Hi Alick,

Thanks for your reply.

So just to clarify you are confirming that target blank links are seen as outbound links and are not tracked in acquisitions under referrals?

Thanks again.

Hi,

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

I have been reading up on this topic but there is some contradictory articles out there and I was hoping someone could clarify the latest practise for me.

Website A links out to four of its partner websites.
These links are using a target="_blank".

When i look at the acquisition data for any of the partner websites there is zero referral data from site A. 
I tested this wasn't an analytics bug by using the real time feature while clicking the partner links to see what had happened, and to also find the source, but I found that they are all being returned as a source direct. Ideally id like it to show the referrals once more for reporting purposes.

Do I need to add extra google analytics parameters/functions to track the outbound links? or should this referral data be appearing correctly and it is something unrelated to the links themselves? or should I throw in the towel and drop the target blanks?

Thank you in advance for your time.
Best Regards.