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Do branded links improve click-through rate? An honest answer
The commonly quoted uplift figures come from vendor studies with obvious incentives. What is actually defensible about branded short links, and how to measure it on your own traffic.
By Wasim Idrishi · Updated · 4 min read
Search for this and you will find the same handful of percentages repeated across a hundred blog posts, all tracing back to shortener vendors. We sell branded links. Take the number below as an argument, not as evidence, and take everyone else's the same way.
What is defensible
A branded link is legible. links.yourbrand.com/spring tells a reader who is asking for the click.
gc.mw/Xk2p does not, and bit.ly/3xK9pQr actively does not. When the URL is visible, that difference is
real and does not need a study.
It survives suspicion. People have been trained, correctly, to distrust a link they cannot read. The open question is not whether the reader prefers a branded link; it is whether they were ever going to look at the URL. In a link preview card or behind anchor text, they were not.
It carries your reputation, not a stranger's. This is the one we would actually argue from. A shared shortener's domain accumulates every link anyone creates on it. Your subdomain accumulates only yours. In email filtering, that difference is measurable and it is not about click-through rate at all.
It is yours. If a shortener shuts down, links on its domain die. Links on links.yourbrand.com need a
CNAME change and keep working. That is an argument about years, not percentages.
What is not
That a branded link improves click-through rate everywhere. In most modern placements the URL is invisible. An Instagram bio shows the display text; a WhatsApp message often shows a preview card; an HTML newsletter shows the words you wrote.
Where the URL is invisible, the domain in it cannot influence a decision nobody made.
| Placement | URL visible? | Branded link likely to matter |
|---|---|---|
| Plain-text email, SMS | Yes, in full | Yes |
| Print, posters, packaging | Yes, and typed by hand | Yes, strongly |
| Read aloud on a podcast or call | Yes, as speech | Yes, strongly |
| Hover on desktop, status bar | Yes, briefly | Somewhat |
| HTML email behind anchor text | No | No |
| Social post with a preview card | No | No |
Measuring it on your own traffic
Pick a placement where the URL is visible
Plain-text email, SMS, or a printed run split across two versions. Anywhere the reader cannot see the URL, the test cannot answer the question.
Make two links that differ only in domain
Same destination, same alias, same UTM values. One on gc.mw, one on your verified subdomain. Any other difference contaminates the result.
Split the audience, not the schedule
Send both halves at the same time to randomly assigned recipients. A Tuesday send against a Thursday send measures the day of the week.
Read unique visitors, not clicks
Clicks include repeats and scanners. Unique visitors per day is the closer proxy for people, and bot traffic is separated out of the audience breakdowns automatically.
Be honest about the sample
A 3% difference on 500 recipients is noise. If you cannot get to thousands per arm, run the test as a habit across several campaigns rather than deciding on one.
Link Checker
Open the full toolThe thing that actually moves clicks
In every campaign we have run, the destination and the surrounding copy moved the number far more than the domain in the link. A clear promise before the link beats a beautiful link after a vague one, every time.
Where branded links pay off consistently is further down: fewer mistyped URLs off print, fewer messages filtered on domain reputation, and no dependency on a vendor's decision to keep a domain alive. Those are slow, unglamorous wins, and they are the ones that compound.
What to do about it
If the URL is visible in your channel, get a custom domain — two DNS records, and the certificate is issued for you. If it is not visible, spend the effort on the destination instead and use short links for the reasons that hold regardless: an editable destination, per-link analytics, a QR code you can reprint against, and links that outlive the campaign that created them.
Questions people ask
Is the '34% more clicks' figure real?
It comes from shortener vendors' own marketing and we have never seen the methodology behind it. Treat any uplift number published by a company selling branded links as an advertisement, including any number we might publish. Measure it on your own traffic instead.
Where does a branded link actually get seen?
Anywhere the URL is visible: plain-text email, SMS, print, a status bar on hover, a link preview, and anything read aloud. Behind anchor text in an HTML email or a social post that shows a card, the reader never sees it at all.
How do I test this properly?
Split one campaign across two links that differ only in domain, publish both in the same placement at the same time, and compare. The difficult part is the placement, not the links — you need a channel where the two halves genuinely see the same audience.
Does a custom domain help anything besides clicks?
Yes, and this is the stronger argument. It carries your own sending reputation in email rather than a shared shortener's, it survives link-preview scanners better, and it means your links do not disappear if a shortener shuts down.
Keep going
Try it with your own link
Paste a long link and get a 10-character gc.mw link with a QR code. No account needed for 30 days; free forever with one.