Google Analytics IP Address Filter

When visiting your own website, do you keep getting a massive spike in your Google Analytics data? If this isn’t helpful – how are you able to tell the difference between you and other direct visitors? What you need to do is apply an IP address filter. This way whenever you go onto your website from the IP you filtered out, it won’t take the visits into account.

For example if you frequently visit your website from work and your home maybe you should consider applying two IP address filters. This way none of your data will be affected by your own activity around your website.

Step One – Find out your IP Address

The easiest way I’ve found to do this is literally to google what is my IP address and in the results it will tell you.

Step Two – Create Filter

To create a filter what you need to do is click on Admin in the top navigation and then select the view you want to apply the filter to. In this case we are applying it to the Master View we just set up. And then click on filters.

Admin > Select View > Filters

To add a new filter, click + ADD FILTER

Step Three – Filter Settings

You will now need to set up the filter settings. Firstly you need to set the filter name (I chose to call it “IP Address Exclude”).  Next you want to select:

Predefined > Exclude > Traffic from the IP addresses > That are equal to

Step Four – Filtering a Single or Multiple IP Address

Here you have two options: you can either create the filter for a one IP address or for multiple.

Filtering a Single IP Address

To filter one IP address all you have to do is copy and paste the IP address (the one you looked up earlier on google) into the IP Address box. This is a great option when all of the internal traffic comes from one IP address.

Filtering Multiple IP Addresses

To be able to filter multiple IP address, the set up is slightly different. Each IP address needs to be separated with pipes (|). On top of this, you will need to precede each dot with a backslash. This way it will be treated as a regular full stop.

For example:

94/.119/.64/.1|94/.119/.64/.1|94/.119/.64/.1

Step Five – Testing Your Filter Works

To test if your filters are working correctly, head over to Real Time Analytics within reporting to ensure your activity is not being recorded, confirming that your filter is set up correctly.