Questions for Coders - Is their code to track clicks coming from a link?

[gmarch25]

Let's say for example if I posted a link in this forum like the one below (just an example)

www.examplelink.com

Could you make a code that would be embedded in that link that would track how many people clicked that link and that I could see in an external location?

 

[Superconservativenes]

Yeup. All it is is a view counter embedded in the code.

Why not use third party counters like google.

 

[gmarch25]

Yeup. All it is is a view counter embedded in the code.

Why not use third party counters like google.

wait so you could see how many clicks or how many views? or both?

 

[Superconservativenes]

How do you distinguish between views and clicks? My guess is a view when a user actually spends time on the site and a click is jut when the user clicks it. Am I right? If I'm right then yeah, you can monitor both.

 

[gmarch25]

How do you distinguish between views and clicks? My guess is a view when a user actually spends time on the site and a click is jut when the user clicks it. Am I right? If I'm right then yeah, you can monitor both.

Hey I see a view as someone who opens the thread but doesn't click the link, and a click as someone who opens the thread and clicks the link..So tracking both are possible then?

 

[SEOtheWorld]

If you're talking about seeing how many impressions your link gets (how many times your link shows up on a webpage someone is looking at), that's not possible without some fancy scripting being included. To tell how many people clicked the link, there are a few different ways to go about it (referrer tracking on the destination site, passing a query string, etc)

 

[gmarch25]

aww ok thanks so "fancy scripting" means it is possible but its not some turnkey code

 

[ntnsllc]

yes, you can include a tracking ID in the destination of the link. Go to http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033867 and you can use the convenient URL builder. Then when you place your link just set the anchor text to be www.example.com and the destination to www.example.com/?utm_source=bhw&utm_medium=forum&utm_campaign=mycampaign

 

[entrecote]

Could you make a code that would be embedded in that link that would track how many people clicked that link and that I could see in an external location?

If it's your site that the link goes to then this is trivial add a tracking ID (e.g. ?id=thisisthebhwlink ). You don't even need google's toys.

Make sure that the anchor URL is unique, specific to the source page with the link .

The page then has code that processes incoming requests can then identify and count these links and do whatever you need with them.

You don't even need code on the page. Just analyze the log files with one of the plenty tools out there. Google does not give you the complete picture of your traffic anyway. Anyone with noscript, etc can skip their tracking. They can't however skip your logs.

 

[scorpion king]

It can be done with google analytics. Just place a java code on your site, and your visitors clicks will be tracked and shown in analytics dashboard. Simple.