How to Exclude Data from Google Analytics

Google Analytics location report by city.

Recently I was reviewing some Google Analytics data for another site and noticed some anomalies. While we often rejoice at getting a traffic bump, it doesn’t help if the traffic is garbage. We had a lot of traffic coming from Boardman, Oregon. As soon as they hit the site, they were gone. In this case, we wanted to exclude the traffic from showing in Google Analytics.

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Careful When Choosing Your Ad Partners

malware backdrop

For many of us who have been using Google AdSense to monetize our sites, we’ve seen steep declines in revenues. Of course, this varies based on your settings. The decline is mostly due to people using ad blockers. On the flip side, I get several advertising inquiries per week from unknown ad companies. Usually, the pitch tells me I can get a much better ROI using their system because of some new technology.

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Quick Finds and the Value of Good Headlines

Feedly dashboard

I haven’t been as disciplined in my writing as I’d like. My articles have been few and far between, which is not what I intended. Part of this is because of other time commitments, priorities, and partly the longer story’s inertia. To get back into the swing and get my “writing muscle” going again, I thought I would try referencing good content I see from around the web that would benefit you. While I might not be able to write as often, there’s a lot of good content out there. There are three tools I’ll use for this content curation process you might consider for everyday use.

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Slash the Duplicate URLs

Screaming Frog results showing similar URLs

It’s not even April and I’ve made another foolish mistake on this site. Call it my own version of “March Madness” and quasi duplicate URLs. It’s an error of my own making and I have no one to blame. Chances are it may be one that you have too. Fortunately, I’ve discovered this one early so it will be easier to fix.

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My Kingdom for an Email Address

Once in a blue moon, this dragon does shop. I was reading an email newsletter yesterday when I saw an ad from an online retailer. Instead of reading the article, I clicked through to learn more about the store and its offerings. My expectations utterly changed when I got to the site. I wondered if this online tactic had been tested, and then I saw it again.

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The Case for Examining Your URLs

404 error page example

Sometimes, it’s the small items you don’t know about that bite you. After a poor support experience with my first web hosting company, I decided to move my site. I talked to the new company’s sales rep beforehand and felt confident I made the right decision. Except, there was one question I didn’t even know to ask about until various URLs showed 404 server errors. It’s what I call the “capital crime”.

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