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How are clicks counted?

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A click is counted when a visitor follows one of your affiliates’ tracked links and that click passes your program’s filters. This page explains the rule Affilae applies: what gets recorded, what gets discarded, and why your screens do not always show the same total.

Requirements: a live program, Affilae tracking installed on your website (or redirect links), and at least one approved partnership. A click tied to a partnership that has not been approved is never recorded.

Where to find your clicks

MANAGE MY PROGRAMS

Configuration

My affiliates

Medias

Clicks

Conversions

Payments

The Clicks menu inside the program menu, once you have opened a program.

Open Manage programs, then click the program concerned.
In the program menu, open Clicks.
Pick the date range at the top of the list, then narrow it down with the Partnership, Cappings and Traffic source filters.
Click the icon on a row to open its details: Country, Device:, Referrer:, Landing page: and the SubIDs.
The Export button generates a file for the selected period and partnership.

The list shows one row per recorded click, with the columns Date, Partnership, Referrer / Landing page, CPC, Country, ID, IP, Device and Traffic Source.

les filtres de période, Partnership, Cappings et Traffic source, puis l’en-tête des colonnes

What makes a click count, or not

Every click goes through a series of checks. Depending on which check applies, the click is rejected before it is ever recorded, or recorded and then neutralised. The difference matters: a rejected click appears nowhere, a neutralised click stays visible in your list.

SITUATION CLICK RECORDED? RESULT

Partnership not approved, deleted, or invalid tracked link No No trace at all, neither in the list nor in your statistics.

IP address listed in IP blacklist No The click is blocked at the source, handy for excluding your own offices.

Another click from the same visitor within the Session duration Counted once only Repeated clicks on the same link do not inflate your volumes.

Country outside your Geo Targeting selection Yes, flagged as blacklisted No click commission, and that click cannot generate a conversion. Hovering the country shows This country is blacklisted.

Capping reached with the Overcap Stop tracking No Clicks from the capped affiliate stop being recorded.

Capping reached with the Overcap Stop commissions Yes The CPC column shows Overcap and the click commission drops to zero.

Bot or fraudulent traffic identified No Affilae tracking discards these visits automatically through its anti-fraud protections.

A recorded click shows up immediately: there is no overnight job and no delayed consolidation. If a test click does not appear within the minute, look at your tracking setup rather than at a processing delay.

The program settings that filter clicks

Three settings sit in the same place, but inside the edit form, not in the summary view. Open Manage programs, click your program, open Configuration, then click Manage in the header of the Global Settings card.

Careful: the summary view of the Global Settings card only shows part of this information, including Geotargeting written as one word and Session duration. The IP blacklist is not shown there at all. You have to go through Manage to see and set all three fields.

The form lists its fields in this order: Program name, Url, Currencies, Geo Targeting, Manager, Session duration, URL format, Affiliate validation, IP blacklist and Attribution method. Three of them drive how clicks are counted:

Session duration: the window during which repeated clicks from the same visitor on the same link count as one. The field accepts Days, Hours, Minutes or Seconds.
Geo Targeting: the list of allowed countries. By default, every country is accepted. The label is written as two words in the form, and as one word (Geotargeting) in the summary view.
IP blacklist: the IP addresses whose traffic must never be recorded, for instance your own teams.

Remember to Save at the bottom of the form. The fourth lever, Capping, sits on the Commission Rules tab of the same screen, in the Capping section. Pick the Type of capping Clicks, a Partnership or a group, a Period, then the Overcap you want.

Tip: a Session duration of 30 minutes is a sound starting point. Most analytics tools use the same value, which makes comparing your figures with Google Analytics much easier.

Good to know: these settings belong to each program. If you manage several programs, configure each one separately. And do not confuse Session duration, which drives how clicks are counted, with the Tracking duration (in days) of each rule, which drives how a sale is attributed.

les champs Geo Targeting, Session duration et IP blacklist

Why your three screens show different totals

This is the most common question. All three screens count the same recorded clicks, but they do not read them the same way.

