Creating Short Links

Short links let you turn any long, unwieldy URL into a clean, compact link that is easy to share and track. Every short link you create through Leenkies follows the format leenkies.com/l/abc123, giving you a branded, professional-looking URL that works anywhere -- social media bios, email signatures, printed flyers, business cards, QR codes, and more. Best of all, every short link automatically tracks clicks so you can measure exactly how much traffic each link drives.

What Are Short Links?

A Leenkies short link is a compact URL that redirects visitors to any destination you choose. For example, instead of sharing a long URL like https://www.example.com/blog/2025/12/my-really-long-article-title-here, you can create a short link like leenkies.com/l/abc123 that redirects to the same page.

Short links are not just about aesthetics -- they are a powerful tracking tool. Every time someone clicks your short link, Leenkies records the click along with metadata like the visitor's device type, country, and referrer. This gives you precise insight into how your links perform across different channels and campaigns.

Common Use Cases

Short links are versatile and valuable in many situations:

• Social media -- Many platforms have character limits or display long URLs poorly. A short link looks cleaner in posts, comments, and bios, and it gives you click tracking that the platform's native analytics may not provide.

• Print materials -- Flyers, posters, brochures, and packaging need URLs that are easy to type manually. A six-character short link code is far more practical than a long URL with slashes, hyphens, and query parameters.

• Business cards -- Space on a business card is limited. A short link lets you include a trackable URL without cluttering the design.

• Email campaigns -- Use short links in newsletters and outreach emails to track which links recipients click on and measure engagement per campaign.

• Tracking specific campaigns -- Create a unique short link for each campaign, platform, or content piece so you can compare their performance independently.

How to Create a Short Link

Creating a short link takes just a few seconds:

1. From your dashboard, click Create in the sidebar navigation.
2. Select Links from the creation options. This takes you to the short links section.
3. Click the Create Short Link button to open the creation form.
4. Enter the destination URL -- Paste or type the full URL you want the short link to redirect to. This can be any valid URL: a webpage, a file download, a video, a social media post, or anything else accessible via a browser.
5. Leenkies automatically generates a unique six-character alphanumeric code for your short link. You do not need to choose or customize the code -- it is created for you instantly.
6. Click Create to save your new short link. It is immediately active and ready to use.

Enter your destination URL and Leenkies generates a unique short link code automatically. Click Create to activate it.

Copying Your Short Link

Once your short link is created, you can copy it to your clipboard instantly:

1. Find your new short link in the links list.
2. Click the copy icon next to the short link URL.
3. The full short link URL (for example, leenkies.com/l/abc123) is copied to your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere.

Pro Tip: After creating a short link, immediately paste it into your browser to verify that it redirects correctly to your intended destination. This quick check ensures everything is working before you share the link publicly.

Smart Deduplication

Leenkies is smart about duplicate destinations. If you try to create a short link for a URL that you have already created a short link for, Leenkies will notify you and show you the existing short link rather than creating a duplicate. This prevents you from accidentally having multiple short links pointing to the same destination, which would split your analytics data and make tracking less useful.

If you genuinely need multiple short links to the same destination (for example, to track different campaigns separately), you can still create them -- but Leenkies will make sure you are aware of the existing link first so you can make an informed choice.

Bot Filtering

Leenkies automatically filters out bot traffic from your short link analytics. When a short link is clicked, Leenkies examines the request to determine whether it came from a real human visitor or an automated bot (such as a web crawler, link preview generator, or security scanner). Bot clicks are excluded from your analytics data so your click counts reflect genuine human engagement.

This means you can trust that the click numbers you see in your short link analytics represent real visitors who actually followed your link, not inflated counts from automated systems.

Pro Tip: Create a dedicated short link for each social media platform where you share content. For example, create one short link for your Instagram bio and a different one for your Twitter bio, both pointing to the same Leenkies page. This way, you can compare click performance across platforms and see exactly where your traffic comes from.

What to Read Next

• Short Link Analytics -- Track clicks, devices, countries, and referrers for each short link.
• Managing Short Links -- Edit, enable, disable, and delete your short links.