Yandex Metrica: basic setup. How to remove your visits (visits) from Yandex.Metrica statistics How to turn off the accounting of your visits in the metric
I think that each site has one or more statistics services. Our site is no exception, and they are also present on it. As traffic increased on the site, the bounce rate increased in parallel with it.
For a long time I have seen this picture:
Agree, the spectacle is so-so. At first I didn't give it special significance. But after a while the picture was repeated, and I began to understand what was the matter. Using the "Webvisor" function, I analyzed the activity on my site and noticed a strange thing:
![](https://i1.wp.com/pandoge.com/uploads/posts/2017-04/1491996603_news_pandoge_com.png)
Nearly one hundred simultaneous visits from different IP addresses, with zero time spent browsing the site. Here you can immediately guess that these are clearly not people, but bots that spoil the overall picture of statistics. And the task was to filter such traffic as much as possible.
What did I do?
1. First, I went to and in the "Filters" section set the following parameters:
![](https://i2.wp.com/pandoge.com/uploads/posts/2017-04/1491997003_news_pandoge_com.png)
1.1 Ticked the " Disregard my visits».
1.2 Selected filter with parameters:
Filter type– Leave only traffic;
Field – Page URL;
Condition– website and additional addresses.
1.3 I switched the filtering of robots to "Filter robots by strict rules and behavior."
1.4 Saved all settings.
2. Updated the counter code on the site.
One day later, I saw another picture:
![](https://i2.wp.com/pandoge.com/uploads/posts/2017-04/1491996430_news_pandoge_com.png)
That is, thanks to default settings counter, I was able to filter out unwanted traffic (excluded bots) and reduced the bounce rate from 92.1 to 25.4. And a day later, the bounce rate hovered around 10.
If you have your own website and use Yandex.Metrica to collect its statistics, a natural question arises: "How to remove your visits and transitions from the statistics figures so that they are not counted by the counter?". In principle, this is a reasonable task that will allow you to clear the statistics of your web project from your own personal transitions and visits.
Yandex.Metrica statistics, in which your personal actions (as the site owner and the most frequent visitor) are removed, will be more objective and not biased. And this is especially important when setting Goals for certain actions, events, transitions. Indeed, because of your own visits and clicks, all these calculations may lose their objectivity and will not show the real state of affairs on the site.
In general, it is better for every webmaster working with the Yandex Metrics system to sort and remove their visits, especially since this is done quite simply! Just a few clicks in the Metrica settings and your statistics will become much cleaner and clearer. Well, let's get started!
How to remove your visits from Yandex.Metrica statistics: step by step instructions
Step #1
Step #2
Note: in the screenshots, we will immediately show the new Metric, which from June 22 will be official version this service.
Step #3
In the site counter editing section, you need to find the "Filters" menu item and go to it.
Step #4
The last step is just to set the “prohibiting” checkbox against the option “Ignore my visits”. We put a tick and be sure to confirm our actions with the "SAVE" button in order to remember the entered settings.
Ignore my visits (visits):
At the same time, you do not need to change the code of the counter () Metrica or the code of the informer. The settings automatically take effect after they are set and saved by the webmaster.
By the way, after your visits are removed from Yandex.Metrica statistics, you can check it and walk around the pages and sections of your web resource. Ideally, your actions will be ignored by the statistics collection counter. True, it will be so as long as you are authorized in the Yandex system, while you access the site from your main (not someone else's) computer.
If you decide to look at the pages of your project using mobile phone or a tablet where authorization in Yandex has not been completed, your visits will already be recorded as unique. Take this into account when collecting statistical data and filter out all junk information.
Finally - by tradition - an interesting video about working with the Yandex.Metrica system.
You probably already know that the Metrics counter must be installed on the site to track business indicators: traffic sources, time on the site, viewing depth, conversion, etc. This opens up the possibility of in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of the resource and timely adjustments. A big plus is that the absolutely free counter provides extensive statistics.
