Why Do I Get Inflated Clicks on My Links?
Sometimes your click figures are higher than expected. This is usually caused by automated traffic from bots and crawlers.
Common causes
- Social media crawlers — When you share links on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, or other platforms, they automatically fetch the link to generate previews.
- Email/SMS scanning — Email providers and messaging apps check links for spam and security threats.
- Browser prefetching — Some browsers preload links in the background for faster navigation.
- Search engine crawlers — Bots like Googlebot index your links for search results.
These non-human visitors are collectively called robots or bots.
Linkly records all traffic by default, both human and automated.
Identifying robot traffic
Linkly filters known bots out of your traffic reports automatically. The header of every report shows how many were removed, next to your click total:
In this example 3,674 clicks are shown and 9.8k bots were filtered out — so most of the raw traffic to this link was automated.
How to see robot traffic in your reports
Go to Traffic in the left sidebar, or click Report on any link.
Click Include bot traffic at the top of the page.
Bots are hidden by default. Turning this on adds them back into the view, so you can compare filtered and unfiltered totals. To see which networks the traffic came from, use the ISP tab — datacenter providers like AWS or Google Cloud are a strong signal of automated traffic.
Preventing bot traffic from being recorded
Instead of just filtering bots from view, you can prevent social media crawler visits from being recorded at all.
Enable Skip social crawler tracking on your links to:
- Exclude crawlers from Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Google, and YouTube from your analytics
- Keep your click counts focused on human visitors
- Reduce database usage
See Skip Social Crawler Tracking for details.
Blocking robots entirely
Linkly can block robots from accessing your links. However, use this with caution:
- Social platforms may flag blocked links as spam
- Link previews won't work on social media
- Search engines won't index your links
If you enable bot blocking, consider also enabling Skip social crawler tracking to allow social media crawlers through while blocking other bots. Both settings sit next to each other when you edit a link.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my link have clicks before I shared it?
Software on your computer may be opening links automatically. Common culprits include browser extensions, clipboard managers, password managers, and antivirus software that scan links for security. These show up as clicks from your location immediately after creating the link.
Why do I see clicks from countries I didn't share the link in?
Robots often access links from datacenters located around the world. Social media platforms, email providers, and security services check links to generate previews and scan for spam — and their servers may be in different regions than your audience.
How does Linkly detect bots?
Linkly uses two methods: (1) checking the user agent string for known bot signatures like Googlebot or FacebookExternalHit, and (2) checking if the IP address belongs to a cloud provider like Amazon or Microsoft, since datacenter traffic is usually automated.
Why are my click numbers different from Google Analytics?
Google Analytics uses JavaScript tracking, which bots typically don't execute. Linkly records all server-side traffic, giving you complete visibility into both human and bot activity.
Should I be concerned about high bot traffic?
Not necessarily. Bot traffic from social media crawlers and search engines is normal and often beneficial. Known bots are filtered out of your reports by default, so the totals you see are already human traffic — use Include bot traffic if you want to see them.
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