These two produce the longest URLs most people ever encounter. A single AliExpress product link routinely runs past 400 characters, of which about 40 identify the product.
Both are worth covering together because they share an approach: heavy position tracking, aggressive affiliate and referral parameters, and share links that carry the identity of the person sharing.
AliExpress
A product link copied from the app or the address bar looks something like this:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001234567890.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.7a3b4c5d&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%21&algo_pvid=8f2a-1b9c&algo_exp_id=8f2a-1b9c-3&aff_trace_key=9d8c7b6a&terminal_id=4e5f6a7b&curPageLogUid=Xy9Zab
The product is /item/1005001234567890.html. Everything else is disposable.
spm is Alibaba's position tracking. The value encodes which page, which module, and which slot within that module you clicked. Broken down, a2g0o.productlist.main.1 is describing a specific position in a product list. It is remarkably granular, and it appears on nearly every internal Alibaba link.
algo_pvid and algo_exp_id relate to the ranking algorithm and to which experiment group you were placed in. If you have ever wondered whether you are seeing the same product ordering as everyone else, these parameters are a fairly direct answer.
aff_trace_key, aff_fcid, aff_fsk and aff_platform are affiliate attribution. If you arrived from a review site or a YouTube description, these credit that person.
terminal_id and curPageLogUid are session and device identifiers.
The clean version:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001234567890.html
From 400 characters to 55, opening the identical page.
Temu
Temu's parameters are differently named but similar in spirit:
https://www.temu.com/goods.html?goods_id=601099512345678&_oak_mp_inf=EK&_x_ads_channel=google&_x_campaign=summer&refer_share_id=8f2a1b9c&refer_share_uin=7234567890&refer_share_channel=copy_link
goods_id identifies the product and must be kept. Note that Temu puts the identifier in the query string rather than the path, which makes it one of the few retail sites where cutting at the question mark actually breaks the link.
_x_ads_channel, _x_ads_sub_channel and _x_campaign describe the advertising channel that produced the visit.
refer_share_id, refer_share_uin and refer_share_channel are the referral parameters, and they are the ones worth understanding properly.
Temu's referral parameters are doing something specific
Temu runs an aggressive referral programme. Share a link, get credit when someone acts on it. The refer_share_uin in a shared link is tied to the account of the person who shared it.
That means a Temu link forwarded into a group chat is not neutral. It is carrying somebody's referral identity, and every person who opens it is being counted against that account. Usually the person who shared it knows and intends this. Sometimes they copied the link from someone else and are unknowingly passing on a stranger's referral.
I find this the most interesting case in the whole series, because it is the one where the parameters have direct financial consequences rather than just analytical ones. Cleaning a Temu link is not only about tidiness. It changes who gets credit.
That cuts both ways, and I want to be even-handed about it. If a friend sent you a Temu link and you are happy for them to get the referral credit, leaving it alone is a perfectly reasonable choice. The problem is doing it without knowing.
Why these two are worse than Amazon
Amazon links are long, and I have written about cleaning them on the amazon link cleaner page. But Amazon has a canonical short form that everybody knows: amazon.com/dp/ plus the ten-character product code. Once you know that, cleaning an Amazon link is trivial.
AliExpress and Temu have no equally well-known convention. Most people do not know that everything after .html on an AliExpress link is disposable, so they share the full 400-character version. Then the recipient's chat app truncates it, and half the time somebody has to ask for it again.
Cleaning by hand
For AliExpress: keep everything up to and including .html. Delete the rest.
For Temu: keep goods.html?goods_id= and the number that follows. Delete every other parameter. This is the fiddly one, because you have to keep part of the query string rather than dropping it entirely.
For both, if you arrived via an affiliate link and want to remove the credit, the tracking parameters are where that lives.
Cleaning automatically
The link cleaner strips both. For AliExpress it keeps the item path, and for Temu it preserves goods_id while removing the referral and advertising parameters.
A note on short links
Both platforms produce short links, and AliExpress has s.click.aliexpress.com for affiliate traffic specifically. As with every short link, the parameters are invisible until you follow it. Open first, clean second.
Related reading
The URL tracking parameter glossary lists the full parameter set for both.
UTM parameters explained covers the campaign tags that often accompany them.
Frequently asked questions
What is spm in an AliExpress URL?
Alibaba's position tracking. It records which page element you clicked, down to the slot within a list.
Will the short version still open the right product?
Yes for AliExpress, as long as you keep the /item/NUMBER.html path. For Temu you must keep goods_id.
Does cleaning a Temu link remove someone's referral credit?
Yes. That is what refer_share_uin does, and removing it removes the credit.
Why are these URLs so long?
Both platforms track position and ranking experiments in the URL itself rather than only in cookies, and both run large affiliate and referral programmes that need attribution parameters.
Is it safe to click a link with affiliate parameters?
Clicking is not the risk. The parameters affect who gets paid, not what the page does.