October 24, 2022
Where to Find Outbound Click Data in Google Analytics 4?
Updated: October 24th, 2022
Google Analytics 4 can track additional events, not just page views. This is all possible thanks to Enhanced Measurement. But finding that data in GA4 reports is trickier than you might think. In this article, I will explain where to find outbound click data in Google Analytics 4.
Check if you have outbound click tracking enabled
First, go to the admin panel of your Google Analytics 4 property. Then (in the Property column) click Data Streams. Select web data stream.
This will open the settings of your web data stream. Check if Enhanced Measurement is enabled. If yes, check if Outbound clicks is enabled.
If not, then click the gear icon and enable Outbound click tracking.
If you have just enabled that, you will need to wait for ~24 hours to start seeing that data in standard and custom reports.
Standard Reports
In standard reports, it’s easy to find outbound click events. They are called click, and you will see them if you have enabled Enhanced Measurement.
You can find them by going to Reports > Engagement > Events.
But the problem with this is the granularity of the data. If you click the click event, it will open a report where you won’t see what kind of links were clicked. At least, that’s how things work now when I am writing this blog post.
There are two options here:
- You can view the historic (already collected) data in explorations/custom reports (I will explain this a bit later)
- For quicker future access, you can register the “link_url” custom dimension, and then you will see outbound links in standard reports too. Let’s start with this.
Create a custom dimension
This is needed to see the Link URL in standard reports and Looker Studio. I think that in the future, this will be done automatically.
In the left sidebar, go to Configure > Custom Definitions > Custom Dimensions and click Create Custom Dimensions.
Then enter the following settings (make sure the scope is Event):
Save the dimension. After 24-48 hours, you will start seeing the URLs of outbound clicks. Go to Reports > Engagement > Events > Click.
One of the widgets there will contain the basic data about Link URL.
Important: this configuration applies only to the newly collected data. Historic data will not be displayed here. If you want to analyze your current data (and at a more granular level), read the next chapter.
Custom Reports (Explorations)
Another place where you can find the outbound click data are custom reports. On the left sidebar of your GA4 interface, click Explore. Then select Blank.
We’ll need to import two dimensions into that report. Click the Plus icon.
Then select Event name and Link URL dimensions and click Import.
In the metrics section, click the Plus icon and add the metrics that you want to use, for example, Event count and Total Users.
Double-click the Link URL dimension and all metrics you have imported to the exploration. Or just drag and drop them.
Now you will see the list of all links that were clicked. But it’s very likely, that the first row in the table will be empty. Why?
That’s because your current report shows the data of ALL events in your property, not just outbound link clicks. Thus you need to narrow it down. In the Filters section, click Drop or select dimension or metric and then choose Event name. Enter the following condition:
- Event name exactly matches click
Save the filter.
Now you will see the report only of click events and the first column of the table will show the list of outbound links that were clicked.
To see the full value of the Link URL, you will need to hover your mouse over that particular link URL. Hopefully, in the future GA4 will allow us to resize the width of each collumn.
A better filter for this report
It looks like GA4’s automatic outbound link click tracking also tracks things like phone numbers, emails, and javascript:void(0).
To avoid them too, create 3 additional filters in your GA4 exploration:
- Link URL does not contain javascript:void(0)
- Link URL does not contain mailto:
- Link URL does not contain tel:
This will make your report cleaner.
Find Outbound Click Data in Google Analytics 4: Final Words
That’s it! You have now configured an outbound link click report in GA4. By default, the report will show the top 10 rows. But if you want to see more, change the number here:
If you want to learn much more about GA4, how to use it and how to benefit from it, take a look at my in-depth Google Analytics 4 course.
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23 COMMENTS
That is quite helpful. Do you know if Google has plans to implement this properly without a workaround?
Hello,
when I use "Explore > Free Form" option and look at "Link URL" values, ~95% of them are like "javascript:void(0)". Is there any alterantives to see Outbound Link information without extra configuration or the the best solution is to build "Custom Event" with "Custom Dimensions" to track Outbound Link Clicks correctly?
No, it means that your website's links are coded like this. Instead of using URLs, many of them are using javascript:void(0)
A solution here would be to disable outbound click tracking in GA4 and implement an alternative with GTM, where you tracking hostnames that do not match your own domain and also do not match javascript:void(0)
Thank you, Julius! 👍
Hello and thank you very much for this! Very helpful.
Is there a way to add this custom report to the main page of my analytics?
We set this up at the end of June, and it worked fine for looking at Junes data. However, analysing data for this month, I can't actually see a breakdown of the URL's clicked, and when I try to filter it by Event name matches 'click' we get no data at all.
Is this working for anyone else with data in July? Works fine on data up to 30th June
Same here. Not working in July, but working for previous months. Let me know if you find a solution. - Brian
Hi Brian,
Still not managed to find a solution to the issue in July. Strangely it seems to be working again for Augusts data and we've not made any changes etc. Strange!
Not working for me either. I can see total outbound events, but not a breakdown by URL.
How do you know what page the outbound link was clicked on? is there a dimension that can be added for that?
I am wondering what the best way would be to set a specific outbound click as a conversion. Would I create a custom event out of the enhanced measurement (clicks) and set it to a specific parameter of the url? Then mark as a conversion in the Configure/Events section?
While it is nice that Google has provided an easy way to implement outbound click tracking, the implementation does not track the link_text, which is important to many. Swapping out the enhanced measurement tracking/functionality with my own implementation is a little daunting, however, so I think it would be helpful to create a blog post that shows people how to replace and improve outbound link tracking by implementing our own version with link_text tracking (and any other enhanced measurement tracking that is lacking). I am curious about the pros/cons of replacing the enhanced tracking with our own.
link_text is tracked. Maybe your links are coded in a bit unusual way, difficult to comment.
Hmm... Google documentation shows these parameters are populated for the Outbound clicks (click) enhanced measurement event:
link_classes, link_domain, link_id, link_url, outbound (boolean)
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9216061?hl=en
Others have noticed that link_text is missing:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66931019/ga4-link-text-is-usually-not-set
I see these parameters when debugging, and link_text is missing:
debug_mode
engagement_time_msec
ga_session_id
ga_session_number
ignore_referrer
link_domain
link_url
outbound
page_location
page_referrer
page_title
Huh, that's a good catch I didn't notice. I always check link_url in the reports, and never really checked the link_text of outbound link clicks. But I presumed it is there. Well, that's unfortunate, and yet another quirk of GA4
Why does it limit the range I can explore? I am trying to look back to February, but can only go back as far as July.
You need to extems the data retention period in the property settings to 14 months.
Great article. To filter out an easier way, just right click the event under the column "Link URL" and select "Exclude selection". Automatically adds it without having to do it manually.
Thanks for the great explainer on how to get an outbound clicks report. Here's my problem. The report of how many clicked each outbound link on my site grossly undercounts the actual number in the GA4 report compared to the same time period in regular Google Analytics. The total number of users is almost identical, but the actual click numbers for each link are about 75% less in GA4.
Any idea what is wrong?
I am not technical, so please try to be very explicit of what I might need to do to fix this. THANKS.
Amazing! I was stressing out over how to get this done and you nailed it! Thank you friend!
Hi, Thank you a lot for your tutorial.
I had already enhanced the outbound tracking link setting but when I try to see the link url list it says (no set)
Is it something I made wrong or?
Thanks
just wanted to thank you- this artice helped me alot!
I also struggle with (not set), like Jordi here...
Why is that? How can I fix it so it does not show (not set)