Learn how to track link clicks

Tracking link clicks is essential for understanding your audience and measuring the success of your online content or campaigns. In this guide, we’ll explore how to track clicks on a link using various methods. One of the easiest solutions is to use a URL shortener like Beckli – a free link-shortening tool that offers unlimited click tracking. Beckli provides the same features as popular shorteners such as Bitly but without any limitations. This means you can create as many short links as you need and track all their clicks without ever hitting a cap.

In the sections below, we’ll discuss multiple ways to monitor link clicks, including using URL shorteners (with Beckli and other alternatives), adding UTM parameters for campaign tracking, setting up Google Analytics (GA4) for click events, leveraging social media insights, and even using custom scripts. Let’s dive into each method.

Use URL Shorteners to Track Link Clicks

URL shorteners are a convenient way to both tidy up long links and get analytics on how many times those links are clicked. Many shorteners provide dashboards that show click counts, geographic data, referrers, and more. Here’s how you can use them for click tracking, and why Beckli stands out among them.

Beckli – Free URL Shortener with Unlimited Tracking

Beckli is a powerful yet simple URL shortener that makes tracking link clicks effortless. The key advantage of Beckli is that it’s completely free and has no limits on usage. You can create unlimited short links and each link can accumulate unlimited clicks – Beckli will track them all. This is a huge benefit for anyone who doesn’t want to worry about hitting monthly quotas or paywalls. Beckli’s analytics are straightforward and built-in, so you can quickly see how your links are performing.

Short you link below and track clicks pr. day

In fact, Beckli’s feature set mirrors that of paid services: you get click analytics, the ability to customize link slugs, and even support for using a custom branded domain for your short links. Unlike Bitly’s free plan, which restricts the number of links you can create (more on that next), Beckli imposes no such limits. It’s an ideal choice if you need to track a large number of link clicks without incurring costs. Beckli essentially offers the full package of link management and tracking features without any paywalls or caps.

Bitly and Other URL Shortener Alternatives

While Beckli is an excellent no-cost solution, it’s useful to know how it compares to other popular URL shorteners:

Bitly: Bitly is one of the most well-known link shorteners and does offer click tracking and link customization. However, Bitly’s free plan comes with restrictive limits. Currently, a free Bitly account allows you to shorten only a handful of links per month (around 5 short links/month on the latest free plan). If you need more links, you must upgrade to a paid plan. Additionally, Bitly’s free tier does not allow the use of a custom domain for branded links. On the plus side, Bitly provides basic analytics (total clicks, top referrers, etc.) for the links you create and does not limit the number of clicks your Bitly links can receive. But for anyone requiring significant volume or advanced features, the costs can add up quickly, making it less ideal for extensive click tracking on a budget.
TinyURL: TinyURL is a long-standing free URL shortener that is great for creating quick, no-frills short links. You don’t even need an account to shorten URLs with TinyURL. The service is free and anonymous for basic use, which means unlimited link creation without signup. However, TinyURL’s free usage has limited tracking capabilities. If you want to see analytics (like how many clicks your TinyURL links get over time, or more detailed audience info), you’ll need to sign up for an account and likely upgrade to a paid plan. TinyURL’s paid plans (starting around $9.99/month) unlock detailed real-time link performance stats and unlimited click tracking. In other words, the free version is fine for shortening links, but does not provide comprehensive click analytics out of the box.
Rebrandly: Rebrandly is another popular link shortener, known for its focus on branded links. Rebrandly’s free plan is more generous than Bitly’s in terms of branding – it lets you use a custom domain for your links even on the free tier (one domain allowed). However, it still has limits: the Rebrandly free subscription allows a certain number of branded links (around 500 total) and will track only a limited number of clicks per month (for example, up to 5,000 clicks per link per month on the free plan). If you exceed those click counts, additional clicks might not be recorded unless you upgrade. So, while Rebrandly is excellent for branding your short URLs, its analytics on the free plan are capped in volume.
Other Options: There are many other link shorteners (Tiny.cc, BL.INK, Cutt.ly, etc.) each with their own free and paid offerings. Most follow a similar model: free accounts with some limitations on number of links or analytics, and paid plans for heavier usage. For instance, BL.INK and others may provide a trial or basic free tier with a small quota of links, but full analytics usually require payment. Always check the fine print on how many links you can create and how many clicks can be tracked on any free plan.

Use UTM Parameters for Link Click Tracking

Another effective way to track clicks on a link (especially for marketing campaigns) is by using UTM parameters. UTM parameters are small tags that you append to the end of a URL which record information about the link’s source, medium, campaign, and so on. These tags get picked up by analytics tools like Google Analytics, allowing you to identify how users arrived at your site.

