Back to Basics: Filtering out your own IP address

If you have a team of people on your marketing team constantly checking the website you're tracking with Google Analytics, filtering out specific IP addresses is one of the ways you can make sure you're not tracking irrelevant visits to your site. Excluding these IPs may help you get more accurate numbers for metrics like average time on site (since your marketing team probably spends the most time on your site every day), your visitors' geographic locations, etc.

To start filtering out IPs, follow the steps below:

1. Collect IPs from anyone in your office (including yourself) that you don't want to track. If they don't know what their IP addresses are, an easy way to figure it out is to go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/.
2. Then, sign in to your Analytics account at http://www.google.com/analytics.
3. If you have more than one account, select the account that has the profile you want to apply the IP exclusion filter to.
4. Once you're on the Profile Overview page, click 'Edit' from underneath the Actions column.
5. From under the 'Filters Applied to Profile' section, select 'Add Filter.'
6. Select 'Add new Filter for Profile.'
   
   
   
7. Enter an easily identifiable Filter name (i.e. 'My IP address,' or 'CMO's IP address).
8. Select the filter type labeled 'Exclude all traffic from an IP address.' The IP address field will auto-populate with an example IP address. Enter the correct value. Remember to use regular expressions when entering any IP address. For example, if the IP address to filter is:
   
   176.168.1.1
   then the IP address value will be:
   176\.168\.1\.1
   
   
   
9. You may also enter a range of IP addresses. For example:
   Range: 176.168.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14
   IP address value : ^176\.168\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$
10. Click ‘Save changes’ to finish.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team