How to filter out bots & spiders and unlock secret data in Google Analytics
Today’s tips are how to filter out bots & spiders and unlock secret data in Google Analytics.
But before we get into these tips…
I am going to be teaching a workshop series on Google Analytics.
This 4 section workshop series will teach you…
- who your visitors are,
- where they’re coming from,
- and how they are engaging with your site.
Go from a beginner in Google Analytics to someone who is confident in their website’s data collection and analytics.
You can take all 4, or pick and choose which workshops you want to attend.
Also as a special bonus… Get 1 hour of consulting, a $150 value, with me if you attend all 4 workshops and ½ hour of consulting if you attend 3 workshops.
#1 Unlock Secret Data in Google Analytics
The more data that you have in Google Analytics the more problems you can solve and the more you can find out the who, where and how of your site visitors.
The secret data is in Google Search Console. I have talked about Google Search Console before, so check out that post if you need a refresher.
While Search Console holds a lot of data, it needs to be shared with Google Analytics to make it much more useful.
To link Google Search Console to Google Analytics, you need to go to the Admin settings of Google Analytics, then Property Settings. Once there, scroll down to the Search Console heading. Click the link, follow the instructions and you’ll have the two connected and sharing data.
This new data will now begin to show up in the Search Console reports under the Aquisition heading.
#2 Filter out bots & spiders
Your marketing decisions are only as good as the data that backs them. You want your Google Analytics data to be as clean as possible in order to make accurate and informed decisions.
So what you need to do is filter out all of the bots and spiders.
Note: Filters should always be added to a new View in Google Analytics. Never to your main All Web Site Data view.
Here’s how to filter out bots:
- Go to the Google Analytics Admin
- View — Select the appropriate view, or create a new one.
- View Settings
- Scroll down to the heading Bot Filtering.
- Check the checkbox that says “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders”.
Boom. You’re done. Easy as one checkbox.
There are more advanced filters that you can put on your site but are a little much for this email… That is something that would be covered in my workshop series though!
So if you really want to understand your website’s data and be able to make informed decisions register for my workshop series.
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