21 November 2009

Excluding your IP Address from Google Analytics

While working on promoting my etsy shop I took a look at my Google Analytics page and noted, with some satisfaction, that the activity at my shop had increased right around the time that I began listing more items earlier this week. Then I began to wonder if any of that activity was actually ME, looking at my own shop and listings as I made changes. I recalled reading once that you could exclude your own IP address from the Analytics, so I decided to find out how to do that.

I will share how I did it here for anyone else interested in doing this for their own website or etsy shop. For the purposes of this post, I am going to assume that you already have a Google account and have the Analytics product already set up and tracking activity to your site or shop.

1. Log into your Google account.
2. Click on Analytics.
3. In the lower right-hand corner of the screen, click on Filter Manager.
4. On the next screen, click on Add Filter, and give your filter a name.
5. Choose Filter Type=Exclude IP Address from the menu.
6. Enter the IP address for your own home computer. Find this number by going to MyIPAddress.com. Keep in mind that this IP address is for the network you are using at the time you visit the site. If you take your laptop to a coffeeshop and use their wifi, their IP address is different so visits to your own site will be logged. I'm guessing this won't be too big of an issue for anyone. If you really want to, you can add another filter to exclude all your favorite wifi hotspots! Just visit MyIPAddress.com again to get the address.
7. Select which profiles you want the filter applied to and add them.
8. Click Save Changes. Done!!

Now you can visit your own site all you want and not mess up the statistics on how many people visit your site!

8 comments:

Wezz said...

Thanks, Jan! That's really good info.

Hugs,
Wezz

Spirit Dance said...

This is unbelievably helpful I have a few sites I am tracking on Google Analytics as well as helping friends tracking their blogs and websites.

I love your approach to your on-line presence and I love your art.

Thanks so much
Gloria

jlcjbuzz said...

Thanks, so much!

You clear directions helped me do this in a snap!

I've been tweeking my blog!

Carol (jlcjbuzz)

stephanie said...

Thanks! I needed this for my etsy shop!

Tricia @ SweeterThanSweets said...

Thanks so much for this info! Just linked to you from http://howsweeteritis.blogspot.com/

Peony and Thistle said...

Wow, Thanks so much for such a brilliantly clear explanation. I'd been wondering how to do this for the past few weeks so I was delighted to find this post! And having it explained so clearly has allowed me to just do it! Thank You!

Phil Wong said...

Thank you so much for this. You have made this so easy to follow! I really appreciate the time you took to post this. :)

Tricia @ SweeterThanSweets said...

Thanks again for this tutorial! Just wondering if you know if your IP address could change even with the same computer and on the same network? I read on an Etsy forum that someone's IP address changed monthly due to their internet carrier. Is that possible??