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Dead clicks: 33 of 493 startup homepages had one, and 43 of the 49 were real buttons and links
33 of 493 YC startup homepages (6.7%) had at least one dead click when we scanned them on October 28, 2026. Most were not on plain text or images: 43 of the 49 dead clicks were on elements built to be clicked, such as menu buttons, toggles, show-more buttons and links to #.
Quick facts
- How common are dead clicks on startup websites?
- 33 of 493 YC startup homepages (6.7%) had at least one dead click in our October 28, 2026 scan; 21 of them had exactly one.
- Are dead clicks mostly on things that aren't clickable?
- No. 43 of 49 were on real controls (buttons, links, menus); 6 were on cards or rows that only looked clickable.
- Where on the page do dead clicks sit?
- 17 of 49 were in the header, nav or footer, and 24 of 49 were visible without scrolling on a desktop screen.
- How many click problems of any kind?
- 42 of 493 homepages had a dead click, an error on click or a response slower than 2 seconds; 53 with broken links counted too.
- Do broken links cause dead clicks?
- They're counted apart: 13 of 493 sites had a broken internal link (25 links out of 9,319 checked).
- Did any main sign-up button do nothing?
- Yes, on 2 of 493 homepages tapping the main sign-up or demo button did nothing on both a phone and a desktop.
Where the 49 dead clicks were
Most dead clicks were on things designed to be clicked. The biggest group sits in the header, nav or footer, most of them dropdown buttons like "Product" or "Solutions". Our scanner rests the mouse on each element for 0.3 seconds before it clicks, so a menu that opens on hover is already open and the click itself changes nothing; the scan doesn't record whether the hover opened it. That group also holds logo links that point at # and a few buttons in an app's own header.
| Kind of element | Dead clicks | What it looked like |
|---|---|---|
| Buttons and links in the header, nav or footer | 17 | dropdown buttons such as Product, Solutions and Resources, and logo links that point at # |
| Things that only look clickable | 6 | cards, rows, icons and a custom dropdown with a pointer cursor and no action behind them |
| Toggles, tabs and hover cards | 11 | pressed-state buttons and quote cards whose click changes nothing you can see |
| Other buttons and links | 15 | buttons in product mockups, show-more and form tabs that don't respond |
| All dead clicks | 49 | on 33 of 493 homepages |
What counts as a dead click
A dead click is a click that gets no response you can see. Microsoft Clarity defines it as a click on an element that gets no feedback in a reasonable amount of time; Fullstory's 2022 explainer says nothing on the page changes within a few seconds, and its examples mix clicks on things that aren't buttons with buttons that aren't connected to anything. In our scan the mix leaned hard one way: 6 of 49 were on things that only looked clickable, and 43 were on real controls. Clarity also lists slow requests as a cause; our rule counts any request as a response, so slow-request dead clicks aren't in these numbers.
How to fix each kind
- Hover menus: make the click open the menu too (toggle it on click, keep hover as a shortcut). Touch screens and keyboards don't hover the way a mouse does: whether a tap opens a hover-only menu depends on the browser, and a keyboard user never gets it.
- Logo and placeholder links to #: point them at a real page or make them plain text.
- Cards that only look clickable: either link the whole card or drop the pointer cursor and the hover lift.
- Toggles and mockups: a button drawn inside a product screenshot should either work or not be a button.
Other click problems in the same scan
7 sites had a click that answered after more than 2 seconds, 2 had a click that threw an error from the site's own code, and 13 had a broken internal link (25 of 9,319 links checked). Counting dead, slow and error clicks, 42 of 493 homepages (8.5%) had at least one; counting broken links too, 53 (10.8%).
Find the dead clicks on your own site
The free dead click finder runs in your browser on your own page: click the menus and buttons you care about and it marks each one as worked, slow, dead or error, with the same 5-second rule as this scan. It sends nothing back.
A scan and a finder test the clicks you think of. UserProof records what real visitors click, finds dead clicks, rage clicks, errors on click and slow responses, and gives Claude Code the one fix that costs you the most signups. Free for 3 sites; Pro is $29 a month.
Related: the YC homepage report (the same scan, scored per startup), session replay tools for AI coding agents, and a Microsoft Clarity alternative.
Method
- The sample: 500 active Y Combinator companies from the Winter 2025 to Fall 2026 batches in the B2B, consumer, fintech and education groups of YC's public company list (396 of the 493 that loaded are B2B), picked at random, one per domain. 7 didn't load in our browser on a phone, a desktop or both, and are left out. The same scan feeds our YC homepage report, which was published from the first 378 sites; this report uses all 493 that loaded.
- The scan: October 28, 2026, desktop Chrome, up to 3 pages per site (1,337 pages, 9,319 internal links checked). On each page our scanner rests the mouse on and clicks up to 20 elements that look clickable (one already tried on an earlier page of the same site is skipped), and watches each click for 5 seconds for any visible effect: a new page, a change in the address, a change on the page, a popup, a dialog, a download, a copy or a request. Nothing = dead. A change after 2 seconds = slow.
- Each dead click was clicked again in fresh pages and counted only when all 3 tries did nothing.
- Read-only: form posts and checkouts were blocked, and analytics beacons were blocked so the scan never counted as a visit.
- Left out: 10 errors on 9 sites where a Copy button failed only because our headless browser has no clipboard permission (those buttons work for real visitors), and 1 dead click on a native popover button, which opens without changing the page's markup, so our scanner can't see it open.
- Limits: one day, desktop clicks only, homepages and the pages they link to first. Menus that open on hover count as dead when the click itself changes nothing. Clarity's definition (no feedback after the click) reads the same way, but we haven't tested how any replay tool scores them. Any request after a click counts as a response here, so a click that only starts a slow request is not counted as dead: the count is a floor. A scan can't see your visitors; it shows what a first click finds.
- The data: every number on this page as CSV. No site is named.
Sources
- UserProof homepage scan of 493 YC startups, October 28, 2026 (scripts/benchmark-scan.mjs, the scanner in the UserProof product).
- Microsoft Clarity, semantic metrics: dead clicks, rage clicks, quick backs (read November 2, 2026).
- Fullstory, What is a dead click? (March 25, 2022; read November 2, 2026).
- Y Combinator, company directory (the sample list, read October 28, 2026).
Cite this
UserProof, “Dead clicks on 493 startup homepages,” https://getuserproof.com/state-of-dead-clicks, scanned October 28, 2026: 33 of 493 had a dead click; 43 of 49 were on real buttons and links.
FAQ
What are dead clicks?
A dead click is a click or tap that produces no visible response: no new page, no menu, no change on the screen. Our scanner and the finder call a click dead when nothing changes within 5 seconds.
What is a dead click in Microsoft Clarity?
Clarity marks a click as dead when a user clicks an element and gets no feedback in a reasonable amount of time, per its semantic metrics documentation (read November 2, 2026). It doesn't publish the exact time window.
What is the difference between a dead click and a rage click?
Clarity flags a rage click when a visitor clicks several times in rapid succession in one small area (semantic metrics docs, read November 2, 2026); a dead click is a single click that changes nothing.
How do I find dead clicks on my website?
Click through your own page with the free dead click finder, which marks each click as worked, slow, dead or error. For the clicks real visitors make, a session replay tool counts them per page.
What are quick backs?
Quick backs are a separate Clarity metric: a visitor leaves a page for another and comes straight back. They aren't dead clicks and this report doesn't count them.