According to Neil Patel, “UTM parameters are tags you can add to the end of a URL. You can use the tags alongside an analytics platform like Google Analytics to track how users behave after they’ve clicked on your link.” In practice, this means if you add UTMs to a link and someone clicks it, you’ll be able to see data in your analytics reports indicating, for example, that the visitor came from your Facebook Ad Campaign A versus your Twitter Post B.

How UTM Tracking Works: A UTM-enhanced URL might look something like:

https://www.yoursite.com/landing-page?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SpringSale

Here’s what the common UTM parameters indicate:

utm_source – the platform or referrer source (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Newsletter, Google).
utm_medium – the marketing medium (e.g., social, email, CPC, organic).
utm_campaign – the name of the campaign or promotion (e.g., SpringSale, Launch2025).
utm_content – (optional) used to differentiate specific content or links, if you have multiple links pointing to the same URL (e.g., two different call-to-action buttons).
utm_term – (optional) typically used for tracking keywords in paid search campaigns.

By tagging your links with these parameters, every click can be attributed. For instance, if you share a link in an email newsletter and tag it with utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email, you can later see in Google Analytics how many users came from that specific email. This helps answer questions like “Which link generated the most traffic or conversions?”.

Setting Up and Analyzing UTM Data: To implement UTMs, you can manually add parameters to your URLs or use a URL builder tool (Google offers a free Campaign URL Builder). Simply fill in the campaign information, and it will generate a properly formatted URL with UTMs. Once you start using these tagged links, the real power comes when analyzing the data:

In Google Analytics (Universal or GA4), go to the Acquisition or Campaigns reports. You will find the incoming traffic organized by Source, Medium, Campaign, etc. For GA4, you can look under Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition and apply filters for your campaign name, or use the Campaigns report to see sessions and clicks from each UTM-tagged campaign.
You can determine how many users clicked on links from a specific source/medium. For example, you might see that utm_campaign=SpringSale brought 500 users from utm_source=Facebook and 300 from utm_source=Twitter.
UTM parameters also allow you to gauge quality of traffic. You can see bounce rate, time on site, or conversions for each UTM-tagged link. This tells you not just how many clicks a link got, but what those clicks did after arriving (did they sign up? purchase? leave immediately?).

Using UTMs is especially useful when you want to track link clicks across different channels without relying on a separate link shortening service. The clicks will show up in your own analytics system. Keep in mind, UTMs are best for tracking traffic that comes to your website or landing page (they feed data into your analytics). They might not be as useful if you want to simply count clicks on a link that doesn’t go to a site you control – in that case a link shortener or custom script might be more appropriate.

Quick tip: Always use consistent naming in UTMs (e.g., use utm_source=twitter for all Twitter links, not mixing Twitter and twitter), because analytics is case-sensitive and will treat different spellings as separate sources. With UTMs properly in place, you have a robust way to track link clicks as part of your broader campaign analysis.

Track Link Clicks with Google Analytics (GA4)

If you have a website and want to track how many times users click certain links (for example, downloads, outbound links to other sites, or specific buttons on your page), Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides powerful tracking capabilities. GA4 can automatically record outbound link clicks and also allows custom event tracking for any link.

1. Enable Automatic Outbound Link Click Tracking: GA4 comes with a feature called Enhanced Measurement, which can track basic interactions on your site without any coding. One of these interactions is outbound link clicks. By default, GA4 will capture an event called "click" whenever a user clicks a link that leads to an external website (any link that goes to a different domain than your own site). To ensure this is active:

Go to your GA4 property, navigate to Admin > Data Streams, and select your website stream.
Under Enhanced Measurement, make sure the toggle is ON, and that Outbound clicks (or simply "Clicks") is enabled in the settings. GA4 typically has a checkbox for tracking outbound clicks – ensure it’s checked.

Once this is enabled, GA4 will automatically log a "click" event every time someone clicks an outbound link on your site. You can find these events in your GA4 reports. For example, under Engagement > Events, look for the event named "click" and you’ll see the count of outbound link clicks recorded. GA4 even provides details via parameters like the URL that was clicked (so you know which link was clicked). This automatic tracking is very convenient for monitoring how often users leave your site via external links.

