Straight answers about tracking links.

Reference pages on how link tracking actually works, what each platform will and will not tell you, and where the data quietly goes missing.

Click tracking

• How to fix a broken short link
  Check the link string for a typo first, then test the redirect on its own, then check whether the destination page still exists. Most broken short links fail at one of those three points, not because the shortener service itself is down.
• How to point a domain with DNS
  Pointing a domain means adding a DNS record, an A record for a raw IP address or a CNAME for another hostname, at the DNS provider managing your domain's zone, then waiting for that record to take effect everywhere it's cached.
• How to shorten a URL for free
  Paste your long URL into a free shortener, generate the short link, and copy it. No signup is needed for basic use, though picking a shortener that will still exist next year and offers click data matters more than the shortening step itself.
• How to tell if clicks are real
  Compare your click count against a platform's own native tap counter, check how fast clicks arrive after you post the link, and see whether they carry a referrer and vary by device the way real traffic does. No single check proves a click is fake, the pattern across several does.
• How to test a redirect before you trust it
  Open the link with your browser's developer tools on the network tab, or run curl -I -L from a terminal, and read the status code and destination of every hop until you reach the final page. Anything other than a clean chain ending in a 200 is worth investigating.
• How to track clicks on a link
  Track clicks on a link by using a tool that logs each click server side, tagging the link with UTM parameters, and reading the click count together with referrer and geo data. A plain URL shortener alone only gives you a raw count, not who clicked or why.
• How to track link clicks for free
  You can track link clicks for free with a free tracker, or with Google Analytics and UTM parameters if the link points to your own site. Both work with no card required, though free plans often limit how much click history they keep.
• How to use a custom domain for short links
  A custom domain for short links works by pointing a CNAME record at your link platform's target address, so the platform can issue an SSL certificate and serve your pages under your own domain instead of a shared one.
• Unique clicks vs total clicks: what each number actually counts
  A unique click counts each visitor once no matter how many times they click, while total clicks counts every click event, including repeats from the same person. Total clicks is always equal to or higher than unique clicks on the same link.
• What is a custom domain?
  A custom domain is a web address you own and control, such as yourbrand.com or go.yourbrand.com, used in place of a shared address like raydar.bio/you or bit.ly/xyz. It puts your own name in the address bar instead of a platform's.
• What is a deep link?
  A deep link is a URL that opens a specific screen inside a mobile app, like a product page or a user's profile, instead of just launching the app to its default home screen. It works either through a custom scheme the app registers with the OS, or through a normal https link the OS recognizes as belonging to that app.
• What is a redirect?
  A redirect is an instruction that automatically sends a visitor from the URL they requested to a different URL. It is usually delivered as an HTTP status code and a Location header, and it happens before the browser renders anything.
• What is a referrer?
  A referrer is the URL of the page a visitor was on immediately before arriving at the current one, sent by the browser in the HTTP Referer header. Whether it arrives at all, and how much of it survives, depends on privacy settings the browser controls, not the site receiving it.
• What is a session in analytics?
  A session is a group of interactions, like pageviews and clicks, that a tool counts as one continuous visit, usually ending after 30 minutes of inactivity. The exact timeout, and what else resets it, differs by tool, which is why session counts rarely match across platforms.
• What is a vanity URL?
  A vanity URL is a custom, readable web address chosen to represent a brand, such as raydar.bio/yourhandle or a fully owned domain, rather than a random string assigned by a shortener. It is defined by being branded and controlled, not by being short.
• What is an in-app browser?
  An in-app browser is a mini web browser built into an app like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook that renders links inside the app itself instead of handing them to Safari or Chrome. It uses the same underlying engine as a real browser but usually starts with none of its saved logins, passwords, or extensions.
• What is bot traffic?
  Bot traffic is clicks, page loads, or visits generated by automated software rather than a person, including search crawlers, security scanners, and link preview bots that fetch a URL the instant it is shared. Most analytics tools count it as a real click unless something is actively filtering it out.
• What is bounce rate?
  Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that did not count as engaged. GA4 defines engaged as lasting 10 seconds or more, firing a conversion, or having 2 or more pageviews, which is a different definition than Universal Analytics used, single-page sessions only.
• What is click-through rate?
  Click-through rate is the percentage of people who saw something and clicked it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions times 100. The exact number varies between tools because platforms define both 'click' and 'impression' differently.
• What is click tracking?
  Click tracking is the practice of recording every click on a link, including when it happened, what referred it, and where the visitor went next. It answers one specific question: did someone click, and from where, not what they did afterward.
• What is event tracking?
  Event tracking is the practice of recording specific user actions, such as a button click, a video play, or a form submission, as discrete data points rather than only logging which pages were viewed.
• What is link prefetching?
  Link prefetching is when software, a browser, a messaging app, or a platform, loads or partially loads a URL automatically before a person taps it, usually to build a preview card or speed up the next page. It is why a link can show a click within seconds of being shared, before anyone has actually opened it.
• What is link rot?
  Link rot is when a URL that used to work stops leading anywhere useful, because the page was deleted, the domain expired, or it was moved without a redirect left behind. The link still exists. Whatever it pointed to does not.
• What is link tracking?
  Link tracking is the practice of monitoring a link you create and control across its full lifecycle: clicks, referrers, campaigns, and destinations. It is the umbrella term; click tracking is the specific logging that happens inside it.
• Why are my click counts different between tools?
  Click counts differ because each tool measures a different event. A shortener logs every redirect request, including bot and preview fetches, while analytics tools like GA4 only count sessions after a page's script loads, which misses several of those requests.
• Why do links get blocked by spam filters?
  Spam filters mostly judge a link by the reputation of the domain it points to or redirects through, not the wording of the message around it. A domain with no history, a bad history, or one the filter can't quickly resolve gets flagged even when the link itself is safe.
• Why do links open in the wrong browser?
  Links from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and similar apps open inside that app's own built-in browser because the app intercepts the tap and renders the page itself, without ever asking the phone's operating system to open it. Your default browser setting has no effect on this, because the OS is never consulted.

