Exclude back-end domains from reports

Web pages often include social media buttons, adverts, trackers, and external content. When reporting on user activity, you may see domain names you don’t immediately recognise, such as ytimg.com when users visit youtube.com.

You can exclude these back-end domains from your reports to focus on the websites users visit. However, don’t exclude them when reporting on sum, total, or volume metrics like traffic volume, as this will produce inaccurate results.

1. Create a Custom report or edit an existing report template.
2. In the report editor, go to the Options tab and select Advanced.
3. In the Exclude Domain field, enter any known back-end domains. For example, excluding ytimg.com prevents links to video thumbnails on YouTube from showing as user searches.
4. Select the checkboxes for:
   
   • Exclude adverts
   • Do not include unauthenticated requests
   • Filter out Images, Javascript etc.
5. Go to the Exclude results section and find the Do not include these categories field.
6. Enter a list of Categories to exclude, one per line. We recommend excluding the following:
   
   • Content Delivery: Video or high-bandwidth content hosted on content delivery providers like Akamai.
   • Software Updates: Windows and antimalware updates.
   • SSL/CRL: Sites used for certificate verification and updates.
   • Transparent HTTPS incompatible sites: Sites or resources used by applications that don’t add Server Name Indication (SNI) information.
   • Trusted Ranged Get Services: Windows updates and other update services that use HTTP range download requests.
   • Tracking: Trackers that map user activity and target adverts.
   • Search Suggestions: Search page suggestions that appear after each letter entered.