Deeplinks

Deeplinks Overview

When a user clicks on one of the quotes provided by our partners for a specific flight combination or other types of offerings, we will send the user to a specified page on the partner's website. This specific page is called a deeplink.

There are usually two types of pages (depths) on the partner's website we aim for the user to land on: 

1. Day View:  The page which shows a list of itinerary options that the traveler can choose from that are relevant to a specific search query made on Skyscanner before redirect. 
   • Ex. Traveler searches Skyscanner for JFK to LON.
   • Traveler selects flight XX1234 at 10:00AM
   • Traveler chooses your brand for redirect
   • Traveler lands on your website with multiple options including flight XX1234 at 10:00 AM.
2. Booking Page: The page which shows a single flight combination and the user can start booking.
   • Ex. Traveler searches Skyscanner for JFK to LON.
   • Traveler selects flight XX1234 at 10:00AM
   • Traveler chooses your brand for redirect
   • Traveler lands on your website with flight XX1234 at 10:00 AM shown, and fields to enter in their name and booking details

Ideally, we would hope to send the user to a booking page depth for better conversion, however we understand this may not always be the case due to technical constraints on partner's website. Under these circumstances, we would aim at sending the user to the next supported depth: the day view. All depths must support HTTPS.

A deeplink should have the ability to handle incoming requests, and show relevant search results or exactly the same flight combination selected by user. We are capable to redirect user to your deeplink with HTTPS GET parameters directly or after a background HTTPS POST call to retrieve such URL. 

We also encourage you to include deeplink URL information for each quote in your Pricing/Availability API response. If a more complex mechanism to generate such URL is absolutely necessary, please do include a clear instruction in your technical survey and discuss this with your technical account manager.

Deeplink Structure

Deeplinks usually have the following 3 parts:

1. Base URL: the landing page where the user should be redirect to. For example: https://www.example.com/flight/results
2. Product Parameters: the GET parameters to show the user the correct result. For example:
   ?flight_uid=12345
3. Affiliate parameters: the GET parameters for you to track traffic attribution. For example:
   &utm_source=skyscanner&utm_medium=meta_search&utm_campaign=growth

So, a complete but simplified deeplink may look like this:

https://www.example.com/flight/results?flight_uid=12345&utm_source=skyscanner&utm_medium=meta_search&utm_campaign=growth

We will be able to supply the following information as parameter to your deeplink:

• User's preferred language
• User's currency
• If user is on desktop or mobile
• General flight result data

Deeplink (Exit) Tracking

It is important for both Skyscanner and our partners to be able to track exits and conversions from Skyscanner to our partners’ pages. In order to easily capture these exits (redirects), we offer our partners the opportunity to supply a list of key, value pairs which we usually append to the redirect URL to the partner’s search or booking page.

Tracking Parameter Examples

Tracking parameters are exactly the same as URL parameters. They are specified by the partner for the partner’s use.

Here are some examples: 

Example 1

Results list without tracking on Desktop

http://www.deeplink.com?from=lhr&to=cdg

Results list with tracking on Desktop

http://www.deeplink.com?from=lhr&to=cdg&source=skyscanner

Results list without tracking on Mobile

http://mob.deeplink.com?from=lhr&to=cdg

Results list with tracking on Mobile

http://www.deeplink.com?from=lhr&to=cdg&source=skyscanner_mob

We can also prepend any redirects with a URL string if required and encode the link appropriately, please provide us with the details when relevant.

Restrictions

One caveat is that the tracking parameters should not be available in the original deeplink.

For example, we would not append the tracking parameter `campaign_language=en` to the following redirect URL as this parameter is already found in the deeplink:

http://www.deeplink.com/?from=LHR&to=CDG&language=en

In conclusion, we ask for working example(s) of deeplink to be provided in the technical questionnaire, we may ask you to provide deeplinks with and without marketing parameters for extra clarity. To expedite your pre-integration checks, we encourage you to include as much information as possible in the questionnaire.

In addition to the working example, if you support multiple languages, please provide us details on the all the supported languages and also how to construct(add) them in the deeplinks.