Click tracking

Visitors reach merchants through tracked links. Every offer in the public API has an outboundUrl. When a visitor follows it, the platform records a click and redirects to the merchant. This is how the platform counts how many visitors each product, merchant and website sends out.

The outbound link

An outboundUrl looks like this:

https://<redirect domain>/go/<offerId>?w=<websiteId>&s=<signature>

• The host is the website's redirect domain, or the platform's own domain when none is set.
• w is the website id and s a signature the platform issued for that website and offer. Only links the API handed out are accepted, so clicks cannot be forged and offers cannot be enumerated. The signature does not cover the host, so links keep working when the domain changes.
• Open the link in the visitor's browser. It needs no token. Use it as the href of your buy button, with rel="nofollow sponsored".

What GET /go/:offerId does

The response is never cached (Cache-Control: no-store) and is marked noindex, nofollow. The click stores the referrer host only (no path or query), so no visitor data is kept.

Redirect domain

Set a Redirect domain on the website to keep links on a domain of your own, such as go.shop.example. See Websites. There are two ways to serve it.

Point the domain at the platform

Add a CNAME record to the platform's host. The platform answers /go on any host, so no code is needed. On Cloudflare Workers the domain must also be listed in DEPLOYMENT_EXTRA_HOSTS so the Worker answers it.

Serve /go yourself

The @product-comparison/redirect package is a redirect client you run in the website's own frontend. It resolves each link through the API, caches the answer and redirects the visitor, then reports clicks in batches. With it the website serves /go on its own domain.

1. GET /api/public/v1/go/:offerId?s=<signature> returns where the link leads. It never records a click.
2. The client reports clicks with POST /api/public/v1/clicks in batches.

It also answers GET /go/_ping, which the redirect domain check uses (see below).

GET /api/public/v1/go/:offerId

Authenticated with the website token. Query: s, the signature.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $LISTINGS_TOKEN" \
  "https://platform.example/api/public/v1/go/offer_123?s=0123456789abcdef"

{ "target": "https://shop.example/products/ettan-loos", "kind": "offer", "trackable": true, "ttl": 300 }

POST /api/public/v1/clicks

Authenticated with the website token. Send up to 100 entries per request. Each entry stands for count clicks on the same link in the same hour from the same referrer, so a busy link costs one entry per flush, not one request per click.

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $LISTINGS_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"clicks":[{"offerId":"offer_123","s":"0123456789abcdef","referrerHost":"google.com","count":3}]}' \
  "https://platform.example/api/public/v1/clicks"

{ "accepted": 1, "rejected": 0 }

Entries with a bad signature or an offer outside the website's project are dropped and counted in rejected. Accepted entries are stored as individual clicks, so they count exactly like clicks on the platform's own /go.

With the typed client: client.outbound.reportClicks(entries). See Listings client.

Check the redirect domain

After you save a redirect domain, the platform requests https://<domain>/go/_ping and shows who answers: Points to this instance, Self-hosted redirect client, Unknown server or Not reachable. The check is informational only. Links use the domain whatever the result.

Where clicks show up

• Analytics: total clicks against the previous period, clicks over time, Most clicked products, Most clicked merchants, Clicks per website, and click events in Recent events. See Analytics.
• Overview: clicks of the last 24 hours.
• Products, Merchants and Offers: clicks of the last 30 days in the lists (sortable) and on each detail page.
• Websites: clicks of the last 7 days per website.

Merging products or merchants moves their clicks to the destination.