Configuring Google Analytics Filters

Predefined and Custom Analytics Filters

There are two types of filters in Google Analytics - predefined filters and custom filters.

Predefined filters
Google Analytics provides three commonly used predefined filters -- you'll see these filters under the 'Filter Type' drop-downs when you are creating your filters.
The first filter for excluding traffic from domains excludes or includes traffic from the domain that you specify in the Domain field directly below the Filter Type drop-downs. If you apply this filter, Google Analytics will apply a reverse lookup with each visitor's IP address to determine if the visitor is coming in from a domain that should be filtered out. Domains usually represent the ISP of your visitor although larger companies generally have their IP addresses mapped to their domain name.


III. Filter Pattern
The third part of a custom filter is the 'Filter Pattern.' This is the text string that is used to attempt to match pageview data. The pattern that you provide is applied to the field and, if it matches any part of the field, it returns a positive result and causes an action to occur. You'll need to use POSIX regular expressions to create the filter pattern. For more information on POSIX regular expressions, read this google analytics help


The second filter for excluding or including traffic from IP addresses filters traffic from addresses entered into the IP address field. This filter is generally used to exclude your internal company traffic.


The third filter for filtering traffic to a subdirectory lets you control which traffic gets reported to a specified directory on your site. This is typically used on a profile that is created to track one part of a website.


Custom filters
Each custom filter has three main parts.


I. Filter Types
The first part of a custom filter is 'Filter Types.' There are six filter types available and each one serves a specific purpose.
Exclude and Include filters are the most common types. They allow you to segment your data in many different ways. They're frequently used to filter out or filter in traffic from a particular state or country.
Lowercase and Uppercase filters do not require a filter pattern, only a filter field. Lowercase and Uppercase filters are very useful for consolidating line items in a report. For example, multiple entries in your reports for a keyword or a URL may have the same words or URLs -- the only difference between the multiple entries is that sometimes the URL or keyword appears with a different combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. You can use the Lowercase and Uppercase filters to consolidate these multiple entries into a single entry.
Search and Replace filters replace one piece of data with another. They are often used to replace long URL strings with a shorter string that is easier to read and identify in your reports.
You can use Advanced filters to remove unnecessary data, replace one field with another, or combine elements from multiple filter fields. For example, a best practice when tracking multiple subdomains in a single profile is to append the subdomain name to the page names. You can do this by creating an advanced filter that appends Hostname to Request URI.


II. Filter Field
The second part is the 'Filter Field.' There are numerous fields you can use to create your filter. Examples of some commonly used fields are the 'Request URI' and 'Visitor Country' fields.
The complete list of fields can be found through in this google analytics help