Filters Look Like Zero
When you apply a date range, page path, or source filter and see zero, the filter may be narrower than your data. Zero in a filtered view is not the same as zero recorded visits for the site.
Date range filters
The dashboard date range filter controls which period's data is shown. If you select a range during which no beacons were recorded — before the script was installed, during a period the site was down, or a future date — the count will be zero for that range even if hundreds of visits exist outside it.
Start by setting the date range to the widest available option: all time, or the maximum lookback the dashboard supports. If visits appear in the all-time view, your data exists and the issue is the range selection. Narrow the range incrementally until you find the dates where data starts. If visits started on a specific date when the script went live, no data will appear before that date regardless of how the filter is set.
Also check the time zone used by the dashboard. If the dashboard's time zone does not match your expectation, visits you believe landed on one day may be recorded under the previous or next day. A visit at 11 PM in your local time may appear under the following day in a UTC-based dashboard. This can cause a day to appear empty when it is not, depending on how your traffic is distributed across hours.
Page path filters
Page path filters match the exact pathname sent in the beacon. The pathname is the part of the URL after the hostname and before the query string: /blog, /products/shoes, /about. Query strings are never included. The match is case-sensitive and must include the exact leading slash.
Trailing slashes matter. /blog and /blog/ are different paths. If your server sometimes serves /blog and sometimes /blog/ — for example, when some internal links include the slash and others do not — the dashboard will show two separate rows. A filter for /blog finds only visits where the path was exactly /blog. A filter for /blog/ finds only those with the trailing slash. Reset the filter to unfiltered to see both rows and their totals.
If you are looking for a path that your site generates dynamically — such as /products/12345 for product ID 12345 — the filter needs to match the exact path the browser had at load time. Wildcard or partial matching depends on the dashboard's filter capabilities. If partial matching is available, use it. If not, look for the path in the unfiltered pages list and note its exact form before entering it into the filter.
Source filters
Source filters match the referrer hostname recorded in the beacon. The dashboard shows the hostname only — google.com, not google.com/search?q=something. If you enter a partial URL, a full URL, or a path into the source filter, it will not match the stored hostname-only values.
Traffic that arrived without a referrer — direct visits, bookmarks, email links from clients that strip referrers — is grouped under a direct label rather than a hostname. If you are filtering for a specific source and wondering where your direct traffic went, switch the filter to show direct and you will see it separately.
Same-site navigation appears under your own hostname in the sources data. If you are filtering for external sources and your own hostname keeps appearing, that is internal traffic: visitors who arrived on the filtered page by clicking a link on another page of your own site rather than coming from outside.
Resetting filters to verify data exists
Before concluding that data is missing, reset every active filter to its default state. Remove the date range restriction, clear any page path filter, and clear any source filter. Look at the total count for the site with no filters active. If a non-zero total appears, your data exists and the zero you saw earlier was a result of the filter excluding all of it.
Work backward from the unfiltered view. Note the date range where data appears, the page paths that have counts, and the sources that are populated. Then reapply your filters one at a time, starting with the one you are most certain about. This systematic approach isolates which filter is excluding your data rather than leaving you with a compounded zero from multiple filters applied at once.
Troubleshooting
If the unfiltered, all-time view also shows zero for a site you have instrumented, the issue is not the filter — the site has not recorded any visits. Refer to the nothing-recorded troubleshooting article to work through the possible causes: script tag missing, key mismatch, HTTPS requirement, or extension blocking during your own testing.
If applying a date range that should cover your highest-traffic period still shows zero, confirm that the script was live during that period. Check your deployment history or version control to identify when the script tag was first deployed to the live page. If the tag was deployed after the date range you are filtering for, the count will be zero for that range because no beacons were firing.
If page path filters return zero for a path you see in the unfiltered list, compare the filter string character by character with the path shown in the list. A missing leading slash, an extra character, or a case difference can cause the filter to match nothing. Copying the path from the list view and pasting it into the filter field — rather than typing it — eliminates this class of error.