Free Online URL Parameter Cleaner, Remove Tracking
Paste one URL or a whole list and take out the tracking parameters: the utm_ family, fbclid, gclid, msclkid and several dozen more, from a list you can edit. Anything not on that list is always kept, and each URL is shown before and after with the names that went.
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The Parameters That Look Like Tracking and Are Not
This is why nothing outside the list is ever touched.
| Parameter | What it can actually be |
|---|---|
ref | On plenty of sites it is analytics. On others it is a referral code that somebody is paid for, and stripping it means the person who shared the link does not get credited. On some documentation sites it selects a git branch or a version. |
t | On YouTube it is the start time in seconds, so removing it sends the viewer back to the beginning. Elsewhere it is often a cache buster or a token. It is not on the list here for either reason. |
si | On YouTube it is a share identifier and worth removing, which is why it is listed for that host only. On other sites it can be a site or store selector, so a global rule would break those links. |
source | Sometimes a plain analytics field. Sometimes the thing that tells an application which feed or importer a record came from, and the page behaves differently without it. |
id | Almost never tracking. It is usually the entire point of the URL, and it is a good example of why an aggressive cleaner is worse than none. |
fbclid | Genuinely only tracking, from Facebook's click identifier, and safe to remove everywhere. So are gclid, dclid, msclkid, twclid, igshid and yclid. |
The rule this page follows is that removal is opt in by name. The default list holds the parameters that are only ever tracking, plus a few that are usually tracking and are marked in the table when they go, so you can see it happened. Anything else survives untouched, even if it is forty characters of base64 and looks exactly like a tracking token. A cleaner that guesses is a cleaner that eventually hands you a broken link and does not tell you.
How to Clean Tracking From a URL
A few steps, and nothing is uploaded.
What to Know About Tracking Parameters
Including the ones that look like tracking and are not.
ref is analytics on one site and a paid referral code on the next, and on some documentation hosts it selects the branch. On a YouTube link si is a share identifier worth removing, but t is the start time and stripping it sends the viewer back to the beginning. This page removes only names you can see in the list, and si is limited to YouTube, because a global rule for it would break other sites.
utm_source stops the destination attributing the visit to a campaign, but it does not stop cookies, a tracking pixel, server logs, a fingerprint or a redirect through a link shortener that records the click before sending you on. Many shorteners and email click trackers put the identifier in the path, not the query, and that is untouched here. This tidies links; it is not a privacy shield.
/About and /about can be two different pages. Dropping a trailing slash, forcing https and stripping www. are all conveniences that are right nearly always and wrong occasionally, which is why each one is a separate switch and all three are off by default.
Key Features & Capabilities
What this tool does, and what it deliberately does not.
About the URL Parameter Cleaner
A link you want to share often arrives carrying half a campaign report: the five utm_ parameters, a click identifier from whichever ad network was involved, a mail merge identifier from the newsletter, and a Google Analytics linker blob. None of it is useful to the person you are sending it to, all of it is ugly, and some of it says which email of yours was opened. Taking it off by hand means finding the right ampersand and hoping you kept the parameter the page actually needs.
The part that needed care is not the removing, it is the not removing. It is tempting to strip anything that looks like a token, and that is how a cleaner eventually deletes a referral code somebody is paid for, or the timestamp on a video link, or the identifier the page is built around. So this works from a list of names, the list is on the page where you can read and edit it, and a parameter that is not in it is kept no matter how much it looks like tracking. The si entry is limited to YouTube for exactly that reason.
Around that is the normalising that usually wants doing at the same time: lower casing the host, dropping :443 from an https URL, removing a question mark left behind when the last parameter goes, and optionally sorting what remains so two links to the same page compare equal. Every URL is shown before and after with the names that went, because a cleaner you cannot audit is one you have to trust, and this one would rather be checked.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which parameters go, which stay, and why the list is editable.
utm_ family through a prefix rule, the click identifiers fbclid, gclid, gbraid, wbraid, dclid, msclkid, twclid, ttclid, igshid, yclid and rdt_cid, email platform fields such as mc_cid, mc_eid, mkt_tok and vero_id, the Google Analytics _ga and _gl, HubSpot's _hsenc and _hsmi, and a few dozen others. The full list is in the box on the page and you can change it.youtube.com:si in the list, and you can scope any name that way for your own sites.www., and a few internal or legacy hosts have no https at all, in which case forcing it gives you a URL that does not resolve. Lower casing the host is always safe because host names are case insensitive; the path is left alone because it is not.