Analytics

Where to look

• The document page has an Analytics card with five tiles: Viewers, Opens, Time, Downloads and Pages, and a chart by day underneath. Once a document has more than one link, the card also lists Top links and Recently opened. Open full metrics goes to the metrics page.
• The metrics page for a document (Metrics in the document header) has the full picture: totals, the Views and Downloads charts and the viewer list. Choose the period with the range buttons in the page header: the last 7, 30 or 90 days, on every plan, 30 to start with. They are the same three the workspace Metrics page offers. To see one link's numbers only, pick that link on this page.
• Each link has its own counts in the document's Links list, so you can compare audiences. See Share links for making one link per recipient.
• Metrics in the sidebar covers the whole workspace over 7, 30 or 90 days, on every plan: Top documents, Top links, Most engaged people (named readers who spent time reading, by reading time, then pages; someone who opened a link and read nothing is listed under Recent visitors only), Who contributed (people and agents) and Gone quiet, the documents that were shared and not opened.
• Activity in the sidebar lists every open and download as it happens.

The metrics pages update live while you have them open.

What is counted

• Views: how many recipients opened it in the period. A recipient is counted once per link, however often they came back.
• Opens: sittings. A reader who came back three times is one view and three opens.
• Viewers: the number of different people in the period.
• Pages viewed and time spent: how far people got and how long they stayed. Only time with the tab in the foreground counts, and the clock stops after five minutes with no scrolling, mouse movement, clicking, tapping or typing, so a tab left open overnight does not read as hours.
• Downloads: PDF downloads, when the link allows them. Past downloads stay in the count after you turn downloads off.
• By day: a chart of views and downloads over the period.

Your own opens, and those of your teammates, are excluded from every figure. The metrics page tells you how many there were, for example "2 opens by you, not counted". This works when you are signed in to LinkDrop while you open the link. Opened from a private window or a signed-out browser, your visit counts as a recipient's.

A document inside a project can also be opened through the project's link. Those reads are counted on the project, not on the document's own figures. The document's metrics page says how many came through project links and which project carried them.

Every plan: who read it and how

Free and Pro see the same analytics, over the whole history:

• Who opened the document: their LinkDrop account if they were signed in, or the name or email they gave.
• Views, opens, downloads, pages viewed, total time on the document, the charts and a count of viewers.
• Recent visitors at the top of the metrics page: the newest readers, each with how much they read, the time they spent and when. Click one to open that reader's page.
• A reader's page for each reader: sessions, time spent, pages viewed, time on each page, the pages they came back to and the ones they skipped, the longest page, and every visit one by one with its reading order. On a project, which documents they opened and, for each, the pages. It shows Reading now while they have the document open.
• The visit brief written after each visit, on the same page.
• A badge on each reader: Read (went through it properly), Skimmed (turned the pages quickly), Started (was reading but stopped early) or Glanced (under 10 seconds). Hover over it for the raw figures.
• Every link's own list of viewers by name.
• A reader profile of each reader who introduces themselves: who they are, from public professional sources, and their history with you, paid with credits.

In the activity feed, a reader's row opens that reader's page. A reader who never signed in or gave a name shows as an anonymous visitor, with what they read.

Briefs and reader profiles cost credits on every plan; on Free they come out of your starter credits and any credit packs, never out of on-demand billing. What Pro adds is on Pricing, and Credits and plans explains the rest.

A short written summary of each visit is a visit brief. See Notifications and visit briefs, which also covers the email you get when someone opens a link.

Introduce yourself

Recipients can give a name and email with Introduce yourself in the viewer, or in the header of a project link. When they do, their activity is labelled with it on your side. A signed-in viewer is labelled with their LinkDrop account instead. Both show on every plan. Giving a name is optional, and recipients can decline.

Everyone who gives you an address this way also becomes a contact, so you have one list of the people behind the views rather than a name per document.

Ask your agent

A connected agent can read the same figures: views, opens, downloads, pages, time and viewers for a document or a single link, the workspace's activity feed, and a document's recent visit briefs. It gets who read what and the whole history on every plan. Ask it things like "who opened the pitch deck this week?". See Connect your agent.

There is no spreadsheet export of analytics.

What is not tracked

• Viewers' IP addresses are kept for security and abuse prevention only. They are never shown to you.
• No device fingerprinting, and no advertising trackers.
• Nothing a viewer types into the document is recorded. The viewer is read-only.
• Owner and teammate previews are excluded from every count.

See Privacy and security, and the Privacy Policy for the full list of what is recorded about viewers.

Bots and crawlers

Share pages carry a no-index instruction, and LinkDrop's robots rules tell crawlers not to fetch share links at all. This keeps your document out of search engines and keeps bot hits out of your view counts. The rules are advisory: a crawler that ignores them could still register a view.

Where analytics go when things change

• Disabling or deleting a link keeps its past views in the document totals. The metrics page marks the deleted link's traffic as still counted.
• Archiving a document keeps its analytics; they are back when you unarchive it.
• Replacing the PDF keeps the history under the same document.