Detect external link Click?

Question

How can i detect external link click?

I have a simple question, which may or may not have an simple answer. I need to detect if some of my page's user's have clicked an external link, an ad for example.

My first tought was that i would place an random number of transparent div's over a specific link so an user should click on it until he'll get redirected to a new page but that would be inconvievnant for users and would still be exploitable.

I hope that you guys can help me out and i'll do my best to help you out one day.

Sorry for my english as my native language isn't english.

Answer 1

with jquery, select all external links and an handler for click event:

// Creating custom :external selector
$.expr[':'].external = function(obj){
    return !obj.href.match(/^mailto\:/)
            && (obj.hostname != location.hostname);
};

// Manage clicks on external links
$('a:external').click(function() {
    // do your stuff here, ie send the link href to some server-side script
    $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "some.php", data: "href="+$(this).attr("href") });
});

Answer 2

Hey, you really need to use google analytics. Incase you do not want to do that, check this out. Logging hyperlink clicks on my website