Google offer users an option to opt-out of their Google Analytics system. That basically means that if you visit a website that uses Google Analytics for tracking, your visit won’t be recorded by Google.

Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.

The opt-out feature in Google Analytics is available as an add-on for Google Chrome, IE and Firefox browser. Once installed,  the tracking information gathered by Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) will not be sent to Google Analytics servers.

Also see: How to Opt-out of Interest Advertising

Hide your Visits from Google Analytics

The Google Analytics opt-out tool needs to be installed on all browsers but if you want to prevent Google Analytics from tracking your visit system-wide, open your Windows hosts file and add the following line:

# [Google Analytics] 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com

The Google Analytics tracking image (utm.gif) and the JavaScript (ga.js) are both served from google-analytics.com.