Google Analytics – How To Manually Track Clicks On External Links
There is a tutorial on Google which explains How do I manually track clicks on outbound links?
However that tutorial doesn’t help a lot for non-geeks.
This is my effort to simply the outbound link tracking.
Assuming that you are using Asynchronous Google Analytics Tracking Code follow these steps
Step 1
Add following code just before closing head </head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function recordOutboundLink(link, category, action) {
_gat._getTrackerByName()._trackEvent(category, action);
setTimeout('document.location = "' + link.href + '"', 100);
}
</script>
Step 2
For each external/outbound link which you want to track add the tracking information
<a onclick="recordOutboundLink(this, 'External Website', 'externalwebsite.com');return false;" href="http://www.externalwebsite.com">
Google Analytics Report
You can find this outbound link tracking report under Google Analytics Content->Even Tracking
Google Analytics Outbound Link Tracking
You can see more details on this report from the menus in left.
Comments
9 Responses to “
Google Analytics – How To Manually Track Clicks On External Links ”
Do you know how to do this without having to add tracking code to every single link? Is there a way to track all outgoing links easily?
Unfortunately yes, you have to add tracking code to each outgoing link.
I don’t think there is any other easier way to track all outgoing links.
At last! Someone has put it simply. Thank you!
hai
But that will not open a new page… What must be changed?
I think it is not possible to use _blank in the outbound link, so unfortunately you can’t open the link in a new window.
Ajay: did you ever get your _blank to work with event tracking?
Cheers,
Christopher
Nop.
AFAIK it is official that it doesn’t work. It is not possible.
You can retro-fit this to existing links in pages with Javascript. The example below uses jQuery. You’d need to add a script reference to jQuery (1.7 or above) and to the js file that includes the following code…
$(“a”).each(function() {
$(this).on(“click”, function() {
recordOutboundLink(this, $(this).attr(“alt”), $(this).attr(“src”));
});
});
Make sure you correctly set alt tags for each link.