Clicks Over Time: Reading SendURL's Analytics Charts

Per-click detail tells you where each click came from and on what device. Charts tell you when, and whether things are getting better or worse. SendURL draws clicks over time in two places: the Analytics page, for ranges from one hour to 30 days, and each link's own page, day by day. Both are available on every plan.

The Analytics page

Open Analytics in the console sidebar. At the top are two controls:

• Link: All links (combined), or any single link
• Time range: 1h, 6h, 24h, 7d or 30d

The chart plots the windows that had clicks. The window size depends on the range:

• 1h and 6h: 5-minute windows
• 24h: 1-hour windows
• 7d and 30d: 1-day windows

Above the chart are four numbers for the chosen link and range:

• Total Clicks: clicks in the range
• Peak (window): the most clicks in any one window
• Avg / Window: the average number of clicks in the windows that had any
• Active Windows: how many windows had at least one click

Below the chart, Links breakdown lists your links with their all-time click totals, newest links first, and Load more links shows older ones.

Reading the time ranges

Use the short ranges right after you share something. On 1h or 6h, five-minute windows show the spike when a newsletter lands or a post gets picked up, and how fast it fades. 24h shows the daily rhythm: when your audience is awake and clicking, which is the starting point for finding your best time to post. 7d and 30d smooth that out into a trend, which is what you want when comparing weeks or judging whether a link is still pulling traffic.

Active Windows is a quick read on how steady a link is. On the 30d range it's the number of days with clicks: 3 means clicks came in bursts; 28 means a link people keep coming back to.

One link or all of them

All links (combined) adds up every link you own, across all projects, which makes it the quickest health check for your whole account. Pick a single link to see its own curve. The link menu lists the links of the project picked in the sidebar's project switcher, newest first, with Load more for older ones; the combined chart always covers all your links. More on projects in Workspaces and projects.

How fresh the numbers are

The charts are built from click totals that SendURL adds up every 5 minutes, and the Analytics page reloads them every 5 minutes while it's open. So a click can take a few minutes to show up in a chart.

Individual clicks are faster. A link's Recent clicks list reads them directly, so a click appears there as soon as it's recorded. If you're testing a new link, open its page rather than the Analytics chart. Per-click detail is covered in What SendURL records for every click.

Each link's own page

Every link's page starts with three numbers: Total clicks, Last 7 days and Tracked since, the day the link was created.

Its Clicks over time chart has a bar for each day the link was clicked, so you can see a link's whole life at a glance: the launch spike, the long tail, and any revival when someone reshared it. Days without clicks are left out of the chart.

The same daily numbers come from the API with GET /links/:id/stats, which returns a date and a count for each day with clicks (by UTC day), over the link's whole history:

curl https://api.sendurl.to/api/v1/links/LINK_ID/stats \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SENDURL_API_KEY"

That's handy for pulling numbers into a spreadsheet or your own dashboard. See The SendURL REST API.

The dashboard

The console's Dashboard sums things up across your links, or across the project picked in the switcher: Total Links, Total Clicks, Active Links and Avg Clicks/Link, plus your most recent links. It's the page to glance at; Analytics is the page to dig into.

Things to keep in mind

• Every successful redirect counts, QR scans included. Visits to disabled or expired links, and views of a password page, don't.
• Link previews can count. When a chat app or social network fetches your link to build a preview, that request can appear as a click, so a spike at the exact minute you post may be partly previews. Bot clicks and link previews shows how to spot them.
• The charts label times in your browser's time zone.
• Each plan lists an analytics history allowance: Free lists 7 days, Pro 30. The Analytics history line on your Profile page shows yours.

For why click data is worth watching in the first place, see link analytics.