How to Track Outbound Links in Google Analytics

Outbound links can be tracked as Events in Google Analytics

Event tracking requires

  1. Calling trackEvent function
  2. trackEvent function can take up to 5 parameters, of those 2 are required

What are those parameters for trackEvent function

  1. category (required)The name you supply for the group of objects you want to track. It can be anything but be consistent with whatever you decide to use.I suggest using “Outbound Links”  for outbound link tracking
  2. action (required)A name for the type of user interaction for that event.  But again you can use anything you like e.g. “Click”,“Partner Link Click” or whatever makes sense for your business.I suggest that if you have different categories of link then use the category name that defines those links.
  3. label (optional)A string to provide additional description for that event.I suggest using the actual name of the links e.g. gapremium.com, google.com etc.
  4. value (optional)An integer that you can use to provide numerical data about the user event.You can leave this value in case of outbound links or use 1 unless you want to give more weights to certain links.
  5. non-interaction (optional)Boolean value, set as true or falsetrue= not a valid interaction, count it as a bouncefalse = considered a valid interaction (default)If you DO NOT set this value then an outbound click will be considered as a valid interaction thus WON’T BE COUNTED in BOUNCE RATE.Suggestion: Since you really do want people to click on outbound links, set this value to true e.g. it is a valid hit and not a bounce.

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How to call it?

_gaq.push([_trackEvent(category, action, label, value, noninteraction));

Example:

_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Outbound Links’, ‘Partner Links’, ‘gapremium.com’, 1, true]);

 <a href=”http://www.gapremium.com” onClick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Outbound Links’, ‘Partner Links’, ‘gapremium.com’, 1, true]);”>gapremium.com</a>

in this case gapremium.com is the external site.

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