link.amazon Links Explained: Amazon's App-Opening Short Format
If a link like https://link.amazon/A01EiuCNI has started showing up in your share sheet, your PR emails, or other creators' descriptions, you are looking at Amazon's newest short link format. It sits on the .amazon top-level domain, it redirects straight to a product page, and on a phone with the Amazon app installed it opens the app instead of the browser.
Here is what these links actually contain, what happens to the affiliate tag inside them, and what to check before you paste one into a description.
What a link.amazon link is
Mechanically it is the same species as amzn.to: a short code that answers with a single HTTP redirect to a full Amazon store URL. Everything interesting lives in that destination URL — the product, the marketplace (amazon.it, amazon.com, …), and the query parameters, including the tag that decides who earns the commission on whatever the visitor buys.
The difference is the domain. .amazon is a brand top-level domain: only Amazon can register names under it. That has a pleasant safety consequence — a link.amazon URL can only ever be Amazon's own redirector, where a lookalike of a conventional shortener domain could be anyone. And because the destination is a canonical store URL, the app-opening behaviour rides on Amazon's universal links: app if installed, browser if not.
The affiliate tag survives the redirect
When a link.amazon link is generated from a logged-in Associates session, the destination URL carries the creator's tag parameter, exactly like SiteStripe's amzn.to links do. Expand one and you will typically find a long store URL ending in something like &tag=somecreator-21&linkCode=sl2.
That cuts both ways. Your own link.amazon links keep earning for you — and a link.amazon link you copied from someone else keeps earning for them, invisibly, because the tag is hidden behind the redirect where no one reads it. The full anatomy of that leak is in someone else's affiliate tag.
Reading what's inside one
Paste the link into our free affiliate link checker: it follows the redirect, shows the real destination, names the network, and lists every tracking parameter — including whose tag is riding along. No login, no install.
Three things worth checking before you publish one:
- Whose tag is on it. If you did not generate the link yourself, assume the tag is not yours until you have read it.
- Which marketplace it lands on. A link.amazon from an Italian share lands on amazon.it; your amazon.com tag earns nothing there. Associates tags are per-marketplace.
- Whether it expires. Invalid or retired codes redirect to Amazon's homepage — a click that lands on www.amazon.com with no product and no tag is worth zero.
What CreatorLink does with them
You can paste a link.amazon link anywhere CreatorLink accepts a URL and it is treated like the redirect it is:
- Shortening one expands it first, so the real store URL is what gets stored — and your configured tag is injected, replacing whatever tag was hiding behind the redirect.
- Pasting one in the affiliate settings expands it and reads the parameters out of the destination, so you can save your tag straight from a link you already have.
- If no tag is configured for that marketplace, the link is flagged — no tag or someone else's tag — instead of silently passing through.
App opening is not lost in the process: CreatorLink's own smart app opening sends mobile visitors to the Amazon app from the expanded store URL.
FAQ
Is link.amazon safe to click?
The domain can only belong to Amazon — the .amazon TLD is theirs outright — so the redirect can only lead to an Amazon property. As with any affiliate link, the person who shared it may earn from what you buy.
Does a link.amazon link always contain an affiliate tag?
No. Like a.co, it is also used for plain product shares from the app. Whether a tag is present depends on how it was generated — expand it and read the destination to know.
Should I use link.amazon or my own short link in descriptions?
A link.amazon link is frozen: you cannot change its destination, count its clicks, or update the tag inside it after publishing. A short link you own can be repointed and re-tagged across your whole catalog. Use Amazon's format as a source, not as the thing you publish.
Is wrapping a link.amazon link in a shortener allowed?
Amazon's rules on cloaking apply to hiding the destination, and they are the same as for any Associates link — the details, with the Operating Agreement quotes, are in the Amazon Associates link rules.