Glossary
Deep link
An affiliate link that sends the visitor to a specific product or category page instead of the merchant's homepage, with your affiliate ID intact. Major networks include a tool that builds one from a store URL.
Also called: deeplink, deep linking, product link.
You paste the product URL into the network's link builder and get a link with the destination encoded inside it; at Awin, for example, it travels in the ued parameter next to the merchant and affiliate IDs. Deep links usually convert better than homepage links because the visitor lands on the thing the article was about, without searching the store for it.
Product pages die faster than homepages, so deep links rot first: a discontinued item, a new URL structure or a store migration breaks them while the homepage link keeps working. Some programs switch deep linking off or limit it to certain sections. In mobile apps the term means a link that opens a specific screen; for affiliates it matters because a click that opens the merchant's app can lose the browser cookie unless the network tracks app sales.
Related terms: Affiliate link, Link rot, Cookie window, Attribution, Landing page.