Prompted by a question I had a couple of days ago, I thought it worth flagging an important point about ‘internal’ website traffic.

Most companies access their own websites for a wide variety of reasons. Each time they do they add to the traffic that is reported in the server logfiles or by the analytics tools that are used for performance measurement. This can considerably distort subsequent analysis, and therefore it is best to ensure this is excluded.

The specific means by which this traffic can be filtered out varies depending upon the analytics tool that is used. The process you need to follow, however is always broadly the same and requires that you identify the external IP address range that is used in your organisation.

The best way to find out your external IP address is to check with your IT Team, or you can use an IP lookup site such as http://whatismyipaddress.com/ or http://whatsmyip.org/.

Once the IP address range is identified you will need to determine exactly how to set up an exclude filter for your analytics toolset.  This is best achieved by reference to the setup instructions for your particular tool. I also ensure that my own external IP address range is excluded from the traffic data for any websites that I provide services for.

Once the filter(s) have been setup you can be confident that all of the traffic is from prospective customers!