How many Google Analytics profiles do you manage? If you only manage 1, then you may stop reading here. This post isn’t for you.

However, if you manage multiple profiles, then here’s a quick tip to keep your head from spinning.  If you pay attention at all to best practices of web analytics, you’ll know the data only really becomes useful when you “drill down” a few levels and segment your data.

Google Analytics makes that relatively easy with the advanced segments functionality.

If you manage multiple accounts, you may have also noticed that a “Custom Segment” you created shows up on multiple profiles. This is a very common occurrence that happens to newbies either on the agency side (managing multiple clients) or on the corporate side (managing multiple unique sites).

Sometimes, that can be great (hey, it’s nice to only have to do something once, right?), but other times it can be very, very annoying.  The word “custom” is there for a reason. Not every segment you create is likely to be applicable to all your sites and it’s kind of a pain to see 40 advanced segments show up that you have to look through:

 Partial List of Advanced Segments

Luckily, there’s a simple solution. Unfortunately, that solution can be easy to overlook.  Before you save, preview, or test the segment, click on the “More Options” link:

Select ONLY the profile(s) you want this segment to appear in.  See below:

Pretty slick, huh?  Trust me, remembering to do this simple step will save you time and frustration down the line as you (hopefully) begin to make greater use of the Advanced Segments functionality.