False positive clicks

[JBolton]

We get loads of clicks showing up which we don't think are real. This undermines our click tracking as we have a mix of positive signals (real clicks) and false positives. 

The false positives all have the same timestamp as the email is sent, and repeat on a single user. I.e. if someone 'clicks' once, they will always click an email link as soon as the email is delivered. Because of this we believe this is an automated response from some email clients.

Can Hubspot filter these out? Or have the option to auto-filter any same-minute clicks? 

[SNigam · Accepted solution]

Hello @JBolton ,

I understand your issue and I have seen respected @karstenkoehler have also tried to help you. 

But luckily I had solved the same issue for one of my client I am sharing same method to you I hope you will get some idea and might be it will bring some hope to you.

So, one customer of mine is facing issue like he realized that he is getting lot of bot clicks and he want to separate these bots clicks from real human click. So yes there is no such filter available so I used hubspot features to solve this. What I actually did is  -

I created a CTA on HubSpot and in the place of the name of this CTA, I mentioned a dot (.) a small dot or full stop nothing else and I used this CTA also in my email or landing pages because I thought if this is a bot clicks then bot will checks every CTA in that email and click it so whenever my this CTA got clicked I will know this is a bot click because this CTA is almost invisible to human so there is high chances that this got clicked by bot and this is how I filter bot clicks snd segment it.

I hope this will help you.

Thank you

Shubham Nigam

Connect with me for any help

[JCorbett9]

good idea!
how do you set up a filter to filter out the bot clicks on the second CTA within the sales mail?

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @JBolton,

Unfortunately not, no. Email click and open tracking has become increasingly unreliable, also because of the developments since iOS15, see here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Email-Marketing-Tool/iOS-15-let-s-talk-about-it/m-p/499877

The short of it is that it's not possible anymore to determine with 100% accuracy whether this activity comes from an automated process (check for risks, cache email, camouflaging actual user activity) or whether it's human. The technical background is also explained here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/connected-email/understand-hubspot-sales-email-open-and-click-tracking

For your filtering and reporting that means that open and click information are an indicator but no guarantee. Personally, I don't use open and click information for automation at all anymore.

Best regards!

[PJanes]

Great info! What do you use for automation in place of opens and clicks?

[CTA9]

Hi @JBolton,

This type of filter is not possible in HubSpot. You can read this article to know How HS tracks emails

I hope this will help you.