Website analytics · Autessa Analytics
Email link scanner filtering
Autessa Analytics filters email security link scanners out of your website analytics. Corporate email security tools open every link in a newsletter before the reader sees it; Autessa Analytics recognizes that traffic, leaves it out of every website metric, and shows on the overview how many scanners it excluded.
The problem it solves
Every newsletter send looked like a traffic spike
When you email a list, security scanners at your readers’ companies open, and sometimes scroll and click, every link within minutes. To an analytics tool they look like hundreds of visitors from a newsletter who all clicked “Book a demo” and never booked. That makes campaign results and CTA clicks meaningless. Autessa Analytics leaves them out by default.
What you get
- Scanner visits are recognized by the scrambled UTM source they carry on nearly every event.
- They are excluded from every website report: overview, acquisition, conversions, content and campaigns.
- Live now excludes them too, and session replays exclude recordings that started on a scanner link.
- The Visitors tile shows “N link scanners excluded”, so the adjustment is visible, not hidden.
How it works
How does email link scanner filtering work?
A newsletter goes out
Your email links carry UTM tags so real clicks can be credited.
Scanners pre-open the links
Security tools fetch each link from cloud data centers, often within an hour of the send, with the query string scrambled.
Autessa Analytics sets them aside
Events with the scanner signature are left out of website metrics, recordings and Live now.
You see the real readers
Campaign and source numbers reflect people who actually opened the email and clicked.
Every option
Where link scanners are excluded
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Website overview | Excluded from all tiles, the chart and top lists; the excluded count appears under Visitors. |
| Acquisition, Conversions, Content | Excluded from every row and chart. |
| Marketing campaigns | Excluded from campaign and post results. |
| Live now | Excluded in every scope. |
| Session replays | Recordings whose first URL carries the scanner signature are left out. |
Permissions
Who can do what?
| Who | Can |
|---|---|
| Anyone the app is shared with | Open every report, switch the date range, filter and search, and open people and replays in PostHog. |
| App admin | Share the app and its PostHog query tool with teammates, at read or edit level, and decide which tables they can change. |
Computed for you
How scanners were recognized
The scanner signature was verified against real sends: identical large screens, cloud data-center locations, bursts within an hour of each send and no meaningful scrolling. Their links arrive with the query string run through a fixed cipher, which is what Autessa Analytics matches on.
Connected
How it connects to the rest of Autessa Analytics
FAQ
Questions about email link scanner filtering
What is an email link scanner?
A security service, often run by a recipient’s company, that opens every link in an incoming email to check it before the person can click. It shows up in analytics as a burst of fake visitors.
Does Autessa Analytics remove bot traffic?
It removes email security link scanners from website metrics, which is the bot traffic that most distorts newsletter and campaign results, and shows how many it removed.
Is scanner traffic deleted?
No. It is only left out of the reports. The raw events stay in your PostHog project.
100% customizable, code and all
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