SCREEN WHAT IT COUNTS

Dashboard, Clicks card Counters accumulated hour by hour. A period that does not start on a full hour is therefore rounded to the hour.

Reporting, Unique clicks column The same hourly counters, broken down by partnership, group or rule. The Ads and Products tabs read clicks one by one and leave out those outside Geo Targeting, so their totals can be slightly lower.

Program menu, Clicks One row per recorded click, down to the second, including clicks outside Geo Targeting. This is the most detailed view.

The word unique in the Reporting refers to the Session duration: it is not a different counter from the dashboard one, it is the same measurement seen from another angle. For a gap between Affilae and an external tool such as Google Analytics or an affiliate dashboard, the diagnosis steps are covered in Resolving click discrepancies.

What these settings bring you

A credible conversion rate, because a curious visitor who clicks five times does not weigh five times in your statistics.
Click volumes limited to the markets you actually target, and therefore controlled costs.
Protection against abnormal volumes from one partner, thanks to capping and its Overcap.
Easier conversations with your affiliates: you can explain precisely why a click was not kept.

Best practices

Set the Session duration before you open your program, and tell your partners about it: they compare their figures with yours.
Add your teams’ IP addresses to the IP blacklist so internal testing does not pollute your data.
Only turn on Geo Targeting if you genuinely do not ship elsewhere. Targeting that is too narrow costs you valid sales.
Before capping a partner, check their CTR and Avg. CPC in the Reporting first: high click volume is not necessarily a problem.
Use the Traffic source filter on the clicks list to spot unexpected Paid traffic from an affiliate.

Use cases

A shop that only ships to France. The advertiser selects France in Geo Targeting. Clicks from elsewhere stay visible in the list, with This country is blacklisted. shown when hovering the country, but they generate neither a click commission nor a conversion.

A CPC affiliate with a sudden volume spike. The advertiser creates a Clicks capping on that Partnership, with a Period aligned on their billing cycle and the Overcap Stop commissions. Clicks keep being tracked, the CPC column shows Overcap, and the budget holds.

A gap reported by an influencer. The partner reports 1,200 clicks, Affilae shows 900. The advertiser checks the Session duration, opens the Clicks list for the same day and compares: repeated clicks from the same visitor explain most of the gap.

Frequently asked
questions

Voir plus de questions reponses

No. Within the window set by your program’s Session duration, repeated clicks from the same visitor on the same link count as one. That is why the Reporting columns are labelled Unique clicks. If you want a finer count, shorten the duration; to smooth things out further, extend it.

Open Manage programs, click your program, open Configuration, then click Manage in the header of the Global Settings card. The Session duration field accepts days, hours, minutes or seconds. The summary view shows the value but does not let you change it, and the IP blacklist does not appear there at all. Bear in mind that this setting belongs to each program.

It means a capping had been reached when the click happened, with the Overcap set to Stop commissions. The click is still recorded and visible, but it generates no click commission. If you choose the Overcap Stop tracking instead, clicks from that affiliate stop being recorded once the cap is reached.

Because that country is not part of your Geo Targeting selection. The click is still recorded and stays visible in the list, but it earns no click commission and cannot generate a conversion. By default every country is allowed, so this message only appears once you have restricted your targeting.

There is no delay: the click is recorded and your counters are updated in the same move. If a test click does not come through, the cause is almost always an incomplete tracking setup, a badly built link, or a partnership that has not been approved. The checking procedure is described in Testing click and conversion tracking.

No. Affilae tracking includes anti-fraud protections that automatically discard bot visits and suspicious behaviour. This is one of the reasons why your Affilae totals are often lower than those of a link shortener, which counts everything that passes through.

In My account, Subscription tab: the Clicks (this month) line shows your current usage. Affilae also alerts you by email as you approach the click quota of your plan. For any question about going over the quota and how it is billed, contact support at support@affilae.com.

The two tools measure slightly different things. Affilae applies a session duration, an optional geo targeting and anti-fraud protections; an external tool such as Google Analytics or a link shortener applies its own rules. Resolving click discrepancies covers the common causes and how to measure them objectively.