Routy

Clicks Blocked: Link No Longer In Use

A link you retired is still getting clicks, and it has no working replacement to send them to. Those visitors are not reaching any offer.

What it means

When you retire a link, it gets the status Obsolete. A retired link with a replacement forwards its clicks to the replacement. This one has no replacement it can use, so visitors get an error page and the click is not recorded.

Nothing is broken in your setup. The link is in the state you chose. What this issue tells you is that a page, ad or email somewhere still uses it. That is why it is a warning rather than a critical issue.

Why it happens

  • The link was retired without a replacement, and it is still published somewhere.
  • Its replacement was deleted. Routy never forwards clicks to a deleted link. If the link forwards to a link that has since been deleted, the forwarding stops there, even if the deleted link had its own replacement. The issue message names the deleted link when this is the cause.

What you can do

  1. Open the issue's details. They show the blocked URL, the page the click came from, the referrer, and your pa / pb values.
  2. Choose one:
    • Give the retired link a replacement that still exists: open it in Routy Links, or on the Links tab of its account, and use Replace link. Its clicks are forwarded from then on.
    • Or update the page, ad or email that still uses the retired link, so it uses the current one.
  3. Before deleting a link, check whether other links forward to it. Routy warns you when it does, so you can give those links a new replacement first.

When it clears

On its own, 3 days after the last blocked click. Fixing it does not close the issue at that moment, so you can press Resolve once you have fixed it. If clicks are still being blocked, it opens again with the next one. A burst of blocked clicks is reported at most once an hour, and search engine crawlers never trigger it.