How to Set Up Link Routing Rules for Geo, Device, and A/B Splits

You've got a single campaign link. It's in your email, your social posts, maybe printed on packaging. But the landing page you want to show someone in Germany is different from the one you'd show someone in the US. And the mobile experience probably shouldn't be your desktop homepage.

Most teams solve this the ugly way. They create five different links for five different audiences, then try to segment their distribution lists to match. It's tedious, error-prone, and falls apart the moment someone forwards a link to a colleague in another country.

Link routing rules fix this. One link, multiple destinations, with the routing handled automatically based on conditions you define. Here's how it works, including the parts that surprise people.

What Link Routing Rules Do, and What They Don't

A routing rule is a conditional redirect attached to a short link. A rule has a destination, one or more conditions, and a traffic weight. When someone clicks, Acturity checks each active rule against the visitor and decides where to send them.

There are four kinds of condition.

• Country, based on where the visitor's IP address is located
• Device type, which is mobile, desktop or tablet
• Time of day, a start time, an end time, or a window between them, in a timezone you choose
• Referrer, the website the visitor came from

Each text condition can test whether the value is, contains, starts with, or ends with what you typed. If a rule has several conditions, all of them must match.

Rules are checked in order, from the top of the list down. The first rule that matches the visitor and takes them decides where they go:

1. Acturity looks at the first rule. If the visitor matches it and the rule's weight is 100, they go to that rule's destination.
2. If the rule's weight is below 100, only that share of matching visitors goes there. The rest move on to the next rule.
3. If no rule takes the visitor, they go to the link's default destination.

Drag rules to change their order. When a rule's weight is below 100, the choice is based on the visitor's IP address, so the same visitor lands on the same destination each time.

Every redirect Acturity serves is a 302, a temporary redirect, which means every click is counted. Our guide on how link redirects work explains why that matters for tracking.

Setting Up Geo-Targeting Rules

Geo-targeting is probably the most common routing rule, and it's the one where mistakes cost you the most. Sending Japanese-speaking visitors to an English landing page doesn't just hurt conversion rates. It damages trust.

To set up geo-routing in Acturity:

1. Create or edit a short link and open the redirect rules section
2. Add a rule and choose "Country" as the condition type
3. Choose the country
4. Set the destination URL for that rule
5. Repeat for each country you want to handle

Targeting works at the country level. There are no region or city conditions. Location comes from the visitor's IP address, so someone on a VPN is routed by the VPN's country, and if Acturity can't work out a country at all, the visitor matches no country rule and goes to the default destination.

One pattern works well for international campaigns. Set your default destination to the English version of your page, then add a country rule for each localized version. Germany to the German page, Japan to the Japanese page, Brazil to the Portuguese page. Visitors from countries you haven't localized for still get a reasonable experience.

Don't go overboard, though. A SaaS team running 40 campaigns doesn't need routing rules on every single link. Use them where the destination genuinely differs, such as product pages with regional pricing, app downloads with region-specific stores, or events with local registration pages.

Device-Based Routing

Device targeting solves a different problem. Sometimes the right destination depends on whether someone is on a phone, a tablet or a desktop browser.

A device condition tests the device type, and that's all it can see. The values are mobile, desktop and tablet. Acturity records the operating system and browser of each click for your reports, but you can't route on them. A rule can't tell an iPhone from an Android phone, and there is no "iOS only" condition.

That limits the classic app promotion setup. You can send desktop visitors to a marketing page, and you can send mobile visitors to a different page. To handle both app stores, make that mobile page show a button for each store. You can create QR codes that point to the same link, and a desktop visitor who scans one with a phone arrives as a mobile visitor.

Tablets deserve a thought. A tablet visitor on a mobile-optimized page can be a strange experience, and so can a desktop page on a tablet. If your landing pages have a tablet layout, add a tablet rule. If they don't, and most don't, send tablets to your default destination and make sure that page is responsive.

Time and Referrer Rules

Two conditions don't get the attention they deserve.

Time of day. A time rule is active before a time, after a time, or between two times, in the timezone you pick. A window that crosses midnight, such as 22:00 to 06:00, works. Use it for a webinar link that should show "live now" during the event hours, or a support link that should point to a chat page during staffed hours and a contact form outside them.

Referrer. A referrer rule looks at the website the visitor came from. If your link is shared on a partner's site and in your own newsletter, you can send partner traffic to a page that mentions the partnership. A visitor whose browser doesn't send a referrer won't match, because there's nothing to test, so they fall through to the default.

Splitting Traffic with Weights

Every rule has a traffic weight, from 0 to 100. At 100 the rule takes every visitor it matches. Below 100 it takes only that share, and the others move on to the rules below it. At 0 it takes nobody.

