LinkCleanhttps://example.com/landing?yclid=14123456789012345
After LinkCleanhttps://example.com/landing
yclid
Ad-click identifiers · Yandex Direct · introduced ~2010 · Updated 2026-07-22
What is yclid?
What yclid does
yclid is a click identifier appended to outbound paid-ad clicks, the same way Google appends gclid and Microsoft appends msclkid. The token encodes the advertiser, the campaign, the ad-group, and the click, and is read by an analytics tag on the destination to credit the conversion.
Two independent ad platforms attach a parameter with this exact name. Yandex Direct — Yandex's ad platform, the dominant network on Russian-language search — has used yclid for years, read on the destination by Yandex.Metrica. Yahoo! JAPAN Ads, a major search-and-display ad platform in Japan, also tags ad clicks with yclid through its account-level auto-tagging. The two are unrelated uses of a shared name, not one system.
Yahoo! JAPAN Ads and the shared name
Yahoo! JAPAN Ads' auto-tagging appends ?yclid=<token> to ad click-through URLs at the account level — directly analogous to Google's gclid auto-tagging. Because Yahoo! JAPAN is a leading search engine in Japan, most yclid-tagged links a Japanese reader encounters originate from Yahoo! JAPAN Ads rather than Yandex.
The honest limit: a page receiving the click sees only yclid=… in the URL. It can't tell from the parameter name alone whether Yahoo! JAPAN Ads or Yandex Direct added it — they're independent platforms that happen to share the identifier. LinkClean doesn't need to distinguish them; it strips the parameter either way.
Why it's worth stripping anyway
Wherever it came from, yclid lands on links you might receive and forward. Forwarding it follows the same logic as fbclid: the click ID is bound to an ad session on the tagging platform's side, and propagating it leaks attribution metadata into your forward.
The destination page never needs yclid. Strip it, refresh, and the same page loads. (Yandex also runs ymclid, a related Yandex.Metrica click ID, which LinkClean's reference catalog covers in the opt-in set.)
How LinkClean removes it
yclid ships default-on in the ads catalog alongside gclid, fbclid, msclkid, and ttclid, stripped on every host. One rule covers it no matter which platform — Yahoo! JAPAN Ads or Yandex Direct — attached it.
Frequently asked
Which platforms add yclid?
Two independent ones that share the name: Yahoo! JAPAN Ads (which auto-tags ad clicks with it at the account level) and Yandex Direct (paid-search ads on Russian-language search). For a Japanese audience, Yahoo! JAPAN Ads is the far more common source.
Can the destination tell whether Yahoo! JAPAN or Yandex added yclid?
No. The receiving page sees only yclid=… — the parameter name is identical for both platforms, so it can't be attributed to one from the URL alone. They're independent uses of the same name, and LinkClean strips it regardless of origin.
Does a Pixel-equivalent read yclid?
Yes. On Yahoo! JAPAN Ads it's the Yahoo! conversion tag; on Yandex it's Yandex.Metrica. Functionally similar to Google Analytics + Meta Pixel: a script on the destination reads yclid and reports the conversion back to the ad platform.
Is yclid in LinkClean by default?
Yes. Default-on, stripped on every host — no matter which platform tagged the link.
Clean tracking on iPhone, in one tap.
LinkClean strips ~80 vendor-specific tracking parameters from any link, from any app's share sheet — and preserves functional ones like hl, t (YouTube timestamp), and q (search). No account, on-device.
