2023 State of Mobile Deep Linking: A Landmark Report

Deep links are the connective tissue of mobile growth: every paid campaign, every email, every share, and every search result depends on a link resolving to the right screen inside the app. Yet almost nobody measures whether they actually work. This report does.

Our study included the top apps from each major vertical and tested their deep links the way users open them — from real source apps and messages, on real iOS and Android devices, across search, social media, email, and SMS channels. Each app received a unique score, and the results reveal patterns that are intriguing and, at times, surprising.

By examining extensive data sets, we unveil the good, bad, and ugly of deep linking implementations: which channels are most reliable, where links fall back to the home screen or a webview login, and how performance varies across verticals — enabling you to assess and optimize your app’s outreach strategies and capitalize on practices that work.

Every result in the report was produced by Mobot’s robots on physical devices, not by a simulator or a script — because a deep link that resolves on a simulator says nothing about what happens on the phone in your user’s hand.

How the study worked

The benchmark was produced with Branch. Between May and June 2023, Mobot ran more than 2,000 deep link tests covering the top three or four apps in each major vertical, across search, social, email and SMS channels, on iOS and Android. Mobot testing robots opened each link on real devices, from the real source app, with the target app both installed and not installed. Each outcome was tagged: opened in the app, opened in a web view with or without a call to action, opened the app store, or no attempt to send the user to the app. A weighted scoring system turned those outcomes into a score for each app.

Key findings

• Leaders and the rest: five apps scored 100% on both iOS and Android. Ten more scored above 80% on both, and sixteen cleared the 60% passing mark on both. Several apps did well on one platform and struggled on the other.
• Deep links often weren’t attempted at all: across installed and not-installed states, 51% of links made no attempt to open the app (52% on Android, 49% on iOS). With the app installed, 43% were unattempted on iOS and 40% on Android.
• Social channels were hardest: links opened from the Facebook app worked 28.57% of the time (32.14% Android, 25.00% iOS). Instagram reached 41.51% overall (66.67% iOS, 15.38% Android), and Twitter, now X, 55.36% overall (90.00% Android, 15.38% iOS).
• Email and search did better: links from Gmail worked 88% of the time (86% iOS, 90% Android), Apple Mail 86%, and the Google app 88% (91% Android, 85% iOS).
• Verticals varied widely: in health apps, 84% of deep links were unattempted when the app was installed, and in sports 65%. Music and finance apps attempted 100% of the time.

What to take from it

Deep link success depends on the platform, the channel and the install state, so a link that works in one combination proves little about the others. Tailor your implementation to each channel, close the gaps where links are never attempted, and test continuously on real devices from the real source apps.

What a benchmark for your app contains

A Mobot deep link benchmark for your own app uses the same method: links opened by Mobot testing robots from the real source on real devices, the in-app destination confirmed, then scored and compared with industry peers, by channel (search, social, email and SMS) and by device and OS.