webtrend reports

[Walter Sobchek]

Hi,
I'm a recent starter into web analytics and I've never worked with webtrends before so this might seem like a retarded question but I'll appreciate any help greatly.

Basically, I'm trying to filter out robots, spiders, crawlers from the reports and profiles. I created a hit filter which excludes data based on browser. I saved it and applied it globally except when I go back to viewing the reports nothing has changed, is there some step that I'm missing?

[cgrantski]

I think the problem is in the phrase "when I go back to viewing the reports" and this is a typical misunderstanding by new users. WebTrends (and many other such programs) don't apply those filters to existing, already-analyzed data. They are processing filters, not viewing filters. Your reports from this point on will be filtered, as WebTrends applies the filter to new data. But your previously processed data won't be filtered. If you are using the software version of WebTrends (rather than the ASP product On Demand) you can re-analyze your previous data. If you do so, I suggest making a clone of your existing profile to do the reprocessing of old data and leaving the existing profile intact until the new profile is finished.

Be prepared for some or many spiders and bots to get past your filters; they are constantly changing their IPs or browser identification and some simply don't identify themselves.

[Walter Sobchek]

That took care of it, thanks!