Google Analytics to track outbound links

zaphodbeeb

Hi,

Just wondering if there's any Google experts out there can help with a serious problem I'm having. I've a price comparison site set up and working 100% where links to products are shown along with short descriptions - clicking on the links then opens external sites in a new window.

None of which is showing up in Google Analytics. If I take out the bit that launches the new window

<a href="http://www.externalsite.com/" target="_new"....

then it works fine. I've tried various differing methods as detailed by Google in their ever changing documentation but am getting nowhere.

Any suggestions appreciated - particularly from those who may have come across this before.

Many thanks

ZB

Evil Phil

Are you saying that if you take out target="_new" then the links show up in GA? Sometimes _new is confused with _blank (which has been deprecated IIRC).

Either way, I think it is better practice to have neither and let the user decide where they want the content in a new window or in the existing window. Hopefully, this is sort out your problem too.

zaphodbeeb

Evil Phil wrote: »

Are you saying that if you take out target="_new" then the links show up in GA? Sometimes _new is confused with _blank (which has been deprecated IIRC).

I've tried both _blank and _new.

Either way, I think it is better practice to have neither and let the user decide where they want the content in a new window or in the existing window. Hopefully, this is sort out your problem too.

You may be right - but that decision isn't up to me. The idea is that you can see a list of (say for example cars) then click on each one and view in another window [the referring site] - close that window and still see the list that sent you there in the first place ...

JohnK

As far as I'm aware if you're tracking a click to a new window you need to track the click using javascript in the onclick event of the link, similar to this article http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55527

zaphodbeeb

JohnK wrote: »

As far as I'm aware if you're tracking a click to a new window you need to track the click using javascript in the onclick event of the link, similar to this article http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55527

Thanks for that. As I said though, I've tried many methods including the above and they work SO LONG AS the link to the external site opens in the same window.

This as I mentioned, is not what I need. I need the link to open in a new window.

Does anyone know of a method by which you can actually *gasp* TALK to a Google person who can help? Do these people actually exist ahahaha :-)

JohnK

Can you post the html of your page so? This is the code that I've just pulled off one of my sites and this tracks perfectly

<a href="http://www.google.com&quot; onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/URL/YOU/WANT/TO/TRACK/');" target="_blank">blah</a>

zaphodbeeb

Many thanks. As regards posting the URL of the site, I'll check. :-) Not up to me.

I notice that the URL you have as an example is on the same site - I presume it could be an external link....

Thanks again - will try that and update this tomorrow.

JohnK

So far as GA is concerned anything you're tracking will be a page of your site so in the above example GA would think the URL is http://www.mysite.com/URL/YOU/WANT/TO/TRACK/
Might be easier to spot the outbound links by tracking them as something like /OUTBOUND/www.example.com and /OUTBOUND/www.google.com etc. so you can easily find them for reports

zaphodbeeb

Something like...


<a href="http://www.externalsite.com&quot; onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/OUTBOUND/External_Site/');" target="_blank">blah</a>


Thanks for the help!

JohnK

Yeah that should do it.