Short links: share links and see who clicks

A long URL is hard to read in a chat and tells you nothing once it is sent. With Short links, every link goes out on Ciarem’s short domain, ciarem.link, and Ciarem counts who opens it, from which channel and country.

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Turn on Short links

Short links is an add-on, free like Checkout. Once it is on, a Shorten pill appears wherever you type a long URL into a text that reaches a customer, the inbox composer gets a Shorten link button, and Short links appears in the sidebar for admins.

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Shorten a link while you write

Type or paste a long URL into the inbox composer and pause: the URL lights up and a Shorten pill appears right above it. Click Shorten and the long URL is swapped for your short link in place; the pill shows the short link for a moment and fades. Press Escape or the × to dismiss it for that URL; to bring it back, move the cursor right after the URL and type a space. The pill never moves your cursor or takes the focus. The same pill appears everywhere a text can reach a customer: WhatsApp message templates (body, header, footer and card texts), interactive-message presets and Flow texts, quick replies, surveys, the return message of assignment rules, comment-to-DM automations, the transfer messages and first message of your AI agent, and the inbox dialogs (media caption, contact request, calls, Flow picker). The composer toolbar also has a Shorten link button that opens the full dialog:

1. Enter the Destination URL. Add a Title (optional) to recognize the link later.
2. Click Shorten.
3. Click Insert in message to put the short link in your draft, or copy it.

Links shortened inside a conversation are per recipient: the short link is tied to that contact, that conversation and that channel. That is how Ciarem can tell you exactly who clicked. Send the same short link to someone else and they get their own. Links shortened outside a conversation (a template, a quick reply, a survey) are shared: everyone who receives that text gets the same short URL, so Ciarem counts its clicks but cannot count sends or tell you who clicked. The pill also shows Track clicks. Turn it off and the short link works the same, but Ciarem doesn’t record its clicks; in a chat, that gives a shared link that isn’t tied to the contact and doesn’t count as a send. When that URL already has active short links, a second box, Use an existing short link, lists every short URL they have: the Default one, any sources, and one per person it was sent to, each named by who or where (untracked ones say Not tracked). It shows under the link, or above the pill when there’s no room below, in any editor including the chat: pick one to reuse it instead of making another. In a chat with Track clicks on, the link you pick still gets its own per-recipient code, so you keep seeing who clicked. Outside a chat, picking a person’s short URL inserts the link’s default one, so that person isn’t credited with the clicks. Scroll the list to see them all. In a WhatsApp template the pill warns you that Meta’s template review may reject a URL on a domain your business does not own. If your template is rejected, keep the original URL there. The shorten tools are hidden while you write an internal note, since nothing is sent to the customer.

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Links your AI agent sends

When Shorten links sent by the AI is on, links in your AI agent’s replies are replaced with short links automatically, so their clicks are tracked too. It is on by default. You find the switch in See details on the Short links card.

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The Short links page

Admins see Short links in the sidebar. For the date range you pick (7 days, 30 days, 90 days or Custom, up to 92 days), the tiles at the top show Links, Sends, Clicked, Clicks, Unique clicks and Click rate, and the table lists every link with its Sends, Click rate, Clicks and Last click.

• Use Search links to find a link by title or destination.
• The Source column tells you where it came from: Manual (created here), Inbox or AI.
• The Status column shows Active, Inactive or Expired, plus Not tracked for a link that doesn’t record clicks.
• New link creates a shared link that is not tied to any recipient, for example to paste in an email or an ad. Turn off Track clicks if you only need the short URL: the link works the same, but Ciarem doesn’t record its clicks.

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Link details

Click a link to see its details: the short URL, the destination, the same date range and its numbers. Under the numbers come its Short URLs, then the charts.

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Short URLs

Under the numbers, Short URLs lists every short URL of the link in one table: its Default one, any sources, and one for each person it was sent to in a chat. Each row is named by who or where (the person and their channel, the source, or Default), with its short URL under it, and shows when it was sent, and its clicks, unique clicks and last click (all-time), with a copy icon and, for a person, Open conversation. Turn on Clicked only to list just the ones someone clicked. A person’s short URL whose message never went out (a draft you didn’t send, or a send that failed) shows as Not sent: it isn’t counted as a send, but any click on it still counts. Click the Sent, Clicks, Unique or Last click header to sort by it (a second click reverses the order, a third goes back to the default order); on a phone or tablet use Sort by. Click View metrics on a row to see only that short URL’s numbers and charts above; Show all goes back to the whole link.

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Charts

• Clicks over time, one bar per day.
• By channel, By country, By device and By operating system.
• By sender: who sent the link, your Team, the AI or the WhatsApp Business app.

A source is a named short URL for sharing the link outside a chat, for example in your Instagram bio or an email. The detail page shows By source and By referrer (where the browser came from). Clicks from chat apps show as Direct.

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Edit or delete a link

Use Edit to change the title, the destination, whether the link is Active, whether it records clicks (Track clicks, shared links not yet sent in a conversation), and when it Expires. A few things to know:

• Expires on a date means the link works through the end of that day, in your local time.
• Changing the destination re-points every short link already sent: people who open an old message land on the new destination.
• Turning Active off stops the link from redirecting without deleting its history.
• Turning Track clicks off keeps the clicks already recorded and stops recording new ones. Links your AI agent sends and links shortened in a chat with tracking on are always tracked, and so is any link once it has been sent in a conversation (a chat reuses the link for the same URL): its Edit has no Track clicks switch.

Delete stops every short link of that link from working and removes its statistics. This cannot be undone.

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How clicks are counted

• A send is a short link that actually went out in a message. A link you shortened but never sent, or a message that failed to send, does not count as a send.
• Click rate is the recipients who clicked divided by the recipients it was sent to. A shared link with no recipients shows ”—”.
• Unique clicks count each visitor once, even if they open the link several times.
• Link previews are not clicks. When WhatsApp, Meta, Slack or Telegram fetch a link to draw a preview, Ciarem lets it through but does not count it.
• Country and device come from the visitor’s connection and are approximate.
• Ciarem does not store IP addresses or browser identifiers.

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What is not available yet

• Per-recipient tracking in WhatsApp message templates and broadcasts: a short link in a template is shared, so it counts clicks but not sends or who clicked.
• Custom slugs (the short code is generated for you).
• QR codes and CSV export.
• The Shorten link tools in the mobile app composer.