REMOVING YOUR OWN VISITS FROM GOOGLE ANALYTICS

I often visit Google Analytics to figure out how well I'm doing as far as number of hits (visits) and where my traffic is coming from etc.  I always wondered whether my own visits are counted and from what I hear, they are!

I just read a posting on how to remove your IP address from google analytics.  I am going to share with you the instructions that were given to me for anyone else interested in doing this for their own website or etsy shop. For the purposes of this post, I am going to assume that you already have a Google account and have the Analytics product already set up and tracking activity to your site or shop.

1. Log into your Google account.
2. Click on Analytics.
3. In the lower right-hand corner of the screen, click on Filter Manager.
4. On the next screen, click on Add Filter, and give your filter a name.
5. Choose Filter Type=Exclude IP Address from the menu.
 *This is where I got confused because I never saw what they listed above so I selected EXCLUDE-> TRAFFIC FROM THE IP ADDRESSES->THAT CONTAIN
6. Enter the IP address for your own home computer. Find this number by going to MyIPAddress.com. Keep in mind that this IP address is for the network you are using at the time you visit the site. If you take your laptop to a coffeeshop and use their wifi, their IP address is different so visits to your own site will be logged. I'm guessing this won't be too big of an issue for anyone. If you really want to, you can add another filter to exclude all your favorite wifi hotspots! Just visit MyIPAddress.com again to get the address.

7. Select which profiles you want the filter applied to and add them.  http://www.etsy.com/ was mine in MY case.
8. Click Save Changes. Done!!
Now you can visit your own site all you want and not mess up the statistics on how many people visit your site!

Let's keep our fingers crossed.  If you have anything to add, please do so!