Tuesday, March 3, 2009

What is gooleads.g.doubleclick.net?

by Greg Pike, Applecore Web Developer

Last week, we were noticing some weird referrals listed under Google Analytics, our website statistics package. Being a naturally curious bunch, we wanted to get to the bottom of it. And so, after some research (which included trolling through online forums and calling up our Google contact), we determined these odd referrals were in fact coming from Google.

Last year when Google acquired DoubleClick, a digital marketing technology and services firm, it was integrated into their AdSense service. If you're running an AdWords campaign in the Google Content Network, you'll experience referrals from the domain googleads.g.doubleclick.net in your Google Analytics or equivalent stats package software.

These referrals aren't dangerous. Google has simply migrated much or all of their AdSense hosting to this network. Therefore, googleads.g.doubleclick.net referrals are just paid ads run through Google’s content network.