I try not to get into the techy stuff too much but occasionally I want to provide a couple of necessary tweaks to keep your Google Analytics reporting accurately and tracking all that valuable information needed to help grown your blog. These pointers are for those that have already set up and are tracking. If you’re not already to this point, I would highly suggest setting up an account. The volume of data available is unprecedented and the price ($0) is right. Also assumed for sake of content length is that you’re on a windows machine but most of this will work on any platform

Today’s Tweak is on setting up Analytics Filters to limit out traffic from your own IP Address. Read on and please don’t hesitate to ask any questions or make comments below.

Filters:
Yeah, big numbers look good but what if you develop/redesign/tweak regularly. You end up with blog stats through the roof on those days and craters on the rest. Let’s limit out any and all traffic from the places you do the most development work from. This provides for more accurate reporting on traffic, pages per visit and time on site.

Step 1 – Identify your IP address. I typically open a command prompt and drop an IPConfig. Fear not, non-techies, this is an easy one. Click Start, Run, and type “cmd” into the blank (with no quotes). Hit enter and you’ll see a little black window open. At that prompt type this: “ipconfig /all” again, without quotes, and hit enter. Look down the list for a line that says “IP Address” and write down the number to the right of it, possibly looking something like 192.168.0.1… type exit and hit enter and the window will close.

Step 2 – Setting up your filter. Open Google Analytics and click Analytics Settings in the upper left corner of the screen under the logo. Find your website profile and click Edit to the right of the name. Roll down to Filters Applied to Profile and click + Add Filter to the right. This is where we limit out any traffic coming from the IP Address that you just wrote down in Step 1. Make sure the radio button next to Add new Filter to Profile is clicked and give the filter a name. I called mine Local Traffic. Next to Filter Type use the drop-down box and select Exclude all traffic from an IP address then enter the IP Address you wrote down from Step 1. Click Save Changes and you’re all set.

As with all Google changes they disclaim suggesting that changes could take hours but you should see the effects take place on the next day’s report. Congrats! You are officially reporting accurately without your own interference!