When you are on redirects and setting up Click Through URL for some keywords, the Destination URL populated by the platform won't resolve correctly. However, the Click Through URL you used works fine, for example, when copying and pasting directly in the browser.
What Causes The Issue?
This problem most commonly occurs when the Click Through URL has some special character, but it does not show the character because the URL is decoded. Therefore the URL appears fine, and the Click Through URL resolves correctly. However, you will have an encoded special character on the Destination URL and that causes the URL to not resolve correctly.
How To Fix The Issue
You need to make an edit on the Click Through URL to remove the "hidden" special character in the Destination URL. We'll show you an example below.
The Destination URL shows:
http://tracker.marinsm.com/rd?mkwid=...edium%3Dcpc%0A
And the Click Through URL shows: http://www.example.com?utm_medium=cpc Notice that the Destination URL includes "%0A" (which stands for linefeed) at the end of the URL because this is encoded, but the Click Through URL does not show this hidden linefeed because this is decoded. You can use the following link to look up the meanings for encoded characters (good for locating hidden encoded special characters): http://www.degraeve.com/reference/urlencoding.php.
When you are on redirects, you can edit the Destination URL only by editing the Click Through URL. The issue is that the Click Through URL appears fine since it's decoded. To remove the hidden linefeed from the Destination URL, you will need to edit the Click Through URL area where the issue resides in the Destination URL.
In the above example, you can remove the "?utm_medium=cpc" portion of the Click Through URL.
The Click Through URL will look like this:
Once this has processed, this should remove "%3Futm_medium%3Dcpc%0A" from the Destination URL, as editing the end of the Click Through URL will edit the end of the Destination URL and thus remove the "%0A".
The Destination URL will then look like this:
http://tracker.marinsm.com/rd?mkwid=...ww.example.com
After the hidden character has been removed from the Destination URL, you can edit the Click Through URL back to the correct URL. In the above example, you can add "?utm_medium=cpc" back on the end of the Click Through URL. Make sure that there are no special characters included.
The Click Through URL will then look like how it was before:
http://www.example.com?utm_medium=cpc
Please see the following Help article on how to identify special characters in your URL: Invalid Characters or Punctuation in Keyword, Creative or URL
Once this has processed, the Destination URL should look correct without any encoded special characters. In the above example, there is no "%0A":
http://tracker.marinsm.com/rd?mkwid=...m_medium%3Dcpc
If the above does not work or you have more questions, please contact our Customer Support team, who will be happy to help investigate.
