How do you exclude Google Analytics Tracking based on cookie with cross-domain tracking?

Question

I enabled anonymizeIp for Google Analytics tracking on my website and since changing that, the filters that should exclude requests from my test and staging environments based on IP do not work anymore.

I tried setting up a specific cookie exclusion rule and setting a 'test_environment' cookie on my local machine (according to the answers to this question: How do you exclude yourself from Google Analytics on your website using cookies?)

However, I use cross-domain tracking (linking) and it seems that my 'test_environment' cookie value is simply being ignored. It might be that the cookie of my linked domain is used instead of the local test environment cookie.

Is it possible to combine cookie based exclusion/filtering with cross-domain tracking?

Answer 1

• Simple way: use https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

• Complicated way:

  1. create custom dimension, scope: user
  2. after saving load the page twice and notice dimension name, i.e. dimension1

  3. create HTML file "exclude internal users from GA" with GA snippet, which sets your custom dimension (dimension1) to "internal", like:

     <script> //<![CDATA[ (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXX-X', 'auto'); ga('set', 'anonymizeIp', true); ga('set', 'dimension1', 'internal'); ga('send', 'pageview', { 'hitCallback': function() { window.location.href = '/'; } }); //]]> </script>

  4. Visit this page by yourself and let it visit by your colleagues
  5. To be able to create filter GA should get some data into this dimension - wait a bit.
  6. Create filter: exclude → filterfield=usertype, filter pattern=internal

Conclusion: after you save the filter, all users visited your HTML page will be excluded from GA.

PS: The cookie, which makes this possible remains in the browser forever. "Forever" means for this kind of cookie an expiration after two years. Using a CRM it is possible to create an automated workflow, which sends email an crew members with recommendation to click a link and refresh a cookie. However there could be more smart approaches for this.