If you are using Google analytics you have probably seen that google includes your own visits into the analytics data. If you hardly ever visit your own hubpages or sites then you probably do not need to worry. But if you happen to be like me always testing, adding, editing and so forth, then you probably need to exclude your own visits from the analytics data. It can skew your results quite a bit, specially when you have low traffic.

From your main analytics view find the relevant entry and click edit. See image below.

On the next page scroll down until you get to the filters part and click add filter.

Now there are two types of filters that we can use. Actually there are many types, but I will keep it simple with just two types.

Type 1:

Excluding your IP address.

This will work mainly if you have a static IP address. That is one that does not change often. If unsure just use Type 2. In order to exclude your IP address you first need to find your IP address. To get your IP address head over to www.whatismyip.com

Your IP address will be listed at the top. Take note of it or copy it.

Back at your google analytics page, select "Add new Filter for Profile". put in a name for the filter, use anything you like. In filter type choose "exclude all traffic from an IP address".

Now all you have to do is to enter your IP address, unfortunately google decided to make this a little tricky, but not much.

You see you need to enter a backslash ( / ) in front of every dot ( . ) you have in your IP address. There should be 4 of them. For example if your IP address is 127.0.0.1 then you would enter 127/.0/.0/.1

The reason for this is you can enter regular expressions in the box to do some cool things but that is outside the scope of this article. And hit Save changes.

The second type of filter you can set is what I call the cookie filter. In this you simply set a cookie on your own browser and make a filter accordingly.

For setting a cookie it is easiest (for me at least) to get the firefox cookie editor plugin. Install it restart firefox and continue reading. For those with other browsers you can look around to see if there is something similar. Or you could get firefox. Alternatively there is supposed to be a javascript way of doing it by putting a snippet of code in your address bar, unfortunately I can't get it to work right now, so Im not going to recommend it.

Once you have the plugin installed and have  restarted firefox click on Tools and then Cookie Editor. You should get the window below.

Click on Add and you will get to the screen below

Add the following data into the form. You can change the Name field or content field but you will need to change the field in analytics accordingly.

Name: myself

Content: myself

Host: hubpages.com (this is for hubpages, use your own domain for other site)

path: /

Send for: "any type of connection"

Expires: choose a date far off into the future

And hit save. (check screenshot below if unsure).

Close the cookie Editor and getto the analytics page.

Choose a filter name ( can be anything) and Enter the following data:

Filter type: custom filter

Choose "Exclude" below it

Filter field "Custom feild 1"

Filter pattern "myself" (without qoutes)

Case sensetive: No

And Hit Save

Thats it the statastics should exclude your own visits now.

Note: Whenever you delete all cookies or clear all cookies you will need to add the cookie again (only in cookie editor, not in analytics)