Creating Test Profiles in Google Analytics
June 30, 2006 by Justin CutroniOne major drawback to Google Analytics is that you can not re-process your historical data. This means that once Google Analytics has processed your data it is final. What’s in your reports stays in your reports. If you make a mistake with a filter then the result will be permanent!
Before you make any changes to your profile configuration consider testing your changes on a test profile. Simply create a profile based on your main site profile. Then they apply any changes to the test profile prior to applying them to the main profile. Using this technique you can better understand the impact of your changes.
Some profile modifications that you may want to test include:
- New filters
- New Goals
- New Funnels
Here’s a real life example why this is so important. I recently worked with a client that created an incorrect exclude filter. When they applied the filter to their profile it excluded ALL of the data from the profile. What made this mistake so bad was the client had no way to fully gauge the success of a new advertising campaign they launched that week.
4 Responses to “Creating Test Profiles in Google Analytics”
This week I created a filter to eliminate all hits from the staff in our office for our webpage. Then I saw your advice, which I think will be very helpful. Can you advise on how to set up a proper test profile? I’m not sure if I set mine up correctly - I created a new profile w/ the same domain and from there I’ll put in the filter I want. In my original profile, should I remove the filter (by IP address) and use that to view all hits and then have several “test profiles”?
By Laura on Jul 14, 2006
Hi Laura,
It sounds like you set up the test profile correctly. When I’m setting up profiles for a site I start by identifying what data I’ll need for my analysis. If I’ll need data without internal traffic then I’ll add an exclude filter to the maim profile. Sometimes I’ll have multiple main profiles.
I usually use the test profiles for testing filters before applying them to a profile that I use for data analysis.
Hope that helps and thanks for reading.
Justin
By Justin on Jul 16, 2006