Clicking the link button brings up a text box with a referral link of the form /q/[post ID]/[user ID]. The presence of the user ID in this link allows the system to track the number of visits due to this link and award the announcer, booster, and publicist badges.
This is a nice system. It's nicer than using a bit.ly, goo.gl or other tracking-enabled URL shorteners because the links aren't obfuscated. However, this tracking is wasted on awarding these three badges just once for each user.
I propose that navigating to a tracking URL, if logged in with the [user ID] in the URL, should display analytics for that link to the user who created it. This would not only be useful when auditing one's progress towards the badge, but more importantly, it would be very helpful when doing community evangelism.
/q/[post ID]/[user ID]/tracking, [status-planned] - We're thinking about it, but we're not sure about X, we've started a question about X and once that's resolved we'll proceed with this, [status-declined] - We don't want to do this because of Y, and the community probably can't change our minds, or [status-deferred] - We're working on more important stuff now, give us some time.