Nice work Shawn!
So I guess you also want to ask them to bookmark that page & only use that from now on...
but does this then work as they move to other pages within the site?
Aren't the tags only good for that pageview?

cheers,
mike

Hi Shawn,

How exactly does this email / filter combo exclude visits to your site via this email link? Does clicking this link create a cookie on that users computer so that if they visit your site via any other method, like a Google search for example, they will be excluded? Interesting post.

Jesse

@Mike:

I suppose you could have them bookmark it, but it's not necessary. The cookie that's created lasts for 6 months (assuming they don't screw it up by coming to the site via a search engine or something silly), and is renewed every time they visit the site. The source is actually not a pageview variable, it's a session variable, so excluding the internal source effectively excludes the entire visit (and each subsequent visit), including all pageviews, from Google Analytics.

@Jesse:

When a user clicks on the internal link you create, it sets a cookie in their browser that set them as coming from an internal source. This cookie lasts for 6 months, and is renewed with every new visit to the site. If your employees visit your site from a google search engine or some other non-direct source, it will indeed erase this internal cookie, but they probably shouldn't be doing that anyway. If they accidentally do, they can reset the internal cookie by clicking on the link again. All things considered, I think it's an easy way to exclude the vast majority of internal traffic.

I'm not sure they would reset the cookie after a google search or another overwriting of the cookie. This method is good, but not good enough, imho.

If you were to add this tag to the link to your website from e.g. your Intranet then every time someone used that link it would renew the cookie.

@Tambu:

Similar limitations will exist no matter which method you use to exclude internal traffic. Using different computers, clearing cookies, expiring cookies, overwriting cookies, needing the user defined variable for something else, etc.

This method works great if your employees are made aware that they should not visit the site from your AdWords ads or organic searches. Shouldn't they know your URL if they work for you? They can use a bookmark.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in a cookie based web analyltics platform, no method is going to be perfect. This is just an easy alternative that will do a great job of drastically reducing your internal traffic from your reports, and anyone can do it.

@KDye:

That is a great way for doing this. It would make sure that the cookie is reset each time someone in the office uses the site. No method is going to be 100% perfect, but I think using an intranet like this is about as close as it gets. I think this works well because of its sheer simplicity.

Sean:

This is a great alternative to adding a cookie to your machine, which is what Google Analytics Help Center and your own blog suggest. However, just remember that if you clear your browser's cookies, this process needs to be repeated.

@Aaron:

Absolutely. If you clear cookies, you always have to reset them if you use any kind of cookie-based exclusion method (as opposed to using IP addresses). Thanks for pointing this out.

This is fantastic Shawn, I had looked into excluding internal traffic before but gave up. Creating a custom page on the site was going to be difficult with our ecommerce provider.

Does this work with the new tracking code?

Thanks for this!

@Thomas:

Thanks, I'm glad this is useful for you. This method will indeed work with the newer ga.js code. Thanks for reading!