Platforms

• How many links should be in your bio?
  Keep it to three to five links. Above that, extra links push your best offer down or off a phone screen that only fits about four or five tappable buttons before a visitor has to scroll, and most visitors never scroll.
• How to add a link in bio on Instagram
  Open your profile, tap Edit profile, tap Links, then Add external link, paste your URL, and tap Done. Instagram allows up to five links in this field on any account type, and each one shows as a tappable line under your bio once saved.
• Tracking clicks on Linktree
  Yes. Linktree's own dashboard shows total clicks per link, but the free plan only keeps roughly the last seven days of history and does not break clicks down by referrer, device or location. For that level of detail, upgrade to Linktree Pro or move to a tool with deeper analytics on its free plan.
• How to track link clicks on Facebook
  Facebook reports link clicks for Page posts inside Page Insights, but a Page's bio link, a personal profile share, or a Group post get no click data at all. fbclid appears on almost every Facebook link tap, organic or paid, so its presence alone does not mean an ad ran.
• How to track link clicks on Instagram
  Instagram will not tell you who clicked your bio link or what they did next, but professional accounts do get an aggregate tap count in Insights. For clicks by source, post, or individual link, you need UTM parameters and a link tool with its own analytics.
• Tracking link clicks on LinkedIn
  LinkedIn does not give you a per-link click count for organic posts. Company Page analytics show one aggregate clicks figure that mixes link clicks with clicks on your logo and company name, and personal profiles show even less. Tag your link with UTM parameters before you post to get a real count.
• How to track link clicks on TikTok
  TikTok gives no native click count at all for an organic bio link. The only click data TikTok produces natively is ttclid, an ad click identifier, so organic clicks have to be tracked with UTM parameters and a separate link tool.
• Tracking link clicks on YouTube
  Not for a plain description link. YouTube Studio only reports click data for cards and end screens pointing at an approved destination, not for text links pasted into the description. Replace the link with a UTM tagged or shortened tracking link before you publish to see real clicks.
• How to track sales from Instagram
  Tag every link with UTM parameters and match that data to your store's order records, then add a unique discount code for Instagram as a backup signal, because Instagram's in-app browser can break cookie-based attribution before someone actually buys.
• How to write a call to action for a bio link
  Name the specific destination and the reason to tap it, not the mechanism. Skip generic verbs like click here or learn more and write what the visitor actually gets on the other side, in five words or fewer.
• Link in bio best practices
  Cap your links at three to five, put the one goal that matters most at the top, write CTAs that name the destination instead of saying click here, and track clicks per link so you know what to cut.
• Link in bio vs website
  A link in bio page is a menu of destinations behind the one clickable URL a social profile allows. A website is a full, owned property with its own pages and its own search visibility. Most creators only need the first; most businesses eventually need both.
• What is a link in bio?
  A link in bio is the single clickable URL a platform like Instagram or TikTok allows in a profile, since links inside captions and comments are not clickable. It usually points to a page listing several destinations, not just one.
• Why is my link flagged as unsafe?
  A link gets flagged as unsafe because the domain it lives on has a poor reputation score with that platform, usually from other links on a shared shortener, not because your specific page was reviewed and judged unsafe.

