As a quick and dirty solution I just added google analytics tracking of outbound links. It was really easy as I just borrowed a piece of code from
this blog (kudos!). Everything went fine and the stats started coming in.
But when I later visited the site myself I realized something awful. Since I'm a obsessive middle-clicker opening all potentially interesting links in new tabs I ran into the issue immediately. It opens my middle-clicks in the same tab, transforming my middle-clicks to left-clicks.
Further googling explained everything. Many have written scripts like the one I picked and some have already considered this issue. So I read them all and improved the script I had stolen already. Here it is. Please comment if you think there's something wrong with it!
(function($) {
"use strict";
// current page host
var baseURI = window.location.host;
// click event on body
$("body").on("click", function(e) {
// abandon if link already aborted or analytics is not available
if (e.isDefaultPrevented() || typeof ga !== "function") return;
// abandon if no active link or link within domain
var link = $(e.target).closest("a");
if (link.length != 1 || baseURI == link[0].host) return;
var normalClick = !e.metaKey && !e.crtlKey && e.which == 1;
var href = link[0].href;
var opts = {'hitType': 'event','eventCategory': 'outbound',
'eventAction': 'link','eventLabel': href
}
if (normalClick) {
// cancel event and record outbound link
{ opts.hitCallback = loadPage };
e.preventDefault();
ga('send', opts);
// redirect after one second if recording takes too long
setTimeout(loadPage, 1000);
} else {
// Just send the event
ga('send', opts);
}
// redirect to outbound page
function loadPage() {
document.location = href;
}
});
})(jQuery);
