CWS Web Marketing Blog
How to Filter Your Own Visits from Google Analytics Data
You’ll get a more accurate picture of your web site’s “real” visitors if you filter your company’s own visits to your web site. This can easily be done If you have a static IP address, an identifying web address that never changes when your computer connects to the internet. Usually, you’ll know if you have one because you requested one from your ISP (such as Verizon or Comcast), or your IT person got one for you when s/he set up your computer network.
Once you know your IP address, you simply add a Filter to Google Analytics under “Settings”.
- Click Filter Manager from the Analytics Settings page
- Enter a Filter Name, such as “Exclude My Company Visits”
- From the Filter Type drop-down list, select Exclude all traffic from an IP address
- The IP address field will auto-populate with an example IP address showing dots and backslashes. Enter the correct value, but keep the dots and backslashes; those are necessary for Google to read the address properly.
For example, if the IP address to filter is 176.168.1.1 then the IP address value will be 176\.168\.1\.1
If you connect to the internet with a dynamic IP address (which is the default for most cable and DSL connections), your IP address is subject to change. In some cases the IP address will change infrequently, so you can still filter it from your data, but you’ll have to check the address periodically to make sure it stays the same. You can do this through sites like What’s My IP?
