In order to get accurate results (especially in the beginning phases of a site deployment, you need to make sure that your own visits and activity on the site are not showing up in the Google Analytics reporting data.

Google provides a tool designed to do just that. Its called the Filter Manager and here’s how you use it to exclude your Home and Work IP from your site’s traffic data:

1. Access Google Analytics
2. Choose the account you want to edit and click “Analytics Settings” from the top left menu.
3. You will see a table listing your sites under this account and below this table you will see three columns. The last column should be labeled “Filter Manager”. Click on the link for “Filter Manager”.
4. Once in Filter Manager, you will see a grid listing of you existing filters (if you have already set up any). Click “+ Add Filter” located at the top right of the Filters table. This will allow you to input a new filter as described below.
5. Under “Filter Name” I use something like “Exclude Home PC’ or “Exclude Work PC”. You will need to set up a separate filter for each IP you want to exclude.
6. Next, from the pulldown menu, change it to “Exclude All Traffic From An IP Address” and enter your IP address with forward slashes in front of the periods like so xx\.xx\.xx\.xx where “xx” is your actual IP numbers. You first need to find your IP address.
7. Next, select your website profiles from the “Available Website Profiles” box and move them over to the “Selected Website Profiles” box using the right arrow button located between the two boxes.
8. Finally, click “Save Changes”
9. You will need to repeat this procedure for each IP you want to exclude from your analytics tracking data.