How to filter out countries in Google Analytics

How to remove countries from your Google Analytics data?

Over the course of a few months, I started seeing traffic coming from different countries climbing in my customer’s Google Analytics account. Knowing my customer doesn’t do business with these countries has prompted me to figure out how to remove them.

The process is actually very simple to do in Google Analytics

Login into you Google Analytics account. Click on the name you gave your instance. Click on the instance and under here your website is listed.

Once inside the reporting section of Google Analytics, Click on “Admin” tab at the top of the page.

On the view column, you will want to create a “new” view so that you still have an unadulterated report of all traffic in Google Analytics. I named mine “Filters Countries, IPs.” After you have your new view selected, click on the “Filters” section then select the “+New Filter Button.”

Setting up filters from here on is pretty straightforward. I filtered out all traffic from the United Kingdom, Canada, Philippines, Russia, Brazil, India, Australia, Germany, and Colombia. These are just the countries that have appeared in my country list under Audience> Country.

The filter name is just a name I gave it to remind me of this condition. I usually just type “block Brazil.” or “Block India” Next, choose the filter type “custom.” Choose “country” from the “Filter Field” drop down. The “Filter Pattern Field” is where you actually define what countries you are filtering, so make sure you spell them correctly. You can double-check your filters by using the “Verify This Filter” button. A graph will pop up and show you how many sessions will be removed from the last seven days.

In view, “View Settings” within the Admin Tab, select “Time Zone” (make sure its set to your time zone and checking) and check the “Bot Filtering” Exclude all hits from knowing bots and spiders

The above is just an example of blocking countries. If you check your website often you can set a filter for your IP address, so this won’t be added to your monthly hits to the website. You would change the “Filter Type” > “Custom”>” Selected Field to”IP Address”. Just keep in mind that if you do not have a static IP Address, you have changed this as your IP address changes.

[schema type=”author” url=”https://localfirstseo.com” name=”Tim Roberts” description=”How to remove countries from your Google Analytics dat.” author=”Tim Roberts” publisher=”Tim Roberts” pubdate=”2015-05-15″ ]