Update: link previews and your own test clicks no longer count

If you have built a link, posted it nowhere, and found it already carrying a few clicks, that number is probably not someone finding it.

Something read it before you posted it. Opening it from the dashboard to check it works is one. Pasting it into Telegram or Slack to look at it yourself is another, and that platform’s server fetches it within seconds to build the preview card.

Both are now excluded from your stats. Opening your own link from the dashboard will not add one, and a platform fetching it for a preview will not either. What you see now sits closer to people actually opening the thing.

Anything that looks like an ordinary click is still counted. A link you copy and open yourself in a private window is one of those. So is automated scanning that runs from cloud servers behind ordinary browser identities, because the request it sends is indistinguishable from a real one, which is why the number is not absolutely clean. Those usually arrive with no referrer, which is where the referrer breakdown helps.

The change applies from now on. Past numbers are left as they are. The link detail page also has a small question mark next to “Total clicks” that says all of this where the number is, so next time it is answered in place.