However, for correct operation, it is important not only to install it, but also to configure it correctly. How to do this, and we tell in the article below.
Setting the counter and goals in Yandex.Metrica
First of all, you need to create an account in Yandex (or log in to an existing one) and go to the page of the service itself.
For new users on this page, the "Counters" menu is automatically selected, in which you should click on the "Add counter" button:
Important! The counter is a representation of the site inside Yandex.Metrica, i.e. the place where all data about the site will be stored. If you have several sites, then for each site you need to create a separate counter so that statistics are collected and displayed correctly. AT otherwise data will be mixed.
After clicking on the "Add counter" button, we see the following form:
Fill in the form fields:
- Counter name- it is most convenient to indicate the name of the site, so that later you do not get confused when creating other counters.
- Website address- Specify the URL of the site.
- Additional addresses- if you want to collect general data for several sites, then add them here.
- Timezone- select the time zone of the region in which your company operates.
- Currency- specify the currency in which we want to see data about the goods.
- Visit timeout in minutes- the time of inactivity of the visitor on the site, after which the visit will be considered completed (for example, a person opened your site, and then went to the kitchen and forgot that he was working at the computer, the visit time is running out, but there is no visit in fact). It's better to leave the default value.
In the end it will look like this:
The tab is selected automatically and on it we see a list of options:
We select the item “Webvisor, scrolling map, form analytics”, which will give us access to maps and webvisor. Other options are very specific and you may never need them, so you can read about them in the Yandex help.
Scroll down the page and be sure to click on the "Save" button.
Below we see the code of our counter, which must be placed on all pages of the site in HTML code (preferably at the beginning of the tag
):Important! Each time you make changes to the counter settings on this tab, you must click the "Save" button and then replace the counter code on the site.
Check the "Ignore my visits" box to collect more clean data on your visitors, without taking into account your activity on the site, and click on the "Save" button.
If you do not select this filter, then the reports will most likely have high bounces for direct hits, or, conversely, the indicators "time on site" or "number of pages viewed" will be too high. Do not think that your visits can add to the statistics. Owners interact with the site a little differently than customers.
For the "Filtering robots" item, it is better to leave the parameter by default.
To receive notifications about site availability, we recommend that you specify your email or phone number where reports will be sent.
Ready! The basic settings of the counter are completed and its code can be installed on the site.
Important! For correct data collection, the code must be on each page of the site. The code starts collecting data as soon as it is added to the site.
Goals tab
The goal is configured for a specific user action on the site, for example, visiting a page, clicking a button, downloading a file, etc. The main thing is to track those actions that benefit your business specifically.
Note that there is no standard set of goals. Everything is individual and depends on the tasks that you set for the site. Now let's look at the main types of goals, from which you can choose the appropriate option.
Goals can be added, edited, or removed at any time, but we recommend setting them up for all conversion elements and/or pages right away. This will avoid data shortages in the future.
There are 4 types of goals available in Yandex.Metrica, which you can find in the "Goals" tab (click on the "Add goal" button):
- Page visits- target selected by default. Allows you to track the number of visitors for one or a set of pages (up to 10). You can also analyze clicks to external sites or file downloads.
For example, we want to know how many users visit the contact page: . For this:
- We indicate the name of the goal that is understandable to us “Visit to the contact page”. Write detailed names so that later it will be easier to remember what the goal was created for.
- Then in the "Condition" field, select "url: contains" and on the right indicate full address pages. If we have a section with a contact page divided into subsections and we do not want data to be collected by subsections, it is better to select the “url: matches” parameter.
- Save the goal by clicking on the "Add goal" button.
At first glance, the goal is simple, but it works great for events such as:
- Visiting the order confirmation page (for an online store) or registration.
- Downloading a file (for example, a price list or a presentation).
- Visiting a page with information for partners or a list of dealers.
- Adding a comment or review.
- Visiting the page with confirmation of subscription to the newsletter, etc.
You can set up such a target without the help of a programmer. But due to the binding to the page address, this goal option is not suitable for non-unique pages.
