Exclude your own visits

Your own visits, your office and your test pages make the figures look better than they are. Leave them out in your site's settings, on every plan.

Your browser

• In Settings, "Stop counting this browser" opens your site with ?simpledata=ignore at the end of the address. You can also add it by hand to any page of the site.
• The site shows a short notice ("SimpleData: this browser is no longer counted") and from then on that browser sends nothing to SimpleData from that site.
• It is stored in the browser, not in an account or a cookie: open the link in each browser and device you use (laptop, phone, the browser you test in). Private windows forget it when they close.
• It applies per site and per address: if the site also answers on another domain or subdomain (shop.example.com and example.com), open it on each.
• To count that browser again: "Count it again", or ?simpledata=count. Clearing the site's data in the browser has the same effect.
• If no notice appears, the browser is not storing site data (some blockers or settings do that) and is still counted: use your IP for it.
• WooCommerce: a test order placed from an ignored browser can still arrive from the WordPress plugin, which checks 15 minutes later from the server whether the browser reported the order, and does not know about the browser. To leave out test orders, add your IP as well.

WordPress: logged-in staff

• With the WordPress plugin (1.1.4 or later), the visits of logged-in users with the roles you choose are not counted: by default administrators, editors and shop managers. Change it in WordPress, SimpleData → Settings → "Your own visits".
• It is decided in WordPress: the tracker is not loaded for them while they are logged in, so nothing reaches SimpleData. Customers and visitors who are not logged in are always counted.
• Their orders count by default, like any other: the plugin sends them from your server 15 minutes after payment. "Do not count their orders", off unless you tick it, leaves out any order placed by a logged-in user with one of those roles, real ones included, and WooCommerce shows a note on each order it leaves out.
• For test orders, the IP is still the tool: it leaves out what you place from your office or your connection, logged in or not, and nothing else.
• If a caching plugin serves cached pages to logged-in users (most do not), they get the page with the tracker in it: use the browser option above as well.
• The opposite is worse: a full-page cache that ignores the login cookies (Cloudflare "Cache Everything" with an Edge Cache TTL that overrides the origin, for instance) can store a page as an administrator saw it, without the tracker, and serve it to every visitor until it expires. Nobody is counted on that page meanwhile. Keep logged-in users (the wordpress_logged_in cookie) out of such a cache, or untick the roles.

IP addresses

• One per line, an address or a range in CIDR notation. "Add it" fills in the IP you are connecting from right now.
• Everything that comes from them is dropped, page views, events and test orders included. A server-side order sent by the WordPress plugin is checked against the buyer's IP too.
• Most home and mobile connections change IP now and then. For your own devices, the browser option above is more reliable; IPs suit an office with a fixed address.
• Up to 50 rules. Ranges wider than /8 (IPv4) or /16 (IPv6) are not accepted: that would leave out a whole provider, not a team.

Pages

• One per line, starting with /. Only the path counts: if you paste a whole address, the domain and ?query are dropped.
• * stands for any text, slashes included. Upper and lower case are the same.
• Page views and events on those pages are dropped. Orders are not: a rule such as /checkout* is about visits, and losing real sales to it would go unnoticed.
• Up to 50 rules, with at most 3 * each.

What is already left out

Known bots and crawlers are never counted as visits (AI agents are shown apart). You do not need a rule for them.