Definition

Click registration

Click registration is the moment an affiliate network's server records your click — at the tracking hop (awin1.com, pxf.io, shareasale.com), before the visitor reaches the merchant. It is the anchor event of affiliate attribution.

Because registration happens server-side at the hop, tracking parameters missing from the final merchant URL do not prove failure — the click was already recorded upstream. This single fact explains most false alarms in affiliate link checking, and it is why Afterlink treats parameter loss as a warning, never as "broken" by itself.