Using custom filters for Google Analytics metrics

This article explain how to use custom filters for all Google Analytics widgets, except for the current visitor gauge and current visitor map. If you’re setting up one of these two widgets, please check this other article instead.

Custom filters are short statements that you can apply to our Google Analytics widgets to refine the data that’s displayed and drill down to the particular metric you're interested in.

From a technical perspective, custom filters restrict the rows of data that are – or aren't – included in the result. Each row in the result is tested against the filter: if the filter matches, the row is retained and if it doesn't match, the row is dropped.

Syntax of custom filters

The syntax of custom filters is always the same:

name operator expression

Filter names

For Core Reporting API, the name always begin with ga: followed by the dimension or metric you want to filter by.  Google has a great resource called the Dimensions & Metrics Explorer that lists and describes all of the dimensions and metrics available through the Core Reporting API. 

Popular dimensions and metrics include:

• campaign
• year
• keyword
• city
• pageTitle
• language
• transactions
• userAgeBracket
• date
• medium
• day
• goalPreviousStep1
• browser
• timeOnPage
• country
• source
• month
• productBrand
• pagePath
• screenResolution
• bounceRate

Filter operators

There are six filter operators for dimensions and six filter operators for metrics. The operators must be URL-encoded in order to be included in URL query strings.

Metric Filters

Dimension Filters

Filter expressions

The expression states the values to be included in or excluded from the results.

There are a few important rules for filter expressions:

• URL-reserved characters — Characters such as & must be url-encoded in the usual way.
• Reserved characters — The semicolon and comma must be backslash escaped when they appear in an expression:
  • semicolon \;
  • comma \,
• Regular Expressions — You can also use regular expressions in filter expressions using the =~ and !~ operators. Their syntax is similar to Perl regular expressions and have these additional rules:
  • Maximum length of 128 characters — Regular expressions longer than 128 characters result in a 400 Bad Request status code returned from the server.
  • Case sensitivity — Regular expression matching is case-insensitive.

Combining custom filters

Filters can be combined using OR and AND boolean logic to create a very specific set of data within a metric.

OR

The OR operator is defined using a comma (,). It takes precedence over the AND operator and may NOT be used to combine dimensions and metrics in the same expression.

Examples: (each must be URL encoded)

Country is either (United States OR Canada):
ga:country==United States,ga:country==Canada

Firefox users on (Windows OR Macintosh) operating systems:
ga:browser==Firefox;ga:operatingSystem==Windows,ga:operatingSystem==Macintosh

AND

The AND operator is defined using a semi-colon (;). It is preceded by the OR operator and CAN be used to combine dimensions and metrics in the same expression.