What an Amazon Affiliate Link Looks Like (With Examples)

An Amazon affiliate link looks like a normal Amazon product URL with your Associates tracking ID added as a tag parameter, for example https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVGGV7FW?tag=yourtag-20. The tag is the only part that credits you. Everything else either says which page to open or records how someone found it.

The anatomy of an Amazon affiliate link

• Storefront (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.de): each one is a separate Associates program with its own tracking IDs.
• /dp/ and the ASIN: the 10-character Amazon product ID that decides which page opens. For books, the ASIN is the ISBN-10. Any text before /dp/ is a readable product name that Amazon ignores.
• tag=: your tracking ID. Its suffix follows the storefront: -20 for the US and Canada, -21 for the UK and the European stores, -22 for Japan and Australia.
• Everything else: ref=, qid=, crid=, sr= and keywords= record the search that led to the page: the terms, the time and the result position. They change neither the product nor your commission.

Short links, SiteStripe links, and OneLink

amzn.to links are Amazon's own short links, built by SiteStripe, the Associates toolbar shown at the top of Amazon pages while you are signed in. Amazon says your tracking ID is already included in the short link; you see it once the link redirects to the full Amazon URL. a.co links usually come from the Share button in the Amazon app. Whether one carries a tag depends on how it was made, so expand it before you trust it.

SiteStripe's full links add parameters of Amazon's own, such as linkCode, linkId and ref_=as_li_ss_tl, which record how the link was built. Leave them as Amazon generated them.

OneLink does not change what a link looks like. It is still an ordinary Amazon link with your home-store tag; Amazon redirects eligible visitors from other countries to their local store and swaps in the tracking ID you connected for that marketplace. The OneLink guide covers how its matching works and where it stops.

Four Amazon affiliate link examples

Each example uses a placeholder tracking ID. Swap in your own.

1. A clean product link. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVGGV7FW?tag=yourtag-20

The US storefront, the product B0CVGGV7FW, and a US tag ending in -20. Nothing else is needed. The free Amazon link shortener turns longer links into this form and keeps your tag.

2. A link copied from search results. https://www.amazon.com/Solo-Leveling-Season-1/dp/B0CVGGV7FW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Q9XK4LZ7M1VD&keywords=solo+leveling&qid=1761134412&sr=8-1&tag=yourtag-20

The same product and tag as example 1. The product name before /dp/ is decoration, and everything from /ref= up to the tag describes the search: the result position, an ID for the search, the terms, and the time. The link works; it is just long.

3. A SiteStripe link on the UK store. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1847941834?linkCode=ll1&tag=yourtag-21&linkId=5d4f2c7a9b1e3f60a8c2d4e6f7a9b0c1&language=en_GB&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

The storefront is amazon.co.uk, so the tag ends in -21. The product is a book, so its ASIN is also its ISBN-10, and the same ISBN opens the same edition on other Amazon stores that sell it. linkCode, linkId, language and ref_ are SiteStripe's own parameters.

4. An amzn.to short link. https://amzn.to/xxxxxxx

No tag is visible until the link redirects to the full Amazon URL. A short link built in someone else's account carries their tag, not yours.

How to check an Amazon affiliate link

Amazon's own advice is to click the link and look for your tracking ID in the URL, usually as &tag= followed by your ID. Read the final URL in the address bar rather than the link you pasted: a short link or redirect can add, change, or drop the tag on the way.

The free Amazon affiliate link checker does this in one step. It expands amzn.to and a.co links, follows the redirects, and reports the storefront, the ASIN or ISBN, the visible tag and whether its suffix fits the storefront, any Amazon Attribution parameters, and whether the destination responds.

Common mistakes

• No tag at all. A product URL copied from the address bar has no tag, so the click credits no one. Amazon's policies require your tag as a parameter on every link you place.
• A tag for the wrong storefront. Tracking IDs belong to one marketplace's program. tag=yourtag-20 on an amazon.co.uk link does not credit your UK account; that link needs the -21 ID from your UK account. The checker flags a suffix that does not match the storefront.
• A second question mark. Typing ?tag=yourtag-20 onto a URL that already contains ? glues the tag onto the previous parameter, as in sr=8-1?tag=yourtag-20, and Amazon sees no tag. When the URL already has a ?, add the tag with &.
• Two tags. Adding your tag to a link copied from another site can leave their tag in place too. Remove theirs; there is no guarantee yours is the one that counts.
• Attribution parameters mixed in. maas parameters mark an Amazon Attribution link, a different program. Read the Attribution links guide before adding a tag to one.

What a BetterLink looks like

Paste the search-result link from example 2 into BetterLink and you share btrlnk.co/wp1itb instead, or go.yoursite.com/wp1itb on your custom domain. The link is live. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

At click time BetterLink sends the shopper to their own storefront when you saved a tag for it (otherwise to the US store) and applies your saved tag in place of the one you pasted:

• UK shopper: amazon.co.uk, same title or a local match, your UK -21 tag.
• German shopper: amazon.de, same title or a local match, your German -21 tag.
• iPhone shopper: Amazon app, tried first, falls back to the browser.

With your own eligible Creators API credential, BetterLink also checks that each storefront has the product and applies a documented fallback when it does not; see how BetterLink localization works. This is the same example as the card on the BetterLink homepage, and the Amazon link localizer shows where your own link would send a shopper.