New! Brazil and Thailand edge locations
Short.io now has edge servers in Brazil and Thailand — meaning faster links for users across South America and the APAC region.
The Short.io Journal
Short.io Blog
Insights on link management, marketing analytics, and the craft of growth — written by the team behind Short.io.
Editor's picks
New! Improved fake bot detection
“Bots can fake their identity in your analytics — appearing as Google, Bing, or OpenAI when they're not. Here's how Short.io now catches them.”
New! Check Open Graph links & debug deep links on our website for free
We've added two more free tools to the Short.io Tools tab — an “Open Graph checker” and a “Deep links debugger”. If you share links on social media or route users into mobile apps, these are for you. No sign-up, no limits, and available right now. Open Graph checker You drop a link on LinkedIn, Slack, wherever, and it’s all wrong. Wrong image, missing description, naked URL with no preview at all. That's an Open Graph (OG) problem. Here’s where the discrepancy happens. Pages use meta tag
Latest
New! Generate, customize, and debug QR codes on our website for free
Short.io’s website now has a dedicated Tools section, featuring four brand-new, useful utilities. All are completely free, and there’s no sign-up required. The first two we’ve added are “QR code generator” and “QR code debugger.” Here’s what they do. QR code generator This isn't a bare-bones "paste a URL, get a square" tool. Our QR Code Generator gives you real control over how your QR codes look before you download them. You can customize: * Color (code, finder, background, and label)
Bot vs. human traffic: How it works & what you can do about it
You launch a campaign, you check your clicks, and the numbers look great… …except 99% of it isn’t real. That’s not a random number we pulled up. Bots will consistently be over 99% of your traffic. Now, this isn’t something to panic about — every website, link, metadata, image, etc. on the internet experiences bot traffic. They’re simply an inseparable part of being online. And they can come from many places and for different reasons. Some are malicious, but most are benign. Thankfully,
Understanding your link analytics, Part I: Every metric explained
What you’ll learn in this article: * Every metric you can track and view on Short.io, for all sections — Click Stream, Conversion Stream, Branded Links, and Domain Statistics * Each metric is explained in detail, with additional context given for more complex pieces of data * A wide variety of use cases that shine a light on how these metrics function in the real world 📈 The promise & challenge of analytics So — analytics, right? Clicks, conversions, top performing lin
New! Conversion streaming
Short.io now offers Conversion Streaming, giving you real-time visibility into how your links perform after a click. Conversion links track what happens after someone clicks. Did someone just click a link, or did they also: * Sign up? * Buy something? * Fill a form? Why does this matter? Picture this: 1. You create and initiate a marketing campaign. 2. But tracking actual conversions can take hours or even days to show up. 3. If you have time-sensitive campaigns like product launches
For developers: sync Short.io links with link-sync-action and build Node.js integrations with @short.io/client-node
If you manage Short.io links as part of a software delivery process, it’s often easier to treat them like configuration: keep them in Git, review changes in pull requests, and let CI apply updates automatically. link-sync-action does exactly that—define links in shortio.yaml, then sync them to Short.io through a GitHub Actions workflow. This post covers two separate developer tools: * link-sync-action — sync links from a shortio.yaml file into Short.io https://github.com/Short-io/link-sync
Link auditing — now free for everyone
Keeping track of every change to your links — creation, deletion, or updating — can be difficult for one person. If you have a team of dozens of people? Impossible. That’s why we created the “Audit” feature. “Audit” lets you keep track of every change to every link in real time. ☝️If you’re using the Free, Hobby, or Pro plans, you’ll only be able to see your own changes.✌️If you’re using a Team or Enterprise plan, you can follow the changes of your entire team. Here’s exactly what you can
New! Public statistics sharing
You can now share your statistics! It’s a simple and quick way to showcase transparent performance to your clients. And it only takes 3 clicks to get there. They don’t need to have a short.io account, either — all that’s needed is the link. You can find the “Share” button under “Domain Statistics” in the sidebar. ☝️Each link updates in real time, so the same link can provide up-to-date information.✌️Each link updates in real time, so the same link can provide up-to-date information. Each l
New! S3 export
We’re excited to announce the new release of click stream S3 support in Short.io! There’s already a lot you can do with your short links. But there are even more use cases when you decide to orchestrate your short link data with your external services and processes. Here are a few examples: * Analyze how your links work as part of your marketing funnel. * Understand data with your own analysis or BI tools. * Build custom dashboards that consolidate and correlate data. * Detect fraud by c
New! "GPT-5 mini"-based AI Assistant for all free users
If you’re a free user and you tried to click on “AI Assistant,” you would see an “Upgrade" button. Up until now, that functionality was only available to paid Short.io subscribers. Now, free users can also take advantage of our AI Assistant. We’re introducing GPT-5 mini. Scaled-down but still capable. Like its bigger GPT-5 counterpart, it can: * Generate links * Track stats * Change settings * Create integrations * And a whole lot more! ☝️GPT-5 mini is available to all Fre
New! APAC servers in South Korea
What’s an edge location? If you create a website that’s based on the other side of the world, you’ll need to send internet data between you and that server. That transmission happens at the speed of light — but even the speed of light is not immediate. To make a round trip from you to that website and back, it takes light around 200ms. Each response from a link takes more than a second, simply because of the fundamental laws of physics. This is why most companies employ Content Delivery Ne
New! A safer, more efficient Google-certified domain
The problem with “v.short.gy” By creating shortlinks on Short.io, you use our free “v.short.gy” domain for transparent links. ☝️In short, transparent links handle tracking, redirects, etc. for you, automatically, in the background. However, due to the popularity of v.short.gy, we experienced an issue with “noisy neighbors” — malicious actors which caused Google Ads to flag our domain. In truth, that was an issue with their internal checker, and it only affected the ability of our links to wo
New! Deep links
Previously, Short.io provided a simple way to generate universal links for you. Enter any Apple or Android app name, and you can connect your link to the corresponding application. But many of our users wanted extra control and customization when creating universal links. We listened, and now, we’ve expanded your options. This new update allows you to not just connect, but edit your association files, too — right in Short.io. Just copy the association file’s JSON code, paste it in, and you