How to Exclude Your Computer From Google Analytics

As a developer/designer, you probably wouldn’t like be counted as a “visit” on the website you are working on. To prevent this, you need to:

Create a “No Report” page (say, no_report.html) with the GA tracking code implemented.
Replace your initial body tag with this code below and upload it to your root directory.

<body onLoad=”javascript:__utmSetVar(’no_report’)”> "No Report" Cookie has been set!
What this code does is that it sets a cookie called __utmSetVar with “no_report” value in your internet browser. So this way, as a developer what you want to do is to visit this page first. From this point on, your interactions on the website will be counted towards the “no_report” cookie.
Now, for Google Analytics to report properly, this “no_report” cookie needs to be excluded from the reports. Create a filter on Google Analytics with these settings:

That’s all. Enjoy!

Notes:

This method is especially helpful when you’re dealing with a dynamic IP on your computer.
If you are one of those web developers who quite often deletes their cookies, I’d recommend using the “exception” feature in your browser under the cookie settings where you can store this specific cookie to never be deleted. If you’re working on multiple clients’ websites and that you make sure to setup the Google Analytics Exclude filter on all of them, you should be set for good. This way, you wouldn’t have to visit the “no_report.html” page ever again.

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