Traffic Rules

Traffic rules are the gate at the front of an offer. When a visitor clicks, the rules evaluate who they are — their country, device, referrer, a URL parameter, their IP — and decide whether to serve the offer or block the click. This is how you keep out geos you don't run, filter low-quality referrers, exclude bots, or require a specific tracking parameter, all before the click becomes recorded traffic or a payable conversion.

Rules vs caps

Traffic rules and offer caps both stop traffic, but for different reasons. A rule blocks based on who the visitor is ("no traffic from this country"). A cap blocks based on how much ("no more than 500 conversions this month"). You use rules for targeting and quality; caps for budget and volume.

How rules evaluate

Each rule has an action (Allow or Block), a set of conditions, and an optional redirect for blocked traffic. Rules run top to bottom and the first match wins: a matching Allow serves the click, a matching Block stops it. If no rule matches, the offer's default action decides. This gives you two patterns:

• Blocklist: default Serve, plus Block rules for what to keep out (e.g. block country RU).
• Allowlist: default Block, plus Allow rules for what to permit (e.g. allow only country BE). Everything else is blocked.

A common mistake is a Serve default plus only Allow rules — that serves everyone, because the non-matching traffic falls through to Serve.

A worked example

You run an offer valid only in the US and Canada, and you've seen fraud from one data-center IP range. You set the default to Block, add an Allow rule for Country is one of US, CA, and add a Block rule above it for IP in that CIDR range. Now a Canadian visitor is served, a UK visitor is blocked (falls through to the Block default), and the fraudulent range is blocked even though it might geolocate to the US. Rule changes take effect within about 15 seconds.

How this works in LimeliJourney

In LimeliJourney, traffic rules are configured per offer on the offer's Traffic tab — a core part of tracking and traffic control. Conditions cover country, device, referrer, URL parameter, and IP or CIDR ranges, with a Match ALL/ANY toggle and drag-to-reorder priority. Blocked visitors go to the rule's own redirect, or fall back through the chain to the campaign fallback, the offer redirect, and finally the global redirect. Blocked clicks are excluded from your counts by default; turn on Include blocked in the Clicks Report to review them, each badged with the reason and where it was sent.