Web Design Tip 347: Filter Out Your IP Traffic From Analytics

Okay, this is something every web designer should know to do and do early, like right after hooking up Google Analytics. Filtering out your traffic will help you and your client see real traffic statistics that aren’t skewed by your own data. You probably know what I’m talking about but if you don’t think of how many minutes and pages per visit your rack up when you are developing a website. Here’s how to filter out that traffic:

1. Open Google Analytics.
2. Click the Admin tab (top right).
3. Select the account you’d like to filter traffic for.
4. Click Filters.
5. Create a New Filter.
6. Give it a name. For example, “IP FILTER”
7. Choose “traffic from the ip address.”
8. Locate your ip address (I use an iGoogle widget, but there are lots of ways to obtain your ip address like using command prompt on windows, system preferences on Mac OS, but if your reading this online just try whatismyip.com).
9. Enter in that ip and save. You are now filtering out traffic from that locale. Congratulations!