ttclid is the TikTok Click ID. TikTok adds it to the landing page URL when someone clicks through from an advertisement, and the destination site uses it to report conversions back to TikTok. The page loads the same without it.
It is the youngest of the major click identifiers, which is the main reason so little has been written about it. If you searched for this parameter and found mostly advertiser documentation, that is why.
How it works
The mechanism is the same as every other platform. A click on a TikTok ad produces a URL like this:
https://example.com/product?ttclid=E.C.P.1a2b3c4d5e
The value identifies the click. On its own it does nothing at all. It becomes useful when the destination site runs the TikTok Pixel or sends events through TikTok's Events API, at which point the parameter can be matched against the ad that produced it.
TikTok's advertiser documentation on ttclid covers the implementation side if you are on that end of it.
What makes ttclid slightly different in practice is how often it arrives alongside a redirect. TikTok routes ad clicks through its own domains before forwarding, so a link copied at the wrong moment can carry both the wrapper and the identifier.
The parameters on ordinary TikTok share links
Most people looking up ttclid have actually encountered something else: the pile of parameters on a link copied from the TikTok app. Those are not ttclid. They are a separate set, and they are worth naming because they are the ones you are more likely to be forwarding to friends.
A share link typically arrives looking like this:
https://www.tiktok.com/@someone/video/7123456789?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7234567890123
is_from_webapp and sender_device describe how the person sharing was using TikTok. web_id is a browser-level identifier belonging to the sender.
That last one is the one worth pausing on. It is not describing the video. It is describing the person who copied the link. I go into it properly in how to clean TikTok links, but the short version is that TikTok share links carry more about the sharer than most people would guess.
Short links make it harder to see
TikTok also produces vm.tiktok.com and vt.tiktok.com short links, particularly from the mobile app. Those hide the parameters entirely behind a redirect, so there is nothing visible to clean until you open the link and see where it lands.
This is a general problem with short links rather than a TikTok-specific one. You cannot inspect what you cannot see, and that is precisely the appeal of them from the platform's side.
Is it safe to remove?
Yes. ttclid is not required for any page to function, and neither are the share parameters. Removing web_id and sender_device from a link before you send it to someone is straightforward and costs nothing.
Removing them
For a single parameter, cut it out of the query string by hand. For a TikTok share link with five or six of them, that is more effort than it is worth, and it is easy to accidentally remove the video ID in the process.
Pasting the URL into the url cleaner strips the tracking and leaves the part that identifies the video.
Related reading
fbclid and gclid are the older and far more common equivalents, covered in what is fbclid and what is gclid.
Everything in one table: the URL tracking parameter glossary.
Frequently asked questions
Is ttclid the same as the parameters on a shared TikTok video?
No. ttclid comes from advertisement clicks. Share links carry a different set, including web_id and sender_device.
Does removing these break the video link?
No. The video is identified by the username and the numeric video ID in the path. Everything after the ? can go.
Why does my TikTok link look different from my friend's link to the same video?
Because the parameters describe the person who copied it, not the video. Two people sharing the same clip produce different URLs.