Kineo Australia

Google Analytics – How to filter out your own IP

We’re an analytical bunch here at Kineo, and we like to know where our website traffic comes from and how much we get. We use Google Analytics.

IPs that muddy up your stats

It’s very important that company or campaign website analytics programs filter out traffic from “friendly” IPs (addresses of your computer and work network) – including the site owners, managers, developers or clients. If you don’t filter these IPs out, your stats can be skewed regarding:

• Visits. Your developers, producers and most of all, clients, will visit your site about 300 times a day. Real people wont.
• Browser types. Of course everyone working on the site (and if you’re lucky, your client) uses FireFox. In reality, this might not be the case. An accurate indication of visitor browser share can help you determine whether it’s worth catering to IE6 quirks etc.
• Bounce rates, time-on-site and conversions. These are really important. You and your clients will most likely spend inordinate amounts of time on the site, reviewing content and functionality. On a transactional website, you probably won’t “transact”, which can push your conversion rates down.

Finding and Filtering IPs

Google Analytics allows you to create Filters to exclude visits from your and your client’s computers. (Click “Read On” for more)Generally, everyone in the same office will have the same IP. To make sure these are filtered from Google Analytics:

1. Go to http://www.whatismyip.com and note your IP
2. Log in to Google Analytics (you’ll need to be an Analytics Administrator to complete the steps below)
3. Click the link “Filter Manager” from the Analytics Settings page (Hint: To quickly get there, click the big “Google Analytics” logo in the top left).

4. Click “Add Filter” in the top right area.

5. Enter a Filter Name for this filter e.g “ClientX IP – 12-Dec-08″. The dates let you know when the filter was created. Reasons why, later.

6. From the Filter Type drop-down list, select “Exclude all traffic from an IP address”. The IP address field will appear, automatically filled with a sample IP address. DELETE THIS and enter the correct IP address from Step

You need to add a / (backslash) before every . (full stop, dot)

For example, if the IP address to be filtered is: 202.43.1.1

then the IP address value to enter is: 202/.43/.1/.1

7. Lastly, apply this filter to the relevant “profiles” you have under your account by selecting and clicking “Add”. This is useful if you manage the Analytics for various projects, or multiple clients. For your own IP, you’ll want to add ALL available website profiles. For your clients’ or suppliers’, only the website they’d likely visit.

8. Click “Save” and that’s it

Note: The “IP” address you or your clients/suppliers get from Step 1 is correct… for now. But IP addresses can change. Check with your I.T guy whether the IP is like to change, and if so, you might want to specifiy a “range” of IPs to exclude from Google Analytics (see this helpful Google article).