Shorten your Google Analytics Non-Branded Keyword Filter

Google Analytics Non-Branded keywords filtering is among the top used filters in DashThis. We already covered the subject here. However, sometimes the filter exceed the Google Analytics API limit of 128 characters.

I think the problem is mostly because filtering using regular expression is complex and most of the time, the analyst isn’t an expert at that field. Rest assured, it’s common among web analysts!

The problem we usually observe is that users repeat words. Like in this example:

ga:keyword!~(DashThis|Dash This|Dashthis.com)

Do you see there are three occurrence of “dash” in this? That’s where you can save space!

Let’s recreate the filter without repetition:

ga:keyword!~(Dash|this)

Ho, but in DashThis’s case, this would filter the keyword "dashboard" as well which is a non-branded keyword that we want to see in the report.

Let’s fine tune it this way:

ga:keyword!~(Dash |this) -> Notice the space after Dash!

That’s it. We now have a fully working non-branded filter for Google Analytics.

» Need help with your filtering? We are here to help!