tracking

Tracking link

Definition

A tracking link is a unique URL assigned to a publisher that routes a customer to the advertiser's site while embedding an identifier the network uses to attribute any resulting click or sale back to that specific publisher. It's the fundamental mechanism that makes performance-based affiliate commission possible.

How does Tracking link work in practice?

A network generates the link example.com/product?affid=4471 for a publisher. When a customer clicks it and buys, the network reads affid=4471 from the tracking data and credits that publisher with the commission.

What happens if a publisher shares a plain URL instead of their tracking link?

Any resulting sale won't be attributed to that publisher, since there's no identifier for the network to match against the conversion. This is a common and costly mistake – publishers must always use their unique tracking link, not the advertiser's raw site URL, for commission to be credited correctly.

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