Blocking Traffic from Google Analytics – Why Didn’t Somebody Tell Me?
Do you run google analytics? Good. Did you know you have to block yourself from appearing in the data? No? Well, let’s go over how to do that.
Since our launch, the subject of analytics seems to be a frequent question from print studios and artists alike. How to install it, why it’s important, how to set up goals, and even how to read the reports.
Succinctly, the question seems to be, why should I care, and how is it going to help me make more $ for my business?
To answer, we are working up a series of posts from the basics to advanced and going to be rolling them out over the coming weeks. Spoiler alert — you need to care, and it’s going to help you make smarter decisions and more $ in your business.
In today’s post, the “Why didn’t somebody tell me?” title refers to the necessity of blocking yourself, your office, and your employees, from your Google Analytics data.
First, if you have not set up GA (yep it has fancy acronym), then see our post on how you do that for your ASF store. If you are not on Art Storefronts, then Google a tutorial and get it up and running.
Why is this important?
You are gathering data with Google Analytics. This data is going to guide your future business and marketing decisions. If your data contains traffic from yourself and your employees visiting your website, it’s going to skew your numbers.
So let’s stop that from happening. You have two options.
Option 1
If your business consists of more than just you, meaning you have employees working for you (read multiple computers), then I recommend this route.
Why didn’t somebody tell me I had to block myself from my Google Analytics traffic?
You know, the reality is they didn’t. They didn’t tell me either. I had to learn the hard way. So let’s learn how to do it right from the get go.
So, we are going to walk through how you block yourself, your employees, your entire office from showing up in your Google Analytics report and we’re going to do it with a filter.
So you can see, I’ve got Google Analytics pulled up here. I’m gonna go ahead and click on my profile. I’m gonna go ahead and go to “Admin,” from “Admin,” I’m gonna go over here to “Filters.” So what we’re gonna do is we’re going to block all traffic to your website from appearing in Google Analytics if it comes from a certain IP address, and that’s the way that we filter out the traffic.
So, what we do here is we go “New Filter,” and I usually call them “Block office traffic.” We’re gonna go in and select the filter type. In this case we’re going to exclude – when it says “Select source or destination,” we’re gonna say “Traffic from the IP addresses,” so let’s go ahead and click that.
And then when it says “Select expression” – “That are equal to.” Now, in here, go ahead and just paste your IP address, which you obviously have memorized – we all do. Yeah, we don’t. So what you want to do is, you just do a Google search, “What is my IP address?”
And Google is pretty awesome, Google will tell you. You’ll also see the first result is “What is my IP?” and they’ll tell you what it is, too. So if you really feel like double-checking, you can say, “Okay, is that my IP address? Is that my IP address? It is.”
Click it, copy it, and paste it in here and click “Save.” That’s it, done and done.
Now all traffic that comes to your website from those IP addresses will be blocked. Now nine times out of ten, even if you have a decent amount of employees, you guys are all operating under the same IP address, so that will really take care of it – so – a quick tip to block the traffic from you and your employees in your office from appearing on your Google Analytics report, that was a mouthful to say but it’s a really important step because you want that Google Analytics data to be clean. Okay.
Option 2
If you are an individual artist, or if you are a digital nomad and work from everywhere; coffee shops, your house, airports, tropical beaches — and believe me we are all envious — then use this option.
To answer your question, yes, it works on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, IE, and even Opera.
All you have to do is click the link, click the button, and follow the process. It will take care of the rest.
Rinse and repeat for all of the computers you use. If you want to be really thorough you can do both option 1 and option 2.
Pro Tip: If you are working with outside contractors, say web designers, marketers, or an offsite bookkeeper with any regularity at all, then its a good idea to block them as well.
Have a great weekend.
This has been a…
[Quick Tip Friday – Print & Art Business Tips in 5 Minutes or Less — #qtf 02]
Leave a Comment:
Robert Mark says
Thanks for the post. It’s also very important to note that if you don’t block yourself, AND if you want to profit from Google ads on your website, you will get yourself blackballed from ever using GoogleAdsense in the future. Google regards your clicks on your own website (and especially ads on your own website) as a terms of service violation. Once they kick you out of the AdSense program, it’s almost impossible to get back in.
Great point Robert. I didn’t even think about the Adsense side. Although I have had Youtube accounts shut down, and your right. Once you get shut down that’s it. Google is not so friendly when it pertains to reinstatement.
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