How long does it typically take for anti-spam bots to click links in emails?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Snov.io explains that some services will verify the links within your email almost immediately after sending.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that high email volume to a single platform, rather than just a single domain, can lead to bot activity. Content fingerprinting issues at third-party filters or hosting providers can also cause bot activity across domains hosted on those platforms.
Email marketer from EmailVendorSelection suggests that speed is part of bot detection, but isn't the be all and end all as Bot detection is more complex than speed alone.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests a message could be quarantined before being inspected, leading to delayed bot activity.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that easily identifiable bot-clicks occur quickly, but there are also non-human click patterns that happen later. One mail provider might re-fetch images and check links for older emails if a sender is flagged as spam. Therefore, completely identifying all server-clicks is impossible, but some are more obvious than others.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that timing varies significantly. Some bots click instantly, others after a few seconds, and some much later, depending on the bot's purpose and sophistication.
Email marketer from Litmus Blog explains that bots don't behave like humans and many anti-spam solutions look for patterns to try to identify Bots. The speed of interaction is just one pattern they examine.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that they have seen patterns where bots come in even at the 30-minute mark, even when emails are dispatched within a minute or two. The spam bots are holding things in queue to scan.
Email marketer from Mailgun Blog explains that some spam filters or security tools immediately click every link in an email to check for malicious content. These happen almost instantly.
Email marketer from StackExchange shares that some companies use security sandboxes. These can execute links and analyze the resulting pages after some period of time.
Email marketer from SendGrid Blog shares that some anti-spam systems may delay their link checks by minutes or even hours to avoid being detected. This is to get a more accurate idea of a user's true intent when clicking links.
Email marketer from Hunter.io suggests that emails will go through verifications steps which may include clicking on links. These steps may happen very quickly but may not.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that aggressive scanners can cause problems and affect sender reputation, and that it will check links very soon after a message arrives.
Expert from SpamResource explains that how quickly a spam filter reacts can vary depending on the filter's configuration and the specific criteria it's evaluating.
Expert from Email Geeks clarifies that ESPs queue emails before sending them. Using the 'hit send' time as a starting point could lead to a perceived delay of up to ten minutes before the email even reaches the network.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Proofpoint shares that the Proofpoint TAP URL Defense rewrites URLs and analyzes them when clicked. There will therefore be a delay before the user is routed to their intended destination.
Documentation from Cisco explains that the Cisco Email Security Appliance will rewrite and follow the links contained in messages. There could be a small delay while it scans.
Documentation from RFC Editor details that SMTP servers can introduce delays. These delays can cause link verification to appear to happen much later than anticipated.