Many network administrators use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, commonly called DHCP, to dynamically assign IP addresses to individual computers across networks, including staff workstations, labs, classrooms, and public computing areas. While DHCP makes the task of managing large and complex networks easier and more efficient, it can throw a wrench into the analytics process simply because IP addresses change on a regular basis: what is an IP address for a staff computer one day may be reassigned to a public or classroom workstation the next. That doesn’t make your quest for user-only web data hopeless; you just need to understand how you’re defining what you’re asking the analytics software to provide. In this scenario, data collected on traffic external to the library would be a closer approximation of student use, and internal traffic of library staff use.

No two networks are the same, however; if you’re lucky, there’s a chance that your network administrators have separated staff and public use, perhaps even on two separate networks, depending upon your network architecture. This second “separate network” scenario would obviously provide a more accurate picture of customer versus staff use of the library’s websites. But even this is not 100 percent perfect; if library staff work from home, their visitor and visit data for those sessions on the website will be recorded in reports with patron data because the IP address provided will belong to their home Internet provider. An exception to this would be if staff working remotely use a virtual private network, or VPN, which would assign them a work IP address. If you’re uncertain how to determine an IP range, explain your goal of separating your audiences via IP to your network administrators and ask what they would advise.

Assuming that you have not added any additional profiles beyond the default profile that is standard with a new Google Analytics account, you may set the default as your master profile. Log in to Google Analytics with an account with administrative access and click the Admin button in the upper right corner. (If you track more than one site and have multiple web properties, you may need to click on the one you’d like to filter here.) Click Profile Settings in the second tab row, and in the Profile Name field, type in “Master Profile” or another descriptive name of your choosing. Leave the rest of the form as is, click the Apply button, and behold, the master profile (see figure 4.1)!

If you find that multiple profiles are already established, it would be wise to consult with your colleagues first before renaming them, creating any new ones, or filtering any existing ones. If the default profile is already in use by someone else, or if you’re not sure if it is, follow the instructions above to establish a new profile to use as your master, and then create a second one to use as your filtered profile.

Now that you have a master profile set up to catch all of your data, all of the time, it’s time to create a new profile to filter (see figure 4.2). From the Property Settings screen—where you left off above—click on the Profiles tab, and then click on the + New Profile button.

Then, as shown in figure 4.3, enter a descriptive name, such as “Public Use (No Staff),” for the profile in the Profile Name field. Click the Create Profile button.

Finally, add a filter to that new profile. You should still be on the page for your newly created profile; make sure that it’s selected in the Profile drop-down menu (figure 4.4), and then click on Filters, and after that, the + New Filter button (figure 4.5).

Fill out the form, which is dynamic and will change as you enter data (see figure 4.6). Type whatever name you like for the filter, for example, “Public Use (No Staff).” Next, change the Filter Type to Custom Filter, and then select Exclude from the list of options, setting the Filter Field to Visitor IP Address from the drop-down menu.

To establish the Filter Pattern, we recommend using Google Analytics's IP Address Range Tool, which is available in the online documentation. Open the IP Address Range Tool in another web browser tab or window, type in the first and last IP addresses in the range you established earlier, and click the Generate RegEx button. Copy and paste the results into the Filter Pattern field back on the Google Analytics form. If you have more than one range of IP addresses, read “More Tips on IP Address Filtering” in the online documentation below the IP Address Range Tool.

Google Analytics: IP Address Range Tool

http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1034771

Double-check that the filter was added to the new profile, not the master profile.

If you have more than one site, lather, rinse, and repeat until you have profiles and filters set as desired on all of them. You could also create a Staff Only filtered profile if you’d like to track staff-only use of the website; just follow the above steps to create another profile and filter to add to it, but use an Include custom filter type when creating the filter on the new Staff Only profile. If you’ve set up custom reports, or would like to, you can set them on your filtered profiles if you’d like to focus on user-only or staff-only use.

You may be tempted to jump right over and check out what your site data looks like with library staff data filtered out, but unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for a few hours. Filters collect data only going forward from the time they were set, which is yet another reason that the master profile is important. Remember: filters, while very helpful for the sake of analysis, are destructive to data. The master profile will retain all of your historical data, and going forward, the filtered profile will slice out the audience-specific data for you.

If other colleagues have access to Google Analytics, be sure to communicate any changes you’ve made so that they understand the purpose of the profiles and which would best suit their needs. For example, even though the web team would likely want to focus its analysis on the user-only filtered profile, library administration would still likely want to report the statistics to the library’s stakeholders from the master profile, as it is the sum total of web use.