Platform Click ID URL Parameter Collection

A living collection of url parameters from popular traffic platforms (organic and paid). Use as filters within website analytics tools, such as Google Analytics (UA & GA) and or from a tag management tool such as Google Tag Manager to clean up URL's and defragement page url/location/query reports.

🤷 Purpose of Click ID's

Social media (and advertising) platforms commonly decorate outbound links with click ID's; suffixed url parameters onto outbound URL's added within the platform. The parameters are used in conjunction with the platforms' marketing tag (pixel) which often is recommended to be placed on the brands' website. The tag commonly references the click ID and drops a first-party cookie in the users' browser with the click ID parameter stored in its value, which is later used for (ad) attribution purposes.

🤔 Problem

Website Analytics tools, such as Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics, Amplitude or similar by default stores the URL alongside each event, which in most above scenarios would include the click id parameters. In a typical site content report inside GA4, one usually wants to compare the number of e.g. page_view events and conversions (performance) between unique pages of their site, such as below, between the homepage / and the Product Showcase Page /product-showcase:

Page Path + Query String	Page Views	Conversions
/	10,478	345
/product-showcase	6,578	834

Because the brand has driven traffic to the website using popular ad platforms such as Facebook, each unique platform click (and ultimately landing page view) reports onto individual rows due to unique click id's generated by the platform e.g. This results in fragmented homepage and product pages' reports; split into muliple lines with single visits, making overall page performance analysis difficult.

Page Path + Query String	Page Views	Conversions
/	1	0
/?fbclid=12345	1	0
/?fbclid=23456	1	1
/?fbclid=34567	1	0
/?fbclid=45678	1	0
/?fbclid=56789	1	0
.......etc
/product-showcase?ttclid=123abc	1	0
/product-showcase?ttclid=234bcd	1	0
/product-showcase?ttclid=345cde	1	1
/product-showcase?ttclid=456def	1	0
/product-showcase?ttclid=567efg	1	0
.......etc

To see the consolidated page report requires additional work, such as using excel pivot tables, aggregation/consolidation and using advanced filters and regular expressions.

Example: a brand creates a post on Facebook with a headline, description and a landing page URL, meant to encourage and lead a user to the brand's website. The brand relies on GA4 on their site to collect user behaviour and struggle with the native page location or page path + query string dimension which is scattered in hundreds of unique rows, as every pageview generated from that post arrives on the site with a unique click ID in the URL.

💡 Solution

Using a clickid parameter list as the one in this repo, the brand can anticipate incoming traffic from any of these platforms (they might not always know from where traffic comes) and build a tool or configure URL manipulation on their backend (e.g. using GTM, Google Analytics, GA3, GA4) that alleviates the fragmentation problem, either by sending "clean" URL's to the analytics tools in the first page and/or using the list to manipulate or truncate incoming traffic if the tool supports it, which can then be used for reporting.

📃 Marketing & Analytics URL Query Parameters | _updated 4 Jan 2024

---start---

Query Parameter	Description
vgo_ee	ActiveCampaign
s_cid	Adobe
ef_id	Adobe
s_kwcid	Adobe
adobe_mc_sdid	Adobe Target (A4T)
adobe_mc_ref	Adobe Target (A4T)
ad_id	Adroll
awclid	Amazon
ao_noptimize	Autoptimize Plugin
bsft_uid	Blueshift
bsft_clkid	Blueshift
ck_subscriber_id	ConvertKit
cn_reloaded	Cookie Notice Plugin
oft_id	Dialog Insight
oft_k	Dialog Insight
oft_lk	Dialog Insight
oft_d	Dialog Insight
oft_c	Dialog Insight
oft_ck	Dialog Insight
oft_campaign	Dialog Insight
oft_ids	Dialog Insight
oft_sk	Dialog Insight
__s	Drip
cid	Generic & unknown platforms
eid	Generic & unknown platforms
clickid	Generic & unknown platforms
h_sid	Hive Email
h_slt	Hive Email
hsCtaTracking	HubSpot
__hssc	Hubspot
__hstc	Hubspot
__hsfp	Hubspot
_hsmi	Hubspot
_hsenc	Hubspot
igsh	Instagram
igshid	Instagram
_ke	Klaviyo (unconfirmed)
_kx	Klaviyo
li_fat_id	Linkedin
ct_params	Mailchimp
mc_cid	Mailchimp
mc_eid	Mailchimp
ml_subscriber	MailerLite
ml_subscriber_hash	MailerLite
mkt_tok	Marketo
fbclid	Meta (Facebook/Instagram/Messenger/Whatsapp)
fb_action_ids	Meta
fb_action_types	Meta
fb_source	Meta
fb_ref	Meta
cvid	Microsoft MSN/Bing
oicd	Microsoft MSN/Bing
campaign	Microsoft
msclkid	Microsoft
oly_anon_id	Olytics
oly_enc_id	Olytics
otc	Olytics
omnisendContactID	Omnisend
_openstat	OpenStat
ICID	Other
subafid	Other
rb_clickid	Other
dicbo	Outbrain
epik	Pinterest
rdt_cid	Reddit
ss_email_id	Squarespace Newsletter
tblci	Taboola
auctid	Teads
ttclid	TikTok
twclid	Twitter
ref_src	Twitter, X
ref_url	Twitter, X
unicorn_click_id	Unicorn Media
vero_conv	Vero
vero_id	Vero
WT.mc_id	Webtrends Marketing Campaign ID
wickedid	Wicked Reports
vmcid	Yahoo DSP
afid	Yahoo Native Params
soc_src	Yahoo
soc_trk	Yahoo
guce_referrer	Yahoo
guce_referrer_sig	Yahoo
yclid	Yandex/Yahoo
ymclid	Yandex
ysclid	Yandex
si	Youtube
_z1_agid	Zemanta
_z1_caid	Zemanta
_z1_msid	Zemanta
_z1_pub	Zemanta

