Click Tracking

ShortyLink tracks every click on your links in real-time, providing you with instant insights into your link performance.

How Click Tracking Works

When someone clicks your short link:

1. The request hits ShortyLink's edge servers
2. We record the click with all metadata
3. The visitor is redirected to the destination
4. The whole process takes milliseconds

Data Collected Per Click

Total vs Unique Clicks

ShortyLink tracks both total clicks and unique visitors:

• Total Clicks - Every click is counted, including repeat visits from the same person
• Unique Clicks - Counts distinct visitors based on a combination of IP and user agent (without tracking individuals)

Real-Time Tracking

Clicks appear in your dashboard within seconds of occurring. The analytics page auto-refreshes to show the latest data.

For high-traffic links, we aggregate data to ensure fast dashboard loading while maintaining accuracy.

Bot Filtering

ShortyLink automatically filters out known bots and crawlers:

• Search engine bots (Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.)
• Social media preview bots
• Monitoring and uptime checkers
• Known scraping services

This ensures your click data reflects real human visitors.

QR Code Tracking

Clicks from QR codes are tracked separately, allowing you to:

• Compare QR vs direct link traffic
• Measure offline marketing effectiveness
• Track specific QR code campaigns

Accessing Click Data via API

GET /api/v1/links/{id}/clicks

Response:
{
  "total_clicks": 1523,
  "unique_clicks": 892,
  "clicks": [
    {
      "timestamp": "2024-01-15T14:32:45Z",
      "country": "US",
      "city": "San Francisco",
      "browser": "Chrome",
      "device": "Desktop",
      "referrer": "twitter.com"
    }
  ]
}