An ad's destination often passes through tracking and affiliate links before it reaches a page. A redirect trace follows the saved destination one hop at a time and records what each server answered.
When a trace runs
- Automatically, once a day per destination, for ads whose destination carries your affiliate parameter, a known affiliate or tracking marker, or an affiliate network link.
- When you select Trace now or Trace again in the Redirect chain column of an advertiser's saved ads or of Non-compliant affiliates.
- Through the API or an AI assistant with trace_redirects. See Connect an AI assistant with MCP.
Read a chain
- Observed lists each hop: its address, status code, how it sent the visit on (HTTP redirect, refresh or a script redirect read without running it) and how long it took.
- The final URL is the page the chain reached. Affiliate IDs are listed only when they are present in a hop, with the hop where they appeared.
- Inferred, needs review lists notes such as a final domain that differs from the ad's domain or possible cloaking. They are prompts to look closer, not findings.
- When a hop reveals one of your affiliate IDs, your Affiliate ID detected alert rules fire once for that ID and capture day.
Traces run from our servers, not from the searcher's country or device, and scripts are not run. A redirect that depends on location, device or a real browser may differ, and a site may answer an automated visit differently.
Limits and safety
- Each account has a daily number of traces that depends on the plan. It resets at 00:00 UTC. Repeating a trace of the same destination within the same hour reuses the first one.
- A trace stops after 10 hops or 20 seconds. It never visits private or internal network addresses and never sends your cookies or credentials.
- Only destinations saved from your own ads can be traced.