Bluesky tracking enhancement: supporting mentions created using link shorteners

1. What's new?

On 3 December 2024, we launched the newest attention source on Altmetric: Bluesky.

We have since continued working to enhance the Bluesky content we can track and bring to our users (see section 3 below for a summary). Throughout December 2024, we added the ability to track attention from posts with embedded links, and attention from the alt text of images, while in January 2025, we increased the volume of historical posts we are able to track. Our newest enhancement, live now, is part of our efforts to increase the volume and type of research mentions we can track on Bluesky.

We are now able to track mentions added to Bluesky posts through any link shortening tool, provided that:

• The shortened link leads to a domain Altmetric is tracking

• The Bluesky post has been created on or after 30 April 2025

Here's an example of a Bluesky post with a shortened link that leads to a research article:

And here's the mention we now track on the article's Altmetric Details Page:

2. Value and user impact

Tracking Bluesky attention in Altmetric enables users to capture more research conversations on a platform the community continues to demonstrate a strong interest in.

We know that many of our customers, especially in the publishing world, make frequent use of link shorteners in their social media posts, and encourage readers to share their publications in the same way. For example, the Share buttons publishers provide on their websites are often built to automatically embed link shorteners in the posts they generate. By capturing mentions created using link shorteners, we can continue to ensure that we are covering as many as possible of the ways research output mentions can occur in Bluesky conversations.

Since going live on 30 April 2025, the inclusion of link shorteners has increased the number of Bluesky mentions we track by 9%.

At the time of writing, we are tracking a total of 76,111 mentions from 64,764 individual Bluesky posts.

3. What Bluesky posts can Altmetric track right now?

At the time of writing (May 2025), we are tracking:

• Original posts and replies collected since 24 October 2024

• Reposts collected since 5 November 2024

• Quote posts collected since 13 November 2024

• Mentions from posts with embedded links collected since 9 December 2024

• Mentions from posts including images with alt text collected since 12 December 2024

• Mentions from historical posts by user profiles processed in the Altmetric system for the first time (as of 15 January 2025)

• Mentions created through link shorteners (from posts within domains we track, shared since 30 April 2025)
  

Due to technical limitations, please note that at this stage we won’t be able to track:

• Historical posts outside the conditions detailed above

• Mentions from links created using link shorteners before 30 April 2025

• Likes

• Follower count updates in real time

• User profile location and cohort data

Please contact the Altmetric Support team for any further questions, we'll be happy to help!