I sometimes share links using a URL-shortener service like Bit.ly. Bit.ly comes with its own analytics that tells you how many “clicks” the URL gets. I was wondering whether those “clicks” are from actual human or otherwise, so I emailed my question to Bit.ly and I received the following response:

What you’re seeing are total decodes, as opposed to total click-throughs measured by JavaScript on the page. Decodes can be caused by bots, and by applications, like browser plug-ins, which expand the underlying url without causing a click-through.

If you download a browser plug-in that automatically expands short urls, for instance, it looks a lot like a human user to an analytics program.

Absent JavaScript on the page, it’s hard to distinguish between a decode and an intentional click-through. At the end of the day, Bit.ly complements rather than replaces JavaScript-based analytics utililties like Google Analytics or Chartbeat.

I was also referred to the article linked above that talks in more detail about interpreting statistics from Bit.ly in comparison to statistics from Google Analytics.