How to Track Exit Links in Google Analytics

Tracking the links users click to leave your website is one of the most valuable, and often overlooked, parts of understanding user behavior. While Google Analytics 4 has made this easier than ever, finding that data requires a few key steps. This guide will walk you through enabling outbound link tracking, creating the necessary custom dimensions, and building a report to see exactly where your audience is heading next.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Why Should You Track Exit Links?

Monitoring outbound clicks tells you what your audience finds interesting enough to leave your site for. It's not about seeing them leave, it's about understanding why and where they go. This information is critical for several reasons:

• Affiliate Marketing: If you use affiliate links, tracking clicks is the first step in measuring performance. Knowing which links get the most clicks helps you understand what products and offers resonate with your audience, allowing you to optimize your strategy.
• Validating Partnerships: For content creators or businesses with sponsored links, this data is gold. You can provide concrete numbers to your partners showing exactly how much traffic you are sending their way, proving the value of the partnership.
• Improving User Experience: Discover what resources your users find most valuable. If you link to a helpful guide on another site and see it gets a lot of clicks, that's a signal that your audience wants more of that kind of information. You can also identify links no one is clicking and remove them to reduce clutter.
• Understanding Engagement: See how many users click through to your social media profiles, sister companies, or support portals. This helps you grasp the full picture of your online ecosystem.

By default, GA4 focuses on what happens on your site. Tracking outbound clicks helps you understand your site's role as a part of the greater internet ecosystem.

The Easy Way: Checking GA4's Enhanced Measurement

Fortunately, GA4 has a built-in feature that automatically tracks outbound clicks for you, called Enhanced Measurement. For most new GA4 properties, this is enabled by default, but it's always a good idea to confirm. A click is considered "outbound" when it leads a user to a domain that is not one of your own (as configured in your data stream settings).

Here’s how to check if it's turned on:

1. Navigate to the Admin section of your Google Analytics dashboard (the gear icon on the bottom-left).
2. In the Property column, click on Data Streams.
3. Select the appropriate web data stream for your website.
4. Under Events, ensure the Enhanced measurement toggle is turned on.
5. Click the gear icon on the right to configure the settings. Make sure that Outbound clicks is checked.

If that box is checked, you’re all set! GA4 is now automatically generating a click event every time someone clicks on a link that leaves your domain.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

The Crucial Step: Registering Custom Dimensions

Just because GA4 is collecting the data doesn't mean you can use it in your reports yet. When the click event fires for an outbound link, GA4 collects useful details as parameters, such as the full URL that was clicked (link_url). However, to filter and organize reports by these parameters, you must first register them as "custom dimensions."

This is the most important - and most often missed - step. Without it, you won't be able to build a useful outbound click report. It's also important to note that custom dimensions are not retroactive, they will only collect data from the day you create them. That's why it's best to set them up now.

Here’s how to create the two essential custom dimensions for outbound click tracking: outbound and link_url.

How to Create the "Outbound" Dimension

This dimension will allow you to filter your click events to show only the ones that went off-site.

1. Go to Admin > Custom definitions (under Data display).
2. Click the Create custom dimensions button.
3. Fill in the fields as follows:
4. Click Save.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

How to Create the "Link URL" Dimension

This dimension will show you the exact URL that was clicked.

1. On the same Custom definitions screen, click Create custom dimensions again.
2. Fill in the fields as follows:
3. Click Save.

Now, moving forward, GA4 will organize your outbound click data in a way that you can easily access in reports.

How to Build Your Outbound Click Report in GA4

The standard Events report in GA4 won't give you the clean view you need. For a detailed list of clicked links, you’ll want to build a custom report using the Explore section.

Here is a step-by-step guide to building a flexible outbound click report:

1. In the left-hand navigation, click on Explore and then choose Blank under "Create a new exploration."
2. Give your report a descriptive name, like "Outbound Link Clicks."
3. In the Variables panel on the left, you'll need to import the dimensions and metrics for your report.
4. Click the + sign next to Dimensions. Search for and import the following:
5. Now, click the + sign next to Metrics. Search for and import:
6. Now it’s time to build the report in the Tab Settings panel. Drag and drop the dimensions and metrics as follows:

You'll now see a table of all URLs clicked (both internal and external) and the number of times each was clicked.

1. The last step is to filter this list to show only the outbound links.

That's it! The table now displays a clean list of all the exit links your users have clicked, along with a count for each. For even more detail, you can drag Page path and screen class into the Rows box underneath link_url to see a breakdown of which pages are driving the most clicks to each external URL.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Advanced Tracking with Google Tag Manager

In most cases, GA4's Enhanced Measurement is all you need. However, there are scenarios where you might want more granular control using Google Tag Manager (GTM). You might consider this approach if:

• You need to exclude certain subdomains from being counted as "outbound."
• You want to capture additional data with each click, such as the clickable text (link_text).
• You want to fire different events based on the type of link clicked (e.g., mailto, phone, affiliate).

If you choose to use GTM for this, remember to disable the automatic "Outbound clicks" tracking in GA4's Enhanced Measurement settings to avoid double-counting. You would then set up a GTM trigger that fires on "Just Links" where the "Click URL" does not contain your own domain, and link it to a GA4 event tag. This path offers more customization but is significantly more complex and unnecessary for most simple tracking needs.

Final Thoughts

Tracking the links that lead users away from your site provides a deeper layer of insight into their journey and interests. With Google Analytics 4, enabling the basic tracking takes just a few clicks, and by registering the right custom dimensions, you can build a powerful report that tells you exactly where your audience is going.

After setting up your tracking, manually building these kinds of reports in GA4's Explore section can still feel like a chore every time you need a quick answer. At Graphed, we simplify this entirely. Once you connect your Google Analytics account, you can skip the whole process of adding dimensions, rows, and filters. You can just ask, "Show me my top 10 most clicked outbound links last month," and we generate the report for you instantly, turning a multi-step process into a single, simple question.