What is the issue?

You may encounter a page not found error when clicking your destination URLs within the Platform after inserting tracking parameters. This can happen to users using keyword-level or creative-level tracking.

What causes the issue?

There are a number of potential causes for this issue, as follows:

• Some websites are configured in such a way that they do not allow for tracking parameters to be appended to URLs. In this case, when these parameters are inserted into destination URLs (either via the URL Builder or manually), you may encounter a page not found error on click.
   
• There could also be an issue with the redirect portion within the URL. If this is the case, you will need to escalate to the redirect provider to see why the redirect is resolving the undesired page.
   
• Another reason could be that the website does not allow certain characters to be inserted in the URL. This could also lead to a page not found error.
   
• Finally, another reason URLs may not resolve as expected can be due to invalid characters, spaces or carriage returns in the URL.
   
• If the account utilizes dimension values in the URL, you may not have assigned that object a dimension value, which can also cause an undesired page to resolve. Please therefore make sure that all of your objects have that dimension value so that it gets updated into the URL. Please refer to this Help article for more information on this.

How to diagnose the issue

You can check whether or not your website is configured to allow for tracking parameters by following these troubleshooting steps:

1. Remove all parameters from the destination URL and see if it resolves correctly.
    
2. Take the URL and re-append all tracking parameters to see if it resolves correctly.
    
3. If it does not, remove all but one parameter and try again.
    
4. Test all individual parameters in this way to discover if one particular parameter is to blame.
    
5. If some parameters resolve and others do not, or if none of the parameters resolve, we recommend you speak to your web development team and ask them why this is.
    
6. You can also invent a parameter – such as test=z – to see if it resolves. If not, the page may not allow parameters to be passed into the URL.
    

If you have invalid characters, spaces or carriage returns in your URL, you can correct this issue by creating a report including Destination URL and find and replace the character using Excel or various other text editing tools.

How to fix or prevent the issue

This issue is not usually a problem with the Platform itself, but rather the destination website. For this reason we recommend you speak to your web development team to help solve the issue.

Important notes

• If a user has replaced the full standard trafficked Platform URL with a shortened URL - for instance: http://bit.ly/AB1234 - we will not be able to track conversions/revenue as Platform parameters get stripped from the URL structure. We recommend that you speak with your Platform representative to seek alternatives.