Link Analytics Track Every Click — Device, Country, Referrer and Timing — Automatically

A short link without analytics is a guess.
You know you sent traffic somewhere. You do not know who arrived, from where, on which device, or at what time.

Cuttly's link analytics turns every short link into a data source. From the moment a link is created, every click is tracked automatically — no setup, no code, no third-party tools required.

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How Link Analytics Works in Cuttly

Analytics are on by default for every link shortened with a Cuttly account. There is nothing to enable. Create the link — the tracking begins immediately.

To view analytics for any link, open your dashboard and click the analytics icon next to the link. The full analytics view opens showing all available data for that link across your selected time period.

You can also view a public demo of the Cuttly analytics view at cutt.ly/link-analytics/stats-for-short-link — no account required.

What Cuttly Tracks — Every Data Point Explained

Total Clicks and Unique Clicks

Total clicks counts every interaction with the link — including repeat visits from the same device. Unique clicks counts only the first click per device, giving you a more accurate measure of how many distinct people actually followed the link.

The ratio between total and unique clicks reveals audience behaviour. A high total-to-unique ratio means people are clicking your link multiple times — suggesting they are returning, bookmarking and revisiting, or that the link is being shared between devices owned by the same person. A ratio close to 1:1 means almost every click is a new visitor.

Click Timeline

The click timeline shows clicks per day over your selected analytics period — visualised as a chart. Use it to identify traffic spikes (which day did the link go viral?), seasonal patterns (does traffic drop at weekends?), and campaign decay curves (how quickly does a post's traffic fade?).

Device Type

Cuttly shows the breakdown of clicks by device category: Mobile, Desktop, Tablet, Phablet, TV, Console and others. For most marketing links, Mobile will dominate — often 70–90% or more depending on the channel.

Device type data is directly actionable. If 92% of your TikTok bio link clicks come from Mobile but your landing page is desktop-first, you are losing conversions silently. The analytics make this visible. Without them, the problem is invisible.

Operating System

Click breakdown by OS: Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, iPadOS, Linux and others. Combined with device type, OS data tells you the specific environment your audience uses — relevant for mobile app deep links, App Store vs Google Play routing decisions, and platform-specific landing page optimisation.

Browser

Browser breakdown: Chrome, Mobile Safari, Chrome Mobile, Chrome Webview, Firefox, Samsung Internet, Edge and others. Browser data informs rendering decisions — if a significant portion of your audience uses a browser with known CSS compatibility issues, your landing page may not display correctly for them.

Device Brand

Breakdown by device manufacturer: Apple, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, Huawei and others. Device brand data is particularly useful for e-commerce and consumer technology brands where audience device preferences align with product affinity — Apple users and Samsung users often have different purchasing behaviour.

Referrer Source

Where did the click come from? Cuttly identifies referrers including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, YouTube, direct traffic and others. Referrer data answers the channel attribution question — which platform actually drove this traffic?

Note that WhatsApp, SMS and some in-app browsers do not pass referrer headers — clicks from these sources typically appear as direct. This is why UTM parameters are important for complete attribution: even when the referrer is masked, UTMs in the destination URL pass the correct source to Google Analytics.

Geographic Location — Country Level

Cuttly shows which countries your link clicks come from. Country-level data answers: Is my audience where I think it is? Are there unexpected geographic markets engaging with my content? Should I localise for a specific region based on traffic patterns?

For international campaigns, country data also reveals delivery effectiveness — a campaign targeting Germany should show Germany prominently in the analytics. If it does not, something in the targeting or channel distribution may be off.

Language

The browser language of each visitor — reflecting their device's language setting. Language data informs localisation decisions: if 40% of your clicks come from Spanish-language browsers but all your content is in English, there is an audience ready for a Spanish version.

Hourly Click Heat Map — When Is Your Audience Most Active?

The hourly heat map is one of the most actionable analytics features Cuttly provides. It shows click activity broken down by day of the week and hour of the day — and compares this week against the previous week in the same view.

For email campaigns: use the heat map from previous campaigns to determine the send time for the next one. For social media: post when the heat map shows peak click hours. For SMS: send at the window that historically generates the fastest click response.

The hourly heat map is available on the Single plan ($25/month) and above.

Bot Click Filtering — Real Traffic Only

Not every click on a short link is a human. Search engine crawlers, security scanners, email preview bots, link preview generators and other automated systems regularly follow short links — and without filtering, all of these count toward your total click numbers.

Bot click filtering detects and excludes non-human traffic from your analytics counts. The impact on reported numbers varies — for links shared in professional email or B2B contexts, bot traffic can represent 15–30% of raw total clicks.

Without bot filtering, campaign reports overstate performance. With bot filtering, your click counts reflect actual human engagement — the only metric that matters for conversion analysis, ROI calculation and audience measurement.

Bot click filtering is available on the Single plan ($25/month) and above.

Analytics History — How Far Back Can You See?

Analytics history determines how far back you can query your click data. On the free plan, data older than 30 days is not accessible in the analytics view — though the links themselves continue working and tracking indefinitely. Upgrading to Single extends this to a full year of historical data.

Campaign Analytics — Aggregated Across Multiple Links

Per-link analytics show you performance for one link. Cuttly Campaigns show you performance across an entire campaign — all links tagged with the same campaign label, aggregated into one view.

Tag any link with a campaign label when creating or editing it. All links sharing the tag appear in a Campaign view showing:

• Total campaign clicks — across all tagged links combined
• Unique campaign clicks
• Device and country breakdown for the campaign as a whole
• Top-performing links ranked by click volume
• Campaign click timeline from first link created to now

This makes it possible to evaluate a campaign as a unit rather than evaluating each link in isolation — and to compare campaigns against each other over time.

Campaign tag analytics available on the Team plan and above.

Combining Cuttly Analytics with Google Analytics (GA4)

Cuttly and Google Analytics measure different things and complement each other perfectly:

To connect them, add UTM parameters to your destination URL before shortening. Cuttly's built-in UTM generator does this automatically. The UTMs pass through the short link redirect invisibly and appear in GA4's Acquisition reports — showing you exactly which short link drove which sessions, conversions and revenue.

PDF Analytics Reports

Cuttly allows you to export the analytics view for any link as a PDF report — ready to share with clients, stakeholders or your team. The PDF report includes the full analytics breakdown for the selected time period: total and unique clicks, device breakdown, country data, referrer sources and click timeline.

PDF analytics reports are available on the Single plan and above.

Full Analytics Feature Comparison