GA4 IP filtering Guide:

Internal traffic comes from within your organization and includes visits from employees, developers testing website changes, and users accessing the site through office networks or VPNs. These visits can inflate website metrics, making it difficult to track actual user behavior.

To filter out internal traffic, start by identifying the IP addresses used by internal users. Individuals can find their IP address by searching "What is my IP?" in Google. Organizations should request a list of internal IP addresses from their IT team. If managing traffic for multiple teams, reviewing network logs can provide a complete list of internal IPs.

Once internal IP addresses are identified, the next step is to configure GA4 to recognize and categorize internal traffic.

1. Log into Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and navigate to the Admin section.

2. Under Property Settings, go to Data Streams and select the website data stream.

3. Scroll down and click on Configure Tag Settings to access additional setup options.

4. Click Show More Settings, then select Define Internal Traffic to create rules.

5. Click Create and enter the rule details:

   • Name the rule "Internal Traffic."

   • Set the Traffic Type to "internal."

   • Choose Match Type as "IP address equals" or "matches regex," depending on the complexity of the IP list.

   • Enter the internal IP addresses or a regex pattern to match multiple addresses.

6. Save the rule to apply it to GA4 tracking.

This step ensures that GA4 can correctly identify internal traffic, but these visits will still appear in reports until a filter is created.

After defining internal traffic, the next step is to exclude it from reports. GA4 allows filtering traffic based on the internal traffic rules set in the previous step.

1. Navigate to Admin → Data Settings → Data Filters in GA4.

2. Click Create Filter and select Internal Traffic as the filter type.

3. Set the filter to Exclude so internal traffic is removed from analytics reports.

4. Apply the filter to all reports where accurate visitor data is needed.

5. Save and publish the filter to activate it.

Once applied, GA4 will automatically exclude internal visits, preventing them from affecting engagement metrics, conversions, and marketing performance analysis.

If an organization has multiple internal IP addresses, manually entering each address can be time-consuming. Instead, regex (regular expressions) can be used to define a pattern that matches multiple IP addresses.

Using regex in GA4 allows a single rule to cover multiple internal IP addresses, reducing the need for manually updating filters as new internal IPs are added. The regex pattern can be entered in the "Define Internal Traffic" rule under "Match Type: matches regex."

Maintaining an updated list of internal IPs manually can be inefficient, especially for organizations with multiple offices or dynamic IPs. To simplify this process, a Python script can be used to:

• Accept a list of internal IP addresses

• Group similar IPs into ranges

• Generate a regex pattern for GA4 filtering

• Output a structured query format for database or analytics use

Python Script to Generate Regex for IP Filtering

VIEW PYTHON SCRIPT

By automating IP management, this script ensures that new internal IPs can be added easily without needing to manually update GA4 filters.