Web Marketing: How to Set Up a Filter in Google Analytics

By John Arnold, Michael Becker, Marty Dickinson, Ian Lurie, and Elizabeth Marsten from Web Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Because in web marketing you want the most accurate numbers, set up a filter to exclude visits from everyone who works at your organization. Your Google Analytics package won’t distinguish between customers and folks at your company unless you tell it to.

That kind of filter depends on the IP addresses used by your office. If you don’t know what that means, it’s best not to fiddle with it. Instead, contact your webmaster or your Internet Service Provider for help in finding the IP address.

Then you set up the filter, as follows:

Log in to Google Analytics.
Select the website for which you want to set up a filter.
Click Admin at the upper-right of the page.
Click the Filters tab.
Select + New Filter.
Give the filter a name you’ll remember, such as Exclude IPs.
Under Filter Type, choose Exclude Traffic from an IP Address.
Type your IP address.

Click Save.

You might need to exclude multiple addresses. You can create a separate filter for each one, or you can use regular expressions (also called regex). regex involves very high-level development expertise.