Most affiliate marketers assume their tracking is working until they check. A systematic link audit takes under an hour and often reveals significant attribution gaps — here's exactly how to do it.

Most affiliate marketers never audit their links. They add a link, confirm it loads, and move on. But loading correctly and tracking correctly are not the same thing.

A 30-minute audit can reveal where your attribution is breaking — and which links are quietly costing you data and revenue.

What You're Looking For

A tracking audit checks three things for each affiliate link:

1. Does your UTM data survive to the destination?

2. Do your affiliate parameters survive to the destination?

3. Does the link resolve to the right product or page?

Most audits reveal problems in the first two areas even when the third looks fine.

Step 1: Inventory Your Active Links

Start by listing every place you've published an affiliate link in the last 90 days:

Blog posts and articles
Email newsletter archives
Social media bios and pinned posts
YouTube descriptions
Landing pages and comparison pages
Any automated tools or plugins that generate affiliate links

You're looking for every entry point a user might click to reach an affiliate product.

For larger sites, run a crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb and filter for external links containing your affiliate network domain patterns (e.g., amzn.to, go.partnerize.com, clk.tradedoubler.com).

Step 2: Pick Representative Links with UTM Parameters

Take five to ten links that you know should have UTM parameters appended. These are links you shared in specific campaigns — email sends, paid ads, social posts.

If you don't currently add UTM parameters to your affiliate links before publishing, that itself is finding number one: you have no way to attribute affiliate clicks to campaigns at all.

Construct test versions of each link with explicit UTM parameters, like:

https://yoursite.com/recommends/product?utm_source=audit_test&utm_medium=test&utm_campaign=link_audit_2026

Step 3: Follow the Full Redirect Chain

For each test link, trace every redirect manually. The simplest method:

curl -I -L "https://yourlink.com/affiliate/product?utm_source=audit_test&utm_medium=test&utm_campaign=link_audit_2026"

Review the output. You're looking for each Location: header in the redirect chain. Note:

How many redirects occur
Which domains are involved
What happens to your UTM parameters at each step

Check the final URL in the chain. If utm_source=audit_test is present in the final destination URL, your parameters survived. If it's absent, they were stripped somewhere in the chain.

Step 4: Check the Browser's Network Tab

For links that use JavaScript-based redirects (which curl won't follow correctly), use your browser's developer tools:

1. Open DevTools → Network tab

2. Click the affiliate link

3. Filter by "Doc" or "All" to see the full redirect sequence

4. Check the final request URL for your UTM parameters

Some affiliate redirects use meta-refresh tags or client-side redirects that operate differently from HTTP 301/302 redirects. These are common culprits for silent UTM stripping.

Step 5: Verify in Your Analytics Platform

After clicking each test link, verify in your analytics platform (e.g., GA4 Realtime report) that the session appears with the correct UTM values — not as "direct" or the affiliate network's domain as the source.

If the analytics shows:

Your UTM values → parameters are surviving end to end
Affiliate network domain as source → parameters are being stripped at the redirect
"direct" or "(not set)" → parameters are being stripped and the session is being counted as a new direct session

Step 6: Document the Gaps

For each link tested, record:

|----------|--------------------------------------|---------------------------|----------------|

This table becomes your priority list for remediation.

Common Gaps and Their Causes

Gap: UTM stripped by affiliate network redirect

Cause: The affiliate network's redirect server does not forward non-affiliate query parameters.

Fix: Use link infrastructure that preserves query parameters end-to-end, such as Affilio.

Gap: Parameters stripped by merchant landing page

Cause: Some merchant sites redirect users on arrival (e.g., mobile detection, A/B test routing), stripping incoming query strings.

Fix: Test with multiple destination URLs. Some products may have cleaner landing pages that preserve parameters.

Gap: JavaScript redirect loses parameters

Cause: Client-side redirects using window.location may not include the original query string.

Fix: Check if the link provider has a server-side redirect option, or route through a parameter-preserving intermediary.

Gap: Link doesn't include UTM parameters at all

Cause: Links were added manually without campaign tagging.

Fix: Establish a discipline of appending UTM parameters to every affiliate link at the time of publication.

Running This Audit Regularly

Affiliate links age. Products get discontinued. Redirect chains change when affiliate networks update their infrastructure. Merchant landing pages change.

A quarterly audit of your top 20 links takes less than an hour and prevents months of silent attribution loss.

Your links work. But do they track? There's only one way to know for certain.

How to Audit Your Affiliate Links for Tracking Gaps