Excluding your own visits

Inflating your own stats by visiting your own site is the oldest analytics frustration in the book. HitCounters gives you two ways to stop counting yourself, and you can use both at once.

Method 1: Block by IP (server-side)

Best for: working from a fixed location (home or office), excluding everyone on a specific network.

1. Go to your site's Settings page (/dashboard/site-settings.php?site_id=X).
2. In the Exclude My Own Visits card, click Add my current IP — we auto-fill the IP we see you from.
3. Optionally add more IPs or CIDR ranges, one per line:

   192.168.1.50
   203.0.113.42
   10.0.0.0/24

4. Save.

From now on, visits from those IPs are silently dropped server-side — nothing is recorded.

Method 2: Per-device opt-out (client-side)

Best for: laptops you take everywhere, devices that change IPs, excluding specific browsers (e.g. your dev browser but not your "view-as-customer" private window).

1. Visit your own site with ?hc_optout=1 in the URL once. Example: https://yoursite.com/?hc_optout=1
2. The tracker stores a flag in your browser's localStorage and stops sending data from that browser.
3. To re-enable tracking on that browser: visit with ?hc_optout=0.

This method works per browser — each device and each browser profile needs its own opt-out. Clearing site data clears the flag.

Which method to use?

For your site visitors

Any visitor to your site can opt out themselves by visiting ?hc_optout=1. We document this in our privacy policy and don't fight it — user choice is the right answer.

WordPress plugin shortcut

If you use our WordPress plugin, the "Exclude logged-in admins" option is on by default. WP admins won't be tracked when they're logged in, no IP setup needed.