How does the link monitoring system work?
Unfortunately, sometimes a site you’re promoting will run into some type of technical problem and the site will go “down”, or become unresponsive.
The problem with this is that all the traffic you send to a site that’s down is wasted – money down the drain.
But don’t worry – ClickMagick can automatically monitor all the links you’re promoting 24/7 …
… and it’ll let you know if a site you’re promoting goes down so you can pause your ads, swap out the link, or do something else to prevent wasting your clicks.
ClickMagick’s monitoring system will alert you via the email in your User Profile – and optionally via text message to your mobile phone – whenever a link goes down, and it will also let you know when it comes back up.
You can view the alert, including the reason and the time, by clicking on the Settings menu to the right of the link and selecting Link Down Alerts:
Here’s a list of the most common errors you’ll see, and a brief description of what they mean:
401 Authorization Required / Unauthorized
This URL requires authentication i.e. a username and password, so our monitoring system is unable to access it.
403 Forbidden
The server hosting the URL you’re promoting is operational, but refused our request. This could be due to a configuration error, or they could have blocked the IP address of our Link Monitoring System.
404 Not Found
The requested URL does not exist.
500 Timeout / Timed Out
The URL took longer than 20 seconds to load (and might as well be down!)
500 Bad Hostname
Generally means the URL/domain is not configured properly, usually due to a DNS problem.
500 Connection Refused
The server refused the connection. This is usually due to some type of configuration problem.
500 No Route To Host
This is a configuration problem with the server hosting the URL you’re promoting.
500 Internal Error / Server Error
The server hosting the requested URL responded with a generic error message.
Note: Keep in mind that sometimes a link may stop working for just a minute or two. If the link seems to be working fine by the time you test it you can safely ignore the alert from our system. It can sometimes take up to an hour for the system to reflect the link is working again.
Also, please understand that just because a link works for you, it does NOT mean it works for everyone.
Many problems result in some people being able to access a link, with lots of others who can’t. Just know that if you get an alert, there is absolutely 100% guaranteed to be some type of problem at the time of the alert.
Tip #1: Link monitoring and alerts are enabled by default for regular tracking links, and DISABLED by default for rotator URLs.
Tip #2: You can turn off monitoring on a per-link basis at the bottom of the Link Alerts sub-panel for any link if you don’t want to receive alerts.
Similarly, you can turn off monitoring for a Rotator at the bottom of the Link Alerts sub-panel for any rotator.
Finally, you can also permanently disable link monitoring for ALL links and rotators on your User Profile page.