This article walks you through enabling IP address, domain and browser filtering to avoid tracking certain website visitor activity in LIVE Leads.
What is the Difference between IP and Domain Filtering?
- IP filtering blocks (disallows) any specific IP addresses you set from being tracked.
- Domain filtering lets you be selective about what domains you allow to be tracked.
Why Use Domain Filtering?
- To ensure that only domains you choose can use your tracking tag. With domain filtering on, if someone else tries using your tracking tag their traffic is ignored and not logged.
- To filter out testing environments. For instance, if you set up a page, such as, test.yourdomain.com, then you could activate the domain filter and your testing views would not be captured, and your reports would not be skewed by this temporary traffic.
IP Address Filtering
Avoid tracking activity on your website that may skew the accuracy of your results, such as your own usage and your team's usage.
To Filter An IP Address:
- Enter each octet (set of digits) of the IP you wish to filter. Click the "Add IP" button.
- Once you add an IP address, you can temporarily disable it without deleting it, by selecting the DISABLED option in the Filtering pulldown menu. To begin filtering any disabled IP, simply select ACTIVE in the Filtering pulldown menu.
You can also batch import multiple IP addresses by clicking Batch Import and copy/pasting a list of IP addresses (one per line).
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Filtering IP addresses will not stop people from viewing your website pages, it will only block the recording of their activities on your site.
- If your Internet Service Provider (ISP) issues you an IP address dynamically (known as DHCP), it is subject to change, and the filtering may need updating to stay viable. As an alternative solution, use Browser Filtering instead.
- IP Address filtering is real-time. This means as soon as you add an IP address to the filter, it will immediately be blocked from recording that IP address activity. Removal of IP addresses is also real-time.
Domain Name Filtering
Domain Name Filtering allows you to secure your reporting data, enabling reports to only capture authorized domain names. This ensures that no one can use your unique tracking snippet for unauthorized purposes.
How to Filter By Domain(s):
- Enter the domain names you wish authorized to capture visitor traffic.
(Be sure to add www.website.com if your website can be addressed this way.) - Click Add to save the domain name to your filter list.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- You can not delete your master domain. It is required for visitor tracking to be active.
- To use Domain Filtering, your registered account domain MUST NOT contain a page file or page name. It MUST be a domain only, for example:
CORRECT: website.com
INCORRECT: website.com/pagename.htm
If you wish to use Domain Filtering, and your login domain contains a page name, please contact our Customer Success & Support team to update your account domain. - All Link Tracking will be blocked for as long as domain filtering is enabled. This is a security measure to guard against unauthorized domain use.
- If you install your tracking tag on more than one domain, all information will be captured into a single reporting interface, and it may be difficult to identify which traffic was from which domain. The best solution is to establish an additional account for each domain name so that you can distinguish traffic and activity on a per domain basis. Contact our Customer Success & Support team for more information.
Browser Filtering
Browser Filtering allows you to avoid tracking activity on your website from a specific internet browser. This is accomplished by setting a cookie to your browser.
Browser Filtering blocks (disallows) all clicks from being tracked. It is important to note that if you delete your cookies, or use any type of desktop software that could remove or block cookie usage, then your clicks might not be properly ignored. See your software's documentation for further information.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- If you use more than one browser, you must log in separately with each, in order to turn this filtering on for each specific browser.
- If you use cookie filtering software, or delete your cookies, you will need to reactivate this filter.