Why Your Shorts Description Links Aren't Clickable

No tap, no underline, nothing. You didn't do anything wrong — YouTube turned those links off on purpose, and no amount of re-pasting will bring them back.

It's not a bug. YouTube switched them off — and most old guides predate the change

On 31 August 2023, YouTube made links in Shorts descriptions, Shorts comments, and the vertical live feed non-clickable — for everyone, including your own links on your own videos. Shorts comments and descriptions had become a channel for malware, phishing, and scam links, and YouTube's filters couldn't keep up — so it removed the click entirely. Long-form videos were untouched. Their descriptions and comments still take clickable links today.

That date matters because most advice online predates it. Any guide from before September 2023 telling you to "just paste your link in the description" describes a YouTube that no longer exists. If a tutorial's fix is "make sure your link starts with https://" — close the tab. That's the fix for long-form videos, not Shorts, and following it will waste your afternoon.

How we got here, in five dates

YouTube took the click away, then spent three years building narrower, safer doors to replace it — every fix below is one of those doors.

The four doors YouTube left open on purpose

1. Related Video — the only clickable link inside a Short. In YouTube Studio, open the Short, pick Related Video, choose one public or unlisted video from your own channel, and save. Viewers see a tappable link below your channel name. It needs Advanced features, and the destination has to be yours. Pick the video that continues the Short, not your latest upload — the viewer tapped because they wanted more of this, not a tour of your channel.

2. Channel profile links — your "link in bio." YouTube lets you put up to 14 links on your channel page, and the first shows right next to the Subscribe button. Go to Studio → Customization → Profile → Links, and put the link that matters most first. First position is the only one most visitors ever see.

3. The long-form bridge. Your Short teases, the Related Video carries the viewer to a long-form video on your channel, and that video's description has your website link — clickable, because long-form descriptions still support links with Advanced features on. Put the link in the first line: only ~150 characters show before "more." Our YouTube description character limit guide has the full 5,000-character rule.

4. The sponsored brand link — only if you have a brand deal. If your Short is part of a reported brand deal, YouTube lets you add one link to the brand's site — a sticker on the video and in the description, on mobile, for organic viewers only. It's a US pilot, not a general way to link your own site, and if someone tries to sell you access to it, walk away.

Advice that sounds right and isn't

Pin a comment with the link. Pinned comments are plain text too — pinning changes the position, not the clickability. A pinned comment can still say "link in my profile" or name the video to watch next, and that's genuinely useful. It's just not a clickable link.

Use a link shortener. A Bitly link is shorter, easier to type, and counts clicks — but it's still plain text in a Shorts description. Shorteners help you measure and help viewers type; they don't make anything clickable — useful for measuring, not for getting a tap.

Verified channels can still post clickable links. YouTube's own help page makes no such exception — Shorts descriptions are non-clickable, full stop, with no carve-out for verified or trusted channels. Any claim that verification changes that has no basis in YouTube's published rules.

Links work on desktop, just not in the app. Also wrong. YouTube's help page lists Shorts descriptions as non-clickable with no device exception. Swapping a /shorts/ URL for a /watch?v= URL changes the player layout, not the link rule.

Re-uploading the long-form video will fix a description that refuses to save. Different problem, different fix. The setup above depends on your long-form video carrying the link in its own description — and if Studio won't accept that description in the first place, work through our YouTube description won't-save troubleshooting guide before you delete and re-upload anything.

What the numbers actually look like (spoiler: it's a slow drip)

One small channel measured this properly instead of guessing. The Smith Riff guitar channel posted 12 Shorts between late August and mid-October 2026 — 54,024 views in total — each ending by naming its tool. Over 45 days, the site got 13 visits: two from people who typed the address out of a Short's description, five through the long-form videos' clickable descriptions. The same Shorts brought about 20 new subscribers to a small channel.

Shorts are a discovery and subscriber machine. As a traffic machine, they're a slow drip — unless you build the bridge above. If your only goal is clicks to your site, Shorts alone will disappoint you, and that's not your fault. It's the format.

YouTube Analytics doesn't report description link clicks, so measure it yourself: give each video its own short link with UTM tags and watch the clicks in your link tool. One link per video, one destination — and you'll know exactly which Short earned the visit.

The setup that works: Short → Video → Site

Every Short gets a Related Video in Studio before it goes live. That long-form video's description carries your link in line one, with Advanced features on — and if that link is dead too, our YouTube description won't-save fix list walks through the causes. Your channel page carries the same link first in the profile list. The Short's own description still names a short address for the viewers who type — with its own UTM tag so you can count them. And say the next step out loud: "The full version is linked under my name" beats "link in description" — the link under your name is the one they can actually tap.

The question isn't where to paste the link, but where the viewer goes next.