You send a campaign to a list of business contacts, and within a minute the dashboard lights up. Click rates are higher than anything you've seen, every link in the email seems to be getting attention, and a few recipients appear to have clicked everything at once.
Then you look at conversions, and nothing has changed.
What you're seeing is almost certainly automated clicks from corporate email security scanners. They open and follow links in incoming email to check for threats, and to your analytics they look like people. Timing, request patterns, and landing-page activity can help separate those automated checks from genuine clicks.
#What email link scanners are
Most business email passes through security filtering before it reaches an inbox. Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Safe Links, Mimecast, Proofpoint, Barracuda, and similar tools protect organizations from phishing and malware by checking the links in incoming messages.
They do this in a few ways. Many rewrite every link in an email so it passes through the vendor's service first, which lets them check the destination at the moment someone clicks. Many also fetch links at delivery, following them through any redirects to inspect the final page, sometimes in a sandboxed browser. Some do both.
From your side, those automated fetches look like clicks. Your short link or tracking redirect logs a request, records a device and location, and counts it, just as it would for a person.
#Why this inflates your click counts
Scanners tend to check every link in a message, not just the one a person might choose. That means your header logo, footer links, social icons, and main call to action can all register "clicks" within the same few seconds.
They also click on emails nobody ever reads. A message that sits unopened in an inbox can still show a click, because the scanner checked it on arrival.
The effect is concentrated in B2B. Consumer inboxes on Gmail or Outlook.com do scan for threats, but corporate gateways are far more aggressive about fetching links. A list heavy with company domains, especially larger organizations and regulated industries, can see a large share of its recorded clicks come from security tools.
The result is a click rate that looks great, a click-to-conversion ratio that looks terrible, and A/B tests that can point you in the wrong direction because one variant happened to reach more heavily filtered domains.
#The side effects beyond analytics
Inflated numbers are the mild version of the problem. Any link that does something when it's fetched can be triggered by a scanner.
Unsubscribe links are the classic example. If clicking a link unsubscribes someone immediately, a scanner can unsubscribe them without their knowledge. That's part of why RFC 8058, which defines one-click unsubscribe for email headers, requires the action to happen through a POST request rather than a simple link fetch.
Magic login links and one-time confirmation links have the same issue. A scanner can consume a single-use token before the recipient clicks it, so the real person gets an "expired link" error. Double opt-in confirmations can be triggered automatically, which defeats their purpose.
The general rule is that a GET request from an email link should not trigger a sensitive state change. Use a confirmation action where appropriate. RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe is a separate POST-based flow and should remain genuinely one-click.
#How to recognize bot clicks
Timing is the clearest signal. Scanner clicks usually arrive within seconds of delivery, often before any human could plausibly have opened the email, let alone read it. A burst of clicks in the first minute after sending, especially from business domains, is a strong hint.
Clicking everything is another sign. When one recipient appears to click every link in the email within a second or two, including footers and images, that's a scanner following each link in turn.
Look at where the clicks come from. Scanner requests typically originate from cloud and data center networks, such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and the security vendors' own infrastructure, rather than residential or mobile networks. Location data may show cities where those data centers are, not where your recipients work.
User agents and behavior help too. Some scanners use obvious bot user agents; others imitate real browsers. Either way, they rarely behave like a person after landing: no scrolling, no further page views, no form interaction, and often no JavaScript execution.
#How to filter bot clicks out of your data
No single filter catches everything, so combine a few approaches.
Set a time-to-click threshold. Treat clicks that happen within, say, 10 to 30 seconds of delivery as suspect, and report them separately. Real people rarely open, read, and click that fast. Tune the threshold by looking at your own data, since some engaged recipients do click quickly.
Add a hidden honeypot link. Include a link in your email that people can't see, styled to be invisible, and that leads nowhere important. Humans won't click it; scanners that follow every link will. A honeypot request is evidence of automated activity for that message, but the recipient may also make genuine clicks later. Flag individual events and compare other signals rather than discarding every click by that recipient.
