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Excluding Internal Traffic

Posted
Updated
ByEmily Gomez
Visits from your team can affect experiment data just like visits from other website visitors.
If you frequently visit pages where experiments are running, Bluvia A/B Testing allows you to exclude specified IP addresses from tracking so internal activity doesn’t influence your results.

Why Exclude Internal Traffic?

Your team may interact with your website differently from a typical visitor.
For example, team members may regularly:
  • Review website changes.
  • Test buttons and forms.
  • Perform quality assurance.
  • Visit the same pages repeatedly.
  • Check active experiments.
  • Review new content before or after publication.
Including this activity in experiment data can introduce behavior that doesn’t represent the audience you’re actually trying to understand.
Excluding internal traffic can help keep your experiment data focused on your intended visitors.

Exclude an IP Address

You can exclude IP addresses from the Bluvia A/B Testing plugin settings.
To add an exclusion:
  1. Navigate to Bluvia A/B Testing ā†’ Settings.
  2. Find Excluded IPs under Tracking Settings.
  3. Enter the IP address you want to exclude.
  4. Enter additional IP addresses on separate lines, if needed.
  5. Select Save Changes.
Traffic from the listed IP addresses will be excluded from Bluvia A/B Testing tracking.

Which IP Addresses Should You Exclude?

Consider excluding an IP address when traffic from that location regularly represents internal activity rather than typical website visitors.
This might include:
  • Your office
  • Development or QA environments
  • Team members who frequently test the website
  • Other known sources of internal traffic
You don’t need to exclude every occasional visit from your team.
Focus on traffic that occurs frequently enough that it could meaningfully influence your experiment data.

Be Aware of Changing IP Addresses

Not every internet connection uses a permanent IP address.
Some internet providers, offices, home networks, VPNs, and mobile connections may use IP addresses that change over time.
If an IP address changes, the previously excluded address will no longer represent that connection.
If you’re relying on IP exclusions for internal traffic, periodically confirm that the addresses you’ve configured are still correct.

Excluded IPs vs. Exclusion Rules

Bluvia A/B Testing provides both global Excluded IPs and experiment-specific Exclusion Rules, but they serve different purposes.

Excluded IPs

Configured under Bluvia A/B Testing ā†’ Settings.
Use these when you want specified IP addresses excluded from tracking across your Bluvia A/B Testing environment.
This is generally the better option for ongoing internal or team traffic.

Exclusion Rules

Configured within an individual experiment.
Use these when you want to prevent certain visitors from participating in a specific test.
For example, an experiment may exclude visitors based on conditions that only matter for that particular test.
See Targeting & Exclusion Rules for more information about experiment-level exclusions.

Testing Your Own Experiments

Excluding your IP address can affect how your own activity is recorded while you’re checking an experiment.
If you need to verify how a specific Variant looks or behaves, use the experiment’s Preview functionality rather than relying on a normal tracked visit.
Previewing allows you to review the experience without using your own experiment participation as the primary way to verify a Variant.
Remember that Bluvia A/B Testing also uses cookies to maintain a visitor’s assignment to the Control or a Variant.
See Cookie & Visitor Tracking for more information.

When You May Not Need an IP Exclusion

Internal traffic doesn’t always need to be excluded.
For example, if your team rarely visits pages involved in experiments, those occasional visits may have little practical impact on your results.
The value of excluding internal traffic increases when your team frequently interacts with experiment pages or performs repeated testing.
Consider your own workflow and how much internal activity your website receives.

Review Your Exclusions Periodically

As your team or website environment changes, review your Excluded IPs to make sure they’re still relevant.
You may need to update the list when:
  • Your office network changes.
  • Your team’s IP addresses change.
  • A development environment is added or removed.
  • An old exclusion is no longer necessary.
Keeping the list current helps prevent unintended traffic from being excluded.

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