- Number of views- this goal allows you to select those users who have viewed the specified number of pages. Required to assess the depth of the site view.
For example, we will specify 5 pages to track the number of users who have viewed 5 or more pages of the site. Do not forget to specify the name of the goal and click on the "Add goal" button.
- JavaScript event- a goal that allows you to track the execution of events: clicking on a button, filling out a form, watching a video, etc. To set a goal, a unique parameter is specified in the "Goal ID" field, which is called using the "reachGoal" function in the element code on the site.
For example, let's say we want to track the number of clicks on the "Get expert advice" button for the audit sale page, so we'll specify the sovet parameter as follows:
Then, in order for the goal data to be counted, on the site in the element code, you need to add a function with our parameter:
yaCounter12345678.reachGoal("sovet"), where 12345678 is your counter number, which is listed at the top of the Metrics page:
Important! For each element, the identifier must be unique and match the corresponding parameter in the site code. Identifiers should not contain the same words as in the page address, as well as special characters: /, &, #, ?, =.
The downside is that if you don't know how to make changes to your site's code, then you will have to involve the appropriate specialist (which can take time). But given goal not tied to the page address, allows you to track multiple actions on one page.
- Composite goal- suitable for tracking the sequence of actions. Most often used to analyze the process of ordering a product or placing an application for a service.
For example, for ordering a product, let's make an approximate order of steps:
- Go to the cart page - url: starts with https://site.ru/cart
- Filling out the order form - identifier zakaz
- Go to the order confirmation page - url: matches https://site.ru/success
The name and number of steps may vary depending on the site. For this purpose, we recommend that you specify a name for each step; for identifiers, you need to add the appropriate functions to the site code.
In Metrica, the form is filled out as follows:
This goal is like a constructor, where each step is a goal of the form "Visit pages" or "JavaScript event". In the reports, you can also see the data separately for each step. The maximum number of steps is 5, so if you have a process on your site that has more steps, then you should break it down into several compound goals.
Important! The steps must be connected and executed in a row: if it is possible to complete the third step without passing the second, then such a sequence will not count. In this case, you will have to create a separate target for each scenario.
In general, when setting goals, it is worth knowing about the following features:
- A maximum of 200 targets can be created for one counter.
- When you change the goal, the accumulated data is not recalculated.
- Deleting a target does not save any data.
Goal report
The total conversion data for all configured goals is available in the Conversions report.
And the results will look like this:
Each goal can be "opened" for a more detailed analysis of information.
The compound target will look like this:
If you click on the funnel sign next to the name,
you can get a step-by-step report in the form of a funnel:
Such reports will help to understand at what step users have difficulties and they leave. Having found out which step is the most problematic, it is worth moving on to the analysis of the Webvisor records.
Conclusion
Now you know how to create a counter and set up goals in Yandex.Metrica. Thanks to the counter, you can get more accurate information about the actions of your users on the site and understand exactly where to make changes on the site.
To consolidate the information, we also recommend reading our book “Business Analytics. Not a step without Yandex.Metrica "and watch the webinar.
If you have any difficulties or would like to delegate the counter setup to specialists, you can
When a SEO grows out of short pants, he starts opening Metrika and Analytics not only to… hmm, admire the beautifully growing charts. Complex data segmentation, detailed analysis of entry points and conversions come to the fore. In short, advanced features. If you use the statistics system specifically for serious analytics, then you hardly need to prove how important the accuracy of the source data is.
I'll tell you about a few simple tricks to increase the correctness of statistics.
1. Set the counter as high as possible in the code
The position of the counter is really very important. If you put it at the end of the code, the system will not count visitors who leave the site without waiting for it to fully load. And this will deprive you of valuable failure data and prevent you from fighting them.
In addition, distortion can be very large. I am familiar with the case when Analytics and Metrica installed in different places gave out the number of visitors that differed by more than two times (by the way, if you see a similar problem in yourself, check the speed of the site).
2. We filter users who are not members of the target audience
The director opens the meeting room.
