If you’re an experienced digital marketer, I’m probably not telling you anything new yet. But here’s something you might not have realized. Setting up the filters is a two-step process. First you create the filter. Then you turn it on. This is the part that some people miss.
Here’s a video where you can stumble through setting up a filter in Google Analytics with me.
Or a step-by-step description:
Figure out your IP address
Your IP address is how your device identifies itself to others on the Internet. It’s what you’ll use to set up your filter. To find it:
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Do a Google search for “What is my IP address” and use one of the websites that pops up to find your IP address. The “IP v4” should be fine if it gives you more than one option.
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Open any app you can temporarily paste text into. Copy and paste the IP address you found. You’ll need it in the next step.
Set up your filter
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Log in to your Google Analytics account and make sure you’re tracking the right property.
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Click Admin (the gear at the bottom left corner of your screen).
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In the Data collection and modification box, click Data streams.
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Click the name of the data stream for your website. (If it’s a simple website there should probably be just one. If you don’t have a data stream set up, this article isn’t comprehensive enough for you and you should probably go read something else.)
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Scroll down to about the third box on the screen, labeled Google tag, and click Configure tag settings.
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Scroll down to the bottom of that box and click Show more.”
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Click Define internal traffic and then click the blue Create button at the top right.
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Name your rule. I named mine Naomi but you can choose something like Hide internal traffic or anything that suits your fancy.
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Set a value for traffic_type_value. I strongly advise to leave it as “internal” because if you name it something different, that’s one more thing to remember.
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Under IP addresses and Match type, make a selection. If you’re only filtering out one IP address, you should choose IP address equals.
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In the Value box, paste the IP address that you copied earlier.
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To save your condition, click the blue Create button again (at the top right. Don’t click Add condition at the bottom— that will just add another condition.)
You’re done with this step, but you’re not quite done yet.
To activate the filter:
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Close out all the boxes you opened in the previous step. Likely you’ll be brought back to a screen that is mostly blank in the middle, but has a bunch of menu items under Data collection and modification on the sidebar. In that menu, click Data filters.
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Click the blue Create filter button and then choose Internal traffic.
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Name your data filter anything you like. Choose Exclude from the Filter operation dropdown list.
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Next to traffic_type, leave the parameter value as internal (unless you changed it in step 9 above).
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If you want to test your filter and explore more ways to use it, choose Testing under Filter state. I do advise doing this if you’re not sure what you’re doing. But if you’re ready to activate it, choose Active under Filter state.
Two important notes
Don’t leave it in testing mode for too long If you do leave a filter in testing mode, schedule a date on your calendar to evaluate the filter and activate it. Otherwise you’re likely to think it’s active, when it isn’t.
Filters are destructive Google Analytics filters actually stop you from collecting data from the filters you’ve created. They’re not things you can turn on and off. So before you activate a filter, make sure you really do not want to track that type of traffic. If you do, you probably want to do something a little bit fancier and now you’ll have to go read something else. Sorry.
