YouTube Shorts started in India on 14 September 2020, two months after India banned TikTok, as a beta for 15-second clips. The format reached the United States in March 2021 and, in July 2021, every country where YouTube operates, more than a hundred. The limit was 60 seconds until 15 October 2024; since that date a Short can run three minutes, as long as the video is square or taller. Shorts play in a vertical feed. A swipe loads the next one, and the viewer never leaves the player.
Links are where a Short differs most from a regular YouTube video. In a regular video, the description and the comments carry clickable links. In a Short, they do not. YouTube switched them off on 31 August 2023, for the creator’s own links as much as for commenters’ links. The stated reason was spam: links in Shorts comments and descriptions had become a channel for malware and phishing. Social media icons on channel pages disappeared at the same time.
Two exits were left open.
| Date | What changed |
| 23 August 2023 | Clickable links appear on the channel page, next to the Subscribe button |
| 31 August 2023 | Links in Shorts descriptions and comments become plain text |
| September 2023 | A creator can attach one related video to a Short; it shows above the description with a play button |
| 15 October 2024 | Shorts can run up to three minutes |
So a viewer who wants to leave a Short for a website has three routes: tap the channel name and use the channel page links, tap the related video and use that video’s clickable description, or read the address in the Short’s description and type it.
What that does to measurement
A click on a tagged link is the only visit that can be traced back to a specific video. The UTM tag in a Short’s description measures viewers who typed or copied the address. The tag in the related video’s description measures viewers who went through that video first. A visit from the YouTube app with no tag may arrive with no referrer at all, in which case the website counts it as direct. Direct traffic on the days after a Short, compared with its usual level, is the only way to see those.
The channel page links can be tagged as well. They measure viewers who tapped the channel name, which is also the route to subscribing.
For a channel that wants website visits out of Shorts, the setup follows from the rules. Every Short gets a related video attached in YouTube Studio, and that video’s description carries the tagged link in its first line. The channel page carries a second tagged link next to the Subscribe button. The Short’s own description still names the address, for viewers who type it, with a tag of its own so those viewers can be counted. The closing seconds of the Short point to the related video rather than to the website, since the video is one tap away and the website is not.
One channel, measured on the site
Smith Riff, a guitar channel with a few hundred subscribers, published twelve Shorts between 31 August and 14 October 2026, each about a minute long, about the count-ins and tempos of famous records. Each Short ends with one sentence naming CountIn, a browser tool that adds a count-in and a click track to a backing track, and each episode was also published the same day as a two-minute regular video with a tagged link in its description. The site counts visits on its own server, one counter per day per source, with the UTM tag as the source when there is one and the referrer host when there is not.
| Shorts published | 12 |
| Views on 14 October 2026 | 54,024 |
| Best Short (The Beatles, “I Saw Her Standing There”) | 42,060 views |
| Visits to the site from YouTube, 45 days | 13 |
| Of which: tag in a regular video’s description | 5 |
| Tag in a Short’s description | 2 |
| youtube.com or m.youtube.com referrer, no tag | 6 |
| Visits to the site from all sources, 45 days | 978 |
The Beatles Short accounts for five of the thirteen: two visits on 1 September, two on 2 September, one on 4 September, four of them through the regular video’s tag. Its own description tag was never logged. Direct visits on the six days after it went out were 7, 2, 0, 8, 6 and 10 a day, against 13.5 a day over the summer before the series, so no untagged app traffic hid there. On YouTube the same Short brought 12 comments and about 20 subscribers, and the Shorts that followed opened at hundreds or thousands of views where the channel’s earlier Shorts opened at 30 to 70.
The regular videos tell the other half. The two-minute “Taxman” video has 5,238 views, more than its Short (3,239), and its description link is clickable.
Frequently asked questions
Can a viewer click a link in a YouTube Short?
Not in the description and not in the comments. Those have been plain text since 31 August 2023. A Short can carry one related video, and the channel page has clickable links next to the Subscribe button.
Does a UTM tag in a Short’s description measure anything?
It measures viewers who copy or type the address. On the channel above, two in 45 days.
Does the YouTube app pass a referrer to the website?
Not always. An untagged visit from the app can arrive as direct. The check is direct traffic after a Short against its baseline.
Is a regular video better than a Short for sending viewers to a website?
A regular video’s description links are clickable and a Short’s are not, so a regular video sends more visits per view. On the channel above, the regular “Taxman” video out-viewed its own Short and the regular videos carried most of the traceable visits.
What does a Short deliver?
Views and subscribers. One Short brought about 20 subscribers to a channel of a few hundred and lifted the next episodes from tens of views to hundreds and thousands.
About the Author
Paweł Kowalski plays guitar in a cover band, runs the Smith Riff channel on YouTube and builds CountIn, a browser tool that adds a count-in and a click track to backing tracks.
