URL Cleaner

How to use this URL cleaner

1. Paste any link — a product page, article, or shared social link.
2. The tracking parameters are stripped instantly as you type.
3. Copy the clean URL, or check exactly what was removed.

How does this work?

Your link never leaves your device. It's parsed locally with the browser's own URL API, and known tracking parameters (analytics, ad click IDs, affiliate tags) are removed from the query string before rebuilding the URL.

Why tracking parameters exist in the first place

Tracking parameters got their start with Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) codes, created by the analytics company Google acquired in 2005 to become Google Analytics. The idea was simple: append a few extra query-string fields (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign) to a link, and the destination site's analytics can tell exactly which newsletter, ad, or social post sent that visitor. Ad platforms later added their own click IDs — fbclid (Facebook), gclid (Google Ads), msclkid (Microsoft Ads) — which work similarly but also let the ad network match a click to a later purchase or signup, which is the technical basis of conversion tracking.

How this cleaner decides what to remove

Rather than guessing which parameters look suspicious, this tool works off an allowlist of known tracking parameter names — the UTM family, the major ad-network click IDs, affiliate and referral tags from marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, and a handful of email-marketing identifiers. Anything not on that list is left alone, on purpose: a URL can have query parameters that are functionally required (a search term, a page number, a product variant ID), and blindly stripping every parameter would break the link instead of cleaning it. The tradeoff is that a brand-new tracking parameter, invented after this tool's list was last updated, will pass through unnoticed until it's added — which is also why the "removed parameters" list is shown, so you can see exactly what was (and wasn't) touched.

Why these parameters are a privacy concern, not just clutter

Tracking parameters aren't only about analytics dashboards — fbclid and gclid in particular are often unique per click, meaning the URL you're about to share (or that a friend forwarded to you) can be tied back to the exact account, ad, and timestamp that generated it. Sharing a link with the tracking parameter intact can leak information the original poster didn't intend to pass along, and clicking one yourself hands the ad network a stronger signal to link your browsing across sites than the destination page alone would. Stripping them before sharing (or before clicking, when you can edit the URL first) is a small but real privacy improvement.

When not to strip a URL

There's one case where cleaning a link actively works against your intent: affiliate links. If a content creator, blogger, or reviewer earns a commission through a parameter like an Amazon "tag" or a dedicated affiliate ID, removing it before sharing (or clicking) means they don't get credited for sending you there — even though the destination page looks identical either way. If you want to support the person who shared the link, keep the original URL; use this tool only when you want a shorter, tracker-free link for your own records or to share without passing that attribution along.

Limitations of this tool

This tool can only recognize tracking parameters that are already in its known list, so it isn't a guarantee against every possible tracking mechanism — first-party tracking embedded in the path itself (rather than the query string), or tracking done through cookies and fingerprinting rather than URL parameters, isn't something a URL cleaner can touch at all. It also doesn't resolve shortened links (bit.ly, t.co and similar) back to their real destination before cleaning, since that would require contacting an external server, which this tool deliberately never does — if you're handed a shortened link, you'd need to unshorten it elsewhere first to see (and clean) the real URL underneath.