Notes on Google Analytics
Editing Reports
Filters
Multiple filters can be applied to a report, however always remember that they are ANDed together. This isn't intuitive when you have several "include" filters, but in fact you end up with the intersection, not union. Forget this and prepare to be frustrated.
IP Filtering
Google limits you to in using domain name based filters to something like arizona.edu. Library.arizona.edu will not work. Trust me, I tried it. To fine tune reports you have to use regular expressions based on IP numbers. Goolge limits them to 255 characters, so plan accordingly.
As of April 1, 2009 here are some of the regular expressions used to filter by IP numbers (these are based on the changes in vlans that just took place):
- Info-Commons
- ^150\.135\.(1(6[0-3]))\..*$
- 55-MainLib-v101
- ^150\.135\.48\..*$
- 55-MainLib-v102
- ^150\.135\.90\.(1[3-9].*|2.*)$
- 54-SciLib-v101
- ^128\.196\.20\..*$
- 54-SciLib-v102
- ^128\.196\.18\.(19.*|2.*)$
- Main and SEL vlans
- ^(150\.135\.48\..*|150\.135\.90\.(1[3-9].*|2.*)|128\.196\.20\..*|128\.196\.18\.(19.*|2.*))$
Note that these can be used individually in exclude filters, but for an include filter they have to be combined as in the Main and SEL vlans example. This is due to the fact that filters are ANDed together (see above). Also note that for simplicity in the regular expressions some of these don't precisely match the vlans. For example, the regular expression for the 55-MainLib-v102 vlan starts at 150.135.90.130 instead of 150.135.90.128. Given the limit on the lenght imposed by Google and the complexity we would get into if we weren't willing to make this little compromise this seems reasonable.