Track the links you text and see who clicks

Link tracking is on for every workspace. Every link your team or your AI texts is sent as a short link.ody.co/… link — the customer still lands on the page you meant, and you see who clicked, when, and how often in the conversation and in the Link clicks section on the Analytics screen. Nothing changes for the person typing the text. If you would rather send the full URL, switch it off in Settings → Analytics.

Before you start

• You must be a workspace admin or owner to turn link tracking off or change its settings. Every member can see the settings and the clicks.
• Link tracking is on by default for every workspace (since November 7, 2026). Your choice sticks: once you switch it off, it stays off until you switch it back on.
• The Link clicks section of the Analytics screen follows the Analytics screen's plan rule (Growth or above). Tracking itself and the clicks shown in conversations work on every paid plan.

Step-by-step

1. Click Settings in the left sidebar, then Analytics (under Workspace). On your phone or in the iPhone / Android app: More → Settings → Analytics.
2. In the Tracked links card, Track links in outbound texts is already on. Switch it off if you want texts to carry the full URL; a toast confirms Link tracking is off. Switch it back on at any time.
3. Leave Show clicks in conversations on if you want a "Raphael clicked your link" line in the thread and the conversation lifted to the top of the inbox on the first click. Switch it off to keep clicks in Analytics only.
4. (Optional) In the Attribution card, edit the Tracking template — the parameters Ody adds to the destination so your website analytics credit the visit to an Ody text — and click Save template. Reset to default brings back Ody's template. The Preview line shows what a sample link will look like.

That's it — nothing changes for the people sending texts. They type farmdogs.com/book; the customer receives link.ody.co/x7Kq2mQ; tapping it opens farmdogs.com/book with your attribution parameters added.

Developers and automations can flip the same three settings — tracking on/off, clicks in conversations, the template — with an API key that has the Workspace settings scope: GET/PATCH /v1/api/link-tracking, ody.linkTracking.update(...) in the SDKs, or the MCP configure_link_tracking tool. See Link tracking on dev.ody.co and Use the Ody API and SDKs.

What gets tracked

• Every outbound text: texts your teammates send, replies from your AI texting agent, texts Astra sends during a call, and texts sent through the Ody API. Each is labelled by sender in Analytics (Team texts, AI texting, AI call follow-up, API).
• Only outbound. Links your customers text you are never changed.
• Up to 5 links per text. Links to Ody itself are left alone.
• People, not robots. Messaging apps and carriers often "preview" links the moment a text arrives. Ody recognises previews, scanners and prefetchers and never counts them, so a click always means a person opened your link.

Where clicks show up

In the conversation (when Show clicks in conversations is on): a small centered line — 🔗 Raphael clicked your link · farmdogs.com — appears in the thread at the time of the first click, with a clicked 3× chip when the same link is opened again. The first click also moves the conversation to the top of your inbox with the preview "🔗 Raphael clicked your link". It does not mark the conversation unread — a click is a signal, not a message to answer.

Hover any short link in one of your sent texts to see where it points and how many clicks it has; clicking it opens the original page. In the iPhone and Android apps the same information sits in a small caption under the text you sent (farmdogs.com · 2 clicks) — tap it to open the page, press and hold to copy the link.

In Analytics → Link clicks (Growth plan and above), for the selected range:

• Links sent, Clicks, Click-through (share of texts with a link that got at least one click), People who clicked, Repeat clicks and Time to first click.
• Clicks per day, By source (team vs. AI vs. API), Top destinations (by website), Repeat clickers (contacts who opened a link more than once — your warmest leads; click a name to open the conversation) and Recent clicks.
• Export includes the Link clicks sections in the CSV.

If your workspace has switched tracking off, the section shows a single card with a Turn on link tracking button that takes you to the setting. While tracking is on but nobody has tapped a link yet, the same card reads Waiting for the first click: nothing is wrong, the next link your team or AI texts goes out as a short link and the first tap shows up here and in the conversation.

The iPhone and Android apps (iPhone 1.4, Android 1.3.0 and later) show the same Link clicks section under More → Analytics — the KPIs, By source, Top destinations and Recent clicks. The Repeat clickers table and the CSV export are on the web app.

The tracking template

The default template is

utm_source=ody&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign={source}&utm_content=c_{contactRef}

so a visit from an Ody text shows up in Google Analytics, PostHog or any UTM-aware tool as source ody, medium sms, campaign ody_text (or ody_ai_text, ody_ai_call_text, ody_api) and an anonymous contact reference in content.

• Placeholders you can use: {source}, {contactRef} (an anonymous id for the contact — never the phone number), {workspaceRef}, {line} (the business number that texted) and {code} (the short link code).
• Parameters already on a link are never overwritten — a campaign link you built by hand keeps its own attribution.
• A template must be name=value pairs joined with &, 512 characters or fewer. If a saved template ever can't be applied, Ody falls back to the default so texts always go out.

Privacy

• Ody stores the time of the click, the device type (phone or computer) and the country. The clicker's IP address is not stored — only a hash that changes daily.
• Short links never contain a phone number, and the attribution parameters identify the contact only by an anonymous reference.
• Short links are 7 random characters, so nobody can guess one and discover the pages you send.

Troubleshooting

• The switch is greyed out / "Only workspace admins can change link tracking" — ask an admin or owner to change it.
• A customer says the link looks odd — short links always start with link.ody.co/. If they tap it they land on your original page; if you'd rather send the full URL to a specific customer, switch tracking off before sending and on again afterwards (texts already sent keep working).
• No clicks appear although the customer says they opened it — some corporate mail/security tools open links in a sandbox that Ody deliberately doesn't count. Ask them to tap the link in their messaging app.
• I turned "Show clicks in conversations" off and the lines vanished — that's expected; clicks are kept, and the lines come back the moment you turn it on again.
• Links texted before November 7, 2026 (or while tracking was switched off) aren't tracked — correct; only texts sent while tracking is on are rewritten.
• I want to stop using short links — switch off Track links in outbound texts in Settings → Analytics. Links already sent keep working; new texts carry the URL exactly as typed.

Related articles

• Tracked links in your texts
• Analytics overview
• Export analytics as CSV
• Let your AI agent answer texts