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Last updated: 27 Mar 2024

govuk_publishing_components: Google Analytics Specialist Link Tracker

A module for tracking link clicks on GOV.UK.

When initialised, the JS adds an event listener to the <body> of the page with the following listeners:

  • A click listener (for left clicks, control clicks, and "Meta key" clicks - "Meta key" clicks are command + clicks or windows key + clicks.)
  • A mousedown listener (for middle clicks.)
  • A contextmenu listener (for right clicks / context menu keypresses.)

When one of these listeners are fired, they check if the event.target is an <a> tag with a href. If so, it will then check if the link is:

  • A generic download - This is either a href to assets.publishing.service.gov.uk or a href on the www.gov.uk domain pointing to the /government/uploads/ path.
  • A preview link - This is either a href to assets.publishing.service.gov.uk or a href on the www.gov.uk domain pointing to the /government/uploads/ path which has /preview in the URL after the file path.
  • A mailto link - This is an email href that starts with mailto:.
  • An generic link - This is a href that is not on the internal domains. Internal domains include the current hostname, and any domains passed through to the init({internalDomains: []}) array.
    • To calculate this, it checks the start of the href. If we were to use www.gov.uk as an example, it would check if the href starts with:
      • http://www.gov.uk/,
      • https://www.gov.uk/,
      • //www.gov.uk/,
      • www.gov.uk/,
      • (NB: www.gov.uk/ is technically a relative link, as a href must contain a / or http method at the start to be treated as non-relative).
    • It also checks if a href starts with / and does not start with // to determine if it's a relative link like /bank-holidays , but not a protocol relative link such as //google.com.
    • If the href does not meet the above criteria, then it is considered an external link.

Events can either have an event_name of navigation, file_download, or share. Download and preview links will use the file_download value, while generic external links, mailto links, and follow links will use navigation. Share links use share.

Link URLs are stripped of the _ga and _gl query parameters. These are only relevant for cross domain tracking and aren't useful for our click tracking. Link text is stripped of multiple lines and multiple spaces, as this causes issues in the analytics dashboards.

Basic use

//= require ./analytics-ga4/ga4-link-tracker

window.GOVUK.analyticsGa4.linkTracker.init()

Passing a config object with arrays to init() is optional, but passing each array enables extra functionality:

  • Passing an internalDomains array allows you to class domains which aren't the current hostname as internal domains. For example, if you were adding tracking and your hostname was helpforhouseholds.campaign.gov.uk, www.gov.uk links would be classed as external links, unless you add www.gov.uk to this array. The link tracker will automatically add the domain with www. removed as well (gov.uk in this case,) as sometimes www. is omitted from href values.
  • Passing an internalDownloadPaths array allows you to specify paths which should be classified as paths to a downloads route in your internal domains. If the path exists in an internal href, it will be treated as a download link.
  • Passing a dedicatedDownloadDomains array allows you to specify domains which will always be classed as a download link. For example, dropbox.com could be added to always track dropbox links as download links.
//= require ./analytics-ga4/ga4-link-tracker

window.GOVUK.analyticsGa4.linkTracker.init({
  internalDomains: ['www.gov.uk'],
  internalDownloadPaths: ['/government/uploads/', '/downloads/'],
  dedicatedDownloadDomains: ['assets.publishing.service.gov.uk', 'dropbox.com'],
})

<a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/742746/A_quick_guide_to_govt_healthy_eating_update.pdf">A Quick Guide to the Government’s Healthy Eating Recommendations</a>

In the example above, on a left click of the link, the following would be pushed to the dataLayer, using the eventSchema found in ga4-schemas.js:

{
  "event": "event_data",
  "event_data": {
    "event_name": "file_download",
    "type": "generic download",
    "url": "https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/742746/A_quick_guide_to_govt_healthy_eating_update.pdf",
    "text": "A Quick Guide to the Government’s Healthy Eating Recommendations",
    "external": "true",
    "method": "primary click",
    "link_domain": "https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk",
  }
}

Preview links would turn type to preview.

External links would turn event_name to navigation and type to generic link. type can be overridden by putting a data-ga4-attributes attribute on a link, containing a JSON snippet with an alternative type. This is done on 'Start now' buttons to uniquely identify them.

Mailto links would turn turn event_name to navigation and type to email.

Share links would turn event_name to share and type to share this page.

Follow links would turn event_name to navigation and type to follow us

For method:

  • Left clicks are a primary click
  • Right clicks and context menu keypresses are secondary click
  • Middle mouse button clicks are middle click
  • Meta key clicks are command/win click
  • Shift key clicks are shift click
  • Control clicks are ctrl click
  • Alt clicks are alt/option click