Why your Amazon affiliate link goes to the homepage (and how to fix it)
Your Amazon affiliate link redirects to the homepage instead of the product page. The 5 most common causes and the fix for each.
Quick answer
The most common cause is locale mismatch: your tag is for one Amazon region but the URL points to another. Amazon then redirects to the regional homepage. Other causes are a dead ASIN, malformed tag parameter, region-restricted product, or a stripped redirect via an aggregator.
You wrote the post months ago. The link looked fine when you tested it. Today a reader tells you it lands them on the Amazon homepage instead of the product. No 404, no error, just the wrong page — and no commission for the click. This is one of the most common ways an Amazon affiliate link silently dies, and it almost always traces to one of the five causes below.
The 5 most common causes
Locale mismatch (US tag, EU URL or vice versa)
Symptom
The link redirects to amazon.com or amazon.nl homepage instead of the product page. Often happens when you copy a link from a different region than your Associates account.
Fix
Regenerate the link with the SiteStripe extension on the Amazon domain you actually target. Each country has its own Associates account — your yourname-20 tag works on amazon.com but not on amazon.de. For multi-region creators, Amazon OneLink helps but does not cover every edge case.
Dead ASIN (product removed from catalog)
Symptom
The link goes to the homepage or to a "looking for something?" search page. The product no longer exists in the catalog.
Fix
Search Amazon for the same product, get the new ASIN, and regenerate the affiliate link. If the product is permanently discontinued, replace it with a working alternative — leaving a dead link in your content costs every click that lands on it.
Malformed or missing `tag=` parameter
Symptom
The link goes to the right product page but you receive no commission. The URL itself looks normal.
Fix
Open the URL in private browsing and watch the address bar. The final URL should still contain ?tag=yourname-XX (where XX is your locale suffix). If the tag is missing or wrong-cased, regenerate the link via Amazon Associates — manually editing the URL almost always fails because of region-specific formatting.
Region-restricted product (third-party seller exited)
Symptom
Link works in one country but homepage-redirects in another. Common with marketplace sellers who stop listing in some regions.
Fix
Link to a region-stable product (sold and shipped by Amazon directly), or accept that international clicks on this specific link will not convert. Worth flagging the product variant as "regional" in your own content notes for future updates.
Stripped redirect via an aggregator
Symptom
A link routed through Skimlinks, RewardStyle, or a similar aggregator lands on the Amazon homepage instead of the product. The aggregator added intermediate steps that broke the destination.
Fix
Use the direct Amazon affiliate link with your own tag. Aggregators add convenience but introduce more redirect hops, and every extra hop is a chance for the destination URL or your tag to break.
Manual checks catch the obvious cases. The harder ones — locale drift on a multi-region URL, a marketplace seller exiting your country, an ASIN that quietly migrates — need monitoring that runs on every link, every day, instead of the day you happen to check.
Stop checking links manually.
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Join waitlistFAQ/People also ask
Questions, answered.
No. Amazon Associates reports clicks that converted, not clicks that failed. If your link sends 200 visitors a month to the homepage instead of a product, the dashboard shows the same number it always shows: zero commissions for those clicks.
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