Geo rules send visitors from a place to a destination made for them: a regional storefront, a language, a country-specific offer. One link, several landing pages.
Rule types and precedence
Four rule types are available: continent, country, state or region, and city. They are evaluated most specific first — city, then region, then country, then continent — regardless of the order you added them. Anything unmatched goes to the main destination, so keep that one useful.
Region and city rules hang off a country, so the picker narrows sensibly: choose the country, then the state, then the city. Region and city values accept free text as well as the listed options, because your analytics tool may name a subdivision differently from the geo database.
Building the rules
Add rules in the Geo-targeting tab. Each rule takes a list of values and one destination URL. A country rule listing several countries is one rule, which is usually clearer than one rule per country.
Rule sets can be saved as a geo template and applied to other links, which is how you keep a dozen campaign links pointing at the same set of regional stores without rebuilding the list each time.
Testing a rule
Open the short link with ?ms_geo=IN, or a fuller ?ms_geo=IN-MH, or ?ms_geo=IN-MH/Pune. The rule is evaluated as if you were there. The preview never counts as a click and never fires webhooks or pixels, so you can test as often as you like without polluting your data.
How reliable is the detection
Country detection is reliable. State detection is good on fixed lines and softer on mobile networks, where the address may belong to a gateway in another state entirely. City detection is softest of all. Design around that: never send someone somewhere they cannot leave. Put a visible region switcher on the destination page.
Interaction with other targeting
A matched geo rule wins over the iOS and Android destinations and over A/B variations — the visitor gets the geo destination, and no variation is assigned. If you need both, build the split into the geo destination page rather than expecting the two features to combine.
Country geo-targeting starts on the Starter plan, and region and city rules on Business; on the free plan geo rules sent to the API are dropped, and the response says so.
Find this in your dashboard
- Sign in and select the workspace and domain you want to manage.
- Open Branded Links. Review the article’s steps and your plan’s available controls.
- Save your changes, reopen the record and verify the saved result. For routing changes, check the short link with a test visit.
