Each field represents a piece of data that can have many values. For example, the Visitor City field can contain Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, etc. To find the different values stored in a field, use the Google Analytics reports. As mentioned previously, each report is constructed using a field, so all the values in a field are displayed in the report built from that field.
Filter Patterns The second part of a filter is the filter pattern. The pattern is applied to the filter field and if the pattern matches any part of the field, the pattern returns a positive result, thus causing an action to occur. The patterns used in Google Analytics are called regular expressions. A regular expression is a set of characters that represents a larger set of data. These characters may be standard alphanumeric characters (like letters or numbers) or special characters (like the * or +). You can find more information about regular expressions in Appendix B.
Filter Type The final part of a filter is the filter type. The filter type is the action applied to the data if the filter pattern matches the filter field. There are seven different types of filters, each with a distinct function.
Include/Exclude Filters Include/exclude filters are the most common custom filters in Google Analytics. They’re also the easiest to understand. The action for an include filter is inclusion. This means that if the regular expression matches the filter field, the data is included in the profile. Exclude filters operate in the opposite manner. If the filter pattern matches the filter field, the data will be excluded from the profile. Include/exclude filters are extremely powerful because you can use them to segment your data in different ways. For example, to analyze the visitation habits of visitors from California, create an include filter like the one shown in Figure 6-2. The result of this filter is that all data stored in the profile and displayed in the reports is for visitors from California (the Visitor Region field stores the U.S. state name). Figure 6-3 shows a similar example that uses an include filter for visitors from New York.
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