2. Track Specific Links or Button Clicks (Custom Event): What if you want to track clicks on a link that isn’t outbound – say, a download link or a certain button on your page? In GA4, you can set up a custom event for any click. There are two primary ways to do this:

Using Google Tag Manager (GTM): GTM is a tag management tool that works with GA4. You can configure a click trigger for a specific link or element (for example, a trigger that fires when a link with an ID of “signup-button” is clicked). Then you create a GA4 Event Tag in GTM to send an event (e.g., event name "signup_click") to GA4 whenever that trigger occurs. This requires adding GTM to your site, but it gives you a lot of flexibility. For instance, you could track internal link clicks, clicks on page anchors, or any element by CSS selector. Once set up, these custom events will appear in GA4’s event reports just like the built-in ones.
Using gtag.js (GA4’s Global Site Tag): If you’re not using GTM, you can still track link clicks by adding a bit of JavaScript to your site. With GA4’s gtag.js snippet, you can manually send an event. For example, add an onclick attribute to a link calling gtag('event', 'click', {'event_category': 'PDF Download','event_label': 'Brochure'}); or use an event listener to call the gtag function. This will log a custom event to GA4. However, this method involves more manual coding compared to GTM’s point-and-click setup.

3. View and Analyze Click Events in GA4: After setting up tracking (whether using the automatic outbound tracking or custom events), you can analyze the data:

In GA4 Reports, under Engagement > Events, you will see a list of events. The automatic outbound link clicks will appear simply as "click" event (with details in the parameters for each click such as link_url for the clicked URL). Your custom-named events (if any) will appear by the names you gave them (e.g., "signup_click").
Click on the event name to see more details. GA4 will show you metrics like how many times that event happened, and you can even see parameters. For outbound "click" events, GA4 has predefined dimensions like Link URL, Link text, and Link domain that you can use in Explorations or custom reports to break down where users are clicking.
If you want to get advanced, you can build a funnel exploration to see, for example, how many users clicked a link after viewing a page, etc., or use segments to see what percentage of users clicked a particular link.

In summary, Google Analytics 4 is a robust way to track link clicks on your own website. With minimal configuration (just turning on Enhanced Measurement), you get automatic tracking of outbound link clicks. And with a bit more setup (via GTM or code), you can track virtually any link click (outbound or internal) that matters to your business. The data will live in your GA4 property, ready for you to analyze alongside other user behavior metrics.

Leverage Social Media Insights for Link Clicks

If you are sharing links on social media platforms, you can take advantage of those platforms’ built-in analytics to track clicks. Most social networks provide insight tools that show how your posts performed — including how many users clicked on any links you shared. Here’s how this works on major platforms:

Facebook: If you post a link on a Facebook Page (for a business or organization), Facebook’s Insights (or the newer Meta Business Suite analytics) will show the number of link clicks that post received. For each post, you can view details such as Reach, Reactions, Comments, Shares, and Link Clicks. This metric tells you how many people clicked the link in your post. For example, a Facebook Page post insight might say a post got 1,000 impressions and 150 link clicks, meaning 150 people clicked through the link you shared. (Note: For personal Facebook profiles, detailed link analytics are not available, but on Pages you have this data.) Also, if you’re running Facebook Ads, the Ads Manager provides Link Clicks and Click-Through Rate (CTR) as metrics for each ad, which is helpful for tracking ad-driven link clicks.
Twitter: Twitter offers Twitter Analytics to every account. By visiting the Twitter Analytics dashboard (analytics.twitter.com), you can see performance of your tweets. For tweets that contain a link, Twitter Analytics will report the number of Link Clicks. For example, if you tweeted a blog post link, you might see that it got 50 link clicks (alongside other data like impressions and engagements). You can also click on an individual tweet in the Analytics interface to see a detailed breakdown, including how many clicks the link in that tweet received. This is a quick way to gauge which tweets are driving traffic to your site or content.
LinkedIn: On LinkedIn, if you share content with a link (especially via a LinkedIn Page or as a sponsored update), you have access to Post Analytics. LinkedIn will show metrics such as impressions, clicks, and engagement rate. The “Clicks” metric on LinkedIn post analytics generally counts the number of times people clicked on your content, which includes link clicks or clicks on the post itself (excluding likes or other interactions). If your post contains a link, most of those clicks are likely people clicking through to that link. LinkedIn Pages also offer more detailed analytics where you can see clicks on each update. If you’re using LinkedIn Ads, the campaign manager provides link click stats similar to Facebook Ads.
Other Platforms: Most other social networks have their own version of analytics:
- Instagram: If you have a Business or Creator account, Instagram Insights will tell you how many people clicked the link in your bio, or swiped up on your Story links. This can be useful if you direct users to a “link in bio” (which could even be a Beckli link-in-bio page) and want to track that.
- YouTube: While YouTube analytics focuses on video metrics, if you add trackable links in descriptions or cards, you’d have to rely on URL shortener stats or UTMs to know their clicks, since YouTube itself doesn’t report on external link clicks.
- Pinterest: Pinterest Analytics shows clicks on your pinned links (outbound clicks from pins to your website).

