Google Analytics is a fantastic little tool for analysing how to improve your website through visitor behaviour, locality , referal traffic etc but if your IP address is included in the analysis it may make the results quite inaccurate. In this post I discuss how to exclude IP addresses from the analytics.
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If you are using Google Analytics to give you useful information and you aren’t excluding your IP address you may as well shut down your account with google now. If you are at a loss to what an IP address is or how to find it don’t worry, that is why I wrote this post..I’ll help you as much as I can.
What the heck is an IP address?
Think of an I.P ( internet protocol) address is a unique string of numbers that EVERY single digital device you use or own has if they can connect to the internet. It is like a home address for your computer devices so that it can be identified online. This is why you need to exclude your ip addresses you own to access your website as even when you are working on new content google analytics will see you as a visitor and NOT an owner or designer.
How do I find out my IP address?
To find out your I.P address all you need to do is go to www.google.co.uk and type into the search bar”ip address” and it will come up with your unique IP address. It is that simple 🙂
Ok, got it..so how do you exclude your own IP address from google analytics results?
1 . Firstly you need to login to your account.
2. Click “Admin” in the orange bar on the right hand side.
3. You should receive a screen similar to the above one, just check you have the right website open before you go any further from the drop down boxes.
4. In the third column, the “profile” the fourth item in the list is called “filters” click it!
5. Now click on the filters tab and click the “+ New Filter” button.
You will be given a screen like the one below simply give the filter a name that will help you identifiy it is your computer like “home desktop”.
6.The Filter Type raido button to select is “Predefined filter”.
7. The final step is to choose “Exclude” from the first drop down list then “traffic from the ISP domain” and “that are equal to” then enter your IP address you looked up in Google.  Check whether it’s IPv6 or not (if you don’t know leave it unchecked).
8. Click “Save”
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Complete-oooooooooo!! Your account will no longer include you in the analytic results. Hooray!!
…if you don’t have a Google Analytics account yet, don’t worry it is really straight forward and in a future post I will be blogging how to set up Google Analytics for your cms website.