What is Click Tracking?
Counting and analyzing how many people click a link and what they do.
Trusted by small businesses worldwide
Short links
created
Clicks
tracked
Chrome extension
installs
Ads on your links,
ever
Quick Answer
Click tracking is the practice of measuring how many people click a specific link, often with additional detail like when, from where, on what device, and from what source. Click tracking turns a link from a simple address into a way to measure engagement.
Full Definition
Click tracking works by routing clicks through a tracking service before sending the visitor to the destination. The tracking service records each click and then redirects the visitor to the destination URL. The visitor experiences a single click; the service records the data in the background.
URL shorteners are one of the most common forms of click tracking. Every short link is a tracking link: the shortener counts clicks because every click passes through its redirect. More sophisticated tracking can capture additional detail, like device type, browser, operating system, geographic location, and referrer (the source the visitor came from).
Why It Matters
Without click tracking, links are invisible to measurement. A marketer can share a link on social media, in an email, and on a printed flyer, but if the link is the same in all three places, there is no way to tell which one drove engagement. With click tracking and a separate link per channel, the question gets answered: every link reports its own clicks.
Click tracking also catches problems. A link that gets no clicks tells the marketer the channel is not working. A link that gets sudden traffic tells the marketer something went viral. Both are useful signals that vanish without measurement.
How ShortifyMe Handles It
Every ShortifyMe short link is tracked automatically once created in an account. Free accounts see total clicks and unique clicks for every link. Paid plans add detailed breakdowns by device, browser, operating system, referrer, and location. Click tracking applies to QR code scans as well, since each scan is a click on the underlying short link.
Related Terms
Link Analytics
The full set of data about how your links perform, from total clicks down to device, location, and source.
UTM Tracking
Adding labeled tags to a URL so analytics tools can tell where each click came from.
URL Shortener
A tool that turns a long web address into a clean, short, shareable link.
Scan Tracking
Counting and analyzing how many people scan a QR code. The QR equivalent of click tracking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not necessarily. A URL shortener gives you basic click tracking automatically. Dedicated analytics tools like Google Analytics add deeper tracking once the visitor reaches your site. Most marketers use both: the shortener for link-level data, the analytics tool for on-site data.
Total clicks counts every click. Unique clicks counts each visitor once, filtering out repeat clicks from the same person. Unique clicks gives a cleaner picture of how many different people engaged.
Yes, when the QR code encodes a tracked short link. ShortifyMe QR codes are tracked, so every scan is recorded just like a click.
More from the ShortifyMe Glossary
Browse plain-language definitions for short links, QR codes, and link tracking.
Try ShortifyMe Free
Put this into practice. Create a free account in 30 seconds. No credit card required.