Skip Social Crawler Tracking
When you share links on social media, platforms like Facebook, X, and LinkedIn automatically fetch your links to generate previews. By default, these crawler visits are recorded in your analytics.
Skip social crawler tracking lets you exclude these automated visits from your analytics, so your click counts reflect only human visitors.
How it works
| Setting | Crawlers can access | Clicks recorded | Previews work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disabled (default) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Enabled | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
When enabled, social crawlers still access your links and generate previews — they just aren't recorded in your analytics or counted toward your click limits.
Detected platforms
The following are recognised as social media crawlers:
- Facebook — FacebookExternalHit, Facebot
- X — Twitterbot
- LinkedIn — LinkedIn Corporation
- Google — Googlebot, APIs-Google, AdsBot-Google
- YouTube — Youtube, LLC
- WhatsApp — WhatsApp link previews
- Telegram — Telegram link previews
Detection uses both user agent strings and ISP lookup.
Interaction with bot blocking
If you also use the "Block bots & spiders" feature:
| Block bots | Skip tracking | Social crawlers | Clicks recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| ❌ Off | ❌ Off | ✅ Allowed | ✅ Yes |
| ❌ Off | ✅ On | ✅ Allowed | ❌ No |
| ✅ On | Either | ✅ Allowed | ❌ No |
With Block bots on, social media link previews are let through automatically, so you don't need to enable Skip social crawler tracking as well. Those preview visits aren't recorded or counted toward your click limits, and every other bot is blocked with a 403 error.
A preview only gets through if it comes from the platform's own network, or from somewhere that isn't a hosting provider. Scanners running on cloud hosting often pose as Facebook or WhatsApp, so those are still blocked.
When to enable
Enable for most links — Cleaner analytics, accurate conversion metrics, and reduced database usage.
Disable temporarily when debugging social sharing issues, so you can verify crawlers are accessing your links.
Related articles
Frequently asked questions
Will this affect link previews on social media?
No. Social media platforms can still access your links and generate previews. This only affects whether those visits are recorded in your analytics.
Do I need to turn this on if I block bots?
No. Block bots already lets social media link previews through, and those visits aren't recorded. Use Skip social crawler tracking on links that don't block bots.
Do social crawler visits count against my click limit?
When skip tracking is enabled, social crawler visits do not count against your click limit.
How is this different from the Filter Robots button?
The Filter Robots button hides bot traffic from your analytics view, but the data is still recorded. Skip social crawler tracking prevents recording altogether.
Plan availability
Available on Starter and above
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