How Google Ads handles a click: the browser goes straight to the final URL while tracking addresses load in the background.
Tracking used to sit in front of the landing page. A click went to Google, then through each tracking redirect, and only then to the page. Under parallel tracking, which Google made mandatory for Search campaigns on 30 October 2018, the browser goes from Google straight to the final URL, and the tracking template is called separately in the background.
That's faster for the shopper, and it changes what can be seen. The address bar shows the brand's page, a gclid and anything in the final URL suffix, never the network's redirect. So following an ad's click, by hand or with a tool, shows little of the tracking, and it also charges the advertiser for the click unless Google judges it invalid.
- A network credited through a background request usually relies on its tag on the brand's pages, or on identifiers passed in the final URL.
- Never click an ad to see where it goes. Record it, look the advertiser up and ask.
- Trace a link refuses Google ad click links for the same reason.
Only some clicks covers what this means for spotting an affiliate behind an ad.
Google's own help and policy pages first.