How many people visited our site yesterday?
- So. Our company has 43 employees. What bastard didn't come in?
Jokes are jokes, and on poorly visited sites, the project team can seriously affect the statistics.
To avoid this, go to the counter settings - Filters and:
- Check the box "Ignore my visits".
- We add a filter by ip of employees working on the site.
If there are many remote employees working on the site, filtering by IP can be inconvenient. There is no ideal solution for such a case, as an option, you can oblige employees to access the site only through a link with a label like “utm_source=corporate”. Or make it so that everyone visits the link with a parameter once, set a cookie, and then track the arrival of visitors with this cookie through a JavaScript event goal.
We do not close the "Filters" page, it is also needed for the following items.
3. Filter robots
Set the option "filter robots by strict rules and behavior" (the toughest option). After the settings take effect, the total amount of displayed traffic on the site may seriously decrease. Keep this in mind if the site is not yours, but a client's.
For customers who do not have extensive experience in Internet marketing, it is often extremely difficult to prove that it is not the number of visitors as such that matters, but the customers that the site brings. It would seem that representatives of a real business, coming to the Internet, should take care of orders/purchases first of all. This is not always the case: the magic of rising charts is addictive.
4. We accept data only from our domains
This week, many of our users have noticed the appearance in Metrica (Popular, Webvisor) reports of page views from domains that have nothing to do with the counter.
From a technical point of view, there is nothing impossible in such a situation: it was spam. Yes, on a par with postal and search engine spam, such "statistics spam" also exists. We have located the source of this spam and blocked it.
Why does Metrica accept hits related to other domains? This is done for the convenience of users: very often, the owners of counters do not specify the site address in the settings. Or, having installed the tracking code on another site, they forget to register it as a mirror. If Yandex.Metrica did not take into account views from such unspecified sites by default, this would create unnecessary inconvenience.
Each user can turn on filtering himself, which prohibits Yandex.Metrica from taking into account views from any other sites. To do this, you need to specify the site address and all the necessary mirrors in the counter settings, and then in the "Filters" section of the counter settings, add the filtering rule "Leave only traffic - page URL - site and mirrors".
Unfortunately, in this way it will not be possible to block all refspam (invalid referrals from "left" sites). I consider banning sites that “pollut” the statistics of transitions to htacess to be an irrational waste of resources (the list of domains is constantly changing), if necessary, it’s easier to create and save segments that cut off refspam in Yandex.Metrica itself.
5. Dealing with "internal transitions"
I think everyone saw the source of traffic in the reports " internal transitions". In fact, Metrica registers visitors who have spent a long time on the site like this: one visit is split into several, and the true source is shown only for the first visit.
If internal transitions interfere with you, then most of them can be easily removed by attaching them to 1 visit. Quote from help:
The visit is over if some time has passed between the visitor's actions on the site. The default is 30 minutes. You can specify a different time using the visit timeout option.
For example, the timeout is 30 minutes. The visitor went to the site and looked at several pages - the visit is counted. Then left the browser tab open and walked away. After 35 minutes, he returned (the timeout period expired) and went to another page of the site. This viewing is considered a new visit.
Thus, to get rid of internal transitions, you need to go to the counter settings (tab "Basic") and specify a timeout, for example, 360 minutes.
Attention: you should not change the timeout just like that, "just in case". First, make sure that changing the rules for calculating the number of visits will not skew the results of regularly monitored metrics or experiments. The total number of displayed visits will decrease, the viewing depth will increase slightly, keep this in mind.
For a number of purposes, it will be enough to simply remove the internal transitions using the appropriate segment.
For example (clickable):
Of course, you can filter in other ways. In my opinion, this is what Metrica is good for - it provides a lot of alternative ways to quickly build any reports, and in the nuances in which they differ, you can find very valuable data. He who has a head, let him find!
and increase the timeout
Today we will talk about Yandex Metrica settings. And this will be the final point in a series of articles about this wonderful tool.
Where can I find Yandex Metrica settings?
