Custom Filter Definitions

Time to Take Control of Your Filters

Google Analytics 10 Hour Video Course
This is where the real trickery and power is in Google Analytics. Advanced filters are constantly evolving. They use a regular expression language to work. If you have prior knowledge using regular expressions it will definitely come in handy.

Custom filters are the most advanced aspect of Google Analytics. They are a way to refine your data reporting to focus on ROI, see particular traffic sources or clean up your data.

1) Once you select the “custom filter option items 2-5 appear.

2) More preset filters to choose from. You can only pick one at a time.

3) Use this pull down menu to choose the filter field you want.

4) Enter the filter pattern you want to use.

5) Specify if URL is case sensitive.

Advanced Filters

Learn About Advanced Filters

You can use more than 1 filter to accomplish 1 job. In the case below I am using Part 1 to a 2 part filter. What I am trying to find out is what keywords are triggering what ads in my AdWords account. This information is not available in any Google Adwords tools unless you pull out a magic filter.

1) Filter Name: Name your filter.

2) Filter Type: Specify Type. You need to select “Custom Filter” to see options below.

3) Advanced Option: Select this option to trigger advanced options below.

4) Field A -> Extract A: Uses regular expression patterns.

5) Field B -> Extract B: Uses regular expression patterns.

6) Output To -> Constructor: this is where the data extracted from Field A & B are united.

7) Field A Required: Choose yes and Google Analytics uses special matching rules.

8) Field B Required: Choose yes and Google Analytics uses special matching rules.

9) Override Output Field: Permanently changes the value of constructor.

10) Case Sensitive: If URLs are varying in upper and lower case.

Filters and Your Business

You don’t need to be a coding genius to use advanced filters in Google Analytics. The most important aspect to grasp is what specific filters do you need for your business. For the second part it looks like this:

The 2 of them together look like this in your profile summary page.

Finally, the custom reports that are a product from this filter look like this in your AdWords Reports.


Google Analytics 10 Hour Video Course
The keywords that are highlighted in brackets are what’s new. Take a look at the entries I highlighted. On the 6th entry we can see that the user entered “SEO company” into the search engine which triggered the SEO advertisement. In this analysis we can see that search engine optimization, SEO Toronto, and Toronto SEO are the best keywords based on pages/visit, time on site. Unfortunately there is not much data here to make data driven decisions but it is always good to check your data extracted from custom filters within 24 hours.

In due time this filter will tell us where my Adwords advertising is strong and weak. Additionally, we may spot keywords that should not be triggering ads. This filter can also help uncover negative keywords for Adwords.

Helpful Resources for RegEx

Be Sociable, Share!