Huge issue: All links labelled as “external-redirect” in GA4!

Hi @beogeek,

Thank you for reaching out. Just to confirm, is this happening for all of the links on your site, or just the ones created with Pretty Links?

Would it be possible to provide me with a screenshot of what Google Analytics is reporting for those links, and a screenshot of how you have one of your pretty links configured on the Pretty Links Edit page (Wp-Admin -> Pretty Links -> Edit)?

I look forward to hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Hope that helps, and yes this is only for pretty link links, no other link on the site is doing this, I’ve tried disabling caching, cloudflare, etc.

We’ve also checked the hit values and they are as follows

The labelling applied within the value of the hit, seen below, is what is determining the title of the URL.

$params_args    = array(
    'link_text'   => 'external-redirect',
    'link_url'    => $url,
    'link_domain' => $url_components['host'],
    'outbound'    => 'true',

The link text/title is a statically applied value. This is from the created hit that is sent via measurement API to Google Analytics by MonsterInsights. Part of the link variables are from Pretty Links itself.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by beogeek.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by beogeek.

Hi @beogeek,

Thank you for getting back to me and providing that information. Would it be possible to provide me with the URL to one of your pages/posts where the issue is occurring? I got with one of our developers, and they mentioned that Pretty Links shouldn’t cause this so there might be another plugin or some code in the theme that’s altering the link.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Sure, but it’s only happening with the pretty links and only as of recent. All other links are reported in GA4 correctly.

One of the posts is here – https://www.microgreensilo.com/what-causes-microgreen-mold/

The anchor text is adding more fans the pretty link title is Grow Rack Fans- 3 Fan, the target link is https://collabs.shop/8fyo90 and in GA4 its reported as follows, row #10 you can see link label is not set, link text external-redirect.

Now for the other affiliate links from Ascend it appears as if the link is truncated with the same not set and external-redirect applied but the link URL is not actually the entire link.

I’ve spoken to Monster Insights and they can’t seem to locate the issue either but are amendment it’s pretty links as per previous screen shots and code.

Hi @beogeek,

Thank you for that. It looks like whenever I click the pretty link anchored to that “adding more fans”, it’s redirecting me to https://www.bootstrapfarmer.com/products/grow-rack-fans?dt_id=415611%3Bap%3A135483.

When viewing the logs in the browser console, the https://collabs.shop/8fyo90 link (the URL you’re using as the target for the pretty link) is actually performing an additional 302 redirect to the bootstrapfarmer.com site: https://share.cspf.co/X6un4jAx

This may be why Google is recording it as an external redirect since the URL just redirects the user to another page (bootstrapfarmer.com in this case).

You may need to update the target URL for the pretty link so that it links directly to https://www.bootstrapfarmer.com/products/grow-rack-fans?dt_id=415611%3Bap%3A135483, and that should allow Google to pick up the appropriate information.

I hope this helps!

Kind regards,

Hi, we investigated the issue further, yes there is another redirect but that shouldn’t matter. It’s a combination of Pretty Links changes and Monster Insights, here’s what MI support replied with

It looks like there was an update to PrettyLinks that caused us to need to switch which link was being referenced server side. We’ll get it sorted within an upcoming release for you.?

Hi @beogeek,

Thank you for reporting those findings from MonsterInsights to us. I’m not aware of any recent changes to the hook they’re using for tracking server-side redirects within Pretty Links (prli_before_redirect), but I’m glad to hear they were able to locate and straighten out the issue. Please let us know if that update fixes the issue for you.

Kind regards,