Link click counts and link icons
Both are off until you turn them on in Silotree → Settings → On your pages. Click counts show which links readers use, counted per post, link and day with nothing about who clicked. Link icons mark links that leave your site or open a new tab, for every reader including those using a screen reader.
Steps
Open Silotree → Settings → On your pages
In WordPress, open Silotree → Settings and find the On your pages card. You need to be an administrator. Both settings there are off until you turn them on.
Turn on click counts, link icons, or both
- Count clicks on the links in your posts. Adds one small script (under 1 KB, loaded with defer) to single posts and pages. When a reader clicks a link in the post’s text, it sends your own site the post’s ID and the link’s address, and the plugin adds one to that day’s total for that link. No cookie, no browser storage, no IP address, no browser details and no visitor ID. You and anyone else who can edit posts are never counted.
- Mark links that leave your site or open a new tab. Adds a small arrow (↗) after links in your posts that go to another site or open in a new tab, and words a screen reader reads out: “link to another site” or “opens in a new tab”. Styles only, in your theme’s link colour. Your posts are not changed, and links around images and buttons are left alone.
Press Save.
Read the counts on Reports and on each post
Silotree → Reports gains a Links readers click card: the total over the last 30 days and the ten links clicked most, each from one post to another. Open the Links report under any post to see each of its links with a line such as Clicked 14 times in 30 days.
If your site is connected to Silotree, the plugin sends the daily totals once a day. The weekly email then says which links Silotree wrote readers clicked that week, and Results lists the written links readers use most.
Delete the counts or turn them off
Counts are kept for 90 days and then deleted on their own. To delete them all now, press Delete click counts in the same card; on a connected site this deletes Silotree’s copy too. If Silotree cannot be reached at that moment, the plugin asks again once a day until it can, and sends no new counts before then. Untick the setting to stop counting. Counts already kept stay on Reports, marked as from before, until they are 90 days old or you delete them.
What you should see
You can see which of your links readers actually use, without collecting anything about them, and every reader can tell before clicking when a link will take them off your site or into a new tab.
If it doesn’t work
- No clicks are counted
Check while signed out, or in a private window: editors are never counted. Counts appear the moment a click lands, on Reports. If they still do not, a security plugin may be blocking
/wp-json/silotree/v1/click; allow that address. A page cache does not matter, because the script sends the click after the page has loaded.On a very busy site, at most 600 clicks are counted in any one minute and at most 5,000 a day for one link; clicks past that are not counted. The ceiling is one number for the whole site, not anything about who clicked.
- A link in my menu was not counted
Only links in the post’s own text are counted. Menus, headers, footers, sidebars and forms are left out on purpose, so the counts say which links in your writing readers use.
- The arrows do not appear
The arrows appear inside your theme’s post content. Most themes mark it in a way the plugin recognises; if yours does not, a developer can name it with the
silotree_link_icons_scopefilter.
Questions
Do I need a cookie banner for click counts?
Click counts set no cookie, use no browser storage and store nothing that identifies a reader: no IP address, no browser details, no visitor ID. Each click only adds one to a daily total for that link. Whether your site needs a banner depends on everything else it runs, so check with whoever looks after your privacy policy; the plugin suggests wording for it under Settings → Privacy.
Are my own clicks counted?
No. The script is not loaded for anyone who can edit posts, so you and your editors can check a post without changing its counts.
Which links are counted?
Links in the post's own text that point at another post or page on your site. Links in menus, headers, footers, sidebars and forms are left out, and a click is only counted when the post really contains that link.
Does it slow my pages down?
Click counts add one script under 1 KB, loaded with defer at the end of single posts only. Link icons add under 1 KB of styles inside the page. Neither loads anything from another site.