Excluding visits

This page shows how to keep traffic out of your numbers: your own visits, an admin area, a staging site, or anything else you do not want counted. It also explains the list of pages that stay counted but never receive revenue credit.

Before you start #

Three things are true of every exclusion rule:

• An excluded hit is dropped for good. It is not stored, appears in no report and cannot be brought back. Removing the rule later does not restore it.
• Rules work from now on. A new rule reaches new visits within about a minute. It never changes data that was already recorded, and removing a rule does not change it either.
• An excluded hit uses no allowance. It does not count toward the monthly events of your plan. See plans, usage and limits.

Do not exclude signup, checkout, confirmation or funnel pages. An excluded page cannot appear in a dashboard or as a step of a funnel.

The kinds of rule #

A rule has a kind and a value. This is how each kind matches:

• Path. A path such as /admin matches that path only, and upper and lower case count. A path ending in /* matches every path that starts with what stands before the star, and not the path without the slash.
• Hostname. Matches the hostname a page was served from. A leading www. is ignored on both sides. No wildcards.
• Country. Matches visits from one country. A visit whose country is unknown never matches.
• IP address. An IPv4 address matches exactly. An IPv6 address matches its whole /64 network. Ranges cannot be written. The address of a visit is compared in memory and never stored.

A hit is left out when it matches any one rule. The rules are checked after the bot filter, so a hit that was already filtered as a bot is counted as a bot and not as excluded.

Examples #

The first two rows show the one thing that catches people out. A path ending in a star covers what is under it, and not the path without the slash. To leave out an area together with its start page you need both rules. After you add a rule ending in a star, the screen offers the second one with one click.

A value is tidied before it is saved, so the same rule typed two ways is one rule. A full address pasted as a hostname is reduced to its hostname, for example.

Add and remove rules #

The owner and admins of the workspace can manage rules. Viewers cannot see them.

1. Open the site, then Settings, Exclusions.
2. Find the section for the kind of rule: Paths, Hostnames, Countries or IP addresses.
3. Enter the value, or choose a country from the list, and add it.

To remove a rule, use the remove button next to it in the list.

A site can have 100 rules, all kinds counted together. The meter at the bottom of the screen shows how many are in use. A rule the site already has is refused.

Leave out your own visits #

There are two ways, and they suit different situations.

By IP address #

In the IP addresses section, "Add my current IP" reads the address you are connected from and adds it as a rule. This leaves out everyone on that connection, on every browser and device, which is right for an office.

It stops working when your address changes. Most home and mobile connections get a new address from time to time, and the rule then points at nothing, or at a stranger. For a laptop that moves around, use the browser switch instead.

The address in a rule is saved, because the rule needs it. The address of a visit is only compared with it in memory and is never stored.

In one browser #

A switch in your own browser stops the script before it sends anything. Nothing is saved in Clear Saga for it, and it is not a rule.

1. Open your site in the browser you want to leave out.
2. Open the browser console.
3. Paste this line and press Enter:

localStorage.clearsaga_ignore = 'true'

To start sending again from that browser:

delete localStorage.clearsaga_ignore

Things to know about the switch:

• It is kept per hostname. If your site runs on more than one hostname, set it on each.
• It belongs to one browser. Another browser, a private window or another device still sends.
• Clearing the browser's site data removes it.
• The value has to be exactly true, in lower case.
• It uses no cookie and identifies nobody, so you can also offer it to your visitors as a way to opt out. If you do, mention it in your privacy notice. It also stops the cookie of returning visitors from being set or read.

Pages without revenue credit #

The same screen has a second list, "Pages without revenue credit". It is not an exclusion: pages on it keep counting as traffic, as conversions and as funnel steps. They only stop receiving credit for revenue.

It is meant for thank-you and order confirmation pages. Such a page is viewed just before an order is recorded and would otherwise take the credit that belongs to the page that led there.

• Entries follow the same grammar as a path rule: an exact path, or a path ending in a star.
• The list can hold 50 pages.
• Unlike the rules above, it is applied when a report is read. Adding or removing a page changes the credit of past orders too.

What rules cannot do #

• A rule cannot remove data that is already recorded. To clear a site's history, see managing a site.
• A rule never blocks a visitor's withdrawal. On a site that remembers returning visitors, a visitor who withdraws consent is forgotten even when a rule matches their address, country, hostname or page.
• IP ranges cannot be written. Each rule is one address, and an IPv6 address stands for its own network as described above.
• Hostnames and paths take no wildcards, apart from the star at the end of a path.
• There is no rule by browser, device or source. To look at your numbers without a group of visits, use a filter with "is not" on the dashboard. See filters and saved segments.

Next: Bot filtering, Plans, usage and limits, Privacy: cookieless by default