Facebook announced updates to App Links to give developers new analytics support, so they can analyze and segment mobile traffic.
As you may recall, Facebook launched App Links at f8 a few months ago. It’s basically a way for mobile applications to link to content within one another. Now, developers who use the Facebook SDK will be able to use App Links to access info about their app through App Insights.
The Bolts SDK will now support sending events so that developers can measure traffic flowing through each App Link using Facebook’s DK for iOS and Android. Facebook says in a blog post:
Bolts Framework implements the App Links protocol and raises measurement notifications for App Links-related events including:
- ‘al_nav_out’ — this event is raised in the referring app when it sends out an App Links url
- ‘al_nav_in’ — this event is raised in the receiving app when it opens an incoming App Links url or intent
- ‘al_ref_back_out’ (iOS only) — this event is raised in the receiving app when someone navigates back from the receiving app to the referring app by tapping on the navigate-back bar
Data can be accessed via App Insights or by the Graph API. They’re also adding calculation of the time spent in your app for incoming App Links.
Documentation can be found here.
Facebook says it has seen over 3 billion unique App Links created since April’s launch. Hundreds of apps, including Spotify, Hulu, Vimeo, and Airbnb, are using them. In July Facebook said it had over a billion unique app links, so those have grown significantly over the past month and a half.
Image via Facebook