Measurement and attribution
What are bot clicks?
Short answer
Bot clicks are visits to a link made by software, not people: link-preview crawlers from WhatsApp, iMessage, Slack and Facebook, search engine bots, and email or security scanners that check links before delivery. They inflate click counts, so good link analytics keep them apart from real clicks.
Where they come from
Paste a link into a chat and the app fetches it to build a preview card. Send it in an email and the recipient’s security system may open it first to check it. Search engines crawl it once it’s public. Each of these is a request your link sees as a click, often seconds after you share it and before anyone has tapped. Counts that jump the moment a link is posted, before anyone could have read it, are a typical sign.
Why it matters
A campaign can look busier than it was. Conversion rates drop, tests point the wrong way, and budget moves to channels that only fooled the counter.
Analytics that tell crawlers and previews apart from real taps keep the numbers honest. Appy reports real clicks separately from bot and link-preview clicks.
Related terms
- Smart link
A smart link is one link, often with a matching QR code, that checks the device tapping it and sends each person to the right place: iPhones to the App Store, Android phones to Google Play or another store, desktops to your website, and straight into the app when it’s already installed.
- Dynamic QR code
A dynamic QR code holds a short link instead of the final destination. Scanning it goes through a redirect, so you can change where it points after printing and count every scan. A static QR code holds the content itself: it never expires, but it can’t be edited or tracked.
One link for every phone
Create a free smart link and QR code that sends iPhones to the App Store, Android phones to Google Play and desktops to your website.