How to Stop Tracking Your Own Visits in Google Analytics

One of the many things I’ve harped on here on the PuTTin’ OuT blog is the importance of hard data, and Google Analytics is where it’s at (here are some basic Google Analytics website metrics tips if you’re new to it).

But the thing about data is that it’s not worth the flies on a horse’s eye if it isn’t accurate (my apologies for the Georgia girl comparison)!

If you haven’t set up the IP address filter in Google Analytics, I’m sorry to say your metrics aren’t worth—well, you know 🙂

Why Your IP Address Is Killing Your Stats

If you’re not familiar with IP addresses, they’re basically the unique code attached to your internet connection. Anyone logging onto your connection in your office is under the same IP address. The connection you have at home will be different from this, though, as is your neighbor’s and the office’s a floor above yours.

If you or your team/employees/tech people are actively on your website, that means Google Analytics is tracking what they do. Which is not good.

For the most part, what ya’ll do on your site doesn’t matter in the least. You might go to the homepage just to click a specific link, leave a window open for hours, check something out then jet immediately, run through your internal links to test the flow, etc. Then, when you check out your Analytics, all that data is mixed right in with actual organic users’ info, meaning your stats are drastically different from what they really are.

You use analytics so you can see what real users are doing on your site. Your own team is almost definitely skewing your visitor count, and could be dramatically increasing Average Time on Site, decreasing Bounce Rate, decreasing Conversion Rate, etc. Then you see the stats for your Homepage, say, and think Wow, 15% Bounce Rate? That’s great! When in reality your team has a BR of 0% while your real potential leads have a BR of 50%.

How to Filter It Out

This will require you to add a new filter (see my post on how to get (not provided) filters for the steps). Once you’re into the setup, make it look like this:

Then fill in with your IP address and names (the easiest way to find your IP is just Googling “ip address”). Repeat for everyone who works on/with your website. And keep in mind this is permanent data removal, so you may want to add a secondary Analytics profile without the filter first to keep all your data – just in case.

Have some more tips for Analytics Filters or IP tracking? Fire away in the comments!