Table of Contents
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I. Introduction
Filters hold the key to unlocking the power of Nihuo Web Log Analyzer. Understanding how filters work will help you to get the most out of your
reports. Filters allow you to limit the scope of Nihuo Web Log Analyzer’s analysis to specific parts of your site, providing only the most important information in reports to make reports more readable or relevant.
II. Why should I filter data?
Filtering or excluding certain data from your reports is important to ensure your data reports are accurate. If you want to measure performance
of your promotion plan and you do not set up any filters, all those visits from your web team are going to have a negative effect on the reported data. Generally it is a good idea to filter as many known people and domains as possible to ensure the reported data is as accurate as possible.
You can create extra profiles of the same website and filter specific traffic to only appear in all reports of that profile.
III. Hit Filter & Visit Filter
Nihuo Web Log Analyzer provides two filter types: Hit Filter and Visit Filter.
Hit filters include or exclude raw data generated by individual actions on a web site.
Visit filters include or exclude all the data in a visitor session.
Multiple filters can be combined in a profile with boolean operator ( AND, OR , NOT ).
Here’s the correct list for all the currently available filters and how Nihuo categorizes them.
1. Hit Filter
- Advertising
- Agent
- Authenticate User
- Browser
- Client Host Country
- Client Host Domain
- Client Host IP
- Cookie
- Day Of Week
- File Type
- HTTP Method
- OS
- Referrer
- Requested File
- Return Code
- Spider
- Stolen Object
- Time
- URL Parameter
- Virtual Domain
2. Visit Filter
- Visitor with specified entry page
- Visitors with specified exit page
- Visitors who came from specify referrer
- Visitors who accessed specified file
- Visitors who accessed specified file type
- Visit Depth
- Visitors who came from specify search phrase
For step-by-step instructions on creating filters, please refer to http://loganalyzer.net/tutorial.html#filter.
IV. Wildcards
Nihuo Web Log Analyzer support using wildcards in hit parameters.
Here are the wildcards supported by Nihuo Web Log Analyzer:
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Wildcard
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Matches
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?
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any character (only one) |
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*
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zero or more characters (any characters) |
1. An example using *
Let’s say you want exclude all files and subdirectory below /admin/ from reports.
Just create exclude Requested File hit filer and input below parameter:
2. An example using ?
Let’s say you have several files on your website:
file2.htm
file3.htm
file35.htm
Let’s say we use this wildcard file name:
The ? matches a single character. The wildcard file name above means
“match any filename which starts with file, is followed by a single character, and then the .htm extension follows”. This wildcard will select:
file2.htm
file3.htm
… but it will NOT select:
because it has two characters, instead of one, between file and .htm.
But if you specify the wildcard:
then only
will be selected, because the wildcard file name specifies that there must be 2 characters between file and .htm
For more detail information about wildcards, please refer to http://www.loganalyzer.net/log-analysis-tutorial/how-to-use-wildcards.html
V.How to exclude spiders and bots data?
If you want to exclude spiders and bots traffic from appearing in your reports, you can use spider hit filter to filter out visits from spiders and bots.
To exclude spiders and bots:
- Right click profile and select Edit from menu
- Select Hit Filter page
- Click Template button and select Exclude all spiders from menu
- Click OK button
- Clearing database is required ( Right click profile and select Clear database from menu)
- Re-analyze ( Right click profile and select Analyze from menu)
You may also use agent filter to filter out visits from particular spiders and bots which aren’t recognized by Nihuo Web Log Analyzer.
For example: exclude agent string “Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider DAV 1.1″
- Right click profile and select Edit from menu
- Select Hit Filter page
- Click And button and select Agent from menu
- Input “Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider DAV 1.1″ ( include double quotes ).
- Click OK button
- Right click the filter node and select Not from context menu
- Click OK button
- Clearing database
- Re-analyze
VI.How do I exclude my internal traffic from reports?
If you want to exclude internal traffic from appearing in your reports, you can filter out a specific IP address or a range of IP addresses. You can also use cookies to filter out visits from particular users. We’ll explain how below.
To exclude by IP address:
- Right click profile and select Edit from menu
- Select Hit Filter page
- Click And button and select Client Host IP from menu
- Enter correct IP range value and click OK button
- Right click the filter node and select Not from context menu
- Click OK button
- Clearing database
- Re-analyze
To exclude traffic by Cookie Content:
To exclude traffic from dynamic IP addresses, you can use a JavaScript function to set a cookie on your internal computers. You’ll then be able to filter all visitors with this cookies from appearing on your Analytics reports. How to exclude traffic by cookie:
- Create a new page on your domain, containing the following code:
< script > function SetCookie(cookieName, cookieValue, nDays) {
var today = new Date();
var expire = new Date();
if (nDays == null || nDays == 0)
nDays = 1;expire.setTime(today.getTime() + 3600000 * 24 * nDays);
document.cookie = cookieName + “=” + escape(cookieValue) +
“; expires=” + expire.toGMTString();}
</script>
(Please note you must ensure cookie field had been exported in log files.)
- In order to set the cookie, visit your newly created page from all computers that you would like to exclude from your reports.
- Launch Nihuo Web Log Analyzer and right click profile and select Edit from menu
- Select Hit Filter page
- Click And button and select Cookie from menu
- Enter “test_value” and click OK button
- Right click the filter node and select Not from context menu
- Click OK button
- Clearing database
- Re-analyze