Campaign data

• First touch vs last touch attribution, and which one to use
  First touch attribution credits the first interaction that brought someone into your funnel. Last touch attribution credits the final interaction right before they converted. They will disagree whenever a customer touches more than one channel, and neither one is the correct answer on its own.
• How to add UTM parameters to a link
  Add a question mark after the URL if it has none, or an ampersand if it already has parameters, then attach utm_source, utm_medium, and any other tags as key=value pairs joined by ampersands, with no spaces.
• How to calculate ROAS
  ROAS is the revenue a campaign generated divided by what you spent on it, usually shown as a multiple like 4x. Add up revenue tied to the campaign, divide by total spend for the same period, and keep the attribution window consistent on both sides.
• How to collect emails without a website
  Use a link-in-bio page, a hosted signup form, or a QR code as the capture point, then point your Instagram or TikTok bio at it. A website and a domain are not required.
• How to measure social media ROI
  Social media ROI equals the value social generated minus what it cost, divided by that cost. The formula is simple; the hard part is tracing revenue back to social at all, which needs every outbound link tagged so clicks can be traced to their source.
• How to see where your website traffic is actually coming from
  Open your analytics tool's traffic source or acquisition report, which sorts visits by referrer and UTM parameters. For a reliable answer, tag every link you post with UTM parameters first, since referrer data is often missing or stripped by in-app browsers.
• How to track affiliate links (and see what's actually working)
  Combine two layers: the sub ID your affiliate network gives you, which attributes commissions, and a wrapper link with UTM parameters, which attributes the click to a specific post or channel. The network tells you what sold; the wrapper tells you what sent it.
• How to track email clicks (and tell real ones from bots)
  Turn on click tracking in your email platform, which rewrites each link through a tracking domain and logs who clicked it, then add UTM parameters to every link so the click also shows up in your website or store analytics, not just inside the platform.
• UTM naming conventions that hold up after six months
  A UTM naming convention is a written, closed list of allowed values for utm_source and utm_medium, one casing rule (lowercase, hyphens), and a fixed pattern for utm_campaign, kept in a shared spreadsheet everyone tags from.
• utm_source vs utm_medium: what goes where
  utm_source identifies the specific place a click came from, like instagram or a newsletter name. utm_medium identifies the category of channel that place belongs to, like social or email. Source is a proper noun, medium is a shared category.
• What are UTM parameters?
  UTM parameters are tags added to the end of a URL that identify the source, medium, and campaign behind a click. They do not change the page that loads; they only work if something on the receiving end is set up to read and log them.
• What is a click ID?
  A click ID is a unique string an ad platform automatically appends to a link's URL the moment someone clicks an ad, such as gclid or fbclid, so that platform can match the click back to the exact ad and campaign later. The platform generates it. The advertiser does not write it.
• What is a landing page?
  A landing page is a standalone web page built around one specific action, such as signing up or buying, with no navigation menu or other links to distract from that action.
• What is a lead magnet?
  A lead magnet is a free resource, tool, or piece of content offered in exchange for a visitor's contact details, usually an email address, so an anonymous visitor becomes a named lead you can follow up with directly.
• What is ad tracking?
  Ad tracking is the set of methods, pixels, device identifiers, and URL parameters like UTMs and click IDs, used to measure what happens after someone sees or clicks an ad. It is distinct from ad serving, which is the process of choosing and delivering the ad itself.
• What is an attribution window?
  An attribution window, also called a lookback window or conversion window, is the fixed period after a click or view during which a resulting sale still gets credited to that touchpoint. A sale that happens after the window closes is not counted, even from the same person.
• What is attribution in marketing?
  Attribution is the practice of assigning credit for a sale or signup to the marketing touchpoints that led to it. It is a model applied on top of tracking data, not the tracking itself, and it is always a choice, not a fact.
• What is campaign tracking?
  Campaign tracking is the practice of tagging links so that clicks, and later conversions, can be attributed back to a specific marketing effort, such as an email send, an Instagram post, or a paid ad, usually through UTM parameters and platform click IDs.
• What is conversion tracking?
  Conversion tracking measures what a visitor does after they click, such as a purchase or a signup, and connects that outcome back to the specific click or campaign that drove it. It requires instrumentation on the destination page, not just the link.
• What is cost per click?
  Cost per click (CPC) is the average amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks an ad. It is calculated as total spend divided by total clicks: CPC = spend / clicks.
• Qualified lead vs prospect
  A prospect is somebody who plausibly fits your market but has not been checked. A qualified lead has answered questions confirming what they want, roughly when, roughly what they can spend, and whether they decide. The difference is evidence, and it decides whether someone is worth an email or worth an hour.
• Lead qualification, defined
  Lead qualification is the process of checking whether someone who has shown interest actually has the need, budget, authority and timing to become a customer, before sales spends time on them. It ends in a decision: pursue now, nurture later, or drop.
• What is multi-touch attribution?
  Multi-touch attribution credits a conversion to more than one marketing touchpoint instead of just the first or last one, splitting the credit across touches using a model such as linear, time decay, or U-shaped weighting.
• What is view-through attribution?
  View-through attribution credits a conversion to an ad when someone saw it but never clicked, then converted later within a lookback window, matched by the platform's own device or account identity rather than a click.
• Why do your analytics numbers never match?
  Analytics numbers never match because each platform uses a different attribution model, a different measurement window, and often an entirely different data collection pipeline, not because one tool is wrong.
• Why your traffic is showing up as direct
  Traffic shows as direct whenever your analytics tool has no referrer and no UTM parameters to read, which usually means the click came through an app that strips referrer data or a link with no tag, not that someone typed your URL from memory.