If this is not the first article from our series that you are reading, then you should not have any problems finding the settings. But just in case, here they are:
What items are available to us? There are 8 in total:
- main;
- counter code;
- webvisor;
- goals (after the name of the item, the number of goals is indicated);
- filters;
- access (the number of accounts that are given access to the counter is also indicated here).
I will not analyze each tab in detail - I will only note the main points that you should pay attention to when connecting Yandex Metrics.
Main
Here you can find the meter's unique number and name (you can use whatever you like).
Immediately you need to specify the address of the site on which the counter is installed, add additional addresses (this may be necessary if your site has several addresses - for example, with www and without). In addition, you can use one counter for several sites - but, to be honest, I can hardly imagine why such a function is needed.
The currency of the site will help in determining the cost of achieving goals.
But the most useful item here, perhaps, is the visit timeout in minutes. I recommend setting it to the maximum value - 360 minutes.
Why is this needed? So that the visits of one visitor who, for some reason, turned off the page with your site, switched to another tab, or simply left the computer (in general, took a break in studying the site, but did not close it) did not turn into several different visits .
Counter code
Here you can enable , (Please note that these features are not enabled by default! Do not check this box - they will not work).
Thanks to the checkbox in front of the “Asynchronous code” item, Yandex Metrica will not affect the loading speed of your site.
If you want the counter to be displayed on the pages of your site, check the box in front of the “Informer” item, and using the “Prohibition of sending for indexing site pages” item, you can hide from search pages. Is this just what you need?
All in all, best option counter settings - in the image above. Everything else should be included depending on the features of your work and your site.
Webvisor
If you have an online store and it is important for you to see what exactly the visitor adds to his cart and how he then acts, choose the options “From the browser” or “Separate request”. Then in the webview you will see exact copy computer screen of a visitor to your site. But keep in mind that this is an additional load on your site!
If the content of the page is the same for all users (as, for example, in our blog), then select the “Off” option.
Why do I need the item “Loading pages to the player on your behalf”, I, to be honest, I can’t understand. To see how users would behave if they were in your position? Not even a guess. So there is only one option - an anonymous user.
Goals
Allows you to add and edit goals on your site. The options are very different - from visiting certain pages to complex compound goals that include multiple events.
If your goal is to keep the attention of users, pay attention to the “Number of views” option. It will help you quickly find those visitors who have visited a certain number of pages on the site (for example, more than 10).
If you have an online store, then your option is to set the goal to visit the thank you page for the purchase. Thus, the goal will be achieved only by those visitors who saw this page, which means they made a purchase.
However, setting goals is not a task for beginners, so I will not go into details.
Filters
This is not the section that beginners should climb into - otherwise you can mess up such firewood, which will only help deleting all settings.
So just check the box "Ignore my visits" - and after that try to access the site only from the browser in which your Yandex Metrics account is active.
The option "Filter robots only by strict rules" is selected by default - leave it. This item refers to search robots that index content. This choice allows you to cut off only "tested" robots and not lose a single real visitor.
Notifications
A very useful item for those who have problems with the availability of the site. It allows you to receive notifications about problems with its availability - and, as you can see in the illustration above, you can even set a convenient time for receiving SMS. True, I don’t understand why choose the “Only weekdays” option - apparently, it is intended for those who want to relax from all problems during off-hours, including troubles with a downed site.
Loading data
These are also features for advanced users. Although they are very useful features that allow you to see how your specific customers behave (yes, even Ivan Ivanovich, even Ivan Nikiforovich), as well as understand exactly what actions led to the offline conversion.
Access
Everything is simple here. If you want to give access to statistics to everyone, set the switch to "On". If you want someone specific to get access, add his login (the mail must be on Yandex). You can define its permissions - only viewing or editing.
So the series of articles about Yandex Metrics has come to an end. If you have any questions - ask them in the comments, and I will definitely answer them.
I would be grateful if you write about what topics you are interested in for my next articles. And I will try to fulfill your requests!