I’m sorry to say the adventure continues in this “Missing Variables” saga. The first Episode was ‘A New Hope.’ This episode is ‘The Empire Strikes Back.’

In the Combined Field Filter I need, I can select the “missing” visitor city and visitor region variables I want either in Internet Explorer (drop-down menu) or Firefox (up/down arrows) and apparently create and save the needed filter.

But the selected variables don’t “stick.”

If i go back and edit the filter after saving it, the boxes where I selected the variables are blank (actually each has a “dash” rather than the desired variable name). I discovered this because the filters I thought I’d created and activated weren’t working.

If I go in Firefox and select two of the variables to SHOW in it’s drop down menu, those variables STICK. . .As they do with Internet Explorer.

Cheers! And Thanks Robbin for not “Steve you dill, do this…”

- Dill

1) Go back to the original post and do it the way I suggested, but use Internet Explorer
2) If you love FF, you can do it there too, but don’t use the dropdown. Instead, put your cursor into the field and use your arrow buttons to page through the fields, and you will find city and region and country.

It is just a little bug related to the dropdown in FF and will probably get fixed soon. (But we learned a lot about Regular Expressions and filters, no?) And of course, thank you, Steve, for all your help!

Hmm. And my alternate can’t work either - was thinking of using the advanced tab to create a new custom/user defined field that you could exclude on. Two part it and add “Lexington KY” type of thing. Ugly but….

But you can only get Geo, you can’t get the City and/or State information. So can’t work.

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55588
(found via Justin’s book!)

I’m all out of ideas. It looks like the ability is there, but the interface won’t let you construct the rules needed.

Cheers!
- Steve

Concord, MA passes 1 and 2, saved. . .Good
Lexington, KY fails 1 and 2, rejected. . .Good
Lexington, MA fails 1 and passes 2, but not both, so it is rejected ???. . .Bad
Louisville, KY fails 2 and passes 1, but not both, so it is rejected ???. . .Bad

Wouldn’t this Include filter pair incorrectly reject everything that is Lexington and incorrectly reject everything that is KY as well as correctly reject all that are Lexington, KY ?

In essence, I *strongly believe* (ie test!!!) you’d need to use “negative” INCLUDE filters. As per Robbins initial correction to me.

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55559&topic=11094
“When an Include Filter is applied, the hit is thrown away if the pattern does not match the data. If multiple Include Filters are applied, the hit must match every applied Include Filter in order for the hit to be saved.”

So , in techno-babble english, we want two Include filters:
1. Match everything BUT ‘Lexington’
2. Match everything BUT ‘KY’

Which if I’ve got the logic right, simple use the above RegEx’s in my previous, in include filters.
I’d suggest this is more logic puzzle, than GA/RegEx puzzle.

Robbin, do you concur? I want a cross check on this one.

Do let us know how it goes!

Cheers!
- Steve

Just to restate the problem:
Want ONLY traffic from Lexington, KY; but not from any other State. Silly eg Lexington, ZZ.”

The report I want to create includes every visitor that is NOT (Lexington AND KY), to use the example. It would ONLY have traffic NOT from Lexington, KY — Lexington, KY visitors would be excluded.