Attribution & match confidence
Attribution answers one question: which link brought this person into the app? A person clicks your OptoLink link, lands in an app store, installs, and opens the app. If OptoLink can connect that first open back to the original click, the open is matched — the link's destination and context arrive with it, and the match is recorded for reporting.
This page explains the analytics side: how matches appear in your numbers and what the confidence tiers mean. The mechanics of the match itself (how the SDK resolves on first open, how long a click stays matchable) are covered in Deferred deep linking & the match flow.
Matched vs unmatched
Every match attempt ends one of two ways:
- Matched — a click was found for the device's first open. The user lands on the link's in-app destination and the click is attributed.
- Unmatched — no click could be tied to this open. The app still opens (fallback routing applies), but no link gets credit.
The Matched Rate card on Analytics → Overview shows the share of attempts that matched. It reads 0% when there have been no match attempts at all. The Matches card shows both numbers: total matches, with the unmatched count as its subtext.
A match attempt happens when an app open needs attribution rather than direct routing. Plain web clicks on your short links are recorded as clicks either way.
Confidence tiers
Different matches rest on different kinds of evidence. Some signals are deterministic: a value passed through the clipboard or the install referrer can only mean this one click. Others are probabilistic: timing and device characteristics suggest a likely click. OptoLink grades every match into a confidence tier so you can tell strong attribution from a good guess.
The Analytics → Overview match-confidence card lists the tiers in this order:
| Label in analytics | Tier | Kind of evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Verified (deterministic) | exact | A one-to-one signal: clipboard value, install referrer, or a direct open of the link |
| High confidence | high | Strong probabilistic match |
| Medium confidence | medium | Probabilistic match with weaker agreement |
| Low confidence | low | Probable match, thin evidence |
| No match | none | The open could not be tied to a click |
Deterministic matches are as reliable as attribution gets. Probabilistic matches trade certainty for coverage: they catch installs that no deterministic signal exists for, but a small share will attach to the wrong click. The tier list lets you judge that trade-off for your own traffic. A high "Verified" share means your numbers rest on certain evidence; a large low-tier share means treat per-link numbers as directional.
Tiers with no data don't appear in the card. Each tier shows its count, its share of matches, and a proportional bar.
Where matches show up
- Overview → Matches card — total matches with the unmatched subtext, plus the period-over-period delta.
- Overview → Matched Rate card — share of attempts that matched.
- Overview → Attribution funnel — the Clicks → Matches stage shows how much of your click volume comes back as attributed installs.
- Breakdowns → Template dimension — matches per template, next to clicks and conversions.
Numbers are aggregated over UTC windows; see Clicks, events & analytics data for how OptoLink counts and buckets them.