Where can an affiliate link actually be tapped?
Short answer
Of Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook and TikTok, only Facebook lets a link written in your text be tapped, and it does it for every account. On the other three the address arrives as text somebody has to type, or the link has to live in a profile. The table below is read out of the product, so this page cannot say one thing and the publish screen another.
| Place | Link in your text | Where a link does work | Caption room | Hashtags it allows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Reels | Shows as text | The short link goes in your caption, short enough that somebody can type it, and the same link comes ready to paste in your bio. | 2,200 characters | 30 |
| YouTube Shorts | Shows as text | Your text goes out with the short link written out, and you get the line for your channel, where a link does work. | 5,000 characters | 15 |
| Can be tapped | The short link goes in the post with every parameter intact, so the tap lands exactly where you meant it to land. | 63,206 characters | 10 | |
| TikTok | Shows as text | You get the bio line ready to paste, with its own short link, and we count those taps ourselves. If we do not count them, nobody does. | 2,200 characters | 20 |
This table is read from the same rules the publish screen uses.
Why it is worth knowing before you post
A link that cannot be tapped is not a worse click rate, it is zero clicks from that surface. Everything you measure afterwards depends on giving people a path that exists: a profile line, an address short enough to type, a place where a tap works.
So nothing here is ever painted as tappable where it is not, and this page and the publish screen read the same table.
What people actually ask
Are links in a YouTube Shorts description clickable?
- No. YouTube switched that off for Shorts descriptions and comments to cut spam, and it is the same for every channel. On a long video they still work.
Can I put an affiliate link in a TikTok caption?
- You can write it and nobody can tap it. The only tappable link on TikTok is the one in the profile, and that needs a verified business account or a thousand followers.
Where this comes from
- YouTube Help: sharing links with your audience
- Facebook Help: links inside a post
- TikTok Support: personal and business accounts
Official documentation only. Where we have no source, the page says we did not measure it.
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