New in the playbook: How I set up Google Analytics

While nothing we do is “future-proof,” I do have a strong opinion on how Google Analytics should be set up and configured to avoid problems that could come from future growth.

In my quest to dump my brain somewhere, I’ve added the Google Analytics Setup Guide to the playbook.

My hope is that you may get a few ideas from looking through the filters that I typically set up:

• Exclude data sent from unauthorized domains (either accidentally or maliciously)
• Add domain/subdomain hostnames as top-level folder so you can roll all of your company’s sites into the same view
• Make everything lowercase so non-case-sensitive file systems don’t fragment page-level data across multiple URLs
• Exclude your own traffic from the reports, including staging and development environments
• Get CPC referral tracking to record in a less vague manner

Also, there are some little nuggets related to goals and the tracking code. I hope to keep this updated as I learn more. Enjoy!

Read the Google Analytics Setup Guide »