What is not a filter setting for data in views?

1. Include

2. Exclude

3. Modify

4. Restore

Answer: Restore

If you use filters in a data view in Google Analytics, they will limit or modify the data. For example, you can use the filters feature to remove traffic from a particular IP address and include only those data that have specific directories and subdomains. On the other hand, you might use this feature to convert dynamic webpage URLs to text strings that are readable.

The major problem with filters in Google Analytics is that it fully modifies and alters the data and also include and excludes hits into the data, which is also a sort of modification of the data. Hence, the data is fully altered with filters in Google Analytics.

Since data is altered in Google Analytics with the use of filters, experts mostly recommend using unfiltered data views, as you will always have better and full access to your sets of data in Google Analytics. In this article, we will mainly know about filters in Google Analytics.

Read More: What Feature Can Join Offline Business Systems Data With Online Data Collected By Google Analytics?

What Is Not A Filter Setting For Data In Views?

The major filters that you can find in Google Analytics include exclude, modify, lowercase/ uppercase, search & replace, and Advanced. In the question above, among the four options, the restore is not a filter setting for data in views in Google Analytics.

However, you will be able to create and manage filters both at the view level and account level. As Google Analytics claims, “You can create filters at the account level and then apply them to one or more views. You can create filters at the view level that apply only to that view, and you can manage account-level filters that have been applied to the view.”

Google Analytics Predefined Filters

There are four different predefined filters that Google Analytics provides you to use in the data in view level:

1. Exclude/Include Only Traffic From The ISP Domain:

This is one of the most common filter settings. Use this filter only if you want to exclude or include the website traffic that you are getting from one of your specific domains. It can also be a company network or an ISP.

2. Exclude/Include Only Traffic From The IP Addresses:

Many clicks come from a particular source IP address. To include or exclude such clicks, you can make use of the above Google Analytics filter. Google Analytics Support instructs, “You can filter a simple range of addresses by using the that begin with or that end with options. If you want to filter a more complex range of addresses, use a Custom Filter to Exclude/Include using the IP Address and specify a regular expression as the Filter Pattern.”

3. Exclude/Include Only Traffic To The Subdirectories:

There are many subdirectories present in your website data. Some examples of such subdirectories include – /content/help/faq, etc. With the help of this filter, you can include or exclude traffic in those subdirectories of your website.

4. Exclude/Include Only Traffic To The Hostname:

Your website also contains some hostnames, which are different available. Some examples of hostnames include sales.abcd.com, support.abcd.com, etc. The above filter allows you to include/exclude only traffic to any of your particular hostnames related to your website.

Google Analytics Custom Filters That Are Useful For Data In View 

Google Analytics also offers you to use custom filters on your data in the view. We have mentioned them below:

Include:

With this filter, you will be able to include those hits which match the filter pattern of your data. Thereby, you are also ignoring every non-matching hit, and they will not be available on these reports.

Exclude:

According to Google Analytics, “This type of filter excludes log file lines (hits) that match the Filter Pattern. Matching lines are ignored in their entirety.” Here, the filter excludes every matching line fully, thus altering the data.

Search & Replace:

According to Google Analytics, “This is a simple filter that you can use to search for a pattern within a field and replace the found pattern with an alternate form.” This is a filter that works like a search and replaces options in major software that deals with data.

Lowercase/ Uppercase:

According to Analytics Support, this filter “Converts the contents of the field into all uppercase or all lowercase characters. These filters only affect letters and do not affect special characters or numbers.” The content here is changed into uppercase or lowercase. However, no number or special character is affected.

Advanced:

You will be able to field a new field from another field or two other fields in the data in a view. According to Analytics Support, “The filtering engine applies the expressions in the two Extract fields to the specified fields and then constructs a third field using the Constructor expression.”

What Are Some Of The Most Common Uses Of Google Analytics Filters?

The following are the common uses of Google Analytics filter settings:

• They let you exclude internal traffic data from your website reports. To perform the action, you can easily set up a filter here as per your need.
• You can get access to the report of activities in specific directories on your website by using filters. You can exclude other data as a result.
• As discussed earlier that there are some filters, with the help of which you will be able to track data of subdomains of your website easily.

Read More: What Report Indicates Where Users Start Or Exit The Conversion Funnel?

Final Thought

Your question was, “What is not a filter setting for data in views?” The answer is ‘Restore’ out of the four options given. In this article, you mostly learned about filter settings for viewing data in Google Analytics. However, as you know now, filters modify and alter the data completely. Hence it is necessary to not use filters for data in a view. Keeping the data unfiltered is the best option. What do you think about the filter settings in data in views in Google Analytics? Share your opinion with us in the comments section.

Read Also:

• What Is Not Considered A “Source” In Google Analytics By Default?
• What Metric-Dimension Combination Is Not Valid?
• What Scope Applies To Custom Metrics?