Google Analytics allows you to segment traffic data so as to get better insights for your website. GA filters can be created for different parameters so as to easily segregate traffic to get a better understanding of referring keywords.
In this post, let us learn how to create different types of filters.
Excluding internal IPs:
Whenever Google analytics is implemented we start getting data after a minimum wait of 48 hours (if implemented properly). That data comprises of all the visits from external customers, prospective customers, clients and internal customers, as well. The data which appears on the dashboard would be the summation of all the visits from everyone. In order to segregate the internal customers/employees’ data from the main data, filters are created in Google Analytics profile. One of the best practices is to exclude the internal IPs at the time of creating the profile so that visits from internal IP addresses are excluded to provide the correct data from the very beginning.
The process for creating the filter which excludes the traffic from internal IPs is as follows:
-First of all, whenever we create any filter, always keep the unfiltered profile to check the accuracy of the filtered profile. Create another profile with the same domain and name it in such a way that if someone else is using that account, they would be able to make out that this profile contains the filters to exclude internal IPs.
-Once the new profile is created, go to the filters and chose “Add new filter” for profile. Choose the name for the profile and in the next row select “Exclude traffic from an IP address”.
-Once that is done, provide the IP for the all the office space with the help of Regex and then save. Now the data will be filtered and will not contain any visits from internal IPs.
Filters for different sections of the website:
Sometimes, we might have a particular section in the website that is going through some changes which may affect the visits and other behavior on that section. It is also possible that we want to give user access to some other agency which is trying to bring some changes in the website. A default profile in Google Analytics will contain the data for the whole website along with the data for that particular section. In order to maintain the security of the data that is not going to be used by some third party, filters are used.
To do this, a different profile can be created in such a way that profile contains the data for that particular section of the website and stops the data coming in from the rest of the website.
The process for this is as follows:
-Go to the “Create filter section” of the profile and chose “Add new filter” for profile.
Filters to stop the data coming from unknown website to your account:
The other day, I was really shocked when I saw a new category in the event section of my website. I tried to remember if I had actually created this kind of event for the website, but could not recollect doing anything like that. Then, I clicked on it to see from which page that particular event was being fired. I copied that URL to the browser and got the biggest shock of the day! That page didn’t belong to the website I was analyzing. It belonged to some other website which is nowhere related to our website.
Given below is the process which I followed to exclude such traffic from unknown sources to my website’s GA profile:
-Go to “Create filter” and chose “Add new filter for profile”. Then give the name of the filter and select the “Custom Filter” from the two options.
-After this, select the “Exclude” option. Then select hostname in filter field and give the host name (with the use of regex) in filter pattern option. And then select “No” for case sensitive. This way any spam data can be stopped from coming in our Google analytics account.
Hope this information will help you set up profiles and filter data according to your needs. All the very best!