Track Outlinks that use a confirm OK/Cancel

General questions
1

Hello, i use on my websites a JavaScript confirm() included a Cancel → event.preventDefault()-Rule with links <a href="https://external.com/xyz">. It seems, that matomo tracks the click on a link and not the opening of the link. That’s in my case not so good. My interest is further not to produce more data, like with Event-Tracking. My interest is in manage the link tracking including the use of a confirm(). The further thing is, that not all links have included a confirm().

2

It is realizable with

_paq.push(['trackLink', url, 'link']); // 'link' or 'download'

The url must not be a textstring, but a URL-Object. That is realizable with new URL() .

First, disable the link tracking, if it is enabled:

// _paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']);

Second, put the link tracking in the confirm function:

function link_confirm(link_element) {
	
	var link_element_url = new URL(link_element.href);
	
	var confirm_result = confirm('confirm text');
	if (confirm_result === true) {
		_paq.push(['trackLink', link_element_url, 'link']);
	} else {
		event.preventDefault();
	}
}

Yet, not the link click will be tracked, but the link after click the OK in the confirm.

Third, put to all links a onclick event:

<a href="https://example.com/" onclick="link_confirm(this);">example.com</a>

When in the website also are links included, that should not have a confirm, for this you can write a second function:

function link_tracking(link_element) {
	
	var link_element_url = new URL(link_element.href);
	
	_paq.push(['trackLink', link_element_url, 'link']);
}


<a href="https://example.com/" onclick="link_tracking(this);">example.com</a>

When you make all right, it works fine.

Reference: https://developer.matomo.org/api-reference/tracking-javascript