Here’s something sneaky that many people using Google Analytics (GA) might not think about — visits made by internal sources, (e.g., staff, consultants, designers, management) should not be reported. Obviously, a site manager will make hundreds of visits to their website in a week. Including this behavior in your reporting degrades the quality of the data.
To ensure that visits to your site from internal sources are not included in the Google Analytics reports, you must filter them out.
Here’s how:
First | Find Your IP Address
Visit this site to find your IP address. Note: there are likely a number of IP addresses to filter out. If your staff works remotely, ask them for their IP addresses. If you have an IT department, request all of the IP addresses associated with company-related networks.
Second | Set Up Filters in Google Analytics
Visit the Admin section of your GA account
Under the “Account” section choose “All Filters”
Choose to add a new filter
then…
Name the filter, choose the “Custom Filter” radio button, and select “Exclude”
Choose “IP Address” from the “Filter Field” drop-down.
Copy and paste your IP address into the “Filter Pattern” field.
Enter your IP address into the “Filter Pattern” field in the format GA demands (regular expressions.) For example, if your IP address is 176.168.1.1, then enter 176\.168\.1\.1
Choose which account views you’d like to apply the filter to and then select “Save.”
There you go! Now your reporting will be significantly more accurate and meaningful.
If you run into any trouble, check out Google’s help center. They provide more details on excluding a range of IP addresses, configuring advanced filters, excluding referrers, etc.
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