Brand protection · UK
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Observations, not verdicts
Glossary · D

Letter
D
Related terms
4
Guides
5
Lessons
2
In one line

A paid-search ad whose click goes straight to the brand's site, through the affiliate's tracking, instead of to a page of the publisher's own.

Most affiliate links come from a publisher's own page: a review, a list of codes, a newsletter. Direct linking skips the page. The publisher runs a search ad whose final URL is the brand's own site, with the network's tracking link in the ad's tracking template, so a click lands on the brand's page and a sale can be credited to the publisher.

Because the display URL's domain comes from the final URL, a direct-linked ad shows the brand's web address. It can meet Google's Destination requirements. Whether it's allowed is up to the programme: many terms rule it out without written permission, some allow it for named partners, and a few allow it freely.

  • The Ads Transparency Center, searched for your web address, lists the advertiser accounts whose ads point to it.
  • In GA4, such visits arrive as google / cpc with a gclid, and their Google Ads campaign shows as (not set) because the ad isn't in an account linked to yours.
  • Your programme terms should have a clause on it, separate from bidding on your name.

When it's done without the brand's agreement and copies the brand's own ad, the trade calls it something stronger, covered in the explainer.

Sources

Google's own help and policy pages first.

  1. Google Ads Help: Path
  2. Advertising Policies Help: Destination requirements
  3. Analytics Help: What the value (not set) means in your reports
Related terms
Guides that use it
  1. How to find which partner is behind an ad on your brandMatch an ad on your brand's searches to a partner in your programme without clicking it: the four clues an ad carries, the record each meets and what to ask.
  2. How to use Google's Ads Transparency Center for your brandSearch Google's Ads Transparency Center for your name and web address, read an advertiser's page and each ad's dates, and know what it never shows.
  3. What is ad hijacking? How a brand's ad gets copiedWhat people mean by ad hijacking: an ad that reads like a brand's own and leads to its shop, run from another account. How it works and how to look into it.
  4. Paid-search rules for affiliates: the clauses to writeThe paid-search clauses a programme's terms need, why “bid on or appear on” matters, how Google's matching shapes the wording, and how to roll it out.
  5. Should you bid on your own brand? What the studies foundWhat the field experiments on brand search ads found, why their answers differ, and how to run a fair test on your own name before you switch anything off.
Lessons that use it
  1. Looks like yoursHow another account's ad can show your web address, take the top spot from your own ad, and reach GA4 as paid search.
  2. Only some clicksUnder parallel tracking every click looks the same in the address bar. Whether it earns credit is settled in a request the shopper never sees.
Related terms
  1. Display URL
  2. Final URL
  3. Tracking template
  4. PPC affiliate