Nah fam,
display URL ≠ final destination, my guy.
In Google Ads, the display URL and where folks actually end up don’t always gotta be the exact same thing, as long as it stays inside Google policy.
There a few ways that can happen
without some loud obvious redirect chain.
Parallel tracking
Google Ads can run tracking in the background. So instead of some goofy-looking 302 -> 302 -> 302 chain, Google might fire tracking requests separately while sending users straight to the landing page. If you only watching browser redirects, you might miss what’s really going on.
Deep links
If the advertiser pushing an app, the ad can use play.google.com or an app identifier, but the click logic can still decide where users get sent.
- Play Store if app install is the goal
- A web fallback page
- A campaign page on sites.google.com
JS navigation
No HTTP redirect even needed. The first page can load then instantly run something like:
window.location = "https://sites.google.com/...";
or:
location.replace(...);
Boom, user somewhere else.
Old-school move (Meta refresh)
<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="0;url=https://sites.google.com/...">
See? No visible server redirect chain at all.
Internal Google routing stuff
Both play.google.com and sites.google.com sit under Google infrastructure, so internal routing can happen in ways that don’t show up as some clean redirect chain.
Cloaking or policy abuse
Not getting deep into that one, but some advertisers try making things look more trustworthy by showing a familiar Google domain while routing traffic somewhere different.
Most likely though? Either client-side navigation (JS/meta refresh) or parallel tracking doing its thing.
