Tracking affiliate outbound links

[iGamingMarc]

Hi guys,

Just wondering what everyone uses to track their outbound affiliate links/clicks?
I am using a wordpress plugin called easyaffiliate links, and fairly happy with it.
The major issue is trying to match up the clicks reported by the plugin against the clicks reported by the merchant. They are completely and wildly off.

I wanted to try a different option and see if I could get the figures a little closer

[MJM]

We use Clicky, only because we can't be bothered to change it - but works fine. I think most use Google Analytics goal tracking.

We also use GeotargetingWP for the cases where we need geo specific links under one /go/ link - and that also provides some click tracking.

[casinoportal]

I use the Thirsty Affiliates Pro plugin, it's pretty good and you can also geotarget your links. You can view reports for each link by day, week, a month or a custom period. One problem I have is bot clicks, you may be seeing every click your end, but some affiliate programs will filter non unique clicks or show them separately, which may be resulting in the inaccuracy your talking about.

[iGamingMarc]

Thanks so much guys ,

Let me swap a few links out and use these options and see if it makes a difference.

[mickyfu]

I was using pretty links, same issue wildly off stats.

[gil.langelaan]

Thanks for your question and all replies!

It was helpful.

[xecutable]

Usually many bots do not respect the "nofollow" rule and will follow those links which for a lot of server site counters, counts as a click. In that regard Analytics uses .JS which bots can't run js.

Once you've cloaked all your external links as internal links aka yoursite.com/out/whatever you can easily set up a goal filter in analytics and keep track of those clicks. It's easy to see what's real and what looks suspicious as you can see the source (search engine, referral, direct etc), date, time, country, city , browser, device, provider etc etc etc.

This however might as well be inaccurate as some users will have java off and would not track. However the margin for error at least from my experience seems a lot less, than those server side hit counters.

If you are on wordpress, plugins like Monsterinsights can make your life much easier as they allow analytics to track a certain URL string for example just /out/ and classify it as an event. Then in Analytics under Behavior->Events you can check and see your daily clicks.

[Betarena]

I also use Thirsty Affiliates Pro.

Despite being a bit heavy on loading, something, I’ve detected on pages where it’s loaded.

It is convenient and has some features that are quite useful for this type of measurement.