QR codes

• Dynamic vs static QR codes
  A static QR code has its destination permanently baked into the pattern, so it can never be changed or tracked after printing. A dynamic QR code points to a short redirect link you control, so you can change the destination and see scan counts anytime, even after the code is printed.
• How to make a QR code that tracks scans
  A QR code only tracks scans if it points to a link with analytics behind it, such as a link-in-bio page or a dynamic redirect. Generate the code from that trackable link, tag it with UTM parameters, and scans show up as clicks with device, timing, and location data.
• How to track QR code scans
  Yes, but only if the code points to a trackable link. A QR code itself has no memory. If it encodes a dynamic redirect or a link-in-bio page with analytics, every scan shows up as a click with a timestamp, device, and country. A bare printed URL with no tracking layer gives you nothing.
• QR code best practices for print
  Size a printed QR code to at least one tenth of its intended scan distance, keep a clear blank margin around it at least four modules wide, use a vector file rather than a low resolution raster, and keep strong contrast between the code and its background.
• What is a QR code?
  A QR code, short for quick response code, is a two-dimensional barcode that stores data such as a URL, text, or contact details as a grid of black and white squares a camera can decode instantly. It holds far more data than a standard barcode and reads from any angle.
• What is a QR code scan?
  A QR code scan is the event of a camera decoding the pattern and opening the link it contains. What most analytics tools report as a scan is actually the click on that destination link afterward, which is why scan counts and camera decodes do not always match.

