Link analytics
Track every click on your links.
Every short link reports in real time — clicks, approximate location, device, browser, and referrer. Compare campaigns against each other and answer the only question that matters: which channel actually worked.
Create a tracked link right here. Clicks start recording immediately — sign up free to keep the history and see the full report.
- Real-time click counts on every link
- Country, region, and city-level location
- Device type, operating system, and browser
- Referrer data showing where traffic came from
- Per-link history you can compare side by side
- No tracking pixel or script to install anywhere
Real-time clicks
Clicks appear as they happen, not after an overnight batch. When a post goes out or an email lands, you can watch the response arrive and react while it still matters.
Audience insights
See where your audience is, what they browse on, and which platform sent them. Location is approximate and derived from network metadata — enough to guide decisions, not to identify people.
Campaign attribution
Give each channel its own link and the comparison becomes trivial. No tagging scheme to maintain, no analytics property to configure, no waiting for data to reconcile.
How to track clicks on a link
Link tracking does not need a tag manager, a script, or access to the destination site. If you can share a link, you can measure it.
Create a short link
Shorten the URL you are about to share. Use a separate link per channel if you want to compare them — one for email, one for social, one for print.
Share it as you normally would
Post it, email it, print it as a QR code. Every visit routes through the short link before continuing to the destination, which is what makes it measurable.
Read the report
Open the link in your dashboard to see clicks over time, top locations, device breakdown, and referrers — updating live as traffic arrives.
Link analytics vs site analytics
They answer different questions. Site analytics tells you what happened after someone arrived; link analytics tells you whether they set out at all — including on surfaces where no script can run.
| Site analytics | Link analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Needs a script on the destination | Yes | No |
| Works when you do not own the destination | No | Yes |
| Measures printed and offline placements | No | Yes |
| Blocked by ad and tracker blockers | Often | Rarely |
| Tracks on-page behaviour | Yes | No |
| Attributes a specific share or placement | With UTM setup | By default |
| Setup time | Hours | Seconds |
What teams use link tracking for
Campaign comparison
Run one link per channel and see which placement returned traffic, without building a tagging convention first.
Newsletter performance
Measure which stories and calls to action pulled clicks, even when the destinations belong to someone else.
Device planning
See the real mobile-to-desktop split for your audience and prioritise the experience they actually use.
Partner and affiliate links
Give each partner a distinct link and settle attribution with numbers rather than screenshots.
Content distribution
Track the same article across communities and find out which one is genuinely worth your time.
Print and offline
Attach a QR code to a poster or package and measure a channel that normally reports nothing at all.
What a click actually records
When someone opens a short link, the request passes through Shortly before continuing to the destination. That moment is recorded: the time of the click, the approximate location derived from network metadata, the device type and operating system, the browser, and the referring page when the browser sends one.
That data is aggregate. It is designed to tell you that two hundred people in three countries opened your campaign link on mobile, mostly from a social referrer — not to identify who any of them were.
The redirect adds a few milliseconds and is invisible to the visitor. They click a link and arrive where they expected.
Why link tracking catches what site analytics misses
Site analytics depends on a script running in the visitor's browser on a page you control. That rules out three common cases: destinations you do not own, visitors with tracker blocking enabled, and anything printed.
Link tracking sits earlier in the chain. The click is recorded at the redirect, before the destination page loads at all, so it survives blockers and works regardless of who owns the destination.
The two are complements rather than substitutes. Link analytics tells you which share brought someone; site analytics tells you what they did next. Teams that rely on only one usually have a blind spot they have stopped noticing.
Getting comparable numbers
The discipline that makes link analytics useful is one link per placement. A single link shared everywhere produces one undifferentiated number. Separate links for the newsletter, the social post, and the printed flyer produce a comparison you can act on.
Name aliases consistently so the report is readable weeks later — something like spring-email and spring-social beats two random codes you can no longer tell apart.
Short links also pair cleanly with UTM parameters. Put the UTMs on the destination URL, shorten that, and you get link-level attribution in Shortly plus campaign attribution in your site analytics, without the unwieldy URL ever being seen.
Link analytics FAQ
What data do you track for each click?
Timestamp, approximate location (country, region, city), device type, operating system, browser, and referrer when the browser provides one. Data is aggregate and not tied to an identifiable person.
Is analytics included on the free plan?
Yes. Real-time click tracking is part of the free plan — it is not gated behind a trial or an upgrade.
Do I need to install anything?
No. There is no script, tag, or pixel. Tracking works because visits pass through the short link, so it functions even on destinations you do not control.
How quickly does data appear?
Immediately. Clicks show up in your dashboard as they happen rather than in a delayed batch.
Can I track QR code scans too?
Yes. A scan opens the short link behind the code, so it is recorded as a click with the same location and device detail.
Does the redirect slow things down?
The hop adds a few milliseconds and is imperceptible to visitors.
How does this compare to Google Analytics?
They answer different questions. Link analytics measures whether people clicked, including on destinations you do not own and on printed material. Site analytics measures what happened after arrival. Most teams benefit from both.
Can I use UTM parameters with short links?
Yes. Add UTMs to the destination URL and shorten it. You get link-level data in Shortly and campaign data in your site analytics, while sharing a clean short URL.
Measure everything
See exactly how your links perform.
Create a tracked link above and watch the clicks arrive. Sign up free to keep the history and compare every campaign in one place.