---end---

⚠️ GA4-specific Proceed-with-caution URL Query Parameters | updated 6 May 2023

The following parameters are required by GA4 to identify the traffic source (for channel reports and Source dimensions) and cross-domain measurement. If they are removed from URL' it might cause unwanted behaviour. If you're not using GA4, your analytics tool might have built-in rules for the below parameters too, but needs to be audited and tested before implementing. As such, these parameters are not included in the automatically generated parameter_array.js or parameter_list.csv files in this repo.

Query Parameter	Description
gclid	Google (non-iOS devices)
gbraid	Google (iOS 14.5+ opted out devices) (web-to-app)
wbraid	Google (iOS 14.5+ opted out devices) (app-to-web)
gtm_debug	Google Tag Manager Preview Mode
dclid	Google Display (Enhanced Attribution)
gclsrc	Google Search Ads 360
srsltid	Google Shopping Free Listings Result ID
usqp	Google Testing ID
_ga	Google Analytics
_gl	Google Analytics cross-domain measurement linker parameters. Can be found in GA4 page_location reports as rogue/stray parameters on incoming website traffic from sites with incorrectly configured cross-domain settings. Consider stripping this parameter within e.g Google Tag Manager unless you are in fact using cross-domain tracking/measurement where this parameter would be required.

🤖 Programmatic Access

Subsidiary files auto-generate upon commits to this repo's master branch, based off the main parameter table in this README file, which outputs into parameter_list.csv and parameter_array.js respectively. Based on usecase these always-recent files can be directly referenced from within tag templates or custom solutions via jsdelivr accordingly:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/henkisdabro/platform-url-click-id-parameters@main/parameter_list.csv

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/henkisdabro/platform-url-click-id-parameters@main/parameter_array.js

🧑‍💼 Google Tag Manager Ideas

Google Tag Manager has a community-provided template gallery with templates that can be used in conjunction with this list. An excellent variable template is written by @mbaersh. URL Cleaner can be configured to correct for many of abovementioned issues and this list works very well with it.

🙏 Sourcing and Inspiration

Brave Browser Detailed Trackers

Brave Browser Known Tracker Parameters

Chrome UTM Stripper Extension

Cloudflare Automatic Platform Optimization product cache rule list

🔂 Updates

04/01/2024 | Add parameters for Blueshift, Dialog Insight, Unicorn Media, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Yandex, Hive, Squarespace

11/12/2023 | Add Adobe Target (A4T) parameters to main list

06/05/2023 | Split out Google parameters from the main list and add caveat to README

19/04/2023 | Add parameters from Cloudflare's cache rule list

12/04/2023 | Release production version of github action to autogenerate csv and array files off an updated README.md file

06/03/2023 | Consolidate parameters into a single list and start testing with github actions for auto-generation of files.

📩 Feedback and Assistance

If you have knowledge of other parameters, from other platforms or tools, feel free to raise a pull request.

🎯 Plans

• Build a GTM Custom Variable Template (Web and/or Server-side)for specific purposes.

• Auto-build JSON or CSV via Github Actions for programmatic access