Using jQuery and Google Analytics to track Outbound Clicks
Tuesday, August 25. 2009
Most solutions that I've found for tracking outbound links with Google Analytics have been to send the link through a local file that would then be able to be tracked by Google, sending a query string as your end-result location. I never really liked that.
The other day, I accidentally found someone else's solution to use jQuery and Google Analytics for outbound link tracking.
The following code snippet is what I ended up with for my own use (so it doesn't add an actual visit/pageview to my own site's ranking):
What's happening here?
$(document).ready(function(){ - when the DOM is ready, do the following...
$('a[href^="http"]:not([href*="'+domain+'"])').click(function(){ - whenever a hyperlink is clicked that does not contain our domain anywhere in the URL, run the following... (this includes any subdomain, further string trickery would be required to keep subdomains listed in the same category)
pageTracker._trackEvent('Outbound', 'click', $(this).attr('href')); -- Run Google's _trackEvent method to register an event. Typically the 2nd parameter passed in is an "action". In my final version, I changed "click" to be $(document.location) instead, so that I can tell where people are clicking these outbound links from.
You can read more about the Google method "_trackEvents" from the Google Documentation on Google Analytics. Oh, and...about the commented out code, that's more of a reminder to myself, if I ever want to track PDF or DOC file clicks on my own domain, but the code would have to be revised a bit for that to work. Also, make sure you change the domain string to whatever you'd like to track (a specific subdomain, or your whole domain).
The other day, I accidentally found someone else's solution to use jQuery and Google Analytics for outbound link tracking.
The following code snippet is what I ended up with for my own use (so it doesn't add an actual visit/pageview to my own site's ranking):
What's happening here?
$(document).ready(function(){ - when the DOM is ready, do the following...
$('a[href^="http"]:not([href*="'+domain+'"])').click(function(){ - whenever a hyperlink is clicked that does not contain our domain anywhere in the URL, run the following... (this includes any subdomain, further string trickery would be required to keep subdomains listed in the same category)
pageTracker._trackEvent('Outbound', 'click', $(this).attr('href')); -- Run Google's _trackEvent method to register an event. Typically the 2nd parameter passed in is an "action". In my final version, I changed "click" to be $(document.location) instead, so that I can tell where people are clicking these outbound links from.
You can read more about the Google method "_trackEvents" from the Google Documentation on Google Analytics. Oh, and...about the commented out code, that's more of a reminder to myself, if I ever want to track PDF or DOC file clicks on my own domain, but the code would have to be revised a bit for that to work. Also, make sure you change the domain string to whatever you'd like to track (a specific subdomain, or your whole domain).
