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How to Track Link Clicks with Google Analytics

Cody Schneider•

Knowing where users go after they land on your website is just as important as knowing how they got there. If your goal is to drive traffic to affiliate partners, social profiles, or product documentation, you need a reliable way to track when a user clicks a link. This article will walk you through exactly how to track link clicks in Google Analytics 4, from the default outbound tracking to setting up custom tracking for your most important CTAs.

Why Should You Track Link Clicks?

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand "why." Tracking link clicks isn't just about collecting more data, it's about understanding user intent and measuring the effectiveness of your content. For a marketer or business owner, this data helps answer crucial questions:

  • Are my calls-to-action (CTAs) working? Are users clicking your "Sign Up," "Learn More," or "Download Now" buttons?

  • Which affiliate links are most valuable? If you're a content creator or publisher, knowing which partner links get the most attention helps you focus your efforts and maximize revenue.

  • What external content do my users find interesting? If you link to external resources, articles, or studies, tracking clicks shows what topics resonate with your audience, giving you ideas for future content.

  • Are users engaging with downloads? Tracking clicks on links to PDFs, whitepapers, or case studies confirms that users are accessing the resources you create.

  • Are users finding their way to social profiles? If you want to grow your social media following, you need to know if the links from your website are actually sending traffic there.

Every link on your site has a purpose. Tracking helps you determine if it's fulfilling that purpose.

Out-of-the-Box Tracking with Enhanced Measurement in GA4

One of the best things about Google Analytics 4 is that it tracks certain user interactions automatically using a feature called Enhanced measurement. By default, this feature is enabled and includes tracking for "Outbound clicks."

An outbound click is any click that leads a user away from your current website's domain(s). For example, if a user clicks a link on yourwebsite.com that goes to twitter.com, GA4 will automatically record this as an event.

How to Find Outbound Click Data in GA4

GA4 captures these outbound clicks under an event named click. To find this data, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property.

  2. Navigate to the Reports section using the left-hand navigation menu.

  3. Go to Engagement > Events.

  4. In the event name list, look for the event named "click."

When you click on the "click" event, you'll see a report showing how many times this event was triggered. By default, GA4 also collects several useful event parameters along with this event:

  • `link_classes`: The CSS classes of the clicked link.

  • `link_domain`: The destination domain (e.g., "twitter.com").

  • `link_id`: The ID of the clicked link.

  • `link_url`: The full URL of the clicked link.

  • `outbound`: This will always have a value of "true" for these events.

This is great for getting a general overview of outbound traffic, but it has limitations. It doesn't track internal link clicks (like a PDF download hosted on your own site), and it lumps all outbound clicks together. If you want to isolate clicks on a specific link — like a "Book a Demo" button or a particular affiliate offer — you'll need to set up custom event tracking using Google Tag Manager.

How to Track Specific Link Clicks with Google Tag Manager

For more granular tracking, Google Tag Manager (GTM) is your best friend. GTM acts as a middleman between your website and Google Analytics, allowing you to define a "trigger" (the action a user takes) and a "tag" (the data you send to GA4) for nearly any interaction you can imagine.

Using GTM, we can create a custom event that fires only when a user clicks on a link that meets our specific criteria. Let's say we want to track every click on a "Contact Us" link that points to yourwebsite.com/contact.

Here's the step-by-step process:

Step 1: Enable Click Variables in GTM

Variables are placeholders for data that gets filled in when an event happens. For example, when a click occurs, the {{Click URL}} variable captures the URL of the link that was clicked. GTM doesn't enable all of these by default, so we need to switch them on.

  1. In your Google Tag Manager container, go to Variables in the left menu.

  2. Under the "Built-In Variables" section, click Configure.

  3. A panel will slide out. Scroll down to the "Clicks" section and check the boxes for all the click-related variables:

    • Click Element

    • Click Classes

    • Click ID

    • Click Target

    • Click URL

    • Click Text

This simple step makes crucial data available for us to use when setting up our triggers and tags.

Step 2: Create a Trigger

The trigger tells GTM when to fire your tag. The goal here is to create a trigger that only activates on the specific link click we want to track. GTM offers incredibly flexible rules for this.

Let's create a trigger that fires when a user clicks a button with the text "Download The Case Study":

  1. Go to Triggers in the left menu and click New.

  2. Give your trigger a descriptive name, like "Trigger - Click - Case Study Download".

  3. Click inside the "Trigger Configuration" box and choose the trigger type Click - Just Links.

  4. Change the trigger to fire on Some Link Clicks.

  5. Now, set the conditions to define when the trigger should fire. In the dropdown fields, set the rule as follows:

    Choose Click Text | equals | Download The Case Study

  6. Click Save.

Other Common Trigger Configurations

The flexibility of GTM means you can track almost any link. Here are a couple more examples:

  • For an affiliate link: You might not want to specify the full URL, as it might have campaign tags added. Instead, you can use:

    Choose Click URL | contains | affiliatepartner.com

  • For a specific button with a CSS ID: Say a developer has given your main CTA button an ID of hero-cta. You can use:

    Choose Click ID | equals | hero-cta

You can even combine multiple conditions if you need to be highly specific.

