How to See Outbound Clicks in Google Analytics 4

Knowing where your audience goes after leaving your site is just as important as knowing how they got there. If you're using affiliate links, citing sources, or linking to partners, you need to track those outbound clicks. This guide will show you exactly how to find, analyze, and report on all of your outbound click data directly within Google Analytics 4.

Why Tracking Outbound Clicks Matters

Before jumping into the “how,” let’s briefly touch on the “why.” Why should you care which external links people are clicking on your website? The answers can directly impact your strategy and revenue.

Affiliate Marketing Performance: If you use affiliate links, outbound click tracking is non-negotiable. It tells you which products or services your audience is interested in, which pages on your site are best at driving affiliate revenue, and which links are getting completely ignored.
Understanding User Intent: Seeing which external resources or recommendations your visitors click on gives you powerful insights into their needs and next steps. Do they click on links to academic studies, software tools, or partners? This helps you create more relevant content and partnerships.
Validating Content Strategy: Let's say you wrote a "best of" listicle. Tracking outbound clicks tells you which of your recommendations are actually the most popular with your audience. You can use this data to update your content and feature the clear winners more prominently.
Measuring Partnership ROI: If you partner with other businesses and link out to them, tracking clicks is the simplest way to show the value you're providing. You can report on exactly how much traffic you sent their way over a specific period.

Good News: GA4 Tracks Outbound Clicks Automatically

One of the biggest improvements in Google Analytics 4 is that a lot of common user interactions are tracked automatically right out of the box. This is thanks to a feature called Enhanced Measurement.

When Enhanced Measurement is turned on (it’s enabled by default on new properties), GA4 automatically tracks several types of events without you needing to add any extra code. These include page views, scrolls, file downloads, and, most importantly for us, outbound clicks.

Each time a user clicks a link that navigates them away from your current domain(s), GA4 automatically logs a click event. But first, you should always double-check to make sure the feature is active for your property.

How to Check if Enhanced Measurement is Enabled

Verifying this setting only takes a few seconds.

Log into your Google Analytics 4 account.
Click on the Admin gear icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the Property column, click on Data Streams.
Click on the specific data stream for your website.
The Enhanced measurement section will be listed here. Make sure the toggle is switched On.

If for some reason it's turned off, just flip the switch to enable it. GA4 will begin tracking outbound clicks (and other events) moving forward. Keep in mind it doesn't work retroactively, so you won't have data for the period it was inactive.

Finding Basic Click Data in Standard Reports

Now that you've confirmed GA4 is collecting the data, where do you find it? You can find the raw event count in the standard reports, but this view isn't very useful for analysis.

Here's how to see it:

From the left-hand navigation, go to Reports > Engagement > Events.
You'll see a table listing all the events GA4 has collected. Look for an event named click in the list.

On this screen, you’ll just see the total count - the number of times an outbound link was clicked across your entire site. If you click on the event name click, GA4 shows some basic cards, but it doesn't answer the two most important questions: "Which specific links were clicked?" and "Which pages were users on when they clicked them?"

To get that information, you need to build a custom report in the Explore section.

How to Build a Custom Outbound Clicks Report in GA4

The "Explore" hub is where you can move beyond standard reports and build custom analyses to answer specific questions. This is the best way to get a clear, actionable view of your outbound clicks. Let's build a report from scratch.

Step 1: Navigate to the Explore Hub

In the left-hand navigation menu of GA4, click on the Explore icon (it looks like a little Venn diagram).

Step 2: Create a "Free Form" Exploration

From the Explore Hub dashboard, select Free form from the available templates. This gives you a blank canvas to build a familiar table-based report.

Step 3: Import Your Dimensions

On the left-hand side, you'll see a "Variables" column. Dimensions are the attributes of your data - the descriptive "what" or "where." We need to import the dimensions that will tell us which links were clicked and from which page.

Click the (+) button next to Dimensions.
Use the search bar to find and check the box for the following dimensions:
- Link URL: This is the most important one. It shows the full destination URL of the link that was clicked.
- Page location: This shows the URL of the page on your site where the user was when they clicked the link.
- Link text: This captures the actual anchor text of the link (e.g., "click here to learn more"). It provides great context.
Once you’ve selected them, click the blue Import button in the top-right corner.

Step 4: Import Your Metric

Now we need to tell GA4 what to count. Metrics are the numbers you want to measure.

Click the (+) button next to Metrics.
Search for and select Event count.
Click the Import button.

Step 5: Build the Report Table

Your imported dimensions and metrics will now be available in the "Variables" column. The "Tab Settings" column next to it is where you build the actual report by telling GA4 how to arrange them.

For Rows: Drag Link URL from your dimensions and drop it onto the "Rows" box. Immediately, you should see the report table populate with a list of URLs. To get even more detail, you can also drag Page location right below Link URL in the same "Rows" box.
For Values: Drag Event count from your metrics and drop it onto the "Values" box. Now the report will show you the click count for each corresponding link URL.

Step 6: Filter for Only Outbound Clicks

Right now, your report is showing the event count for every event. The final, critical step is to filter this report to show only the click event data.

At the bottom of the "Tab Settings" column, find the Filters box and click on it.
Select Event name from the dimension list.
Choose "exactly matches" from the condition dropdown.
In the expression field, type click
Click the Apply button.

Voilà! The table will now update to show you only the data related to outbound clicks, properly filtered and organized.

Step 7: Name and Analyze Your Report

Give your exploration a helpful name by clicking on the title at the top, like "Outbound Clicks Report." Sorting the Event count column from high to low will immediately show you the most clicked external links across your entire website.

You can now answer key questions:

What are my top-performing affiliate links? Sort by "Event count" to see which "Link URL" is getting the most action.
Which pages on my site drive the most outbound traffic? Use the "Page location" dimension as your primary row to see which of your articles or landing pages are the most effective at sending traffic to external sites.
Is my Call-to-Action text effective? Add "Link text" to your new report to see if different phrasing leads to more clicks.

Final Thoughts

Now you know exactly how to leverage GA4's built-in tracking to see where your users are going. By creating a reusable exploration report, you can easily check on affiliate performance, validate your content strategy, and keep an eye on user behavior without writing a single line of code.

Building these reports is a great start, but we built Graphed because we believe getting insights shouldn't require clicking through sub-menus or manually building explorations. Instead of going through all those steps, we allow you to simply connect your data sources - like Google Analytics - and ask questions in plain English. You can ask "Show me my top 10 most clicked external links from the blog last month" and instantly get a live, shareable dashboard. It removes the entire report-building process, so you can go straight from question to insight in seconds.