How to read link click analytics

The real value of a short link isn't how short it is — it's whether you can measure the clicks. But once the numbers start to accumulate, knowing how to read them is the hard part. Let's walk through the fields in linkpado's Pro analytics one by one.

Visit count

The most basic number: how many times the link was clicked. Because linkpado always uses a temporary redirect (302) for short links, the browser never caches the result and skips counting. A scan that arrives through a QR code is counted as one visit just the same.

The thing to keep in mind is that a visit count is not a clean count of people. The same person clicking twice counts as two, and clicks from search engine crawlers or a messenger's link-preview bot may be included. Rather than the absolute number, focusing on trends and comparisons (today vs. yesterday, link A vs. link B) leads to better interpretation.

Referrer (source)

This shows where a visitor clicked the link. If they came from a particular social post, a newsletter, or another website, that source is recorded.

Referrers are often empty, though. Messenger apps, email clients, QR code scans, and typing the address directly all pass no source information. A referrer that reads "direct" or is empty isn't a measurement error — it's the natural result of those paths.

Device, browser, and OS

These describe the environment a visitor came from. linkpado parses the User-Agent string of the visit request to classify device type (mobile/desktop), browser, and operating system.

This is useful for understanding which channel reaches which kind of audience — "QR poster visitors are almost all mobile," or "newsletter readers skew desktop."

Country, city, and language

The visitor's approximate location and preferred language. Location is estimated from the IP address — it's coarse country- and city-level information, not a precise location that identifies an individual.

"Unknown" is not an error

Sometimes location or language shows up as "unknown" in the analytics. This doesn't mean the data is wrong; it's the natural result of situations like:

• A VPN or corporate network that makes location hard to estimate from IP alone
• A browser or app that passes no language information
• Arrival through a path that hides its source

So analytics are best treated as an indicator of the broad shape of your traffic, not a precise tracking tool. linkpado's visit analytics are not used to identify visitors individually. How we handle data overall, including cookies, is published in the privacy policy.

Detailed analytics are part of the Pro plan. You can see the differences between plans on the pricing page.