Nothing skews your website analytics more than including your internal traffic. Employees’ behaviours on the site are different than visitors’ behaviours because your employees (and subcontractors) spend more time on the site and are less likely to bounce. Why? Because they are busy working on the site, doing programming maintenance or adding content. Because Google Analytics shows many traffic behaviours as an average value, excluding your internal traffic is one way to avoid distorting your data.
To get accurate analytics data, you can filter out your IP address.
How to Exclude Your IP Address From Google Analytics
Go to your Account Overview and click on Filter Manager.
In the Filter Manager screen, click Add Filter on the right hand corner.
In the Create New Filter page, enter a name for your filter.
Under Filter Type, choose Exclude > traffic from the IP addresses > that are equal to
Enter your IP address.
Under Apply Filter to Website Profiles, select the website profile that you want to block your IP address from and click add. This adds your filter to that website.
Click Save Changes.
Now in the Filter Manager screen, your filters will be listed.
If you need to edit your filter, you can do so from this screen.
Finding Your IP Address
There are a number of free sites that will help you find your IP address:
Google Analytics gives you the ability to add users to your account and to grant them different levels of access. This is useful for when you want to share access to others in your company or when you hire an outside consultant who would benefit from looking at your web stats (like us). Here’s how to grant a user access:
Sign in to your Google Analytics. Click on Analytics Settings in the top left corner. Click on the User Manager tab near the bottom of the page. Note: you will only see this tab if you have administrative access to the account. If you only have user access, you won’t see the tab.
Click Add User.
Enter the user’s email address. For example: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Note: The email address must be a Google Account. If you’ve used iGoogle, Gmail, Google Groups, AdWords or Google Checkout you already have a Google Account. If not, you can create one here.
Choose the Access Type for the user. Your options are: View reports only or Account Administrator (this allows the user to edit your account settings).
Select the websites that this user will have access to. Click Add to move them into the Selected Website Profiles list.
Click Save Changes. The user can now login to your analytics using their Google Account email address and password.
If you want to edit the access for an existing user, click User Manager and find the user in the Existing Access list and click Edit. Here you can edit the user’s Access Type and the profiles that the user has access to.
When you give someone access to your Google Analytics, you are not giving them access to your Google Account. You are assigning their email address only to your Google Analytics account so they will only be able to view your Google Analytics reports.
If you need more help, here’s a video:
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Setting up your Google Analytics account to deliver your reports to your Inbox is a handy way to remember to monitor your web stats.
Go to your Dashboard page. Right above the visitor graph, there’s an Email icon. Click on it.
You’ll see 2 tabs, Send Now and Schedule. Click on the Schedule tab.
If you want the report to go to other email addresses, add them (the report is sent to you by default). Put a subject line, and a description if you want. Select the format for the report (we like PDF), and choose a timeframe—Daily (sent each morning), Weekly (sent each Monday); Monthly (sent first day of each month) or Quarterly (sent first quarter of each month). If you want, check “Include date comparison”. Click Schedule.
If you ever need to edit your settings, there is another Email icon in the left navigation under My Customizations. Click on that to manage/modify the scheduled emails.
Posted by Crissy | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
The Boxcar Marketing RSS feed is run through Feedburner.com, which allows readers to subscribe by RSS or email, which is super handy. For an unspecified period of time, those of you using Google Reader were unable to click on the blog post title without getting an Invalid GET data error.
I was stumped.
Until today when I dedicated 30 minutes to figuring this out. Let me save you 30 minutes.
Log into Feedburner.
Analyze > Configure Stats
Customize ... Track clicks as a traffic source in Google Analytics
Remove the parenthesis in the Campaign field.
Feed: ${feedUri} (${feedName})
to
Feed: ${feedUri} ${feedName}
Instant fix (if you know what you’re doing).
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Susannah Gardner of Hop Studios is currently showing the attendees at EE Roadshow how to customize an ExpressionEngine template. I just learned a cool trick. Ok, not a trick really, I just learned something that should have been painfully obvious.
As Susie was demonstrating that you can use a weblog to populate a header, meaning that you can create a custom weblog for your headers, pre-load the information and then set the order to randomly display one of the images, she happily clicked away on the Upload File button and this is what lead to my revelation ...
In EE when you want to reference an image that you’ve already loaded to your system, you click Upload File. And in the second half of the pop-up window, you click View. This will show you all the images in your directory and you can click link to auto-insert the link into any field.
I did not know this. It’s totally obvious! But in the past I have gone to my FTP client, found the filename and typed in the link.
Step 1: Click the Upload File Button to get the pop-up window.
Step 2: Click View
Step 3: Select Your Image. Decide what field it’s going to and select Link.
Ta-da! There’s the code.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Do you want to attract more visitors to your website?
Register for the QuickLearn business training series. Our first session is Search Marketing 101.
QuickLearn: Search Marketing 101
presented by Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing 101
hosted by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing
April 11th
10:00am - 12:00pm
Location: Workspace, 400 - 21 Water Street, Vancouver BC, V6B 1A1
Cost: $150
Search marketing is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective ways to promote your company and drive qualified leads to your website.
Most people find search engines to be a mystery. How do I get my website to rank higher in search listings for key phrases related to my business, products or services? Should I consider paying for advertising placement on search engines?
Effective search marketing and optimization is the key component to any successful online presence. If you are unsure of how search works, how to integrate search into your existing promotional campaigns, or why search is important to your business—this is the session for you.
For more information or to register in person, contact Monique Trottier at 778-837-9012.
Alexandre Brabant is the president of Vancouver-based eMarketing 101. He is a leading Search Marketing Specialist and the Co-Chair of SEMPO Canada, Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization.
Posted by Rachael Ashe | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Do you want to attract more visitors to your website?
Register for the QuickLearn business training series. Our first session is Search Marketing 101.
QuickLearn: Search Marketing 101
presented by Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing 101
hosted by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing
February 19
6:30-8:30 pm
Location: Boxcar Marketing offices, suite 302, 70 East 2nd Ave. (corner of Main and Quebec)
Cost: $120
Search marketing is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective ways to promote your company and drive qualified leads to your website.
Most people find search engines to be a mystery. How do I get my website to rank higher in search listings for key phrases related to my business, products or services? Should I consider paying for advertising placement on search engines?
Effective search marketing and optimization is the key component to any successful online presence. If you are unsure of how search works, how to integrate search into your existing promotional campaigns, or why search is important to your business—this is the session for you.
For more information or to register in person, contact Monique Trottier at 778-837-9012.
Alexandre Brabant is the president of Vancouver-based eMarketing 101. He is a leading Search Marketing Specialist and the Co-Chair of SEMPO Canada, Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
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