New to Segments: Excluding certain Visitors' data from reports

[ElliotSi]

Can I use Segments to exclude certain Visitors from different report suites? For example, I want to exclude developers' Adobe data from the prod report.

My idea of how to do this is in my first Adobe event (where I send Visitor's unique userid), I also add a flag that is set depending on the condition above (if user is a dev in prod). I set an eVar to the flag in a Rule, then create a Segment that checks if the eVar is true/false. If I add the Segment to the top of the report, will it exclude ALL data sent from that user? So I don't need to pass that flag with each Adobe event; just the first one?

How will this affect past data?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hi @ElliotSi,

As long as the developers always are identified as the same user, then yes, excluding visitors based on ever having that flag should work.

The problem with developers is that they often are testing on multiple browsers / devices / in and out of incognito and private modes, etc... so trying to identify all the potential hits will likely be impossible... but it could certainly help.

As long as the hit with the flag is inside the reporting window, the user's data should be excluded both past and present....

For example:

Visit 1 (March 1):

• Page A
• Page B
• Page C

Visit 2 (March 29):

• Page D (flag applied)
• Page E
• Page F

Visit 3 (April 20):

• Page G
• Page H

Segment:

Visitor (Exclude)

     Flag equals true

If you run a report that ranges from March 1 - April 23, all three of the above Visits will be excluded (all three visits are in the range, and the visit with the flag is also inside the range)

If you run a report from March 1 - March 20 (contains Visit 1, but not the visit with the flag), the visit will not be excluded.... (This used to work, until they changed the segment logic last year which I am still not happy about, as this has made some segments impossible now....)

If you run a report from April 1 - April 23 (contains Visit 3, but not the Visit with the flag), the Visit will not be excluded... unless you captured the flag in a non-expiring eVar and the flag value has carried forward without being explicitly set.

Attribution on your Flag obviously will play a role in how data moving forward works... and sometimes you have think about potential ramifications of a value that never resets. You would be safer to use something like Visit expiry, and at least set the flag on each visit.

I assume that your developers are not accessing the site from Internal IPs? Such as from your actual office or from a work VPN? Since you are looking for a coded solution... Or maybe you are just unaware of the ability to exclude internal traffic from all your reporting....   If they are accessing from the same IP or IP Range, you might want to just consider configuring IP Exclusion rules for your "internal traffic":

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/admin/admin-tools/exclude-ip

Also, if you are looking for more information about Segments and Exclusions, you might want to take a look at this article I wrote:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experiences-by-you/experiences-by-you/analytics/analysis-... 

[SA30]

Hi , I want to know , what is the the flag you are referring in the conversation.

Even. Is it Js flag variable you are referring to and passing it as a dimension?.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I mean, either a dimension with an attribution, or an event that fires for "developers" could theoretically work.. I assumed a dimension, but good shoutout @SA30