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How to Track Clicks from External Links

Tracking clicks on links contained in your email messages and newsletters can be difficult since most browsers won't recognize this link as having a "referring URL" and will display these clicks as coming from "unknown locations" (or blank referring URL) in your website statistics. However, sometimes it is important to track how many times a specific link was clicked from an email message or newsletter in order to measure marketing campaign effectiveness.

Following the steps below will allow you to create a method to track clicks on external links to specific pages on your website (from email and newsletters for example). For the most accurate results, be sure to create a "bounce page" for each link you want to track and use your new bounce page ONLY for that link.

  1. Determine the URL of the page you want to link to. This is where you will be sending your visitors when they click on your link. Write the URL down. You will be using it another step.
  2. Create a new website page using HTML mode. This will be your new "bounce page".
  3. Give your new page a unique name. We recommend naming your pages something like "TrackHits - YourPageName" so that they'll be easy to locate in your website statistics reporting. This is the page you will use to view the number of clicks on your link.

  4. Copy and paste the following code exactly as shown below into the HTML area of your new page - replacing the domain name and pagename in both places (shown in red) to the URL you determined in step #1. You may also wish to change the wording for users who do not have javascript enabled.
    <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
    <!-- Begin
    window.location="http://www.mydomain.com/mypage.cfm";
    // End -->
    </script>
    <noscript>
    Your browser does not have javascript enabled. Please <a href="http://www.mydomain.com/mypage.cfm">click here</a> to visit the page.
    </noscript>
  5. Determine the URL of your newly created bounce page. You can find this URL on the "Page Options" screen for this new page. Please note that you cannot use the Page Preview for determining the URL of the bounce page.
  6. Create your external links using the bounce page URL determined in step #5. Please note that this is NOT the same URL from step #1!
That's it! When your link is clicked from the email message, newsletter or other external source, the visitor will be directed to the new "bounce page" which will count the clicks on the link and then automatically redirected to the page you want them to see. This "bounce" should not be noticed by your visitor since the redirect is immediate.

The number of visitors shown for the bounce page in your website statistics report will be the number of times your link has been clicked.

Tip: Create a bounce page for each link you want to track clicks on and use each bounce page ONLY for tracking that specific link.