Link Analytics vs. Web Analytics — What's the Difference?

People often ask: if I already have Google Analytics (or Plausible, or Fathom), why do I need link analytics too? It's a fair question. Here's the honest answer.

What web analytics does well

Web analytics tools like Google Analytics are built to answer questions about what happens *on your website*:

• Which pages get the most traffic?
• How long do people stay?
• What's the bounce rate?
• How do users move through a funnel?

They're excellent at this. If you care about on-site behavior, web analytics is the right tool.

What web analytics doesn't tell you

Web analytics starts measuring *after someone arrives on your site*. It doesn't tell you:

• Which specific link someone clicked to get there
• Whether the link was in an email, a tweet, or a Slack message
• How many people *saw* your link but didn't click
• What the click-through rate was for a particular piece of content across different channels

This is the gap that link analytics fills.

Link analytics starts before your website

When someone clicks a SendURL link, we capture the event at the redirect layer — before they even hit your site. This means:

• You track clicks even if the person immediately bounces
• You capture geo and device data regardless of what analytics is on the destination page
• You can track links that point to pages you don't own (a PDF, a partner's site, a Google Doc)

They're complementary, not competing

Think of it this way:

• **Link analytics** answers: *Did people click? Where did they come from? What channel worked?*
• **Web analytics** answers: *What did people do after they arrived?*

The best setup uses both. Link analytics tells you which channels are driving traffic. Web analytics tells you what that traffic does once it lands.

When you only need link analytics

If you're sharing links that don't point to your own website — or if you just want to know whether a campaign drove clicks without setting up full analytics infrastructure — link analytics alone is perfectly sufficient.

For a lot of creators, newsletters, and small teams, knowing "this post drove 400 clicks from mobile users in the US" is all the signal they need.