Basic Analytics Tip: Filter out your own IP

Just a basic tip that’s often overlooked but should be added to any physical or mental checklist when setting up a site: Filter out your own IP, as well as the IPs of your clients. The Google Analytics blog just posted an article that’s worth reading if you’re a Google Analytics user: Back to Basics: Filtering out your own IP address

Don’t forget to filter out all IP addresses that need filtering, like:
* Your office IP
* Your home IP
* Your co-workers’ IPs (if they’re in separate offices or home-offices)
* Your client’s office IPs
* Your client’s home IPs
* Remote office locations, such as Starbucks or co-working spaces

You’ll also want to make sure you’re aware of any IPs that change, such as the average cable or DSL internet connection. If that’s the case, you may want to set a monthly reminder to check your IP and update your analytics filtering, or perhaps use a cookie-based filtering method. The obvious disadvantage with the cookie method, however, is that most of us are constantly testing across multiple browsers and multiple computers or virtual machines. (Just for my own computers, I’d have to set cookies in probably 16 browsers spread across 6 different machines. That gets old quickly.)

Failing to filter out your own IPs will only create frustration and confusion, particularly with low-traffic sites, or sites that are getting a lot of traffic while you’re developing and launching. While it may seem like too much trouble, the importance to an online merchant of having accurate analytics data cannot be understated.