Google Analytics won't track Events

Question

Edit: We are not using Google Tag Manager and this question isn't related to it - I want to know how you do this via code on the website and Google Analytics itself - i.e. without using Google Tag Manager at all.

It's been a while since I used Google Analytics but am having a difficult time finding information which will help.

I have a website which includes the following tracking code on all pages of the website:

    <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-***********"></script>

    <script>
      window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
      function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
      gtag('js', new Date());

      gtag('config', '***********');
    </script>

The *** represent the UA- account number.

When I login to the Google Analytics website (https://analytics.google.com/analytics/) data is being collected without any problem.

I want to add Events so that I can track some of the links. I added the following to one such <a> tag:

onclick="ga('send', 'event', 'training', 'contact', 'Course name');"

I clicked on the link a few times and expected that when I went to Behavior > Events > Overview in Analytics it would show an event had taken place. No data is appearing.

I've read the following resource, https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/google-tag-manager-vs-google-analytics/, to try and understand the difference between Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager; I noticed that the script on my website is being loaded from www.googletagmanager.com.

It says at the end of the above resource:

Google Tag Manager does not replace Google Analytics.

So I assumed I can still do everything I need via the Google Analytics website.

When I try and execute the following in my browser console:

ga('send', 'event', 'training', 'contact', 'Course name');

I get an error saying undefined.

So I've read https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31274803/uncaught-referenceerror-ga-is-not-defined but this doesn't help.

I'm finding this quite tedious and wondered if someone can help. All I'm trying to do is track some events using Analytics, which I remember years back wasn't so difficult, but everything has changed.

Answer 1

ga('send', 'event', 'training', 'contact', 'Course name'); is giving a reference error re ga is not defined (due to not using universal -analytics.js)

For global site tag (gtag.js) the following should work for an event

onclick="gtag('event', 'contact', {'event_category': 'training', 'event_label': 'Course name'});"

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/events