Why do I see unexpected data when applying my filter?

Segmenting data using filters

Siteimprove Analytics filters give you a better understanding of user behavior by breaking down data into user segments. This means the filter is based on visitor sessions (aka Visits) unlike the Groups functionality that is slicing data based on a selection of web pages.

You can set up conditions for a filter and view data that match those conditions.

Examples of conditions include:

• visitor location
• traffic source
• page visited
• website event
• campaign parameter
• etc

When the filter is enabled, ALL the data for the visits that match the criteria defined in the filter will be shown. It's important to remember, a Filter is segmenting data based on Visits and not on pages.

Some criteria are not mutually exclusive so you may experience seeing data presented that at first glance does not seem to match the specific criteria configured (see examples below)

Examples

Page Visit example

If the filter criteria is Page visited = Page A, then the data presented can show other pages visited during the same visits where Page A was viewed. If you were aiming to see only data for Page A, then you should either examine that page with the Analytics Page Inspector or create a group that contains the specific page(s) you want to analyze.  

Campaign parameter example

Suppose the filter is based on a campaign parameter. In that case, the data presented can include other campaigns as well if the visitor loaded pages with other campaign parameter values during the same visit.

IP Group example

When it comes to IP filters, users/customers usually create those type of filters to exclude visits from specific pages that are generated by their internal employees. Sometimes applying such filter does not work as expected and visits on pages that should be excluded appear under Analytics. The example in the screenshot below however is not applicable to IP filters. This is because a session can only have one IP, so if you exclude traffic by IP, those IPs should be removed from the data.

One possible explanation on why the IP filter might not work as expected is that the traffic originates from an employee working remotely, whose IP address is not included in the excluded IP range defined in the IP group settings. In such cases, even though the person is part of the organization, their activity isn’t filtered out because their IP doesn't match the internal network criteria.