Number 1 Mistake when Tracking a Website
analytics
While this is basic written law, it amazes me just how many web developers are not excluding non targeted traffic from website statistics. Website statistics are absolutely crucial to the success of a website, they allow you to constantly monitor the performance and also allow you to make crucial business decisions. Therefor it is very important that your statistics are accurate, and show a true representation of your users.
An example is if you have a web developer who manages your website, you will be amazed by how much time they spend using and navigating it. If they fail to block their own IP addresses and exclude their traffic, all their activity will show in your reports, and will skew the results. The same applies to your staff and even your own usage. Your staff and yourself do not act and behave like normal users do on the website, and so having this show in your reports is bad and will come back to hurt you.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Post makes sense. Will update all my accounts now…
October 11th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Thanks for the comment Mel H. Hope it helps.
May 16th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Its a good point, I had sort of been excluding myself in my head when check when I first started the company site but now that staff view it too you make me realize my stats could be quite skewed. Have you come up with any good techniques for doing this?
May 16th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Hey Jobs Manly, depends on what analytics package you use. If you use Google Analytic’s which I recommend, you can easily exclude a certain IP address in the settings. If you do not have a static IP address with your isp – you should apply for one as you will have to constantly update it. Hope this helps.
May 17th, 2010 at 5:43 am
@Trente ye I am using analytics at the moment, Ill see if I can work it out thanks. After a little digging around I found I can exclude a range of IP address. I have excluded our ISP IP range from the stats. Our ISP is quite small so I don’t think it will affect the stats of legitimate traffic much. http://www.google.com.au/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55572