Because Tracking Links and Rotators redirect clicks through our system, we have a “rate limit” in place to protect our systems in the event that one of your Tracking Links or Rotators gets flooded with an enormous amount of traffic.

The rate limit for both Tracking Links and Rotators is 25 clicks per second, and any individual Tracking Link or Rotator that receives more clicks than this over an extended period of time will be paused for one hour.

Similarly, there’s an additional rate limit that applies to all of your Tracking Links and Rotators as a whole, which is 50 clicks per second. If all of your Tracking Links and Rotators combined get more than this for an extended period of time, then all your Tracking Links and Rotators will be paused for one hour.


What would trigger these rate limits?

In almost ten years of being in business, no “normal” user has ever triggered either of these rate limits with “normal” traffic. With that being said, here are the three ways we’ve seen this rate limit get triggered …


Reason #1 – “Bulk” Traffic

Bulk traffic is mostly worthless traffic that is usually sold for a penny a click or even less. This type of traffic is normally generated via pop ups, often associated with malware or viruses, and ClickMagick does not track this type of traffic.

Please see the article below to learn more:

What traffic sources can’t I track with ClickMagick?


Reason #2 – Bots / Denial-Of-Service Attacks

A “bot” (short for “robot”) is a software application that is programmed to do certain tasks. And an incorrectly configured bot could generate an enormous number of clicks to your Tracking Links or Rotators in a very short period of time.

Bots can also be purposely used to perform a “denial-of-service attack,” which is where someone attempts to maliciously crash your website or online store by overloading it with fake clicks.

Most normal websites would slow to a crawl, or crash completely, if it received 25-50 clicks per second for any extended period of time, so in this case our rate limits are protecting both our systems and your website or online store as well.


Reason #3 – High-Volume Email

If you’re a high-volume emailer, there’s a tiny chance you could trigger our rate limits if you send a tremendous number of emails containing a Tracking Link or Rotator that get a lot of clicks in a very short period of time.

Normally you’d have to be sending millions of emails for this to happen …

And if that’s you, you should be using Campaigns for your tracking as Tracking Links and Rotators are not meant for tracking millions of emails. Please reach out and we’ll be happy to discuss your options.

Article 895 Last updated: 07/25/2023 8:24:01 AM
https://www.clickmagick.com/kb/?article=895