How to track inbound links from your social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, etc)

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You can track referrals from Facebook or Twitter in Google Analytics, but what if you want to track specific links within your social media profiles to measure different variations or placements within your profiles?

For example what if I want to track how many people open briancray.com by clicking on my Twitter profile link? That’s what this tutorial is about and it can be applied to any social media profile, whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, or the myriad of others.

Step 1: Create trackable link

Visit Google’s URL Builder to build a URL that can be separately tracked in Google Analytics. Fill in the spaces as pictured below (changed to reflect your site and social media profile of choice, of course).

Setting up Google URL Builder Tool to track social media profile referrals

Step 2: Shorten trackable link

Google’s URL Builder makes a long URL even longer. To make it appear less daunting let’s shorten it. In the picture below I used bit.ly, which seems like the best choice.

Shortening your tracking URL

Step 3: Add shortened trackable link to social media profile

You’ve got your trackable link and it’s been shortened. All you have to do now is add it to your various social media profiles!

Step 4 (completed next day): Track your URL in Google Analytics

Because we used Google’s URL Builder, everytime someone clicks on that link Google will automatically track it in Google Analytics. Just go to Traffic Sources » Campaigns in Google Analytics and there you’ll find your referrals (Or you won’t if noone actually clicks the link).

Depending on your traffic, give Google Analytics about a day to begin reporting the referrals. They won’t show up immediately.

Campaign tracked link in Google Analytics

26 comments skip to comment form

  1. Ashwin said— 35 minutes later

    This is something new to me!! Very good way to use GA for tracking the popularity of your social media profiles.

    Will try it out soon. Thanks!!

    #1

  2. Brian Cray said— 1 hour later

    You’re welcome Ashwin!

    #2

  3. aravind said— 9 hours later

    wow Brian!
    Brilliant! Never knew about this feature!
    Thanks a lot

    #3

  4. saurabh shah said— 1 day later

    wow ! really different … going to try it out now… thanks for sharing brian …

    #4

  5. Ola Rynge said— 1 day later

    Well, when will we see a URL shortener where one will be able to predefine tracking options?

    #5

  6. Daniel said— 1 day later

    Tracking Codes aren’t good for SEO

    #6

  7. Brian Cray said— 1 day later

    Daniel: Not if you have canonical URLs defined in your meta

    #7

  8. David said— 3 weeks later

    Thank you for getting my brain juices flowing!

    David

    #8

  9. Dan said— 3 weeks later

    Hi Brian ! Awesome stuff !
    Do you have any recommendation for tracking links back to your website from other facebook pages ?
    I have got facebook as a referrer in GA although I dont have a facebook page and when I click on it on GA, it simply takes me to the facebook homepage, i.e. it does not show me the specific page / profile the traffic came from, any suggestions ?

    #9

  10. Brian Cray said— 3 weeks later

    Dan: Try adding the specific page as one of the campaign parameters. Does that make sense?

    #10

  11. Yasser said— 1 month later

    I always have lots of traffic which is not coming from my facebook page and when I try to search in google analytics I find the traffic is coming from places like these “home.php” “profile.php” and i don’t know if it is coming from people shared the links I post on facebook or from links directly posted by users from my site???

    #11

  12. Yasser said— 1 month later

    please not that links I track it by the tool doesn’t form even 10% of the whole traffic coming from the facebook

    #12

  13. Bryan Cristina said— 2 months later

    “Daniel: Not if you have canonical URLs defined in your meta”

    Hah, I wish people believed that here. They listen to everything Matt Cutts says as if it were gospel…except for that. So when they ask for certain things and how much traffic we have, I have to remind them we don’t have that data thanks to them.

    As far as tracking referrals, Google will truncate any parameters because it likes to keep things tight and tidy, so it’ll try to have as few referrers as possible. We use Webtrends, which has an option to keep every page. Trust me, they get to be many, probably beyond manageable, very quickly.

    If you want to keep the pages in Google though, try this:

    http://www.reubenyau.com/google-analytics-hack-obtaining-full-referring-url/

    #13

  14. Tom said— 2 months later

    Great idea, does the tracking code have to be installed on the domain your sending traffic to?

    I tried just creating a profile in GA and then using the link created with URL builder but nothing was recorded?

    #14

  15. Nigel Lamb said— 3 months later

    Excellent tips there. Simple and effective. Thanks

    #15

  16. Frank McDade said— 3 months later

    It allows you to compare the on-page engagement of visitors referred from different social media sites. This is a great way to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and the content you are pushing.

    #16

  17. David said— 3 months later

    This is exactly what I have been looking for. Thanks!

    #17

  18. Jorge Cunha said— 4 months later

    Hi,

    You can use the URL shortener Clop.in that have the features you describe in one easy step and works with the major Analytics providers sucha as Google Analytics, Omniture and others. My Blog is in Portuguese but an image can provide you all the information. Please see http://clop.in/eRMnK4

    #18

  19. Jens P. Berget said— 4 months later

    Wow. This was exactly what I was looking for.

    Awesome tutorial.

    Thanks!

    - Jens

    #19

  20. Solar Sales said— 5 months later

    Amazing post. Thanks so much!

    #20

  21. Andrew Devine said— 6 months later

    Like usual Brian, these are some valuable tips. I always slow down and take notice when you post. I just subscribed to your feed. Thank you for dedication. :)

    #21

  22. Naresh R said— 7 months later

    Sir I have a question to the below mentioned statement by you:
    “You’ve got your trackable link and it’s been shortened. All you have to do now is add it to your various social media profiles!”
    My question is: Where exactly do we add this URL in our profile?say for eg: where in facebook or twitter? pls reply

    #22

  23. roopa said— 8 months later

    Can someone help how to add shortened trackable link to social media profile? (step number 3)

    #23

  24. Games remix said— 9 months later

    Thanks a lot !
    That’s what i was looking for !

    #24

  25. Manoj said— 10 months later

    Awesome tip – What if I want to send 200 message on Linkedin and want to know which of those 200 people actually clicked on my link? Is there an advanced trackable link I could use for social media marketing?

    #25

  26. Rich Hessler Solar said— 10 months later

    Manoj,

    What you want is typically a paid service. But yes, there is advanced tracking available that can do this. I am in the middle of developing it.

    #26

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