Google Analytics is one of the most popular traffic stats service out there. It’s free and provides comprehensive visitor stats about your site which is all you need from a traffic stats service. You can read more about Google Analytics here.
Your own visits to your sites can mess stats up, specially if your site is an average one which doesn’t get thousands of visitors, so by following the steps below you can exclude your visits to your site or blog from your Analytics stats.
You could do this by blocking specific IP’s from your Analytics account. So first of all you need to figure out how you connect to the Internet. You may be using a static IP or dynamic one. If you are using a static IP you are in luck as the procedure is a lot easier, the best way to find out would be to call up your ISP.
If you are connecting to the internet via a static IP you can visit here or here or here and get your IP address. Note it down or just ‘Ctrl + C’ it.
Now visit your Analytics dashboard, click Analytics Settings and go to ‘Filter Manager’. Click ‘Add Filter’. For Filter Name type something like ‘My IP’, for filter type select ‘Exclude all traffic from an IP address’. Your IP would be in the form of [Number].[Number].[Number].[Number], you’ll have to change it to [Number].[Number].[Number].[Number]. Click Finish.
If you are using a dynamic IP however you will need to use a cookie to ignore your visits, this is because if you connect to the Internet via a dynamic IP connection, the IP changes each time your connection is reset. The Google Analytics help section provides a comprehensive article on how this can be done:
To exclude traffic from dynamic IP addresses, you can use a JavaScript function to set a cookie on your internal computers. You’ll then be able to filter all visitors with this cookies from appearing on your Analytics reports.
How to exclude traffic by cookie:
1. Create a new page on your domain, containing the following code:
<body onLoad=”javascript:pageTracker._setVar(‘test_value’);”>
(Please note that this code is in addition to the Google Analytics tracking code that you have on every page of your website.)
2. In order to set the cookie, visit your newly created page from all computers that you would like to exclude from your reports.
3. Create an Exclude filter to remove data from visitors with this cookie. Follow these instructions http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55494
to create a filter with the following settings:Filter Type: Custom filter > Exclude
Filter Field: User Defined
Filter Pattern: test_value
Case Sensitive: No
Note that using a cookie as explained above is browser specific.
Your visits will now be excluded from your web stats. You can now feel free to visit your site without worrying about your own visits contaminating your traffic stats.
If you are having trouble with excluding your traffic stats please leave a comment.
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[...] Analytics Notes wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptExcluding your visits in Google Analytics March 15th, 2008 Google Analytics is one of the most popular traffic stats service out there. It’s free and provides comprehensive visitor stats about your site which is all you need from a traffic stats service. You can read more about Google Analytics here. Your own visits to your sites can mess stats up, specially if your site is an average one which doesn’t get thousands of visitors, so by following the steps below you can exclude your visits t [...]
Excellant, hopefully I have done it properly now. But how can I double check that it isn’t counting by views?
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Only minus of google analytics is that you must install the tracking code. Doesn’t work on pages like squidoo or hubs.
veryon’s last blog post..Who I Am
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but generally, all site tracking services require you to insert a snippet of html on your website to track it.
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Great tip. I use analytics and a wordpress plugin called Wassup to monitor traffic and the stats can easily get messed up when you are visiting your site often to add posts, make changes, etc.
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This is a good idea – I have always wanted to be able to filter out my own visits from the Google Analytic results. I’m not sure if a static IP is feasible for my situation, however. We have a home network where the IP is shared with a few other family members who may not want a static IP for security reasons even if I could figure out how to change it. I also don’t like the idea of other sites being able to easily block me with IP bans. Fortunately, my traffic at Karlonia has reached the level where my own visits don’t really affect the stats much. I’m receiving mostly search engine traffic anyway, and I can easily sort this out through the keyword listings.
Karl’s last blog post..XBox Red Light Fix: Repair the Ring of Death
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hello karl, i remember karlonia, i think you advertised your entrecard on my site. Looks like your blog has really taken off! congrats! unfortunately i didn’t have time to manage my blog over the past few months but i am back now and hoping to get back on track. Thanks for commenting!
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i think you need to justify posts on your blog, it will look a lot neater. just a hint.
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Great, thanks!
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Couldn’t you just use a proxy?
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Could we just overwrite hosts file and add google dns?
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