Automatically Open all External Links in a New Window in Blogger!

Just today a client requested us that he wish to open all his external links in new window or new tab when clicked and he is not willing to manually do it for each post by adding target="_blank" inside each hyperlink. We wrote down a simple jQuery script that will check all hyperlinks inside your blog pages and will only add the target="_blank"  attribute to links which are external links. It wont  put any effect to internal links of the blog. The script will only detect external hostnames and the moment it finds one, it will insert into the html a target attribute that tells the browser to open the link in a new window. Thus preventing your blog readers from leaving your blog and also helps in increasing your overall pageviews and bounce rate. We thought we shall also share the script with all of you. 

Open all external links in a new tab

Follow these easy steps to add this cool dynamic way of updating all external links.

Note: This method works for both blogger and wordpress blogs, irrespective of platforms.

1. Go to Blogger > Template 
2. Backup your template 
3. Click "Edit HTML" 
4. Just above </head> paste the following script: 

<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'></script>

<script type='text/javascript'>

$(document).ready(function() {

  $("a[href^='http://']").each(
    function(){
     if(this.href.indexOf(location.hostname) == -1) {
        $(this).attr('target', '_blank');
      }
    }
  );

$("a[href^='https://']").each(
function(){
if(this.href.indexOf(location.hostname) == -1) {
$(this).attr('target', '_blank');
}
}
);

 
});

</script>

PS: Please do not add the highlight code if you already have jQuery library source code installed on your blog.

     5. Save your template and you are all done!

Check your blog and click some external links to see it working just fine. :)

How it works? (Optional know-how)

I have added the code twice to check once for links starting with http://  and then for https://. Normally all bloggers blogs have hostnames starting with http://  without the http:// secure protocol. Therefore I added the second instance so that the script may work even for wordpress self hosted blogs.

The yellow highlighted part is where the script scans values inside href attributes and if the value is equal to a negative one (== -1), then this indicates that the hostname is an external domain.

Note: If you equate the href value to a positive one (==1) inside the conditional statement, then all your internal links will start opening in new windows!

Once the condition is met, the script then inserts a target="_blank" attribute inside the hyperlink tag. That simple!

Hope this script proves helpful for most of you. It is extremely SEO friendly and works fine with all major browsers be it IE, webkit browsers or Mozilla.

Peace and blessings buddies! :)