New to Analytics

Can we block our own visits?

[Jakes Redding]

Just starting to get my feet wet with web analytics. My host provides a web stats application; we'll also use Google Analytics. Question: Can I block visits from within our company from being counted (2 users)? On some days our own traffic can be a significant portion of the whole. We'd like to try and make it more real. I've read through the hosting company's documentation, but didn't see this topic covered.

Thanks for any input.

[arieng]

I know you can do it within Google Analytics. Check out the "Filter Manager" on your "Analytics Settings" page. You can block traffic from a domain or an IP.

[McElvoy]

You will need to know your own IP address or address range, which you can easily get by googling "what is my IP address" and going to one of the service sites that will tell you. If you have a range and not a single IP (i.e. large company) you might be able to identify the range using the whois at www.arin.net. Of course, your hosting people should be able to tell you.

Finally, you ought to consider filtering out "internal network addresses" which are a collection in the 172, 192 ranges and the 10's.
10.0.0.0 through 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 through 172.31.0.0
192.168.0.0 through 192.168.255.0

These may or may not be a factor depending on your hosting situation, but it's never a bad idea to filter them out if you are trying to just get a view of real outside visitors.

[edited by: McElvoy at 9:05 pm (utc) on April 21, 2007]