# Onboarding ## How does NATS work? NATS is used to track visitors as they navigate through your site. NATS tracks their navigation via a NATS linkcode which is appended to the link of your tour's landing page. A NATS linkcode is an identifier for various NATS elements in a particular order; the affiliate, the program, the site, the tour, the campaign, the ad tool, and two (2) optional values identified as subid1 and subid2. ### Types of Linkcodes There are three (3) types of NATS linkcodes, all of which contain the same information; encoded (common), un-encoded (rare) and shortname (rare). Most implementations of NATS linkcodes are encoded. The encoded linkcode uses the numeric ID for all values and generates a seemingly random assortment of characters to represent that information. The un-encoded linkcode comma separates the required information using the affiliates username, instead of the affiliate ID, and the numeric IDs of the rest of the values. The un-encoded (shortname) linkcode comma separates the required information using the affiliate username, program shortname, site shortname, tour shortname, and the numeric ID of the rest of the values. ### Tracking Visitors A visitor clicks a link via an ad tool with a specified NATS linkcode which directs the visitor through a tracking script. This script writes a cookie on the surfer's browser that identifies the affiliate that should be credited with any future action from said the visitor. Once completed, the specified tour's landing page, also known as the pre-join page, will be displayed to the visitor. The tour landing page will have a join button that directs the surfer to your tour's join page. On the join page, the surfer will, in most implementations, have payment options which will be specified by the billing cascade. Once the join page is successfully processed, the surfer is converted to a member, earning you and your affiliates revenue. By default, NATS uses 301 (permanent) redirects for all track links. This means that when a visitor clicks a tracking link they are redirected to the destination tour URL with an HTTP Status Code 301, and search engines will more likely index the **landing pages** over the tracking URL. This will help with SEO performance since the pages will retain any link equity. Learn more on the [Permanent vs Temporary Track Redirect Links](/using-nats/nats-admin-features/linkcodes/permanent-vs-temporary-track-redirect-links.md) article. The NATS Onboarding process will cover all the NATS Admins as well as the Affiliate Area. ## An Overview of NATS {% content-ref url="/pages/O4WRjJFr5rk4WQbLQUCH" %} [An Overview of NATS](/getting-started/onboarding/an-overview-of-nats.md) {% endcontent-ref %} --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.toomuchmedia.com/getting-started/onboarding.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.