Human Extended

    How to exclude your IP address from Google Analytics

    Dave Pinch
    ,

    As a website owner, you should exclude your own IP address(es) from Google Analytics to keep the data clean and accurate. When you’re working on your website such as testing pages, fixing bugs, etc., Google Analytics can count all that activity as if it were from real visitors. This can mess up your stats, making it look like more people are visiting your site than actually are, or that they’re spending more time on certain pages. By excluding your own IP address, you make sure the data reflects only real user behavior, which helps you make better decisions based on accurate insights.

    There are several major steps to excluding IP addresses from Google Analytics:

    1. Identify the IP addresses that represent internal traffic.
    2. Configure Analytics to tag events from those IP addresses as internal.
    3. Configure a filter that watches for the tagged events and excludes them.
    4. Test to confirm everything is working correctly

    Instructions

    1. Sign into Google Analytics

      The direct link is https://analytics.google.com/.

    2. Click Admin in the side menu

    3. Click Data Streams under Data collection and modification

    4. Select the data stream for your website

    5. Click Configure tag settings

    6. Scroll down and click Show more

    7. Click Define internal traffic

    8. Click Create

      If you already have a filter for excluding IP addresses, instead select your filter and jump to step 11 to add your additional IP addresses.

    9. Set the name of the filter

    10. Set the value of the traffic_type parameter (default internal)

    11. Specify the IP address(es) to exclude

      You can add specific IP addresses or ranges of IP addresses, and you can add multiple conditions, e.g., a condition for each person on your team. When multiple conditions are defined, they are evaluated as “OR”, meaning the traffic_type parameter is set if any of the conditions are true.

    12. Click Create (or Save)

      By completing this step, you have created a rule that tags your traffic as internal. This alone does not cause the data to be filtered. You need to return to the admin screen and enable a filter to handle the tagged internal traffic.

    13. Click Admin from the side menu to return to the main admin screen

    14. Click Data filters under Data collection and modification

    15. Click Create to create a new filter

      If you already have a filter for internal traffic, you can click it to change it.

    16. Select Internal Traffic for the filter type

    17. Give the filter a name, e.g., Internal Traffic

    18. Select Exclude for the filter operation

    19. Set the traffic_type parameter to “internal” or whatever value you tagged internal traffic in step 10 above

    20. Select Testing as your filter state until you are satisfied with the results and then return to change to Active

      You should start with Testing to make sure you have configured everything correctly. Once you change to Active, the internal traffic will be excluded and cannot be recovered.

    21. Click Create (if adding a new filter) or Save (if changing an existing filter)

    22. Go to your website and click around on pages configured with Analytics

      It may take 24-36 hours for the filter to take effect.

    23. Return to Analytics later and confirm the filter is working.

    References

    License

    Feel free to remix this content for your website.

    Licensed under CC BY 4.0

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