1 Google Analytics Trick That Will Change the Way You Look at Your Visitors

Reduce your Analytics clutter and gain powerful insights in seconds with this 1 simple trick. I'm going to get right to it. Most sites have between 30 and 50 percent of visitors who have zero interest in the site. They arrive and immediately bounce. You can improve your insight into your visitors immediately by simple removing bounced visits from your Analytics data.  I'm not suggesting that you permanently filter out bounced visitors, but you can remove them using an advanced segment for occasional views of your data without the "noise floor" of those visits.

Taking Out the Trash

When you need to take out the trash (data), consider advanced segments. There is already a pre-configured segment known as "non-bounce sessions" created for you. Open the advanced segments tab and select"+Add Segment".

Once you select your segment, apply it.

In most cases, you'll find that you're more interested in the behavior of engaged visitors than in the behavior of disengaged visitors. If you look at the example to the right, you'll see that Analytics tells you that your average session duration is 2 minutes and your average pages per session is 2.94. This is technically true, but is not an accurate reflection of your "real" visitors. Segment out the non-bounced visitors to see "of those who had any real intention of staying, how engaged were they?"

Now you can see the behavior of "engaged" visitors. You'll find that by checking this segment from time to time, you'll get a deeper view of your "real" visitors. You'll always need to monitor your bounce rate and improve it, but this one trick helps you to remove some of the clutter and get to the good stuff.