WebTrends -- filters

[blueFinger2]

Hey all,

First time posting here, and I appologize if I'm posting in the wrong area.

I'm trying to figure out how to setup my WebTrends 7.0 Small Business Edition so that I can filter out ips/domains. I found a thread that helped a lot...essentially creating an include filter with referring URL: http:*www* and exclude filter with referring URL: *yourdomain.com*. This worked great...but I was wondering how do I filter out reserved IPs...like 192.168.* -- is it the same type of thing? I can't seem to get it to work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike

[blueFinger2]

I spoke too soon...that filter solution didn't work.

I really don't understand this.

I did this:
Create one include filter:
Referring URL: http:* www*
And one exclude filter:
Referring URL: *yourowndomain.com*

But when I looked at the report, under marketing/referrer, I'm still seeing my domain and 'no referrer' coming up.

What am I doing wrong?

Mk

[cgrantski]

It sounds like the thread deals with a version of WT a couple gens ago. Back then, you needed an Include filter if you had an Exclude filter. No more. Just make one Exclude filter.

You are trying to eliminate certain irrelevant visitors, whose IP addresses you already know, from your whole analysis, right?

If so, you want a simple exclude hit filter, which is under Options (don't create filters under Custom Reports for this).

In Hit Filter creation, choose "exclude, based upon Address." Then in the next window drop in all your IP addresses, separated by spaces if you have more than one. They can also be domain names if, in fact, you've set the program to resolve IPs. When using * wild cards, you only need one - i.e. 63.73.*.* is wrong, 63.73.* is right. That's it. Don't forget to actually attach that filter to your profile.

[cgrantski]

If, on the other hand, you are trying to exclude visits that were referred to your site by a certain other site, then you need a simple Exclude Visit filter (note this is a Visit filter, not a Hit filter), based on Referrer. Note in the instructions that you can only use a wild card asterisk at the beginning or the end, not both. If you want to exclude www.sitename.com/variousdirectories/variouspages and sitename.com/variousdirectories/variouspages, don't use *sitename.com*, use www.sitename.com* and sitename.com* separated by a space.

The Visit filters act to exclude or include a whole visit based on the referrer field found on the very first hit of the visit.

[blueFinger2]

Thank you very much for the help. Actually, this solution is how I started. But wasn't working, and that's why I turned to this exclude/include concept thinking that it would be my saviour. Not so much.

I followed your suggestion to a "T", but sadly, it's still doesn't work.

Here's how it stands:
- Under the advanced tab in my new profile, I select the newly created hit filter
- This hit filter says "exclude" "web server" "include/exclude...parameters" with "address" checked
- Then under "address" I have (All Addresses) in the dropdown and "192.168.*" in the text field (minus the quotes)
- I have "perform DNS lookup" activated in Internet Resolution
- I have "enable Visitor History" enabled in the Visitor history tab with "Visit History" and "Search Engine History" checked -- which by the way, nothing comes up for Search engines either--I'm assuming I should see something?

So when I run the report, and go to "marketing / Visitors / Top Visitors" I see as a 3rd entry "192.168.18.150"

What gives?

[cgrantski]

Blue: If you want to contact me offline, I will try to help you. Then we can come back and post the fix here in case others someday run into the same issue. Feel free to sticky me. We can also work on the search engine business; I think I know the issue.

[blueFinger2]

Thanks for the help. I did finally figure out what the issue was...for those interested, the biggest issue was that I wasn't "Clearing anaylsis data" before running another analysis. WT doesn't refresh--so if you make a change to the reporting structure you need to clear the data first.