Step 3: Create the GA4 Event Tag

Now that we have our trigger, it's time to create the tag. The tag is what actually packages up the data and sends it to Google Analytics.

  1. Go to Tags in the left menu and click New.

  2. Give your tag a clear name, such as "GA4 Event - Case Study Download".

  3. Click on the Tag Configuration box and select Google Analytics: GA4 Event.

  4. Find your Measurement ID from your GA4 property (Admin > Data Streams > Click your stream) and enter it in the Measurement ID field. Or, if you've already set it up as a configuration tag variable, select that.

  5. In the Event Name field, enter a name for your event. This is how it will appear in your GA4 reports. Use something descriptive, following Google’s recommended snake_case format, like case_study_download.

  6. (Optional but Recommended) Expand the Event Parameters section. This is where you can send additional useful information with your event. Click Add row for each parameter you want to add:

    • Parameter Name: link_text | Value: {{Click Text}}

    • Parameter Name: link_url | Value: {{Click URL}}

This sends the text of the link (e.g., "Download The Case Study") and the actual URL clicked along with the event, making your reports much more insightful.

  1. Now, below the Tag Configuration, click on the Triggering box.

  2. Select the trigger you created in the previous step ("Trigger - Click - Case Study Download").

  3. Click Save.

Step 4: Preview and Debug in GTM

Before making changes live, it's crucial to test them. GTM's Preview mode lets you do just this.

  1. In the top right corner of the GTM dashboard, click Preview.

  2. A new tab will open. Enter the URL of your website and click Connect. Your website will open in a new window with a "Tag Assistant Connected" badge.

  3. Go to your website window and perform a normal click on the link you set up tracking for (in our example, the "Download The Case Study" button).

  4. Switch back to the Tag Assistant window. On the left side, under the "Summary," you should see a "Link Click" event in the event timeline. Click on it.

  5. Now, look at the "Tags Fired" section. You should see your "GA4 Event - Case Study Download" tag listed there. This confirms your setup is working correctly!

If your tag did not fire, it means the conditions of your trigger weren't met. Go back to the "Link Click" event, click on the Variables tab in Tag Assistant, and inspect the values of variables like Click Text, Click URL, etc. This will usually reveal a typo or mismatch between your trigger and the actual data.

Step 5: Publish Your Container

Once you've confirmed that everything works as expected, it's time to make your changes live.

  1. Back in the main GTM window, click the blue Submit button in the top right corner.

  2. Add a Version Name (e.g., "Added Case Study Download Tracking") and a brief description. This is good practice for keeping a history of your changes.

  3. Click Publish.

That's it! Your new tag is now live and will start sending data to GA4 whenever a visitor clicks that specific link.

Finding Your Custom Click Data in GA4

After your custom link tracking is live, you'll want to see the fruits of your labor. Data can take up to 24-48 hours to fully process into standard reports, but you can verify it's working much sooner.

Using the Realtime Report

The fastest way to confirm data is flowing is the Realtime report. In GA4, navigate to Reports > Realtime. In the "Event count by Event name" card, you should see your custom event (e.g., case_study_download) pop up within seconds or minutes of an actual click.

Using the Engagement Reports

After a day or so, the event will appear in your standard reports. Go to Reports > Engagement > Events. You'll find your custom event name in the list. Clicking it will take you to a detailed report for that specific event.

Viewing Your Custom Parameters

Remember those custom parameters we added (link_text and link_url)? To make these visible and usable in GA4 reports, you need to register them as Custom Dimensions.

  1. Go to Admin (the gear icon in the bottom left).

  2. Under the "Data display" column, click on Custom definitions.

  3. Click the Create custom dimensions button.

  4. Fill out the form:

    • Dimension name: e.g., "Link Text"

    • Scope: Event

    • Description: The text of the clicked link.

    • Event parameter: link_text (this must match the parameter name you set in GTM exactly!)

  5. Click Save.

  6. Repeat the process to create another custom dimension for your link_url parameter.

Now, after another 24-48 hours, these newly registered dimensions will be available in your reports. You can add them as secondary dimensions in standard reports or use them to create custom reports in the "Explore" section of GA4.

Final Thoughts

Tracking what users click on is fundamental to understanding your user journey and improving your website's performance. Fortunately, Google Analytics 4 gets you started with automatic outbound click tracking, and by adding the power of Google Tag Manager, you gain complete control to track the specific interactions that matter most to your business.

Manually setting up custom event tracking and then digging through reports is powerful, but it can still be a slow process, especially when your data isn't just in Google Analytics. We built Graphed to streamline this by connecting to all your data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and social ad platforms in one place. Instead of building detailed reports piece-by-piece, you can ask for them in plain English. For example, just ask, “Show me how many case study downloads we got last month, grouped by the marketing campaign they came from,” and instantly get a shareable dashboard. You can try Graphed to see how easy it is to chat with your data and get answers in seconds.