In Google Analytics you can exclude selected referring websites that distort reporting. Unlike filters, which eliminate certain visits from reports, exclusions keep them in the statistics, but they are treated as direct visits and do not overwrite traffic sources.
Exclusions are available at the property administration level (listing unwanted referrals). In the data stream configuration (tag configuration), add the relevant addresses to the ignore list. You can find more information in this GA4 help article.
Here are the most important exclusions that every Google Analytics administrator should consider enabling.
Payment gateways
It is worth excluding redirects from an external domain handling the shopping cart or payments (e.g. PayPal, Stripe, your bank’s gateway, etc.). A user returning from these pages does not represent a visit from a new source.
Email services
It is recommended to exclude the domains of email services (e.g. mail.google.com, outlook.live.com, etc.). Visits from such services may, for example, mean a click on an email address confirmation link or a password reset. Overwriting traffic sources is not desirable in this case. Note that for users of email client programs (e.g. Outlook), visits from email messages are reported as direct visits.
Excluding email services in Google Analytics will therefore align the reporting of visits coming from links placed in email messages, regardless of whether the user reads their email through the webmail site or through an app. If, on the other hand, you want to track the effectiveness of newsletters or email campaigns, such messages should be properly tagged with utm parameters (more about utm parameter tagging in the Google Analytics help article).
Excluding your own domain is not needed (it was good practice in earlier versions of Analytics).
Applying these exclusions will make the reporting of traffic sources and conversions in Google Analytics more reliable. Only in exceptional cases might the above exclusions not be justified.
