Short Link Analytics

Every short link you create from your account has an Analytics tab. It shows how many people opened the link, on which days, whether they clicked it or scanned its QR image, which devices they used and, on the Starter plan or higher, where they came from.

Where to Find It

Open a short link from your list in the dashboard and choose the Analytics tab. Pick the last 7, 30 or 90 days or a custom range, and group the chart by day, week or month.

What Is Counted

A visit is one opening of the short link in a browser.
Link previews and bots, such as the preview a chat app fetches when a link is shared, are recognised by how they identify themselves. They are shown as Bot visits and are not counted in Visits.
Requests that only check an address or load it ahead of time, without opening it, are not counted at all.
Unique visitors are counted per day. Someone who visits twice on the same day is one unique visitor, and someone who comes back on another day counts again, so over a range the unique visitors of each day are added up.
Your own visits count like anyone else’s, and a visit shows up a few seconds after it happens.

The Total Visit Count

The number of visitors on the link’s details is its total since it was created. Since visit analytics started, bots and link previews are no longer added to it, so it grows more slowly than before. The total from before that date is kept as it was, bots included.

What the Analytics Tab Shows

Three numbers for the range you pick — Visits, Unique visitors and Bot visits.
A chart of visits and unique visitors for each day, week or month of the range.
Breakdowns of the visits, each listing its top ten values with their share, and the rest as Other.
- How they arrived — Link click or QR scan.
- Devices — mobile, tablet, desktop or other.
- Countries — worked out from each visitor’s connection, so a VPN shows the VPN’s country.
- Operating systems — such as Android, iOS or Windows.
- Browsers — such as Chrome, Safari or Firefox.
- Referring sites — the site a visitor came from. Direct or unknown means the browser did not say, which is usual for typed links, apps, email and scans.
- Browser languages — the first language each visitor’s browser asks for.

Link Click or QR Scan

Every short link has a QR image. A scan of a QR image you download from the link’s page after visit analytics started is shown as a QR scan. Images downloaded before that date hold the plain short link, so their scans are counted as link clicks. Download the image again and print the new one to tell scans and clicks apart.

Dates and Time Zones

Visit analytics started on the date shown on the Analytics tab. Visits from before that date are only in the total visit count.
Days follow your account’s time zone. A range that reaches back more than 90 days is counted in UTC days instead, and the tab says so.
A range starts no earlier than the day the link or QR code was created, ends today at the latest, and covers at most 400 days.

Analytics on Each Plan

On the Free plan, the Analytics tab shows Visits, Unique visitors, Bot visits, the chart, how visitors arrived and their devices, for the last 30 days.
On the Starter plan or higher, it also shows countries, operating systems, browsers, referring sites and browser languages, with no 30-day limit.
A breakdown your plan does not include is shown locked, with the plan that unlocks it.

The Statistics Page

The statistics page shows all your short links together. Visits (daily) is the number of visits made on each day, Visits in period adds them up for the range you pick, and the top links are ranked by their visits in that range. These numbers start on the day visit analytics started and leave out bots and link previews. Total Visitors stays the lifetime count.

Visitor Privacy

Posty5 does not store visitors’ IP addresses. A visitor is recognised for one day only, with a code that changes every day, which is why unique visitors are counted per day. Analytics show totals and never single out a visitor.

For Developers

With an API key, your own software can read the same analytics. The answer follows the same plan rules — a breakdown your plan does not include is listed as locked, and asking for it by name is refused.

REST API GET /api/short-link/:id/analytics
Query parameters from, to, interval, tz, breakdown, limit
npm SDK @posty5/short-link → ShortLinkClient.getAnalytics
.NET SDK ShortLinkClient.GetAnalyticsAsync
n8n node and operation Posty5 Short Link → Get Analytics
Every field of the answer is described in the developer documentation docs.posty5.com