Comments on: Tracking outgoing clicks with Google Analytics

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:05:12 +0000

That is great information. Im glad that I can relate to this sorta stuff. I know if you have any cell phone tracking software problems you can just use this Cell Phone Tracker

By: Will

Will — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:21:53 +0000

uncaught exception: Syntax error, unrecognized expression: [@href^="http://"] I got this guy. It works if you remove the @ as of jquery 1.3.2

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:49:29 +0000

Thanks for the tutorial. Exactly what I was looking for. I appreciate your time for the post!

By: jl255

jl255 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:24:45 +0000

Hi, tks for this great tip! Would you be able to provide some guidance on how to set up new profiles and filtering on Analytics to make sure the right traffic is tracked? I’ve no idea how to do that. TKs!

By: Top 10 .eduGuru Posts of 2008 | .eduGuru

Top 10 .eduGuru Posts of 2008 | .eduGuru — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:10:51 +0000

[...] Tracking Outgoing Clicks with Google Analytics [...]

By: Erick

Erick — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:49:47 +0000

@Gilzow exactly the same thing we saw when we put it on our front page.

By: Gilzow

Gilzow — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:38:15 +0000

@Nick the most interesting thing we have seen so far is that students use our main page frequently to get to the student webmail portal instead of just typing webmail.mizzou.edu in their browser.

@Brian Clifton you have XSS vulnerabilities at your website

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:57:47 +0000

This really is a handy metric that people need to measure. I have a client that has a site which is basically just an online directory, so it’s nothing but outgoing links.

This will be the only real analytics of interest – seeing where we’re sending them. Can’t wait to get it up and running.

By: Trending Upward | Poorly Performing Pages - How Do We Know?

Trending Upward | Poorly Performing Pages - How Do We Know? — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:07:11 +0000

[...] actual exit links (as opposed to someone closing out of your site via the browser), check out the great post by Nick DeNardis on .eduGuru about tracking exit links in Google [...]

By: Nick DeNardis

Nick DeNardis — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 15:45:25 +0000

@Brian Nice article! I am surprised I did not stumble on it before. I like your approach, it is definitely more robust than my proof of concept.

I like that you supplied some analytics with your post. We just started doing this and are just acquiring analytics.

With your results have you made any changes to the way you post or how you link to external sites?

By: Brian Clifton

Brian Clifton — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:07:43 +0000

Nice post Nick. Also have a look at the following: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/2008/06/08/updated-tracking-script-for-gajs/

(originally from Sep 2007!)

Info there for both urchin.js and ga.js users

I would be interested in your comments.

Best regards, Brian Clifton

By: Ross Johnson

Ross Johnson — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:16:26 +0000

Excellent tip, I can see a lot of uses for this.

See what type of content users are interested in.

See if any ill placed external link could be decreasing your conversion rate in the conversion funnel.

probably more.

By: Nick DeNardis

Nick DeNardis — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:18:01 +0000

@Ben Good point, we have just begun working with the new AJAX API, its super nice. Will eventually do a followup post on it.

@Kyle Simple and effective for sure! I just realized how many external clicks we were getting. Now I know where all those “bounces” are going.

@Gilzow Nice work man! That is some good work. You find anything interesting with the results?

By: Gilzow

Gilzow — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:44:41 +0000

Good post. We did something almost identical this year at missouri.edu (http://is.gd/ap0W) and have been very pleased with the results. Kyle is correct in that you have to set up filters to really get a better sense of the data.

Setting up a second profile to record this data is a great idea that I hadn’t considered.

By: Kyle James

Kyle James — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:24:53 +0000

Genius! Quit simple, but incredibly effective. Of course you have to do some extra work in GA to get your filters and profiles setup properly, but talk about a whole new wave of premium intelligence.

I’d recommend setting up a profile that filters out the “outgoing” subdirectory.