Visitors and identity

• Cookieless visitor identification
  Cookieless visitor identification recognizes a returning visitor without a browser cookie, typically using a hashed IP signal, a server side first party token, or an account login instead. It does not automatically mean the method is more private than cookies were.
• How to track visitors on your website (without overclaiming what you can see)
  Use free analytics like GA4 or Plausible to count visitors and see behavior, and layer in an IP based identification tool if you need to know which people or companies showed up. No method identifies every visitor, and none sees activity beyond the pages you actually track.
• Intent data vs visitor identification
  Intent data is an aggregated, account-level signal that a company is researching a topic somewhere across the web, sold by third-party providers. Visitor identification is a real-time, per-visit signal that a specific company or person just landed on a specific page you control.
• Person-level vs company-level visitor identification
  Company-level identification matches a website visitor's IP address to the business it belongs to. Person-level identification tries to match that visitor to a named individual, a harder claim. Company-level is more reliable since it only identifies an organization, not a person.
• Visitor tracking vs visitor identification
  Visitor tracking measures behavior, pages viewed, time on page, clicks, without needing to know who the visitor is. Visitor identification adds a probable company or person on top of that anonymous behavior. Identification sits on top of tracking; it does not replace it.
• What is a match rate?
  A match rate is the percentage of website visitors an identification tool successfully recognizes out of a defined visitor pool. It is close to meaningless on its own because vendors rarely disclose what that pool excludes, such as bots, VPN users, or mobile carrier traffic.
• What is a visitor ID?
  A visitor ID is an anonymous identifier, usually a cookie value or a hashed token, assigned to a browser or device the moment it first shows up, before anyone knows who is behind it. It is not a name or an account. It resets or multiplies whenever the underlying cookie, device, or network changes.
• What is an identity graph?
  An identity graph is a database that links different identifiers, a cookie, a device ID, a hashed email, an IP address, into clusters a system treats as the same person or household. It stores probabilistic edges and confidence scores, not a single verified identity.
• What is de-anonymization?
  De-anonymization is the process of matching an anonymous website visitor, tracked only as a cookie or IP address, back to a real person, household, or company using an outside database. It is always probabilistic and never a certainty, and the specific mechanism behind a match determines how much weight it deserves.
• What is IP hashing?
  IP hashing runs a visitor's IP address through a one way function, usually with a random salt, to produce a fixed string that can recognize repeat visits without storing the raw IP address. A hashed IP is still generally treated as personal data under GDPR, not anonymous data.
• What is website visitor tracking?
  Website visitor tracking is the practice of measuring how many people visit a site and what they do there, using cookies, pixels, and server logs. On its own it counts and describes behavior; it does not attach a name to a visitor unless a separate identification layer is added on top.

Privacy

• What is SynthID?
  SynthID is Google DeepMind's watermark for AI content from Google's models, covering images, audio, video and text. Unlike Content Credentials, which attach a signed record to a file, SynthID alters the content itself, so it survives screenshots, cropping and compression. A detection tells you content came from a model that applies it; no detection tells you nothing at all.
• Do you need consent to track clicks?
  It depends on the mechanism. A server-side click log built only from a UTM parameter and a referrer usually sits outside cookie consent rules, but the moment a cookie gets set, or a raw IP address gets stored, you are into territory that EU, UK, and some US state privacy laws treat as regulated.
• First-party vs third-party data
  First-party data is collected directly by you, on your own property, from people interacting with you. Third-party data is collected by an unrelated company that has no direct relationship with the person, then sold or licensed on to others.
• What link tracking protection actually does
  Link tracking protection is a browser feature, built into Safari's private browsing, Messages and Mail since iOS 17, and into Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection, that strips known cross-site tracking parameters from a URL. It does not strip plain UTM parameters, and it does not block the click.
• What is a tracking pixel?
  A tracking pixel is a tiny, usually invisible image, typically 1x1 pixel, embedded in an email or webpage. When it loads, it sends a request to a server that logs the event, such as an email open or an ad view.
• What is cookie consent?
  Cookie consent is the permission a website visitor gives before non-essential cookies, such as analytics or advertising cookies, are placed on their device. It is typically collected through a cookie banner, and it does not need to cover cookies that are strictly necessary for the site to function.
• What is Do Not Track?
  Do Not Track (DNT) is an HTTP header and browser setting that signals a visitor's preference not to be tracked across sites. It is voluntary, most major websites and ad networks ignore it, and browser vendors have largely abandoned it in favor of newer signals like Global Privacy Control.
• First party tracking, defined
  First party tracking is when the website a visitor is directly on collects data about that visit itself, through its own domain's cookies, server logs or redirect events, rather than through a separate advertising company's script embedded on the page.