Helpful Google Analytics Filters

A Few Good Uses for Google Analytics Filters

Prevent GATC Code Theft

Your tracking code is visible to anyone on the internet. All they need to do is “view the source” of your webpages that have the GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code) installed and paste it into another webpage. Now your data is skewed! Is there anything you can do to prevent this form happening? YES!

This simple filter serves to instruct Google Analytics to only record site visits to your website.

1. Add new Filter for Profile
2. Name your filter “Traffic to Site”
3. Choose Custom drop down
4. Choose “Include”
5. Choose Hostname in filter field
6. Enter ^yourdomainname.com$ in filter pattern

When You Are Finished

” Data Magic- Become a Wizard of Filters ”

Google Analytics Training Video Series

Filters…Enhance the Data You Collect!

Some of the darker mysteries of Google Analytics filters is slowly being uncovered. Finally I am seeing interest in one of the most fascinating features of this software. Filters make you think about what is important to you when implementing an analytics strategy. They use a regular expression coding language which is second nature to the elite few but misunderstood by the masses. That is the reason most people choose the stand clear of advanced filters. Do you know what you are missing? I aim to answer that exact question in this filter library.

You are just going to get a quick brief here, the rest of this learning pad is a pure collection of the best Google Analytics filters I have tested. If you are new the filtering your data you are probably wondering where to start. What is a filter and how can it help me?

Blocking IP Ranges

If we only knew the control over the data you have at your fingertips! A good example is “IP address ranges”. Can you imagine having to block all the IP addresses in your corporate network? You surely want to prevent your own people from populating your web analytics data because they are not real visits. The expressions needed are difficult to write, but you can easily use helpful tools to help you write the expression needed to filter out a complete network of IP addresses.

You no longer need to indulge yourself in the deep knowledge required for creating complicated expressions. Google has created a free tool to build the expression for you. All you need to do is enter the beginning IP address and the end in the range and this tool will create the expression for you. Now your data is more truthfully populated with genuine visits, behavioral trends and patterns are going to be more meaningful. If you followed my recipe for set up you can compare the “Raw” Profile to the “Master (filtered)” profile and see the difference. You may want to visit my recommended plugin page first so you can compare profiles with a special Google Analytics plugin.

What Else Can I do with Filters

You can manage and segment your incoming data so it tells you more about what is important to you. It may be pay per click, email campaigns or graphic design changes, the list is almost endless…filters are your magic wand to custom report data.

To Give you a Few Ideas You can:

• Rewrite URLs
• Isolate, exclude, or integrate sub domains
• Block IPs
• Gain a better understanding of referring keywords
• Focus on paid traffic
• Find out the exact page on Google people come from
• Exclude your internal traffic
• Create predefined filters
• Write your own detailed custom filters with regular expressions

When you execute a filter it is immediately applied to inbound data. Any new filter you create will not affect your historical data.

• More from Google on filters
• Google on Advanced filters

Important to Note

It is important to note that more than 1 filter can be used in your profile. When this happens they often depend on each other. The order they appear in needs to be carefully checked. Make sure all cylinders are lined up. Like an engine in an automobile, the firing order is critical to many multiple parts advanced filters. When creating an advanced filter you should test it in your test profile first.

Google Analytics Training Video Series

The Secret to Filters

The secret is to gain knowledge in what filters expose the most meaningful data for your business. You can use this library to get you well on your way. It is updated daily with the newest filters for Google Analytics. No filters are listing in this library with being tested first!

” Block Unwanted (internal) Traffic ”

Blocking IP Addresses From Google Analytics

• Go to this website http://whatismyip.com/
• Highlight your IP address and copy it (cntrl C)
• Copy and paste in the IP address into Google Analytics settings moduleNote: you need to enter the IP Address like this “63.212.171.” (Add backslashes)
• Repeat process if necessary. E.g. Home, your web team or other administrative locations. If you are on a network you can block IP ranges by using a handy free expression builder tool Google provides.

Why Block IP Addresses?

Once we do this, Google Analytics does not pick up any of these IP visits in tracking data. It takes a few minutes to do this even if you are part of a network that has a range of IP addresses. All you will need to determine is the beginning and end of your IP address range.

I encourage you to use this small set up task to your advantage, especially if you have employees, web design firms, SEO companies and other non-legit traffic sources. We ideally want to understand the behaviors of genuine visitors that find your site.

• How did they find your site?
• Who sent them?
• What did they do?
• Where do your site visitors originate?

” URI Forced Lowercase ”

Is it true good things come in small packages? Here is a 30 second filter solution when you want only one version of your URI (Uniform Resource Indicator, you know the part that follows the backslash after domain extension). What happens when UPPER and LOWER case URIs are present in reports is 2 versions exist. You can force them to be all lower case with this filter.

Google Analytics Training Video Series

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