Click Filter Manager Then Click Add Your Filter

1. Include My Site Traffic

Because Google Analytic only requires a single piece of JavaScript on your page, it is susceptible to being copied and placed on another site. This could have devastating effects to your data’s integrity. Here is a simple way to make sure that only your site’s traffic is monitored.

On the Edit Filter screen:

Enter Filter Name: Include My Site Traffic
Filter Type: Select Custom from the drop down menu
Choose Custom Type: Select Include from the radio buttons
Filter Field: Select Hostname from the drop down menu
Filter Pattern: Enter ^yourdomainname\.com$
Choose Case Sensitive: Decide whether you want the filter to be case sensitive or not

Lastly, select the profile you want to apply the filter to and press Save Changes. Now your profile will only accept traffic data from your domain.

2. Exclude Internal Traffic

With Google Analytics you can set what traffic you want to exclude. A good place to begin is with the internal traffic of your business. Luckily GA makes excluding this traffic a snap.

Return to Add Filter Page to add the exclude internal traffic filter.

Enter Filter Name: Block Internal IP Addresses
Filter Type: Select Exclude All Traffic From An IP Address from the drop down menu
IP Address: Enter Your IP Address or An IP Address Range Here

Note: Remember to include regular expressions

For example, if the IP address you are filtering is: 192.168.1.1

Then the IP address value is: 192\.168\.1\.1

Note: Google offers a free tool that will generate the regular expression you need if you are applying the exclusion filter to a url range.

Remember to select the profile you want to apply the filter to and press Save Changes. Now your profile will no longer log data collected from the IP addresses you excluded.

3. Force URI Case To Lower

Add this filter to make sure that you don’t have the same page appear twice in your data because in one instance the URL is upper case and in another it is lower case.

Return to Add Filter Page to create the force URI case to lower filter.

Enter Filter Name: Force URI Case To Lower
Filter Type: Select Custom Filter from the drop down menu
Choose Custom Type: Select Lowercase from the radio buttons
Filter Field: Select Request URI

Select the profile or profiles you want to apply this filter to and Save Changes. Now you can be sure not to have duplicated pages in your Content Reports.

4. Display Full Referral Names

Add this filter to display the full name of the referral site where traffic came from.

Return to Add Filter Page to create the display full referral names filter.

Enter Filter Name: Display Full Referral Names
Filter Type: Select Custom Filter from the drop down menu
Choose Custom Type: Select Advanced from the radio buttons
Field A -> Extract A: Select Referral from the drop down menu and enter (.*) in the text field to tell Google Analytics to select the entire URL
Field B -> Extract B: Leave drop down and text field empty
Output To -> Constructor: Select User Defined from the drop down menu and enter $A1 in the text field
Field A Required: Select the Yes radio button
Field B Required: Select the No radio button
Override Output Field: Select the Yes radio button
Case Sensitive: Select the No radio button

Select the profile or profiles you want to apply this filter to and Save Changes. You will now be able to see the complete referral URL in Traffic Sources > Referring Sites Report.

5. Remove URL Root

Add this filter to remove the http://yourwebsite.com portion of URLs from the Content Report. For example http://yourwebsite.com/mywebpage/myinterests/index.html would now be reported in analytics as /mywebpage/myinterests/index.html which will allow you to see more URL information on what pages your visitors went visited.

Return to Add Filter Page to build the remove URL root filter.

Enter Filter Name: Remove URL Root
Filter Type: Select Custom Filter from the drop down menu
Choose Custom Type: Select Advanced from the radio buttons
Filter Field: Select Request URI
Search String: Enter yourdomainname\.com/
Replace String: Enter /
Case Sensitive: Select the No radio button

Select the profile or profiles you want to apply this filter to and Save Changes. You will now be able to see the more complete details of were visitors went to on your website.

You can also adjust this filter to dig deeper into your directory, but you will then be no longer receive data from your other directories. If you wish to filter down into into another directory. I suggest you create an additional profile containing the same parameters as the account you wanted to apply this filter to. Otherwise you will risk losing data that cannot be recovered in Google Analytics.

Note: You can also use a similar filter to remove the file extensions (.php, .html, etc…)

One Last Note: Applying Filters directly effects the data Google Analytics will collect. You have to be careful and make sure to review your traffic before and after applying filters to make sure they are performing properly. All filters applied will only affect future data. Historical data cannot be retroactively filtered or recreated in Google Analytics.

I have to believe that Adobe and Google would not be releasing anything that wouldn’t help their users. Both are industry powerhouses who are well respected for the quality of their products. Personally, I question if Adobe isn’t utilizing OCR technology similar to its Acrobat Capture software to capture image text in SWF files and make it searchable. I may be stretching, but I would be disappointed if they didn’t go all out to solve this long overdue problem.

Here is a great Conversion University presentation by Google Analytics Anvangelist Avinash Kaushik given about a year ago. I think both beginners and experienced analytics users with both benefit from viewing his presentation. I also recommend bookmarking Avinash’s blog and picking up his book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day. The guy is a guru of the industry and his insights are extremely valuable.

The presentation really details what to focus on and using analytics not only to review reports but to take marketable action from your findings. Enjoy.

Welcome to the Search Marketing Blog for SearchMarketingAds.com. The concept behind this blog is simply to share articles, experiences and knowledge between SEO/SEM professionals and small business owners. It may be a couple days before I am able to add more. But I intend on being very active on the blog. In the meantime, please feel free to look around the site and please bookmark or share the blog with the AddThis button below or in the right hand column. Thanks.

-Robert Patterson

SearchMarketingAds.com