Solutions
One number per link, and nothing about the people who clicked
Most shorteners are analytics products with a redirect attached. Linkonda inverts that: it counts redirects and stores nothing about who made them. This page sets out precisely what that means.
The complete list
| Data point | Recorded? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Total redirect count per link | ✓ Yes | The only click data that exists |
| IP address | ✗ No | Not logged, not hashed, not derived from |
| Geolocation / country | ✗ No | Would require the IP |
| Device, OS, browser | ✗ No | User agent is not stored |
| Referrer | ✗ No | Where the click came from is not recorded |
| Timestamp per click | ✗ No | Only a running total |
| Cookies on redirect | ✗ No | None set |
| Unique visitor identifier | ✗ No | No fingerprint, no ID |
| Destination URL | ✓ Yes | Needed to perform the redirect |
Why an aggregate counter is enough for most uses
Ask what decision a click breakdown would actually change. For most short links — a link in a newsletter, a QR code on a poster, a link shared in a chat — the useful question is "did anyone use this?", and a total answers it completely.
Detailed attribution matters when you are running paid acquisition and optimising spend across channels. That is a real need, and it is well served by tools built for it. It is not what most short links are for, and collecting the data by default means carrying its risk by default.
What you give up
Stated plainly, because it is a real trade:
- No geographic or device breakdown per link
- No time-series graph of clicks over a period
- No unique-versus-total click distinction
- No referrer attribution, UTM roll-ups, or retargeting pixels
- No A/B measurement of which variant converted, only how many times each was served
If two or more of those are load-bearing for your work, use a tracking shortener — the Short.io comparison and Bitly comparison are written to help you make that call honestly.
What you get back
No consent obligation arising from the redirect. No visitor dataset to secure, retain, or produce on request. No breach exposure from click logs. No interstitial or blocklist risk from an analytics-heavy shared domain, especially when combined with your own custom domain.
And links that keep working. Because there is no per-click storage growing over time, there is no economic reason to expire your links or meter your clicks — which is why the free plan keeps links permanently and counts them without limit.
Related
For the regulatory framing, see GDPR-compliant short links. For how the counter is exposed programmatically, see the URL shortener API.
Frequently asked questions
- What exactly does Linkonda record when a link is clicked?
- A single counter is incremented for that link. No row is written describing the click, so there is no IP address, geolocation, user agent, referrer, timestamp, or visitor identifier associated with it.
- Can I see where my clicks came from?
- No, and that is deliberate. If you need geographic or device breakdowns, Linkonda is the wrong tool and a tracking shortener will serve you better. What you get is a reliable total per link.
- Are cookies set on the redirect?
- No. The redirect sets no cookies and runs no tracking script. A session cookie exists only for signed-in users of the web app itself, not for people following your links.
- Is the click count public?
- The per-link stats endpoint is public, returning only the total redirect count for a given slug. It exposes nothing about individual visitors because nothing about them is stored.
- Does Linkonda use analytics on its own website?
- The marketing site uses privacy-friendly product analytics to understand which pages are used. That is separate from the redirect path — following a short link involves no analytics script at all.