Reading the live checkReading the live check

Type your store's web address, press Go, and within about 30 seconds three panes fill in. This lesson reads each part as the site labels it: what it shows, how to read it, and where its data comes from.

One rule runs through all of it. The check records what was seen, and never clicks an ad or requests its click link. What a sighting means under your programme's terms is for you to decide.

Before you run one, the panel plays a sample, marked Sample · not live data. The question mark beside each part's title opens a card on how to read it and where its data comes from.

Running a check

The bar says Searching as ‘Yourbrand’: the name the check searches Google for. If it's wrong, Change name on the brand page searches again. Capture online means Godotoro's search machines are taking checks now.

On the left, As it happens logs each step. An arrow (→) is what the check asked: the store and the name it searches for. An ellipsis (…) is a source being asked now. A tick (✓) is an answer in, or one recent enough to read from what Godotoro holds. An exclamation mark (!) means a pane shows what's held, or a source couldn't finish.

A check doesn't always search afresh. Stores on the market map are searched on a schedule: for most, the bare name and ‘discount code’ every four hours from 00:00 to 20:00 London time, so six times a day, nights included, and ‘voucher code’ and ‘promo code’ weekly. A check refreshes whatever is out of date: the name and ‘discount code’ after 8 hours, the other two after a day.

Who's bidding

The first pane lists every advertiser seen on Google UK this week on four searches: your name alone, and with ‘discount code’, ‘voucher code’ and ‘promo code’. Each search keeps its own bidders under its own head, such as ‘yourbrand promo code’ · 2 checks. The big figure, Other advertisers, counts everyone but you.

Each ad is drawn as it showed, with a row of tags under it. Imagine the second ad on ‘yourbrand discount code’ · 40 checks reads Voucher site · 31/40 · Top 2:

• Voucher site: what kind of advertiser it is, filed by the ad's domain from Godotoro's own list. The others are Cashback, Deals community, Retailer, Marketplace, and Other for sites not yet filed.
• 31/40: seen in 31 of the 40 checks of that search this week. A low share can come from a schedule, a budget, location targeting or a lost auction. The fraction doesn't say which.
• Top 2: its best place. Top is above the results, Bottom below, and the number is its place among them. Google runs the two locations as separate auctions.

Two tags are drawn stronger. You is your own ad: it shows your address, and the advertiser Google names has your store's name (or Godotoro holds no answer). That rests on a name match, so ads you run under another company name can show as Your address. Your address means the ad shows your web address and Google names another advertiser. It counts among the other advertisers.

Under some ads, Paid for by gives the advertiser Google names in its “About this advertiser” panel, and where they're based: Paid for by Example Media Ltd · United Kingdom. For a verified advertiser that's its legal name or an approved trade mark name; for an unverified one, the name on its payments profile. The name links to its ads on Google's Ads Transparency Center.

A second line can follow: track.network.example (Example Network) among its click hosts. Google's page carries, with each ad, a list of addresses a click on it may connect to. When one belongs to an affiliate network, the row names the network. Nothing was clicked. It tells you which network to ask, not which publisher.

Ads showing your address

The second pane reads Google's register instead of its results. It lists the advertiser accounts that, according to Google's Ads Transparency Center, run ads in the UK showing your web address. Other advertisers counts them, leaving out the one that's probably you. Each row reads:

• The name, which opens its ads on the Ads Transparency Center.
• 212 ads: how many of its ads Google lists.
• Same name as the store: the account's name matches yours, so it's probably you. It's a name match, not Google's word.
• Verified by Google, or Not verified by Google: whether Google has verified who the advertiser is.

The register doesn't depend on where anyone searches from, so it can list an account whose ads you've never seen at your desk. It's read weekly for stores on the market map, and again by a check when the last lookup is over a day old.

Where your codes are

The third pane shows which of the 15 coupon extensions and voucher sites Godotoro reads list codes for your store. Listed on 9/15 means nine of them list at least one. Each provider is tagged Extension, a browser extension that offers codes as you shop, or Voucher site, a website that lists codes.

A code shows as its first letters and its length, such as SU••••••: enough to recognise your own, not enough to use. Open a provider for what each code gives and, where the provider says, figures like 94% success and when it last worked. Those are the provider's own figures, not a test of ours.

Providers are read when someone checks the store and the last answer is over six hours old. On the brand page, Last checked says how fresh each is.

The brand page

Under the panes, See Yourbrand's brand page opens /brand/yourbrand.example. It starts with In short, then Last run (and whether a scheduled sweep or a check ran it) and Check now, which refreshes whatever is out of date. Who's bidding gains a window of 7, 30 or 90 days, and for each advertiser:

• a strip, one mark per check, oldest on the left, coloured for Top 1, Top 2, Top 3 or lower, Bottom or Not seen;
• Seen in 31 of 40 checks, its best and usual position, First seen and Last seen;
• its sightings in office hours (09:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday, London time), out of hours, and at night (00:00 to 06:00);
• the moon, ☾ Only out of office hours, for one seen out of hours at least twice and never in office hours across at least two office-hours searches;
• its distinct ads.

Ads showing your address adds First listed by our lookups, and Came and went: accounts an earlier lookup listed and the latest doesn't. Where your codes are adds Every code we've seen, with who lists each code now and before. Every check run lists each search and lookup behind the page, and How it went: Answered, Blocked by Google or Didn't finish.

A check is free. Signed out, you see each section's first rows. A free account, through Google or an emailed link, sees everything.

What the check doesn't see

It sees what a UK desktop browser sees on google.co.uk, for four searches, at the times it searched. It never clicks, so it can't show which publisher a network credited: your network's records hold that.

What to do with what you see

Most of what a check shows has an ordinary explanation: an approved partner, your own agency, another team, terms a publisher never received, a sub-network's publisher who didn't know the rules, or an old campaign still running. Start there. Aware, not accusing sets out the approach.

1. Record the sighting: the search, the ad as it read, the advertiser Google names, its Ads Transparency id, and the date and time, London time.
2. Compare it with your own records: your Ads accounts, your agency's, your approved publishers, and any partner allowed to bid on your name or link to your site.
3. Open the advertiser on the Ads Transparency Center and note the ads it lists for the UK.
4. Ask your network a specific question, with those details, before the validation window on any matching sales closes.

When you're ready, check your brand.