That gives you a way to split a segment on purpose. Say you want to test two German landing pages. Create two rules with the same condition, country is Germany. Put page A first with weight 50, and page B second with weight 100. Half of German visitors see page A, the other half see page B, and everyone else goes to the default. If you set both rules to 50 instead, a quarter of German visitors would match neither rule and go to the default.

For a full test across all your traffic, with statistics on which variant won, use A/B testing instead. Split rules are a routing tool. A/B tests add measurement, including confidence levels. The post on A/B testing your links covers when to pick which.

A practical tip. When you test something risky, like a new landing page design, send most of the traffic to the page you know works. Put the new page first with weight 10 and the proven page below it with weight 100. If the new page holds up, raise its weight.

When Rules Overlap

Because the first matching rule wins, the order of overlapping rules decides everything.

Say you have a rule for Japan that sends visitors to a Japanese page, and a separate rule for mobile that sends visitors to a mobile page. A visitor in Japan on a phone matches both. Whichever rule sits higher in the list takes that visitor. If the mobile rule is on top, Japanese phone users get the mobile page, not the Japanese one.

There are two ways to get this right.

• Put the more specific rule higher. A rule for "country is Japan and device is mobile" goes above the plain mobile rule.
• Put the conditions in one rule, so each rule covers its own group. A single rule with "country is Japan" and "device is mobile" matches only Japanese phone visitors. Add a second rule for "country is Japan" and "device is desktop".

There is also no "is not" condition, so you can't write "mobile, but not in Japan". If you need rules like that, either list the other countries explicitly or split the job across two links.

The other cost of complexity is upkeep. Every rule is a destination you have to maintain. If you change the German landing page address, you need to update it in the rule too. Keep your rule sets as small as you can get away with.

Checking That It Works

Setting up routing rules without testing them is like adjusting your car's mirrors and then driving with your eyes closed. There is no preview tool for rules, so you have to test them yourself.

Click the link from the situations your rules cover. Use a VPN with an exit in the target country, a phone and a desktop, and a link from the referring site if you have a referrer rule. Write down where each test lands. This takes a few minutes and saves you from sending a whole country's traffic to a 404.

After launch, watch your analytics dashboard. It breaks clicks down by country, device and referrer, so you can see whether the audience you expected is the audience you got. Things to look for:

• A country you wrote a rule for that sends almost no clicks, which may mean the rule never matches
• Far more traffic than expected going to your default destination, which may mean your rules are too narrow
• A geographic spread that doesn't match your audience, which may mean your audience isn't where you thought it was

If a rule has a weight below 100, expect some wobble in small numbers. A rule at 50 can take 60 of the first hundred visitors. The choice follows the visitor's IP address, so many people behind one office network all land on the same page.

For campaign-level visibility across several routed links, grouping links into campaigns makes patterns easier to spot. You can also track the metrics that matter to give your whole team a view of what's working.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Forgetting the default URL. Every routed link needs a sensible fallback. If someone clicks from a country or device you didn't account for, the default is what they see. Don't leave it as a generic homepage if you can give them something better.

Putting rules in the wrong order. If two rules can match the same visitor, the higher one wins. Put the more specific rule first.

Over-segmenting. Having 30 routing rules on one link is a sign that you're trying to solve a content problem with link routing. If you need that many variations, you probably need a localization plan, not more rules.

Not testing from the target context. It's easy to set up a rule for Brazil and never check it. Test it with a VPN before the campaign goes out.

Forgetting the rules after the first setup. When you change a destination page, check every rule that points to it.

FAQ

Can I use link routing rules with branded domains?

Yes. Routing rules are part of the link, not the domain, so they work on a link whatever custom domain it uses. Your visitors see your branded domain and the routing happens on redirect.

Do routing rules slow down the redirect?

Acturity only looks up the visitor's country when a link has a country rule, and the device type comes from the browser's user-agent text that arrives with every request. We haven't published a speed figure for rules, so we won't claim one.

How do routing rules interact with UTM parameters?

Query parameters on your short link are kept on the way to the destination. For example, a visitor who opens go.example.com/promo?utm_source=email carries that parameter through. Each rule's destination is its own address, so you can put different UTM tags on each one and see which variant or segment drove a visit, unless the link belongs to a campaign, whose UTM values replace them. Our UTM parameters guide shows how to name them.

Start Simple, Then Layer

Link routing is easy to start with and surprisingly deep once you get into it. Begin with a single country rule or device rule on your next campaign link. Watch the analytics. See how traffic is spread.

Once you're comfortable with the basics, try a time window or a referrer rule, or split a segment between two pages: the first page with a weight below 100, the second with 100. The Acturity dashboard shows you where your clicks come from, so you're never flying blind.

The real value of routing rules isn't any single redirect. It's giving every visitor a more relevant destination, automatically, from one link. That's less work for your team and a better experience for your audience.