Google Analytics Training Introduction- Part 5
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Keeping Data Clean
Filters, Plugins and IP Blocking
Not to repeat myself but setting up goals is the most important part to tracking key information about your website interactions. But when you are deciding on goals you must technically consider different types of goals you can choose from. There is regular expression match, head match, exact match gold types. These types work as filters for URL strings and basically can help you produce better (more meaningful) data.
Now you can study your goal funnel visualization after significant website activity and learn where the friction points are. You may learn that you are making it extremely difficult for your web site visitors to purchase your products. That's no good!
Why would you want to stop certain traffic from showing up in your report interface? That’s actually a question I get asked frequently. Most people that install Google Analytics don’t know that they will show up as a web site visit everytime they are checking thier site. Why does that matter? Well, you aren’t a legitimate visitor (no offense); we really wanted to have pure web site visitor data. To do that Google Analytics offers IP address blocking. You can block single IP addresses or block complete network ranges easily. Now you are looking at the behavior of people arriving to your site naturally.
To help purify your data even more you can use filters. You can use preset filters which are very easy to work with at the click of one button or explore custom filters. Custom filters use a regular expression language. Learning what filters are for and how to use them is the trick. Data flows through filters in Google Analytics a certain way that you must be aware of when using multiple phase filters. Learning the simple use of filters will allow you to bring more of the cream to the top in your business.
Good, better, best, outstanding! Take your pick.
