For security reasons, the web is moving away from the insecure http protocol toward the secure https protocol. You don’t need to understand the technical stuff – but you do need to know this:

No online marketer should use insecure http URLs in the year 2020.

Insecure http URLs are “penalized” in various ways, more and more so as each day passes, so don’t use them.

If you’re already using https for all of your web pages, custom domains, pixels, tracking links and all of your other marketing-related activities then you’re in good shape, and you don’t need to do a thing …

On the other hand, if you’re still using http URLs or pixels, here’s what you should do immediately:


Action Step #1 – Use Only Secure Tracking Links

For your tracking links, always use our secure https://www.clkmg.com and https://www.clkmr.com tracking domains (this is the default), or set up SSL/HTTPS on your custom tracking domains.

You can set up your secure custom domains for free with Cloudflare. Just follow the steps in this article:

How do I set up a secure custom tracking domain?


Action Step #2 – Make Sure You’re Using Protocol Agnostic ClickMagick Pixels

Our Pixel Builder has been generating “protocol agnostic” pixels for a while now, which means they will work properly on any page whether the page is loaded with http or https.

However, if you’ve been using ClickMagick for a long time, you may still have outdated http tracking pixels on your web pages or attached to your tracking links.

We recommend reviewing the pixels that you’ve added to your pages and your tracking links and updating them if you see http in the pixel code.

 
 

Action Step #3 – Make Sure You’re Only Using Secure Web Pages & URLs

Any URLs that you are promoting need to be secure and start with https, not http. This goes for your website and any other URLs you may promote.

If you host your site and you’re still using http, you need to generate and install an SSL Certificate on your web server, which makes your site secure. Your web developer should be able to set this up.

On the other hand, if you use any service or platform to build and host your pages, and all of your URLs do not start with https, you will want to get in touch with them immediately and ask for assistance with switching from insecure http to secure https for all of your URLs/pages.

If you are promoting affiliate links or any other URLs that are http, you should test them with https and see if they still work correctly. If they do great, start using the https version.

If not, you’ll want to contact whoever gave you the URL. If they can’t provide you with a secure https version of the URL, you should probably stop promoting it until they do.


Have an Alert In Your Account About Insecure Tracking Pixels?

For your convenience, you can now find a list of the specific pages or links generating insecure tracking pixel requests to your account on your Pixel Debugger page.

These should be fixed ASAP, as these pixels will not work correctly.

If you see a specific URL listed, that page contains the outdated insecure pixel. To fix this, use the Pixel Builder to create a new pixel to replace what’s on your page now.

If a tracking link or rotator is listed, it means one or both of the following are true:

1. You have added an insecure pixel to the link or rotator, which needs to be updated as described above.

2. You have added the correct pixel to this link or rotator, but it still receives insecure HTTP requests. To fix this issue, see Action Steps 1 & 3 above, and update these links as necessary.

The list on the Pixel Debugger page is updated daily, so please wait up to a day for the next update and continue updating your pages and links until nothing remains.

At this point, you’re secure and good to go!

Article 206 Last updated: 03/13/2023 8:23:23 AM
https://www.clickmagick.com/kb/?article=206