79% Abandon Links That Land on Homepages, Bitly Survey Finds

By Tom Whitfield

79% of consumers have abandoned an action because a social link sent them to a generic homepage instead of the featured product. That figure comes from "The Click Expectation Report," published Sept. 29 on the Bitly blog by Jenny Coppola, Bitly's senior director of brand and content. The survey covered 1,006 U.S. consumers and 501 U.S. marketers and creators, fielded between July 27 and Aug. 5, 2026.

SEOs have spent roughly 15 years telling clients to keep bit.ly links out of anything that matters. The new data says that case is half right — and the ignored half is costing more clicks than the argued-over half.

What did SEOs get right about short links?

When Bitly asked consumers what makes them hesitate before clicking, 23% named generic shorteners that hide the brand's name. That is a real cost, but it sits near the bottom of the list.

The top hesitation drivers:

• Safety or security concerns about the URL: 57%
• Links that feel like clickbait: 52%
• Vague descriptions of where the link goes: 44%
• Mismatch between a creator's usual content and the destination: 42%

Long URLs packed with tracking characters bothered 28% of consumers — five points more than generic shorteners, within the survey's margin of error. UTM-heavy URLs look no better to consumers than the bit.ly links SEOs tell clients to avoid.

On the other side, 48% of consumers said a custom branded short link builds the recognition that makes them comfortable clicking. That was the top factor, ahead of personal trust in the sharer (44%) and clear copy explaining the destination (43%).

The link equity objection was settled in 2011, when Google's Matt Cutts said in a Webmaster Help video that shorteners using 301 redirects pass PageRank like any other 301, as Search Engine Journal reported. The ownership objection still has teeth: Google announced in 2024 that its goo.gl short links would stop working on Aug. 25, 2025, then reversed course weeks before the deadline for links still seeing activity.

Why is the homepage the bigger leak?

Only 8% of consumers expect a social video link to land on a homepage; 61% expect a product page. Yet 39% of marketers and 30% of creators named the generic homepage as a top destination for their social video links. Across both groups, 34% admitted their links usually route there.

The rest of the abandonment list reads like a technical SEO audit:

• Excessive redirects or browser security warnings: 76%
• Missing promo code promised in the post: 76%
• Forced app installs or app store redirects: 69%
• Pages not built for mobile: 51%
• Wrong region, language or currency: 49%

The mobile figure splits by age. Only 41% of Baby Boomers abandoned over a non-mobile page, versus 61% to 62% of Millennials and Gen Z. iOS users bailed more often than Android users, 57% versus 47%.

A short link adds a hop. If that hop leads to a tracking redirect, then a regional redirect, then an app store prompt, that is exactly the chain 76% of consumers say makes them leave.

How many consumers withhold clicks on purpose?

93% said they had avoided clicking a link deliberately, to keep their algorithm from serving more of that content. Some 43% do it always or often, rising to 45% among Gen Z and Millennials.

Click-through rate has always stood in for interest. A large share of interested people now decline to click precisely because they know the click will be counted and shape what they see next. Low CTR can sit alongside high attention.

Which platforms do consumers trust?

LinkedIn topped trust at 19%, with YouTube, Instagram and Reddit tied at 17% each — a four-way statistical tie given the plus-or-minus 3.1-point margin of error on the consumer sample.

The generational splits matter more. Instagram was Gen Z's top pick at 33%, nearly double the 18% among Millennials. LinkedIn climbed with age, leading for Gen X (22%) and Boomers (24%). TikTok fell at every step, from 12% among Gen Z to 2% among Boomers. Reddit belonged to Millennials at 21%.

Consumers trusted corporate brands over independent creators for six of seven link types. The widest gap was app or software downloads: 88% brand trust versus 12% creator trust. Curated resource lists split 50/50.

Is attribution holding up?

Marketers and creators expect links in social profiles and content to drive an average of 39% of their revenue over the next 12 months. Difficulty tracking traffic across channels was the top challenge, cited by 36% overall — 41% of marketers, 30% of creators. Connecting platform analytics to campaign data tripped up 29% of marketers but 17% of creators. In-app browsers stripping tracking parameters hit creators harder, 27% versus 18%.

Marketers lean on native tracking in social management platforms (39%); creators lean on post-purchase or post-signup surveys (33%). Marketers use manual UTMs nearly three times as often as creators, 23% versus 8%. Some 10% of creators and 3% of marketers measure nothing at all.

When in-app browsers drop referrers or parameters, those visits surface as direct or unattributed traffic — muddying every channel report that sits next to organic.

What should marketers check before quoting this?

The survey ran through an opt-in online panel and the results are unweighted. Bitly gives margins of error "assuming a simple random sample," which an opt-in panel isn't; an AAPOR task force advised in 2010 that "claims of 'representativeness' should be avoided" for such samples.

The 2.3x click lift claimed for custom domain links comes from Bitly's sales copy, not the survey. The infographic describes the 79% as abandoning "a purchase"; the report text says "an action." Use the text. Quote findings as "Bitly's survey found," not "consumers say."

The practical takeaway: send people to the page they were promised, from a source they recognize, and be honest about what analytics cannot see.