Hide referrer
What it does
Redirect mode controls what the destination site sees in the Referer header when a visitor goes through your short link. It is set per project and applies to every link in it.
- Direct — standard behavior: the browser passes the original traffic source (the page where your link was clicked) through to the destination. tapurl.io never appears as the referrer on plain redirects.
- Hide referrer — the destination receives no Referer at all. Your traffic source stays private.
Why hide the referrer
In affiliate marketing, the referrer reveals where your traffic comes from. An affiliate network or advertiser that sees your winning source can copy your funnel — or buy the same placement directly, cutting you out.
Hide referrer keeps that information to yourself: the destination sees the visit, but not where it came from. Professional trackers ship the same capability as paid redirect modes; on tapurl.io it is included from the Growth plan.
How to enable
- Open your project and choose Settings → Edit project.
- Under Redirect mode, select Hide referrer.
- Save. The mode applies to all links in the project immediately.
To verify: curl -s -D - -o /dev/null https://tapurl.io/yourcode — the response headers will include Referrer-Policy: no-referrer. A plain curl -I (HEAD request) works too.
Good to know
- Requires the Growth plan or higher. If the plan is downgraded, links silently fall back to Direct; your setting is kept and reactivates on upgrade.
- Technically, Hide referrer serves an instant pass-through page that strips the Referer before sending the visitor on — the same proven mechanism professional trackers use. The extra hop is imperceptible (0 ms delay). With retargeting pixels enabled it is combined with the pixel page.
- Hiding the referrer does not affect click tracking, SubID capture, UTM passthrough or postbacks — your own analytics are unchanged.