February 22, 2006

Back in November, Amit Agarwal wrote about preventing Google Analytics from tracking visits via an edit to the Windows Host file. This is an effective work-around for excluding traffic from internal PCs with dynamic IP addresses, but tweaking the Hosts file is a bit tricky for the average user. Plus, if you've got dozens or hundreds of employees, it's really not practical.

Using Google Analytics' Visitor Segmentation, you can achieve the same result, much more efficiently and with a lot less work on your internal users' end.

Create a hidden page on your website, using the following tag:

<body onLoad="javascript:__utmSetVar('internal');">

In the best case scenario, this page is hosted behind a password-protected Employees Only area. You can also use a link, calling the __utmSetVar function via an onClick event, if you so choose.

Now broadcast the URL for this page only to the employees you wish to exclude from Google Analytics' data.

Lastly, create an Exclude Filter with the following criteria:

Filter Type: Exclude
Filter Field: User Defined
Filter Pattern: internal
Case Sensitive: Off

Don't forget to apply the filter to your profile.

Once your employees visit the page, their browsers will be tagged "internal" and their transactions, page views, and clickpaths will be excluded from your data.

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Posted by Michael Harrison, Analytics and Optimization Specialist at 5:29 PM

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Filed under: Analytics
Tagged as: Filters

Comments

fred said:

what if I am tapped as internal and I visit someone else's page that has the same code, would I not show up on their results either

May 1, 2006 3:56 PM

Michael Harrison said:

Fred,

Your "internal" cookie will not, by default, transfer from domain to domain, as Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies. You will only be excluded from the reports of the profile with the filter on it... not by any others.

Hope that answers your question.

May 1, 2006 4:54 PM

Jonathan said:

What happens if our internal users use an alternative browser? Do they need to connect to the broadcast URL again in that browser? What happens if the same internal users are off-site in a conference facility? Or if they reset their cookies?

September 29, 2006 1:38 PM

Michael Harrison said:

Jonathan,

If your internal users are on an alternative browser or if they reset their cookies, they will need to re-connect to the broadcast URL again before they will be filtered out.

September 29, 2006 3:10 PM

David W Snow said:

As I understand this:
1. A cookie is created by the function.
2. For all sites in my Google profile, (I have a main site and subdomains in my profile) GA won't count me UNLESS I delete my cookies.
3. If my site re-prompts me for login info I have likely deleted my cookies and should re-enable this cookie.
4. this will work thru DHCP IP address changes.

This sure sounds better than figureing out whe Verizon changed my address and tweaking the filter.

October 23, 2008 9:51 PM

Michael Harrison, Analytics and Optimization Specialist said:

@David: You're correct. It's pretty much foolproof.

November 3, 2008 2:50 PM

Ratty said:

Hi,

I'm trying to understand exactly what happens when you create the cookies with multiple sites too.

On point 2 here, what happens if you have multiple domains on the same account?

And when you call __utmSetVar('internal'); how do you know which domain you are creating it for?

Sorry to be dense but I can't see the links here.

June 4, 2009 6:12 AM

rutherford said:

Presumably we have to initialise both gaJsHost and pageTracker at the bottom of the hidden page in the usual manner too?

June 8, 2009 9:28 AM

Bill said:

I wasn't sure how to do this because I use Blogger.com. I found this solution and it works:

http://mlawire.blogspot.com/2009/07/blogger-exclude-your-visits-from-google.html