Where do my exiting visitors go next?

Can I use Google Analytics to find out domains my visitors exit to

[Jonm35]

Hello All,

Hoping that someone can help - is there any way within Google Analytics to track which domains my exiting visitors next visit?

Thanks in advance,

Jon

[cgrantski]

Are they exiting via a link on your pages that goes elsewhere? Then yes - run those links through a redirect page and tag that page.

If they're just going somewhere else, then no.

[chakde]

I think analytics does not have this facility.

[cgrantski]

You can put a redirect page anywhere you want and put any kind of tracking tag on it. Then every time the tracking page is hit (by an exiting visitor) you'll have a tracked event. You'll need to construct the page(s) in a way that records the destination.

Also, I am pretty sure GA has some code (possibly still in beta) that you can attach to any links you want on the site - links to PDFs for example, or these offsite links. WebTrends has had that kind of code for a long time, they call it the Multitrack code, and Google Analytics now has its own version. It was announced by GA a while back. The thing I like about WebTrends' code is that it automatically recognizes an off-site, PDF, mailto, etc link and records those clicks - no need to find those links on your site and change each one's code, a huge time saver both in terms of implementation and quality assurance checking. It sure would be nice if GA could come up with something similar!

[Jonm35]

Thanks guys, the help is appreciated.

[ColinG]

Easy:

[google.com...]

add the onClick code to every link:

<a href="http://www.example.com" onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/example.com');">

[jkovar]

Analytics can track this as ColinG pointed out, but _only_ if they're clicking a link or triggering some sort of JS event on your page.

If they use a bookmark or something outside of the scope of your page, you're out of luck.

[Jonm35]

Thanks for the further advice ColinG and jkovar. I've set up the onClick code. It seems to be exaggerating the exits reported. Any idea why it would overstate?

[jkovar]

The event could be firing twice. What does your HTML look like ?