Do you exclude yourself from Google Analytics tracking?

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   fritteritterposted 14 years ago

   If you don't have much traffic to your hubs it's easy to get your hopes up over your traffic statistics when in actuality, you are the primary contributor to those numbers. I just figured out how to exclude myself yesterday, I wish I had known how to do it when I started my blog last year because I really had trouble with inflated stats at the beginning.
   
   If not, you probably should exclude yourself, it only takes about a minute or two. Existing info on how to do this had too many confusing steps and options and even the related info on Google's help pages is outdated (or at least it doesn't work on HubPages). So I hubbed up some easier instructions
   
   I don't think Analytics gives you any way to filter out old traffic, but it will at least inspire more confidence in your statistics going forward. Stats on common pages like your profile and things like "Avg. Time on Site" are pretty useless when you are the primary contributor

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   yoshi97posted 14 years ago

   Excellent info!
   
   Absolutely, one should exclude themselves from analytics as it allows a person to recognize their true potential.

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3. 81

   fritteritterposted 14 years ago

   I tried this yesterday as well as standard IP filtering and even IP filtering didn't have any effect on past stats so I guess it's really important to follow those instructions as soon as you start a new site (or as soon as you join a new publishing site like HP).
   
   I can definitely see the difference now though when I'm not tracked on my own articles - the "Avg Time on Site" dropped from 9 minutes two days ago to 2 minutes yesterday so I was really affecting that particular statistic.

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   anime_nanetposted 14 years ago

   But you exclude yourself ip-based or you use some kind of sofisticade technique that detects your loggins no matter what pc you use?

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      fritteritterposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      My IP changes enough that it's a pain to keep up with it. You don't really know when it changes unless you check it daily... and each time it changes or you move to a new IP (weekend trip or something) you have to log into Google Analytics to fix it.
      
      I have a browser cookie set which identifies my browser, then Google ignores any request with that cookie. That way, if I switch to a different computer, I just add that cookie if it's not already there, no need to go to Google to change the Analytics settings.
      
      As far as setting the cookie, it's just a copy-paste command that you paste in your browser address bar and all you need to do is plug in a unique word like your username. I think this is definitely the easiest way to do it so I wrote a hub explaining how.
      
      I guess it's technically more sophisticated, but in the end it's a lot easier and less steps than managing IP filtering or downloading some program to set a cookie.

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   DoodleLynposted 14 years ago

   wow, I'm fairly new here, and just tried this. You're right, it was really easy, even for a technologically challenged computer user like myself. Thanks for the really helpful and well written hub.

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      fritteritterposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks, and wow, you're doing very well here, keep it up! Your hubs introduced me to HubMob, I suppose I'll be doing even more writing here now!

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