URL Cleaner
Strip Tracking Tags And Redirects

What A URL Cleaner Does For You

Shared links carry luggage. A campaign tag, an ad click id and a referral stamp all ride along behind the question mark, and none of them help the person who receives the link. So a URL cleaner takes that tail off and leaves the address itself.

There is nothing to install. Because the page works entirely in your browser, you paste a link, read the clean version and close the tab.

Two modes cover the common jobs. First, a single box handles one address at a time. Then a batch box takes a whole list, so a newsletter or a spreadsheet column goes through in one pass.

Nothing travels anywhere. The URL cleaner never opens your link, therefore no request reaches Google, the advertiser or this site.

How The URL Cleaner Works

The work splits into three passes. First, the tool unwraps any redirect so the real address comes forward. Then it reads the query string and drops the tags it recognises. Finally, it tidies the leftovers and prints the result.

Each pass stays visible. Because the tool lists every parameter it removed, you can follow the reasoning instead of trusting a black box. The query itself behaves exactly as the WHATWG URL Standard describes.

The address never leaves the page. So the cleaner guesses nothing about where your link goes, and it makes no request to find out.

Remove UTM Parameters From A URL

Campaign tags are the most common passengers. Five of them carry the whole scheme, and the tool knows all five by name.

The names follow a fixed pattern. Because every one of them starts with utm and an underscore, a single rule catches the family, even when some other tool invents a sixth. Google lists the set in its campaign data help page.

The UTM Family, One Tag At A Time

Source names the site that sent the visit, while medium names the channel. Campaign names the push, term carries the keyword, and content separates two versions of the same advert.

A sixth tag turns up sometimes. For example, utm_id links a row in an advertising report, and the Wikipedia entry on UTM parameters covers the rest.

Why Marketers Still Add Them

These tags are not malware. Because an analytics report needs them to credit a channel, the team that built the link had a real reason for it.

The reason stops at the click, though. Once the visit lands, the tag has done its job, so passing it on to a friend only muddles the next report.

What The URL Cleaner Shows Before It Strips

Every removal appears in a list. Therefore you can see that utm_source went and that the product id stayed, rather than comparing two long strings by eye.

You can also put one back. If a tag matters to you, then switch that name off in the rules and the cleaner leaves it alone.

Clean Tracking Links From Ads And Social

Advertising platforms add their own stamp. Instead of a readable name, you get a long random id that ties one click to an account.

The tool sorts them into families. So the list stays readable, and you can switch a whole family off in one place.

Click Identifiers From Ad Networks

Google Ads writes gclid, and sometimes gbraid or wbraid instead. Microsoft writes msclkid, while Yandex writes yclid and the display network writes dclid.

None of them describe the page. Because each one only identifies a click, dropping it changes nothing about where the link lands.

Social Network Tags

Facebook adds fbclid, Instagram adds igshid, and TikTok adds ttclid. Twitter adds twclid together with ref_src and ref_url.

These stamps also travel between people. So a link forwarded three times can still carry the click id of whoever opened it first.

Mail And Analytics Tags

Mailing tools leave their own pair behind. Mailchimp writes mc_cid and mc_eid, while HubSpot writes _hsenc and _hsmi.

Self-hosted analytics joins in too. Matomo uses pk_ and mtm_ names, and Piwik used piwik_ before the rename, therefore the cleaner treats all three as one family.

Unwrap A Google Redirect Link

Some links are not links at all. Instead of the page you want, they point at a Google address that carries your destination inside a parameter.

The cleaner pulls the real address out. First it spots the wrapper, then it decodes the inner value, and finally it cleans that address as well.

Search And Image Result Wrappers

A copied search result often arrives wrapped. The address starts with google.com/url, and your destination sits in the q parameter behind a pile of percent signs.

Image results do the same with imgurl. YouTube uses a redirect path of its own, so the tool knows that shape as well.

The Generic Wrapper Shape

The pattern repeats across the web. Many sites park a full address inside a parameter called url, u, target or dest, and the tool recognises that shape wherever it turns up.

One rule keeps it safe. Because the inner value must itself parse as an http or https address, a plain word in a parameter called url stays untouched. The decoding follows the URL interface in your browser.

Nested Wrappers And Double Encoding

Wrappers sometimes stack. A newsletter wraps a tracker, that tracker wraps a shortener, and the address you actually want sits three layers down.

The tool unwraps repeatedly, up to a small limit. So a loop cannot run away, yet an ordinary two-layer link still comes out clean.

The Keep List Protects Real Content

Not every parameter is rubbish. Some of them are the page, and removing one of those would break the link completely.

A keep list guards them. Therefore the cleaner strips what it recognises as tracking, and it leaves everything else exactly where it sat.

Parameters That Are The Page

A video id is the clearest case. On YouTube the v parameter chooses the video, so a cleaner that dropped it would send you to the home page instead.

Search pages work the same way. Because q holds the query, and page holds your position in a list, the tool keeps both of them.

Per Site Rules You Switch On

A few shops hide tracking in the path. An Amazon address, for instance, can carry a long reference segment that adds nothing to the product page.

Those rules stay optional. Since a path edit carries more risk than a query edit, the cleaner leaves them off until you tick the box yourself.

A Batch Mode For A Whole List

One link at a time gets slow. So the second box takes a list, one address per line, and it cleans every line in the same pass.

The count travels with each row. As a result, you can see that line four lost six tags while line five lost none. Once a list comes out clean, the bulk URL opener can open every row in its own tab.

Copy Or Download The Cleaned List

A single button copies the whole result. You can also save the list as a plain text file, which suits a spreadsheet import.

Blank lines and stray spaces disappear first. Therefore a list pasted straight out of an email still behaves.

What This URL Cleaner Cannot Do

It cannot follow a shortener. Because resolving one needs a request, and that request would tell the service who asked, the tool refuses on purpose. For that job, use the redirect chain checker instead.

It also cannot judge a parameter it has never met. So an unknown name survives, and that is the safer default.

Safe By Design

Everything happens inside the page. The cleaner makes no network request, writes no cookie and keeps no record of what you pasted.

Your clipboard stays yours as well. Since the tool sends nothing anywhere, you can tidy a private link without a second thought.