How to filter internal traffic in Google Analytics

Google Analytics is used to track how a visitors interact with our website. When our Google Analytics report contains data about internal and external traffic on our website, the statistics will be incorrect, as it is adversely affected by our own visits (internal traffic). This includes from our home, our office, and anywhere else we hit our website. It may also include our co-workers, or any member of our team. But we can stop Analytics from tracking our internal traffic by filtering our IP address.

Filtering internal traffic is even more important in early stages of our websites’ life. While our website has little traffic and we spend more time reviewing each of our web pages or performing unfinished development tasks, our activity is a greater percentage compared to the total activity. Not only changes noticeably the number of visits per session, but also the number of page views per visit, bounce rate and average time spent per user among many other parameters.

There are several methods to filter out internal traffic in Google Analytics. In this guide I’ll show how to use Google Analytics native feature - Filters. Filtering a single IP address is easy and takes just a matter of minutes to set up. For filtering a range of IP addresses, please read another my article here.

Note that the method implemented bellow is only applicable if you’re using a static IP address. A static IP address is an address that doesn’t change. Most regular users use dynamic IP addresses instead, which change over time and are assigned by the network when they connect. Also, your IP address doesn’t travel with you, so if you connect to your website using another wireless network, a static IP address filter wouldn’t work. Your activity would still be tracked and counted by Google Analytics.

Implementetion

1. First, log in to your Google Analytics account.

2. Select the website for which you want to create the filter. It can be selected from the list in the upper left corner of the page.

3. Click the Admin button (image of the cog) at the bottom left corner of the page.

1. Click on the Filters.

1. Click the + New Filter button.

1. Let’s enter a name for the filter in the field “Filter Name”. I entered “Exclude internal traffic”, but if you’re adding several filters that relate to each other, such as your home IP address and work IP address, then get the filters a name that distinguishes them.

1. Select Predefined from the predefined “Filter Type”.

1. Select Exclude from the “Select filter type” dropdown list.

2. Select traffic from the IP addresses from the “Select source or destination” dropdown list.

3. Select that are equal to from the “Select expression” dropdown list.

4. In the field “IP address” enter the IP address that you want to exclude. The easiest way to find the public IP address that you’re using is by searching what is my IP address in Google Search.

5. Click the Save button.

Conclusion

That’s it, we’re done. We’re now filter the internal traffic. So simple isn’t it?

One way to test our filter is to browse to a private page that no one else would have access to, and see if any traffic to that page gets recorded in our Google Analytics report.

If this article has helped you then please leave a comment

Thanks for reading!