Tracking Clicks with Google Analytics Pt. 0

20070313-click.jpgHave you ever wondered what people click on when they get to your website? I don’t mean which links, I mean which elements. Do they get confused and think that an image is a link and try to click on it? Which outbound links do they click on? I know this may seem like a strange topic, but I am headed somewhere :)

Using Google Analytics we can actually track every single click that a visitor makes. It doesn’t matter what they click on, we can track it. This functionality is great for tracking clicks on:

  • non-html pages (mp3, pdf, exe, etc.)
  • links to other sites
  • form elements

There is some instruction in the GA help docs, but I’m going to dive deep into this topic during during three blog posts.

Part 1: About urchinTracker()

In the first part of this series I’ll discuss the technology that Google Analytics uses to tracks clicks. I’ll explain (in painful detail :) ) how it works and what it does.

Part 2: Basic Implementation

Once we know how GA tracks clicks, I’ll walk through a basic implementation. I’ll show you how to track non-HTML files, clicks on outbound links and clicks on almost any element of your web page.

Part 3: Advanced Implementation

Finally, in Part 3 I’ll give you guys the framework to avoid everything I discuss in Part 2. :)

If you have any specific questions about this topic post them below and I’ll try to cover them in the upcoming posts.

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And how about checking out these related posts:

  1. Tracking Offline Advertising With Google Analytics
  2. Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 2: The EpikOne Link Tagging Tool
  3. Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 0: An Overview
  4. Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 1: Link Tagging
  5. Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 3: Reports and Analysis

Comments

  1. Gavin Doolan says:

    Excellent, just read through these and they really clarify what you can and cannot do and why. I wish the GA help files were a bit more like this.

Trackbacks

  1. [...] Tracking Clicks With Google Analytics Pt. 0 (Analytics Talk) [...]

  2. [...]   Re: How can I track outgoing non affiliate clicks Hi Kylah, Do you have Google Analytics installed on you wordpress blog? You can use it to track your outbound links. The new code for GA has events tracking included in it. Alternatively, you can add in additional code to track clicks via page views in GA. How do I manually track clicks on outbound links? There’s a very good post on it here and part 2. tells you how to implement it. Not sure if there is a wordpress plug in for this so might be worth a look around. [...]

  3. [...] Excellent articles by Justin Cutroni about using Google Analytics on your website. Tracking Clicks With Google Analytics [...]

  4. [...] Analytics Talk » Blog Archive » Tracking Clicks with Google Analytics Pt. 0 Nice tip for tracking clicks with GA. (tags: analytics google tracking click) [...]

  5. [...] in Google Analytics | eHow.com How to track your outbound clicks with onclick in Google Analytics Tracking Clicks with Google Analytics Pt. 0 – Analytics Talk Use jQuery with Google Analytics to Track Clicks on Outgoing Links From Your Site. Tracking Clicks [...]

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