Don't spend time trying to analyze your Google Analytics traffic until you've followed this simple guide to excluding your own traffic from the analytics results. When your web site has relatively few visitors, your influence as the author of the web site on the traffic statistics may make them nearly meaningless.

In about one minute you can follow these easy instructions to ensure that the traffic you see in Google Analytics is an accurate representation of the visitors that you care about. You will not need to download any software or browser plugins and you can follow the instructions in the web browser of your choice.

Google Analytics traffic filtering is applied for any new traffic coming in, so your existing statistics will not be changed. If you decide to start another web site, remember this advice as a first step to keep your traffic graphs clean from the start.

The first step to excluding internal traffic from your web site traffic stats is to give Google Analytics something unique by which to identify you.

1. Go to any page on your web site that uses Google Analytics tracking. If you use HubPages, you can follow these instructions without leaving this page!
   
2. Copy the entire one-line code below and paste it into your web browser address bar, entirely replacing the current web address.
   
3. Change the UniqueWord in quotes to something unique, such as your name or username.
   
4. Once you have changed the code, press the Enter key - if your unique word appears in a popup box, it worked!
5. Repeat these steps on all of your sites that use Google Analytics, once per domain (i.e. only once for all of your content at hubpages.com, and once again for yourwebsite.com)
   

javascript:void(function(w){try{__utmSetVar(w)}catch(e){pageTracker._setVar(w)}alert(w)}('UniqueWord'));void(0);

This code tells Google to store a specific word on your computer that will identify you when you are browsing your web site. Don't worry, your unique word can't be seen by sites other than your own.

The Google Analytics Filter Manager is a very powerful tool for filtering your content. The Filter Field dropdown which you will see soon lists all of the different traffic identifiers which you can use to customize your Analytics reports.

1. Go to the Google Analytics Filter Manager (you can always find a link to this page at the bottom of your Analytics homepage)
2. Click the + Add Filter link which is located at the right of the gray bar.
3. Type a filter name, something like My Traffic or Author Filter.
4. In the Filter Type dropdown, select Custom Filter.
5. In the Filter Field dropdown, select User Defined (near the top of the list).
6. In the Filter Pattern text box, type the unique name that you used in Part 1.
7. Finally, in the Available Website Profiles list, select your web site address (i.e. hubpages.com) and click Add » to move your site to the Selected Website Profiles list. Repeat this step for each web site that you track with Google Analytics.
8. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

This simple setup will allow you to exclude yourself from your Google Analytics statistics whenever you visit your web site from your home computer. If you ever switch computers, just follow the steps in Part 1 using the unique word that you've chosen to filter.

If you are not sure whether you set a unique word or do not remember what it is, simply paste the following command into the web browser address bar and hit Enter. Your current unique word will appear in a dialog window which you can then close.

javascript:alert(_uGC(_ubd.cookie,"__utmv=",";").replace(/.*[.-]/,'')||'No unique word');void(0);

Of course, if you see a different word than you set up in Part 2, you should follow the directions in Part 1 to apply the correct unique word.

Unless you have read other articles already and tried to exclude yourself from Google Analytics, you may not appreciate how much simpler this is.

• You can use the same unique word on any computer without ever returning to the Google Analytics Filter Manager.
• You do not need to modify any of the code on your existing page.
• You do not need to look up the IP address for your home network and all other places where you want to browse your web site.
• IP addresses, the codes that uniquely identify computers and home networks, change often and without warning; your unique word will not change.
• It works with both the old and new Google Analytics and Urchin tracking code.
  

If you have multiple authors, you can make a simple addition to the HTML code of one of your author-only pages which will automatically add your unique code whenever they sign in. By making this change you can avoid contacting your entire writing staff with the instructions above while still ensuring that they are not tracked.

1. Add the following snippet to your HTML code, it can appear anywhere on the page.
2. Edit the UniqueWord to something meaningful, such as "authors"

<script type="text/javascript">
setTimeout(function (){var s=function(v){
try{__utmSetVar(v)}catch(e){try{pageTracker._setVar(v)}
catch(e){setTimeout(function(){s(v)},500)}}
};s('UniqueWord')}, 500);
</script>

If you have multiple authors, you may want to track their activity as well, just segmented out from normal users. This is also very simple to do. The instructions below will create a new Website Profile for your staff which you can access from the Google Analytics homepage.

1. Go to the Google Analytics Create a New Website Profile page (you can always find a link to this page at the bottom of your Analytics homepage)
2. Select Add a profile for an existing domain.
3. Choose your web site from the dropdown list and name the profile something distinguishing, such as Blog Co-authors.
4. Follow the instructions in Part 2, but change the selection below Filter Type from Exclude to Include. This will exclude any traffic that doesn't match your unique word.

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