Ignore visit "on the fly"

I’m a new user of Matomo, so maybe I’m asking for something which is obvious, so please excuse me in that case.

My website does not have users (administrators excluded , of course): alla the visitors are guests.

To control how the site is going I open it as a normal guest. Of course this visit is counted, and I would like to exclude it. I do not come from static IP.

Is it there somw way to tell the visit to be ignored? Something like a parameter (or similar) i.e. https://www.website.com/?visit=ignore or https://www.website.com/?visit=ignorez_this_ip, so that I can thell to Matomo to not track that particular visit.

Many thanks in advance for any help!

maxb

Hi Maxb, yes, this is possible. You can set a cookie in your matomo admin page for a opt-out.

Go to matomo:

  • Administration (gear symbol like: ✽)
    – Personal
    — Settings (scroll to bottom ↓ )

Exclude your visits using a cookie

Consider if your browser delete cookies by closing it.

For a another reason, you can configure your matomo to accept Do Not Track (DNT) settings in browsers and set the DNT in your browser.

Go to matomo:

  • Administration (gear symbol like: ✽)
    – Privacy
    — Users opt-out

Support Do Not Track preference

An afterward deleting of the tracking of yourself is difficult and not really for newcomer, but possible with a Plugin.

Hi @Maxb ,
We all are learning something so don’t hesitate to ask/share something!

Let me rephrase your question to understand it and if I am wrong please correct me.
You have a website on which there is no option for signin/signup to become a user, all the visitors are normal visitors.

When you yourself will visit your website, Matomo will consider it a normal visit and it will increase number of visitors, actions, pageviews all the stats.

So, you want not to be tracked. And you also want to know if there is some method to discard some visitors on IP based or on the behalf of some other criteria.

Do you please confirm this is all which you want to ask and I understand all the things correctly?

If so, then a simple answer for all the above question is yes. There is a free plugin called Tracking Spam Prevention. Please configure it and it will help you to block the unwanted visitors. https://plugins.matomo.org/TrackingSpamPrevention

Hi Melbao,

Unluckily my browser(s) clear most of the cookie when closing it, so using a cookie can’t be a guaranteed solution.

Many thanks anyway for your interest in my issue

Maxb

Hello Naser,

I take apeek at the plugin, but unluckily it does not implemet a feature suitable: my IP address is, for the most of the cases, froma DSL router, and it may change itself at anytime, so a solution based on IP can’t work. Also, I use (still for checks) smartphone using data, and that too is a IP which is not always the same.

Anyway thansk for the idea (and for showing me the plugin possibility, which could be useful for other purposes)

Maxb

Hi all,

Thannk s fo the interest (this means that this is a live community!).

I was suggesting the possibility to tell Matomo to ingnore the visit using a parameter because I think it would be the simplest solution to instruct, case by case, Matomo to ignore a certain visit.

Maybe this could be an idea for future releases?

Anyway I’m open to any other ideas!

Hope a solution can be found…

Maxb

How do you track? (simple JavaScript, HTTP API, MTM, etc.?)

Hello Philippe,

Using the Wordpress plugin (.js)

Merci,

Maxb

In principle, whatever you want is possible. However, it is different in the different ways of using Matomo.

If you would just embed the JavaScript tracking code itself into your website, you could write a simple rule with JavaScript.

// example: window.location = https://www.example.com/?visit=ignore
var url_check_matomo = new URL(window.location);
// ↓ if the URL query key "visit" not "ignore" ("!" = not)
if (url_check_matomo.searchParams.get("visit") != "ignore") {
// here the matomo tracking code
}
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