Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by amluto 2605 days ago
Google's approach here seems totally wrong. The destination URL should be, exactly, the link as shown. If someone wants to track clicks using a third-party tracker, Google should offer an API for that which does not give the third-party tracker any ability to control the destination -- they have plenty of market power to impose this and, heck, they could even charge a small premium.

Most browsers support a lovely feature where the a tag has a ping attribute, which is intended for more or less this use case.
2 comments
dangrossman 2605 days ago
Google already works like this in browsers that support it (most modern ones). The ad is linked to the destination URL with no redirects through any advertiser-controlled domain. A third-party tracking URL can be specified, and it will be pinged in the background using the browser's sendBeacon() function. Any redirects in response to the ping don't affect what webpage the browser displays, so they can't be used to hijack the click.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7544674?hl=en

link
soared 2605 days ago
That’s not the point of the tool - the point of the tool is to turn example.com/cms/category/subcategory/product into the easier to read example.com/product
link
alasdair_ 2605 days ago
>That’s not the point of the tool - the point of the tool is to turn example.com/cms/category/subcategory/product into the easier to read example.com/product

Then set up an explicit 301 or 302 on example.com to make this happen, don't hide it in the ad-serving layer.

link