Google Analytics has this function under Content Overview - Site Overlay.

Thanks jbinbpt but it wasn't quite the same as that. The difference was that it showed where users clicked even if that wasn't on a link.

We found from this report that loads of users were trying to click on our address even though that did nothing, so we decided to make it into a link after that.

this sounds like the heat maps used for eye tracking studies.

I think you're right, a couple of people have suggested the term 'Heat Maps' or 'Click Maps' which is helping with my search.

Thanks :)

CrazyEgg is one. Especially the new Confetti view, which is more interesting than the blobs it also does.

Old topic, but I'm currently using clicktale for this

Crazy Egg's new confetti map is superior to the blob map. There are however issues with some Flash pages, but not all.

Are these programs are tracking clicks everywhere on a page whether or not there's actually some type of HTML element at that location?

If you have a big block of white space and someone clicks in there are some of these programs tracking the exact location of the click?

another similar site would be clickdensity. By the way, has anyone here tried using heatmaps on ajax pages?

>>>If you have a big block of white space and someone clicks in there are some of these programs tracking the exact location of the click?

I'm pretty sure, yes. For instance, I found that for one site a significant number of people were clicking on the decorative photo illustrating an article.

If you have a big block of white space and someone clicks in there are some of these programs tracking the exact location of the click?

Yes. We went for Crazy Egg in the end as they do a free trial, and we're now paying for more page impressions. With Crazy Egg you have to check a box if you want to track all clicks (rather than just on links) and it warns you that it slows down the report generation. Ultimately worth it though I think.

For instance, I found that for one site a significant number of people were clicking on the decorative photo illustrating an article.

It's really interesting for stuff like that. I've found in the past people try to click on (postal) addresses. It's tempting to start making everything on your site into links though! I would imagine however that creating too many unobvious links might create more usability issues than it solves.

In interpreting Crazy Egg confetti diagrams we're pretty sure that a lot of the links on unclickable space are on purpose - i.e. are the user's way of activating that browser window so they can use the scroll wheel to go up and down the page. I won't go into the reasons why we think so from the Crazy Egg experiments, but it's borne out also by user studies. So, for those people, yes, making everything clickable would be a big problem.

A nice feature of the Confetti view is that you can switch among different color codings (15 available colors) of the individual dots --- like, the top 15 referrers, or even "how long they were on the page before the click happened."

we're pretty sure that a lot of the links on unclickable space are on purpose

Good point :)

Because of this WW item, we decided to do a little close testing of Crazy Egg today, watching exactly what happens using Fiddler and Firebug, as well as looking at the Crazy Egg results. We found a couple of things ... first, the tag fires erratically for some reason --- definitely not all the clicks get recorded or even sent to Crazy Egg. Second, on our Crazy-Egged pages we found whole blocks of real estate that seemed immune to the tags --- this includes clickable and unclickable areas. We've seen this before in the CE results --- buttons and panels that are completely empty. Now we know that the tag just doesn't fire for clicks in those areas. We don't know what it is in the page code that "protects" these areas and will try to find out. Hopefully Crazy Egg will get back to us with an answer.

We still plan on using Crazy Egg, for sure. We can live with the blank spots. We absolutely won't be trusting CE's estimates of visits or clicks or the ratio between them, however.

I received a reply from Crazy Egg almost immediately, regarding the areas on pages that seem to be protected from Crazy Egg.

"Because you have this within a <dl> (a definition list), and you have links within it, our system is unable to accurately track the clicks and display them.

The best thing to do would be to use a more standard method of placing the items within that box, and also setting up the links. Removing the <dl> and using standard HTML / CSS should solve your issue."