How to Get Faster Redirects with Branded Domains

The average expected latency for a branded link to perform a redirect operation is 200 milliseconds. For most applications, this is acceptable enough for the redirect to be considered invisible in the eyes of users. 

However, if your use case requires your branded links to redirect to your destination URLs as fast as possible, Rebrandly has an alternative option available. 

In your Rebrandly dashboard, you can opt-in for a different DNS configuration for branded domains, the "Faster redirect" configuration, which will enhance the average latency time worldwide- exploiting highly available and congestion-free global routing paths to get your visitors closer to the Rebrandly servers.

Is Faster Redirect for you?

For all branded domains, purchased through Rebrandly from July 2022, this feature won't be available anymore. We will assure, for those domains, the best configuration, which will guarantee the best mix between the accuracy of analytics and the redirection performances. 

The Fast redirect feature is available only for the external domains connected to Rebrandly, by DNS.

Only if you have an external domain and you prefer our performance-oriented solution, instead of the more accurate solution for statistics, please enable the Faster Redirects feature in your Rebrandly account.

Note: before proceeding, however, note that this option does contain limitations:

• Geo-tracking not available: Branded links created with domains configured with Faster Redirect will lose the ability to identify which country the traffic originated from.
  • When looking at click metrics, you will lose access to country-specific reports.
• Geo-routing not available: Branded links created with domains configured with Faster Redirect cannot leverage conditional rules that involve the visitor’s location
• Decreased performance for bot detection: There is a category of bots/crawlers that Rebrandly will not be able to properly mark as such for click traffic coming from links whose domains are configured with Faster Redirect.

How it works:

If you want to get faster redirects and the described limitations aren't an issue for you, follow these simple steps to enable it. 

1. Access your Rebrandly dashboard
2. Identify the external (not purchased through Rebrandly) branded domain you would like to redirect faster and then navigate to the domain detail page
   
3. Switch on the “Faster redirect” option located in the DNS Configuration (Expert only) section   
   
   
4. Click on “Activate” on the confirmation prompt
   
5. You will be prompted with instructions on how to redact your DNS records accordingly to take advantage of Faster Redirection.
   Be sure to apply the recommended changes to your domain’s DNS panel.
   
   
6. Wait for the DNS change to propagate all over the internet, it usually takes up to one hour for changes to take effect

If you run into any challenges configuring Faster Redirect, please reach out to our support team directly at https://rebrandly.support/contact. 

This article is about:

• Branded domain redirects (external)
• Redirect speeds for external branded domains
• Ultra-fast redirects
• Branded domains
  

Related articles: 

• How to Find the Perfect Domain to Use as Your Custom Link Shortener
• How to Find the Best Domain for Your Branded Links