Two Ways to Exclude Internal Traffic in Google Analytics

Last post, I said I'd talk about goals, but I'm going to put that on hold for a second. More than tracking your goals, you should ensure that the data coming into your reports is accurate. And as such, you should be excluding internal traffic (that's you!) from your Google Analytics reports. There are two ways to do it. Which way you pick mostly depends on whether you have a static IP (the same IP everytime you go online) or a dynamic IP. If you know which you have, skip the next paragraph.


If you are doing this from an office, you have a good chance that it is static. If you are doing this from home, you likely have dynamic. You can ask your ISP what you have. Also ask if there is a range of static IP addresses, which is common for offices. You'll need the actual range for the next part.


(Alternatively, you can go to whatsmyip.org and see what your IP address is, then disconnect from the internet for a while and reconnect, checking the site again. Although there is a chance you'll get the same number with a dynamic IP. I'd check with my ISP to be sure)


The first way: Okay! Let's keep ourselves from showing up in our Analytics reports. If you have a static IP, it is easily done using the "Exclude All Traffic from an IP Address" filter. After you log-in, you can find the Filters menu in the bottom right. Name your filter something like "Exclude Internal Traffic", and select "Exclude All Traffic from an IP Address" from the drop-down.


Now you'll have to put your IP address in there. If your IP address is 63.212.171.10, you'll have to put in 63\.212\.171\.10




For those of you with a range of IP address, you can use Google's IP range calcuator. As they mention if you have 2 ranges, it's likely you'll have to put them in the calculator separately. In the filter, you'll put in something like this


^First_IP_Range$|^Second_IP_Range$


Of course, substitute the ranges the calculator gives you, but remember to keep the ^, $, and | symbols as shown above. Now just add your site profile, and you are all set!


The Second Way (credit is due to the guys over at ROI Revolution for this one): This is a lot easier than the first way, but it admittedly does not work as well. We are going to do this by filtering out by URL and manual tagging.


First, go to the filters page and pick a custom filter. Select the "Exclude" button. Then, in the filter field drop-down, pick campaign source. Third, for filter pattern, pick "internal". You are done! That was easy huh? But from now on, you are going to have to go the URL "http://www.example.com/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=internal". Be sure to bookmark it and urge everyone you want to exclude do the same!





If you click on a link to your page from a Google search or a referring site, you will not be exclude from your reports.


Some of you that have done some research will know that Google has a second (or third in this case) of doing this. It uses the SetVar function, and while this works really well, the SetVar cookie is really valuable and I'd prefer to save it for something else. However, excluding internal traffic is essential, so use Google's SetVar method if you can't do the above. You want your reports to be accurate! I hoped this helped! Questions on implementation? Leave it in the comments.


BLam

An Introduction to Me and This Blog

This blog is going to be dedicated to talking about web analytics, ranging from beginner to intermediate things. As you'll discover as you continue reading (hopefully), I'm pretty new to the world of web analytics. This was my motivation for starting this blog. There are a lot of people that are new to analytics as it becomes a growing industry.

As I discover things in web analytics, I want to be able to share with others. So the topics of this blog will generally gravitate towards more beginner/intermediate things, but expect an evolution as I continue learning more about analytics.

A little more about myself. My current job is my first experience with web analytics, and I've been at it for about 6 months now. The main analytics platform I've been working with is Google Analytics, but there is also an internal reporting mechanism which is used too.

I don't have much experience regarding computer programming and whatnot, just what I dabbled in during my high school days. While it is a plus, web analytics doesn't require much too experience in programming unless you are doing some more advanced things. However, during college, I used statistical software for many of my projects.

So that's me and this blog. I hope that I can open up some insights for those of you new to web analytics (and maybe some more experienced people too!).

Getting Started With Google Analytics

I'm going to start this off with implementation of Google Analytics. There are a number of great tools out there, but if you are just testing the waters on your personal blog, Google Analytics is great (and free!). For those of you deciding on a package for your company, Google Analytics provides robust reporting and statistics. All in all, it's a great place to start and understand what your company goals are. Also, you'll find out looking for in your web analytics package when you are shopping around. So let's start from the very beginning: putting Google Analytics on your website. Doing so is a fairly simple process. Just hop over to the Google Analytics website and create your account to get started. After entering the standard info, you'll presented with the tracking code which will open up the Gates of Analytics Insight for you! (Whether you want to share your info with Google is up to you. It's anonymous and will give you benchmarking stats which can be useful)


Follow the instructions putting the Analytics code on all your webpages just before the </body> tag.


If have dynamic content or just have access to a template, you can add it to your template.


Congratulations! You just set up Google Analytics. Quick and painless, huh? Data should be pouring in, and you'll be able to see it in 24 hours! (I know it's exciting, but you have to be patient!) In fact, if you haven't already you should probably think about the purpose of your website. What pages do you want your visitors going to? For e-commerce, it will be a 'thank-you for your purchase!' page; for blogs, maybe the about me section. I'll let you think about it because we'll be setting up goals and funnel reports next time!