Dead click
A dead click is a click that produces no observable response: no DOM change, no navigation, no network activity within a short window after the interaction. It marks the gap between what users believe is interactive and what actually is, and it is invisible to conventional analytics because nothing happens to track.
How it works
Detection correlates a click event with the absence of effects: no mutation events, no page transition, and no meaningful visual change within a few hundred milliseconds. Session replay data makes this practical because both the click and the (missing) consequences live in one event stream. Classic sources of dead clicks: styled text that looks like a link, disabled buttons without disabled styling, images users expect to zoom, and non-interactive table rows. Individually trivial, at volume they map exactly where a UI's affordances mislead.
Where you encounter it
UX audits and redesign validation, where dead-click density before and after a change is a direct measure of whether the new design communicates.