Glossary

Tracking link

A tracking link is the URL an affiliate actually sends traffic to: it points at the tracking platform, which logs the click, mints a click ID, evaluates any rules, and instantly redirects the visitor to the final destination with identifiers attached. The detour is what makes every later report possible.

Anatomy of a tracking link

A typical link — https://track.yourdomain.com/c/abc123?sub1={site_id}&sub2={creative_id} — has three working parts: the tracking domain, the campaign identifier, and query parameters where the traffic source's macros land. On the way out, the tracker appends its own click ID to the offer URL so conversions can be attributed back.

One campaign usually has one tracking link reused across many placements; the sub-ID parameters, not separate links, differentiate where each click came from.

Why it matters

The tracking link is a single point of failure: a typo'd macro or a broken redirect silently destroys attribution for everything behind it. Test links end-to-end — click through, check the click appears in stats with its sub IDs, fire a test conversion — before spending on traffic.

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