Short Link Concepts

The mental model behind short links, so the editor and the reporting make sense before you start clicking through them. If you only want the steps, go to Creating a short link.

What a short link is made of

A short link bundles four things into one object:

• A name. Human-readable, and also the event name recorded on every scan and click.
• A destination URL. Where the visitor ends up.
• Campaign tags. Up to five optional UTM-style values captured as event properties.
• A QR design. The visual styling used when you export a QR code for the link.

Ours Privacy generates the short code for you when the link is created, or you can supply a custom one in the editor or via the API. The code is immutable once the link is published.

The short URL

The public URL follows a fixed shape:

https://<your-domain>/r/<short-code>

• /r/ is the path prefix short links resolve on.
• <short-code> is the link's code. It is generated for you, or you can supply a custom one; codes are immutable once the link is published.

The link's name is the tracked event name on every click, and the campaign tags you set on the link are recorded as the event's campaign properties. Both are read from the published link at click time, so the public URL carries no query string.

The editor composes this URL for you. Copy it from the Copy link button on the back of the QR card rather than assembling it by hand.

Note: Existing links in the older /redirect/<short-code>?event=… shape keep working unchanged. New links use the compact /r/<short-code> shape.

What happens on a scan or click

1. The visitor opens the short URL, from a tap, a click, or a phone camera pointed at a QR code.
2. Ours Privacy responds with a permanent redirect to your destination URL and does not cache the response.
3. Separately and asynchronously, the request is turned into an event in your account, so the redirect is never held up waiting on analytics.
4. The event is decorated with approximate location, device signals, and the campaign tags from the URL, then flows through your normal pipeline.

The visitor experience is a redirect, and nothing is rendered in between.

Note: If a link has no destination set, or has never been published, the visitor is forwarded to the Ours Privacy website rather than shown an error page. A redirect to an unexpected site is the signal that a link is not finished.

The name is the event name

This is the single most useful thing to internalize. When you name a link Spring Postcard QR, every scan records an event called Spring Postcard QR. That is the name you will look for in Analytics, the name you select when building an audience, and the name you map to a destination.

Consequences worth planning around:

• Name links the way you name events. Consistent, specific, and stable. Spring Postcard QR is better than link 3.
• Renaming a link changes the event name going forward. Events already recorded keep the old name, so a rename splits your history into two event names. Rename early or not at all.
• A link left unnamed emits a generic name. Links created from the dashboard start out named Redirect, so rename before you publish or your reporting will be full of events called Redirect.

Grouping several links under one campaign is what the campaign tags are for. Use distinct names per link and a shared campaign value across them.

Publishing is what makes a link live

Short links follow the same versioning model as the rest of your configuration. Saving a link stores it. Publishing a version is what pushes it live so the short URL actually resolves.

The editor tells you where a link stands with a readiness pill in the header:

The publish screen has its own Short Links section, so you can see which links a version will make live before you push it.

Edits to an existing live link, including a new destination, also take effect on the next publish.

The QR code is dynamic

A QR code encodes the short URL, never the destination. Everything downstream follows from that:

• Changing the destination on a published link repoints every printed code without reprinting.
• Renaming the link changes the event name recorded, but the printed code keeps working.
• Deleting the link breaks every printed code, permanently. Disable instead when you want a link to stop working temporarily.

Scans and clicks are the same thing

The QR code encodes exactly the same URL as the Copy link button, so a camera scan and a browser click produce an identical event. Reporting counts them together as clicks and does not split them out. If you need the split today, the practical approach is to create two links with different names, one for the printed code and one for the digital placement.

Two surfaces, one object

A short link is the same underlying object as a Redirect source. It is editable from two places, and they are tuned for different jobs:

New short links are managed in Marketing Center and are kept out of the Sources list and Dashboard source map. Older redirects can still appear in both places. Saving one in the Short Links editor moves its management into Short Links.

Use Redirect Tracking settings in the short-link editor when you need to attach custom event, user, or identity parameters to the redirect URL. See Redirect Tracking for those settings.

Next Steps

• Creating a short link: build one end to end.
• Short link click events: exactly what each scan records.
• Campaigns and UTM tags: group links under a campaign.