Track Outbound Clicks in GA4

June 29, 2025

Ever wondered where your website visitors go when they click away?

You’ve crafted the perfect resource page, full of helpful links to external sites, but are you tracking the value it delivers?

Understanding which external links your users engage with is crucial, and guess what? It’s surprisingly simple to track within Google Analytics 4.

You don’t need to get bogged down with complex setups in Google Tag Manager.

GA4 has a nifty built-in feature that does the heavy lifting for you.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to see exactly which outbound links are being clicked, where those users are coming from on your site, and how to build a simple report to make sense of it all.

Table of Contents

Enhanced Measurements?

Let’s get straight to it. The key to this whole process lies in a feature called Enhanced Measurement. When you set up a data stream in GA4, a set of events are automatically tracked without you needing to add any extra code. One of these is the ‘outbound click’.

GA4 automatically fires an event called click every time a user clicks a link that takes them away from your current domain. It’s that simple. Along with this event, GA4 also collects several useful parameters:

  • link_classes: Any classes associated with the link.
  • link_domain: The domain of the link they clicked on.
  • link_id: The ID of the link, if it has one.
  • link_url: The full URL of the outbound link.
  • outbound: A true/false value indicating if the click was outbound.

Check Your Setup

Before we get into building reports, let’s make sure everything is switched on. It probably is, but it never hurts to double-check.

  1. Head into your GA4 property and click on Admin (the little cog icon in the bottom-left).
  2. Navigate to Data Streams under the ‘Data collection and modification’ section.
  3. Click on your website’s data stream.
  4. Under the ‘Events’ section, you’ll see Enhanced measurement. Make sure the toggle is on and that ‘Outbound clicks’ is listed.

If it’s on, you’re golden. GA4 is already collecting that sweet, sweet data for you.

Building Your Outbound Click Report

Now for the fun part.

The best way to view this information is by building a custom report in the Explore section. This gives you the flexibility to see exactly what you need.

Let’s build one together.

  1. In the left-hand navigation, click on Explore and then select Blank report.

  2. You’ll be presented with a blank canvas. Let’s start by adding the dimensions and metrics we need. In the ‘Variables’ column on the left, click the ‘+’ icon next to ‘Dimensions’ and import the following:

    • Link URL

    • Link text

    • Page path and screen class

    • Event name

  3. Next, click the ‘+’ icon next to ‘Metrics’ and add:

    • Event count

Now, let’s build the report itself in the ‘Tab Settings’ column.

  • Drag Link URL from your dimensions list and drop it into the Rows box.

  • Drag Event count from your metrics list and drop it into the Values box.

You’re almost there! Right now, this report is showing the count for all events. We need to filter it to show only outbound clicks.

  • Scroll down to the Filters box at the bottom left.

  • Drag Event name from your dimensions list and drop it here.

  • Set the filter to exactly matches and enter click.

And there you have it! A clean report showing you every outbound URL clicked and how many times it has happened.

Outbound Click Report in GA4 with dimensions and metrics used

To get even more context, you can add Page path and screen class as another row. This will show you which pages on your site are generating these outbound clicks. For example, you might discover that your ‘About Us’ page is driving a lot of clicks to your company’s LinkedIn profile, or that a blog post is successfully sending traffic to a partner’s website. These are the kinds of actionable insights that can shape your content strategy.

Taking It a Step Further: Creating a Specific Event


What if you want to track clicks to one specific, super-important external site? While you can see this in your Explore report, you might want to create a dedicated event for it.

For instance, let’s say you want to create an event every time someone clicks a link to specific-partner-site.com.

  1. Go to Admin > Events (under ‘Data display’).
  2. Click on Create event.
  3. Click Create again.
  4. In the ‘Custom event name’ field, give your new event a name. Remember to use snake_case (e.g., click_to_partner_site).
  5. Under ‘Matching conditions’, set the following:
    • Parameter: event_name | Operator: equals | Value: click
    • Click Add condition.
    • Parameter: link_url | Operator: contains | Value: specific-partner-site.com
  6. Click Create.

Now, GA4 will generate a brand new click_to_partner_site event every time a user clicks on a link containing that domain. Honestly, you don’t always need to do this, as the Explore report gives you the same information. But it can be a useful option if you want to isolate a particular action as a key event.

The main thing to remember is that you don’t need complicated solutions for what is now a simple task. GA4’s enhanced measurement is designed to make your life easier. Instead of muddying the waters with extra tags in GTM, you can use the powerful, built-in features to get the insights you need.

So, go on, get stuck in! Build your own outbound click report and see what you can discover about your users’ journeys. You might be surprised by what you find.

Kyle

Author

Hello, I'm Kyle Rushton McGregor!

I’m an experienced GA4 Specialist with a demonstrated history of working with Google Tag Manager and Looker Studio. I’m an international speaker who has trained 1000s of people on all things analytics.

Find out more About me
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