Filter by network. Exclude or flag clicks from known data center and cloud networks. Your link analytics may show the network or organization behind each click; if not, the IP address can be mapped to its autonomous system. Be careful not to exclude real users who sit behind corporate VPNs hosted in the cloud.
Measure engagement on the landing page. Use JavaScript execution, scrolling, dwell time, and interaction as supporting signals rather than proof of a human visit. Some scanners execute scripts, while real visitors may block them or leave quickly. Many scanners never execute scripts, and even those that do rarely behave like a person.
Then judge campaigns on outcomes. Signups, purchases, replies, and demo requests are much harder for a bot to fake than a click. If a campaign's clicks rise and its conversions don't, the gap is often bots.
#Using short links to separate the signal
Short links and link analytics make bot filtering easier, because every click passes through a redirect you can see. With S.EE's link analytics, you get timestamps, countries and cities, devices, browsers, and referrers for every click, which is the raw material for spotting bursts, data center locations, and implausible patterns.
A few habits help. Use a separate short link for each link in an email, rather than one link reused across the header, body, and footer, so you can see whether all of them light up together. Use separate links per campaign and per send, so you can compare the first minutes after delivery with the rest of the day.
And use your own branded domain for email links. Beyond the deliverability benefits we covered in our article on whether shortened links affect email deliverability, it gives your links a recognizable identity and more control over domain reputation. Analytics separation depends on the platform's account and link records, not on owning the domain alone.
#What about inflated open rates?
Opens have a related problem with a different cause. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection preloads email images, including tracking pixels, for users who enable it, so many emails register as opened whether or not anyone looked at them. Some security scanners also load images when they inspect messages.
That's why open rates have become a weak metric for many senders. Clicks, filtered for bots, and conversions are more reliable signals of real engagement. Our guide to link analytics when visitors block cookies covers more of the ways tracking has changed.
#Wrapping up
Corporate email link scanners follow links in incoming messages to check for threats, and to your analytics their checks look like clicks. The signs are clicks within seconds of delivery, every link clicked at once, and traffic from data center networks rather than real users.
Filter with a time-to-click threshold, a hidden honeypot link, network-based exclusions, and landing page engagement, and judge campaigns on conversions rather than raw clicks. Keep sensitive actions out of link-fetch GET requests while preserving standards-compliant POST-based one-click unsubscribe.
Thanks for reading! If you want click data detailed enough to spot bots and branded links that keep your email traffic separate, S.EE covers URL shortening, custom domains, and real-time analytics in one place.
Ready to get started? Create your first link or view pricing to find the plan that fits your sending volume.
#Frequently asked questions about email link scanners and bot clicks
##Why does my email click rate look too high?
Corporate email security tools like Microsoft Safe Links, Mimecast, and Proofpoint often follow every link in incoming emails to check for threats. Those automated fetches register as clicks in your analytics, inflating your click rate.
##How can I tell if email clicks are from bots?
Look for clicks within seconds of delivery, one recipient clicking every link at once, clicks from cloud or data center networks, and no engagement on the landing page afterward.
##Can email scanners unsubscribe people automatically?
Yes, if your unsubscribe link acts immediately when fetched. Use a confirmation page with a button, and support RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe, which requires a POST request rather than a simple link fetch.
##What is a honeypot link in email?
It's a link hidden from human readers that only automated scanners will follow. Requests to it flag automated activity, but don't prove that every other click for the recipient was automated.
##Do email link scanners affect A/B test results?
They can. If one variant reaches more recipients behind aggressive security gateways, it can show more bot clicks and appear to win. Judge tests on filtered clicks or, better, on conversions.
##Do consumer email providers also scan links?
Consumer providers scan for threats too, but corporate security gateways are generally far more aggressive about fetching links. Lists with many business addresses see the most bot clicks.
