Click ID (GCLID / FBCLID / WBRAID)

Concept

A click ID is a unique, single-use identifier an ad platform appends to the landing-page URL when a user clicks an ad (gclid for Google, fbclid for Meta, wbraid/gbraid for iOS, msclkid for Microsoft, ttclid for TikTok).

Layman Explanation & Analogy

Think of a click ID as a receipt stapled to a visitor at the door. If that receipt survives to checkout and gets written onto the order, you can later ask the platform exactly which click, campaign and creative started that order. If it gets lost along the way, the order still happens — but nobody can prove the ad caused it.

Worked real-world example

A shopper clicks a Google ad and lands on yoursite.com/?gclid=abc123. Your site stores "abc123" and writes it onto order #88412 at checkout. Months later, joining order #88412 to Google's click export attributes the revenue to the exact campaign.

What people get wrong & common traps

Click IDs die at redirects, cross-domain checkout hops, consent-delayed storage, iOS link-decoration stripping and cross-device jumps. Capturing them requires forwarding across every domain and persisting to first-party storage at landing — auditing this quarterly recovers more attribution than most tooling purchases.

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