Google Analytics: Tips about Filters and Segments Settings You Probably Had No Clue About
It’s time to reveal the broad functionality of Google Analytics and finally learn about your internet traffic.
Filters, custom reports, segments, and dashboards are there for you to extract the information you need, rather than the usual mix of valuable and unnecessary data. We encourage you to try it out and be precise in the analysis, target a particular area or audience, specify location or age group. This tool is essential for any entrepreneur who wants to see a clear representation of what is happening with their virtual presence and how it is doing on the market.
Even if some of you are already familiar with the topic, let’s see if there is anything you might have missed out on!
Filter View: Getting Started
Here you choose what to exclude or include in your reports or a domain to focus on. But, remember that once you delete a view, it won’t show at all. And consider - filtered data appears as soon as you switch it on, but leaves the previous information intact.
There are some views, quite useful if you don’t know where to begin.
- General View - the one you leave intact to see the whole picture, without any filters or alterations;
- Main View - the one you will base your reports on. There you add all the necessary filters, exclude members of your company from the analysis or narrow it to a certain location;
- Test View - the one that allows you be sure that the filter works as needed and can be applied as the main setting.
Don’t forget to name each of the views, or you and your team might get confused identifying which is which!
Custom filters for All: Enjoy!
These are great, because now you can finally validate information, group it and make it clear where the traffic is coming from - clients looking for services or employees using the website on a regular basis. Analyse data based on your filtered view easily - here are some of the basic custom options you might consider applying.
Collect data with:
- Exclude/Include Internal IP;
- Include Specific Hostname/Subdomain;
- Exclude Development Site Traffic.
Segment it by:
- Include a Traffic Medium/Device Category/Country;
Make data consistent with:
- Prepend Hostname to Request URI;
- Lowercase Hostname/Request URI/Search Term/Campaign Dimensions;
- Search and Replace Filter.
Advanced segments
What it does is basically create additional profiles to gather data on a specific issue or from a particular source. Adapt it to your needs, regulating any metric or dimension within Google Analytics. For example, you can track and compare traffic from different social media pages. Determine where and who views your website the
Imagine - you have Social Media, Organic traffic, and PPC advertising. Just create and compare these three segments at once to determine where the number of traffic is the most grossing one! You do not need to repeat these settings in the standard reports if you have created the segments.
Discover how exactly to use them on Google Analytics - Segments.
What is so good about reports?
Reports...they are
There a couple of ready to use customised reports, such as Explorer, Flat Table, Map Overlays. Try them all out and see what suits you best!
Visualise data with dashboards
Here is an absolute gem for you - Google Analytics Dashboards. See the general picture of the most important metrics for you, without opening any reports. There are up to 20 dashboards you can create, with 20 widgets in each of them. Choose standard or real-time reporting, whichever works best for you!
There are plenty of efficient, downloadable examples of filters, segments, reports, and dashboards to grow your understanding of this useful tool. Have a go at it and optimise what have been wasting your time on for so long!
You need it
You cannot deny, using Google Analytics comes with great advantages. It gives an amazing range of customising features that almost makes it a bespoke business program, which suits a broad audience of users. Fasten and optimise your reporting system, get to the bottom of the problem you have with traffic flow and extract the info, that the enterprise requires for better performance. Implement our tips and enjoy!
Marketing and Business Development Manager
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