Setting up external link goals in GA

[Gavin.Atkinson]

I have recently switched all my travel affiliate links to TripAdvisor using their javascript code that converts the natural links (direct links to TA URLs) to affiliate links. I have set up goal tracking in GA to try to put a monetary value on clicks through to these links (based on the known conversion rate to commissionable bookings) but GA is over-reporting the goals by a very large margin. I'm wondering what I've done wrong.

The first screen shot below is of the goal settings I used in GA.

The second screenshot shows that GA is reporting 7125 goal completions since I set up the goal on 7 August.

The third screenshot shows the actual number of GA events recorded on outbound clicks to TA URLs in the same period, which is just 97.

So the goal completions being recorded far exceed the actual goal completions, but I'm not sure why. I know I've done something wrong but as this is the first time I've used goals, I'd appreciate some help to see what I've done wrong.

Thank you.

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[john4math]

I'm with Alick300, using an event on the onclick event on the link is the way to go.  If you run jQuery on your pages, it should be pretty easy to select all the links going to tripadvisor.com and attach the goal tracking event code after the page has loaded.  It'll be 1 line of jQuery code... you shouldn't need to go through and add this to thousands of links by hand.

[Gavin.Atkinson]

Thanks for the suggestion, I am very familiar with event tracking codes but that approach means having to add tracking code to 1000s of outbound links on my website, which is something I was trying to avoid.

I recall there used to be a way to do this automatically with javascript but I can't find it at the moment.

[Alick300]

Hi,

I think you are doing wrong because you are using tripadvisor.com as destination URL.

You can track affiliate clicks using event tracking. I'm sharing  a video tutorial link for this @ http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-track-anything-with-google-analytics/

*****You have to change on thing only from above tutorial -onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'category', 'action', 'label']);"  to  onClick="ga('send','event','category','action');"

Or if you have difficulty use this tool to create the event tracking code @ https://gaconfig.com/google-analytics-event-tracking/affiliate-link/

Hope this helps.

Thanks