Only some clicksOnly some clicks

A shopper searches for Yourbrand, clicks an ad showing yourbrand.example and lands on your shop. No network flashes past, no redirect: just your page, with a long gclid on the end of the address. Days later, your network shows a commission against a publisher.

The address bar gave an accurate but very incomplete account. Since October 2018, a Google Search ad click has sent the shopper straight to the page while the tracking runs beside the visit, in a request the shopper never sees. Whatever decides the credit can sit in that request.

The settings behind a click

• The final URL: the page the ad leads to. The ad's displayed domain is taken from it, so an affiliate whose final URL is your page shows your domain (Looks like yours).
• The tracking template: an optional URL Google calls on a click, so a tracker can record it. At account, campaign and ad group level it must contain {lpurl}, which Google fills with the final URL, and it must lead to the same content.
• The final URL suffix: parameters added to the end of the landing page's address, so they reach the page itself.
• Auto-tagging: adds gclid, Google's click ID, to both the landing page's address and the template's URL. Some iOS traffic gets gbraid or wbraid instead.

How parallel tracking works

Before 2018 a click went through each tracker in turn, one redirect at a time, and anyone following it could watch the addresses go by. Parallel tracking splits the click in two. It became mandatory for Search and Shopping on 30 October 2018 and for Display on 31 July 2019. Today it covers Search, Shopping, Display, Video and Performance Max, and only Hotel campaigns can opt out.

• Foreground: Google sends the browser straight to the final URL, with the gclid and the suffix added. It's the only address the bar shows.
• Background: the browser calls Google's click tracker and the tracking template's URL through a browser function called sendBeacon.

That background chain never reaches your shop. Google swaps {lpurl} there for an address of its own that returns HTTP 204, an empty answer, and adds gb=1 so trackers can recognise the call. Browsers that can't do parallel tracking fall back to the old redirects.

So a tracking server can't hand your shop a click ID of its own: in Google's words, the call “does not forward to the website”. Whatever links the click to the sale has to travel another way.

How a network still gets its credit

• The gclid as a shared key, which is Google's own suggestion. The same gclid reaches the template and your page: the background call records it against the publisher, and the network's tag on your page reads it from the address.
• Fixed identifiers in the final URL suffix, read from your page by the network's tag.
• A cookie the background call sets on the network's own domain. That's a third-party cookie: some browsers block those outright, others partition them by site, and Chrome still allows them by default after Google's April 2025 decision.

Each route ends with the network's tag on your own page. You can often look up the suffix's identifiers in your network account. The gclid belongs to the advertiser's Google Ads account, so you can't resolve it yourself.

The first server in the chain

The template can point at the network's click link, or at a server of the advertiser's choosing that passes the request on. A server first in the chain is ordinary: it's how click trackers work.

That server receives the background request straight from the shopper's browser: the IP address, the browser and device (from the user agent), the gb=1 flag and any cookies the browser lets it read. With those it can choose, request by request, whether to forward the click to the network, so a referral is recorded, or end the chain there. The shopper lands on the same page either way.

Google has no page on templates that decide this way; it follows from how parallel tracking works. The rule could rest on anything the request carries: an office's address, a data centre's, a checking service's, the device, the region, the hour, a repeat visit. It could work at store level, tracking only shops whose past average orders make the commission worth it, without ever seeing this shopper's basket.

Leaving a checker out doesn't even need a server: any advertiser can exclude 500 IP addresses per campaign (Not where you are). The page never changes, only the credit. The Google policy that speaks to this is Unfair advantage, which lists “affiliates that advertise on Google Ads against the applicable affiliate program rules”, with a warning at least seven days before any suspension.

Why it's easy to miss

Every address bar looks the same, credited or not. Your network counts only the clicks that reach it, so a publisher's clicks and sales can look entirely consistent.

A test click shows how the server treated one request, yours. It costs the advertiser a click unless Google judges it invalid, and if credited it can leave the publisher's referral in your browser, so a test order could earn commission. This course never suggests clicking an ad to check it.

What it costs

Imagine a two hundred pound order at five per cent: ten pounds of commission. Only a slice of traffic needs a new referral for the bill to matter.

Each of those shoppers was already searching for your name. Whether the new referral beats an earlier one is for your programme's attribution rules, and many credit the last tracked click (How a sale gets credited).

Where it shows in your records

• Your network: the publisher's clicks and sales by device, region and hour, against your own traffic. Imagine 94% of its credited sales on mobile and 52% of yours. That's a question, not an answer.
• Your orders: each reference, when it was placed and the entry URL your site kept. Look for a gclid beside parameters you never set.
• GA4: a click from a Google Ads account not linked to your property shows as google / cpc, campaign “(not set)”, and the Affiliates channel needs the medium “affiliate”. So GA4 can file the sale as paid search while the network credits a publisher.

The ordinary explanations

Uneven credit often has a plain reason that has nothing to do with a decision server.

• The audience: an app or a phone-first site can be credited mostly on mobile.
• Settings: a −100% bid adjustment on computers and tablets, location targeting or an ad schedule shapes device, region and hour.
• Browsers: credit that rides on a background cookie can fall away in browsers that block or partition third-party cookies, without anyone choosing it, and some iOS clicks carry gbraid or wbraid, not a gclid.
• Your site: a landing page without the network's tag, or one that drops the address's parameters, can lose the match.
• Your rules: another publisher's earlier or later referral can take the sale.
• Terms that never covered it, or a template set up wrongly and never revisited.

What to do

1. Make your terms cover direct linking, the display domain and the paid traffic you permit.
2. Require publishers on paid search to explain their tracking arrangement through the network: the template, anything before the network's link, and what decides whether a click is forwarded.
3. Ask for the publisher's clicks and sales by device, region and hour, and compare them with your own traffic over the same weeks.
4. Send real orders, each with its reference, time and entry URL, and ask which click was credited and how its identifiers reached the transaction.
5. Check your own end: every Ads account of yours linked to GA4, and the network's tag on every page publishers link to.
6. Record each sighting: the time, place, query and device, the ad as it read and the advertiser Google names. Work from records, not test clicks.

Seeing it in Godotoro

Godotoro never clicks an ad or requests its click link, so what it records doesn't depend on which clicks get credit. It searches google.co.uk from UK addresses in desktop browsers and records every ad as it showed.

For each ad it shows the advertiser Google names in “About this advertiser”: the verified name, where they're based and their Ads Transparency id, linked to their ads on the Ads Transparency Center. When Google lists an affiliate network's address for the click, Godotoro names the network. Take that name to your network with your order records. What it means under your terms is yours to decide. To see your own, check your brand.