Using social media insights is straightforward: you don’t have to set up anything extra, just ensure you have the proper account type (e.g., a Facebook Page, a Twitter account with analytics enabled, etc.) and then review the metrics after you’ve posted. The downside is that these analytics are platform-specific; they won’t all aggregate in one place. However, they are very handy for measuring engagement on the platform and seeing which posts successfully drove people to click your links.

Pro Tip: You can combine methods for even better data. For example, if you share a Beckli-shortened link on Twitter, you can both:

Check Twitter Analytics for how many link clicks Twitter recorded on that tweet, and
Check Beckli’s dashboard to see the total clicks and possibly other info (like geographic data) for that short link. This way you cross-verify the numbers and get additional insights (Twitter might show you tweet engagements, while Beckli shows you if those clicks came from different countries or devices, etc.).

Use Custom Scripts to Track Link Clicks

For those who have access to their website’s code or want a highly customizable solution, you can track link clicks using custom JavaScript. This approach is more technical, but it gives you full control over what you track and where the data goes. Essentially, you’ll write a script that listens for click events on a link (or multiple links) and then logs that information in some way (for example, sending it to a server, or triggering an analytics event).

Two common methods to implement custom click tracking with JavaScript are:

Inline onclick Handlers: You can add an onclick attribute directly to your link’s HTML. When the link is clicked, the code in this attribute executes. For instance: <a href="https://yoursite.com" onclick="console.log('Link clicked');">Click me</a>. In a real scenario, instead of console.log, you might call a function to record the click. If using an analytics service, the function could send data to that service. For example, Beckli or other analytics could have an API endpoint you ping. (If you were using Fathom Analytics as in the example below, it might look like this:) <a href="/about" onclick="fathom.trackEvent('button click');">About Us</a> – this would log an event named "button click" whenever the link is clicked.
JavaScript Event Listeners: This approach separates the JavaScript from your HTML. You use the DOM API to attach a click event listener to an element. For example, you could do:
```
<a href="/about" id="about-us-link">About Us</a>
<script>
  document.getElementById('about-us-link').addEventListener('click', function() {
     // Your tracking code here
     console.log('About Us link was clicked');
  });
</script>
```
In place of the console.log, you might send an AJAX request to your server to record the click in a database, or trigger a Google Analytics event. The snippet above attaches a listener to the link with ID "about-us-link" and will execute whenever a user clicks that link. This method is cleaner than inline handlers, especially if you have many links to track: you can target links by class name or other attributes in one script block. For instance, you could assign a class like track-click to multiple links and use document.querySelectorAll('.track-click') to attach a tracking event to all of them at once.

Using custom scripts to track clicks means you can decide exactly what happens on a click. Common actions include:

Logging to a server: e.g., make a fetch() or XHR request to your backend like /log-click?link=XYZ. Your server can increment a database counter each time.
Sending to analytics: e.g., calling a function provided by an analytics platform (as shown with Fathom’s fathom.trackEvent in the example, or using Google Analytics gtag('event', ...)).
Triggering other actions: maybe trigger a conversion pixel or any custom behavior.

One important consideration: If you are redirecting the user immediately (for example, the link click takes them to another page), you want to ensure your tracking code still executes. Sometimes developers add a tiny delay or use event.preventDefault() to first record the click then manually navigate, so the tracking isn't lost in the redirect. For instance, you might intercept an outbound link click, send a tracking event, then allow the navigation to proceed.

Custom scripting is most useful for scenarios where built-in tools don’t exactly meet your needs. It does require coding knowledge, and careful testing to make sure you’re capturing all clicks. But once set up, it can be very powerful. You could even combine this with other methods: for example, use a custom script to track clicks and append UTM parameters to the link dynamically, or use it alongside GA4 to send additional context with each click event.

Conclusion: Tracking clicks on a link can be achieved through multiple avenues. If you prefer a plug-and-play solution, URL shorteners like Beckli are a fantastic starting point, giving you immediate insight into link performance with minimal effort. For marketers looking to attribute traffic sources, UTM parameters and analytics tools like Google Analytics (GA4) provide deep campaign tracking capabilities. Social media platforms offer their own analytics to gauge engagement on those channels. And for developers or those needing a tailored approach, custom JavaScript tracking opens up limitless possibilities to record clicks exactly as needed.

Often, the best strategy is to use a combination of these methods. For example, you might use Beckli to shorten and track links in your social media posts (and see overall clicks), while also using UTMs and GA4 to analyze what users do after clicking through to your website. By comprehensively tracking link clicks, you’ll gather valuable data that can inform your content strategy, marketing decisions, and overall understanding of user behavior. No matter which method you choose, the key is that you’ll no longer be in the dark about who’s clicking your links and how often – you’ll have the answers at your fingertips. Happy tracking!

How to Track Clicks on a Link