This feature is only available in the Pro version of Independent Analytics.
There are two different approaches to tracking outbound clicks with Independent Analytics Pro. You can either track specific domains, or you can simply track clicks on all external domains.
The benefit of tracking individual domains is that the Clicks report will show a targeted list of clicks that you truly care about.
On the other hand, tracking all outbound links can lead to lots of clutter. You will see clicks on links in your articles that are not important to your business. This means you will need to make more use of the filtering system to uncover clicks that actually matter to you. With that said, for large content sites with lots of client/sponsored content, there may be hundreds of individual domains that need to be tracked, so tracking all external clicks would be the superior option.
Please keep this in mind when choosing the method you prefer to track outbound clicks.
Method 1: track specific domains
Let’s say you have an Etsy shop, and you link to your store frequently. If you want to track how many times visitors click on links pointing to your Etsy store, you could do so by adding a new Domain link pattern like this:
The domain link pattern will record every click on links pointing to the specified domain, and you can create as many of these patterns as you need.
Once you’re tracking clicks on all the external domains you want to monitor, it’s time to create the report.
Creating the report
To create the outbound clicks report, we’ll apply a couple of filters.
Visit the Clicks report, and then add a filter that excludes all links that contain your own domain in the Target URL.
This condition alone should work well, but you might still see links for email addresses and phone numbers. To exclude them, add two new conditions, each excluding the email and phone number links by name.
With all three conditions added, apply the filter, and you’ll be left with only clicks on external links.
Lastly, click the Save As button to save your customizations as a new report you can revisit in the future.
Now, you have a report showing only clicks on outbound links that you can customize further whenever needed.
Method 2: track all external clicks
If you’d prefer to track all external clicks, that can be done very easily with the External link pattern.
Click the Add Link Pattern button to add a new pattern, name it “External” or “Outbound,” and choose the External type. Then, click Save to begin tracking.
With this link pattern added, clicks on every link pointing to another website will be tracked.
Creating the external clicks report
Creating a report with this data is simple. All you have to do is add a filter to show only clicks that match the External link pattern, like this:
After applying this filter, the data table will only show links that point to external domains.
You can save your results as a new report to quickly revisit your outbound click data in the future.