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I'm new to Google Analytics as of yesterday. I need to test click events one of our sites with an existing Master View. There are numerous resources that explain why a Test View should be created and used, but I am fruitless to find how to best implement it without impacting the Master View (or other views I'll create down the road). So I turn to SO...

I see the Real Time events coming through on the Master View, Test View and Raw View, but the eventCategory/eventAction/eventLabel naming I ran aren't "clean" as I was testing them for my first experience using the service. I can live with the results for now, but is preferred that the Master View be excluded, of course.

My guess of a solution is to have the Master View exclude the new events I'm creating using a filter which I can do before or after the fact to clear the results - based on my understanding here https://blog.kissmetrics.com/avoid-corrupting-analytics-data/. This seems super hacky though and I will be setting up new views for other reasons down the road and don't want to do this for every new view.

I am aware of solutions to block local data (Google Analytics Event tracking: how to avoid sending data for local test?), but I want to see the results in GA for future testing purposes.

Sorry if I'm being dense on this, but there just doesn't seem to be any explicit instruction on how to test with Test View from what I've searched so far. Your help is very much appreciated!

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partyneeds1212
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  • You are doing right. Best practice is to have 3 views. **Raw** - unfiltered, **Main** - with your IP filtered off, tested goals and filters; **Test** - test versions of your filters. There is no problem with event labeling - you are using it in your goals setup and it is specific for each view. So basic workflow looks like: you're testing on your local machine and track results in your **test** view; you'll not contaminating your **main** view with your ip; and you have **raw** view as your all data backup. – Alex Oct 29 '15 at 09:51
  • Thank you @Alex! I had also reached out to a colleague who confirmed the same suggestion this morning: to filter out my own IP address. I will do this on the setup of every new view I create (along with the IP addresses of my team). This seems obvious in retrospect, but it was frustrating that none of the great GA resources out there gave this explicit suggestion. – partyneeds1212 Oct 29 '15 at 15:33

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A test view is a best practice you should adopt, along with a raw (ie. unfiltered) view. It allows you to test our GA configurations before pushing them to your production view. So by configurations that means filters and goals and other settings. It's not exactly meant for you to test events, etc. To test those, you need to set up another property that only your testing events get tracked into.

Keep a raw view handy as well. I typically like to set up goals as well as ecommerce so that not everything is "raw", but at least I can still see conversions and such through raw. Note that the view still remains unfiltered, but not necessarily unprocessed.

Additional reading materials

These articles discuss the benefits of configuring multiple views for your raw data view, your main view, and your test view.

Best Practices for Views in Google Analytics by Tracy Rabold (January 15, 2015)

The 3 Profiles that Every Google Analytics Account Needs by Lars Lofgren (Before March 26, 2014)

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