Clicks & analytics
Every time someone opens one of your short links, e-sat.ly sends them on their way and records that the click happened. Those records are what turn a shortener into a reporting tool: you can see that an SMS campaign was actually opened, on what, from where, and when.
What's recorded on a click
Each click stores a small set of details:
| What | Example | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| When | The moment of the click | Shown to the minute, in your local time |
| Which link | The short code that was opened | Along with the project the link belongs to |
| Country | GR, DE | Country only — never a city or precise location. Shown as unknown when it can't be determined |
| Referrer | The page the visitor came from, if any | Up to 512 characters. Recorded, but not currently shown in the reports. Often empty for SMS and Viber |
| Device | Mobile, desktop, tablet | Detected from the browser, so it's approximate — some tablets show up as mobile or desktop |
| Operating system | iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Linux | The family only, never the version |
| Browser | Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, Opera | Approximate — for example, Chrome on an iPhone shows up as Safari |
| Browser description | — | The text the visitor's browser sends to identify itself, up to 512 characters. Stored, but not shown in the reports |
| Visitor fingerprint | — | A one-way hash of the IP address |
IP addresses are never stored
e-sat.ly does not store the visitor's IP address. It stores only a salted one-way hash of it — a fingerprint that is never kept in readable form. The same IP address produces the same fingerprint, which is what lets the reports count unique visitors rather than just total clicks, without holding the address itself.
Clicks are not tied to a customer's identity. e-sat.ly records that a link was opened, not who opened it. Keep in mind, though, that most short links are created for a single message — so a click on a link sent to one person does tell you that their link was opened. If you need feedback tied to a person, that's what Customers is for.
Recording a click never slows the redirect down — the visitor is sent to their destination first, and the click is written immediately afterwards.
A few things are worth knowing about what counts:
- Every open counts. If the same person opens a link three times, that's three clicks in your total.
- Unique visitors are counted by IP address, not by person. One person who opens a link on Wi-Fi and then on mobile data counts as two visitors, and several people sharing one office or mobile network connection can count as one.
- Only working links record clicks. Opening an expired link, or checking a link with the link checker, isn't recorded.
- Deleting a link deletes its clicks. See How short links work.
Link previews and bots don't inflate your clicks
When you send a link over SMS, Viber, WhatsApp, Messenger and the like, the messaging app often opens the link itself first — quietly, in the background — to build the little preview card your customer sees before they tap. Search engines, link scanners and other automated "bots" open links the same way. None of these is a real person choosing to visit.
e-sat.ly recognizes these automated opens and doesn't count them. The link still works for them exactly as it does for anyone else — that's what lets the preview card appear — but the open isn't recorded as a click. So the numbers in your reports stay closer to the people who actually opened your message, rather than the apps that previewed it on their behalf.
It's automatic — nothing to set up
This filtering is always on; there's nothing to configure. e-sat.ly can only exclude the automated visitors it recognizes, so an occasional preview or bot may still slip into the totals — but the well-known ones (the major messaging apps, social networks and search engines) are already left out. It's part of why your click count can read a little lower than a "delivered" figure, and closer to reality.
The reports
Overview
The console's home screen gives you four headline figures — Projects, Short links, Total clicks (all time) and Clicks (7 days) — plus 7-day trends for links created and clicks received, and your five most-clicked links of all time. The Projects, Short links and Total clicks cards link through to the screen behind them, and each top link opens that link's own clicks page.
Clicks
Analytics → Clicks is the organization-wide view of every click, with a project filter and a date range. It gives you:
- Stat panels — total clicks, unique visitors, and the number of countries (clicks from an unknown country aren't counted in it).
- Clicks over time — a chart across your chosen range, with the time of the last click. Drag across the chart to narrow the date range to that stretch.
- Breakdowns — the top five operating systems, devices and browsers, each shown as a share of all clicks.
- Top links — the five links opened most in the range.
- The click list — individual click events, newest first, 25 per page: when, short code, destination, project, country, device, browser and operating system.
A single link's clicks
From any link's row, View clicks opens that one link's page: its own totals, unique visitors, countries, clicks over time, breakdowns and click list — all for the date range you pick. This is the screen to use when you want to know how one specific link performed — a QR code on a poster, say.
There's no export — the reports are for viewing in the console.
Dates and time zones
The Clicks page and each link's clicks page are always bounded by a date range — Last 7 days by default, Last 30 days, or a custom range reaching up to 24 months back. As on Short Links, there's no "All time" here: the range is what keeps these reports fast across a very large amount of click data. The exception is the Overview, whose Total clicks and top links cover all time.
Timestamps in the click list and the points on the charts use your local time, so a click appears at the same moment in both places. The chart adjusts its detail to the range: hour by hour for ranges of two days or less, day by day up to about six months, and month by month beyond that.
Date ranges start and end at midnight UTC
The start and end dates of a range are applied in UTC, not your local time. If you're a few hours ahead of or behind UTC, clicks that happened close to midnight on the first or last day may fall just inside or just outside your range.
Clicks aren't survey responses
A click means the link was opened — not that a survey was completed. For response and completion rates, use Response Rate in Insights. e-sat.ly answers "did the message get opened at all", which is a useful early signal when a send looks quiet.
How long clicks are kept
Click data follows its project's data-retention window. Clicks older than the window are removed — including the clicks on pinned links — and a transactional link that ages past the window is removed together with all of its clicks, even recent ones. Pinning keeps the link working forever; it doesn't keep its click history forever. If you need a longer history than your reports show, check the project's retention setting.