Click statistics — what they really say about your link (and what you can't read from them)

Did anyone click on your link? Without click statistics: you are guessing. With them, you have the answer on the table. How many people, at what time, from which site they came.

It's just that numbers alone are not enough. You need to know how to read them. Otherwise, it is easy to draw a conclusion that sounds smart but is simply false.

Two numbers that people confuse most often

You enter the panel and see: 200 clicks, 80 unique. What does this mean?

Total clicks are every single entry. All of them. If one person opens a link five times, you have five clicks from one person.

Unique is how many different people went into this. Counted roughly, by venue and network, so it's an approximation, not a head-by-head measurement.

Returning to those 200 vs 80 unique. Some people returned to the link. Two, three times. And this is not a counter error. It is rather a good sign, because someone returned, which means the content was worth a second look.

Where did this movement even come from

A decent counter will show you the source, i.e., the referer. Facebook, Google, manually entered. And here is the trap, because very often you will see a huge spike in traffic described as "direct".

This usually doesn't mean that people typed your link manually. It's just that a large part of applications do not pass the source. Messengers, some email clients, some readers. A link from an SMS? It will almost always end up in "direct". A link from an Instagram bio? Similarly.

So when you see half a move as direct, do not panic. It is normal, not a malfunction.

What this panel won't tell you

Now a part that is worth saying directly, so as not to build a plan on something that isn't there.

Link statistics do not know what a person did after clicking. Did they buy? Did they sign up? Did they leave after a second? The link registers the entry and that's it. The rest is the job of analytics on the landing page itself.

They won't tell you who that person is either. A proper scraper does not identify individuals, and for good reason. At cutty.dev, the IP address goes into the counter in a hashed form, so you get statistics, not a dossier of specific people.

"Why don't I see this in Google Analytics?"

Because Analytics counts page views where its script is running. And a shortened link is not a page. It is a redirect.

It works like this: the browser asks for a short address, receives the destination address, and goes there immediately. It does not load any intermediate page with a tracking script along the way. There is nothing to count in Analytics, because there is no page view.

This data lives elsewhere. On the shredder's side, in its own panel. This is not a failure. That is simply how every redirect in the world works.

Where these numbers really pay for themselves

A single number says little. Click statistics only become interesting when you compare them with something.

The same post, posted in the morning and evening. Which time slot gathered more views? Now you know when to publish next time.

Or: the same goal, but two separate short links. One lands in the newsletter, the other on Instagram. After a week, it is clear as day which channel actually delivers traffic and which one only looks active.

Every link shortened on cutty.dev starts counting from the first click, without setting anything up and without adding scripts. It is a cheap way to decide based on what actually happened, rather than what you think happened.

And if you have one link in your head right now that you've been thinking for a long time, "I wonder if it even works," then it's probably a sign to finally check it out.