iMobiTrax comes equipped with a Click Filtering System that allows you to use our pre- set rules as well as customize your own rules to filter out clicks that come from Google Bot, Microsoft adCenter’s bot, or other review teams. This ensures your reporting data is accurate and you’re only calculating the clicks you actually purchased. You can even set a custom rule to filter out your own IP address so your data won’t be skewed from your internal testing.
Features:
- Click Blocking
- Click Filtering
- Preset Rules
- Adcenter IPs
- Adcenter User Agents (yahoo!/bingbot/slurp/msnbot/adidxbot/yahooseeker) o Catch All User Ages (crawl/crawler)
- Google IPs
- Google User Agents
Creating A New Traffic Blocking/Filter Rule o Rule Name
- Rule Type
- Rule Active
- Filter IP Ranges
- Filter User Agents That Contain o Filter Referrers That Contain
Mass Edits To Rules
- Editing An Existing Traffic Blocking/Filter Rule
- Delete An Existing Traffic Blocking/Filter Rule
- Traffic Blocking/Filtering Reporting
Click Blocking
Blocked clicks are clicks that you want to exclude completely from your iMobiTrax installation. An example would be a scraping service that provides “spy” tools for other mobile marketers. Using this system you can send the crawler to a blank page or define a custom page to send them too. These clicks are logged in a separate database than the normal traffic you are sending your visitors too. This system includes complete reporting so you can see the exact clicks that were blocked and can alter the rules accordingly.
Click Filtering
Filtered clicks are clicks that you want to reach your landing page/offer page but do not want them to count towards you click cost. An example would be the Google bot. If you run traffic from Google Adwords or other search engines you will notice that you receive a lot of initial clicks as the bots make their way through all of your campaigns to ensure your landing pages are operational and/or meet quality standards.
Preset Rules
By default iMobiTrax filters out all clicks that contain IP addresses from Microsoft adCenter and Google Adwords. It also filters out any user agent that contains items from adCenter and Adwords. Finally, we pre-set a rule that automatically filters any click that contains the term “crawl” or “crawler” in the user agent.
Creating A New Traffic Blocking/Filtering Rule
One of the most powerful features of the click blocking/filtering system is the ability to create your own custom rules and block/filter traffic based on your own campaigns. Your options when creating a new fule:
Rule Name – The name of the rule you are creating. For example, “My IP” could be the name of a rule to filter out clicks coming from your IP address.
Rule Type – This is where you define if the rule is a block or a filter. Please note the differences described above.
Rule Active – By default this option is selected to YES. If you wish to create a new rule and set it to inactive you can do so here.
Filter IP Ranges – If you’re block/filter is for an IP address or a range of IP addresses this is where you enter them. If you want to enter your own IP address then you would simple set both values to your IP address. For example, if your IP address is 98.25.43.121 then you would set both values to 98.25.43.121 to 98.25.43.121. If you’re creating a rule to block/filter based on user agent or referring URL then you can leave these fields blank.
Filter User Agents That Contain – This field allows you to enter any term that appears in a user agent and block/filter clicks based on this term. For example, the Google bot contains the term “googlebot” so all clicks that contain this in the user agent will be blocked or filtered. If your rule is for an IP range or a referring URL this field can simply be left blank.
Filter Referrers That Contain – This rule will block/filter traffic that comes from a certain referring URL. Remember, with mobile traffic these aren’t passed a lot of the time. However if you find the need to block/filter traffic on this level then this is the place you will enter any term or phrase that will be analyzed and traffic will be blocked accordingly. For example, if you wanted to block/filter traffic coming from google.com you could simple enter “google” in here. If your rule is for an IP address or a user agent this field can be left blank.
Send Blocked Clicks To – This field is the default destination you want to send blocked clicks too. You’ll notice when you go to create a new campaign or edit an existing campaign you can customize this variable on that level. However, this value will be the default value for the rule if the campaign level isn’t set. If you leave it blank clicks will simply be shown a blank page.
Once the above fields are met with your credential the custom traffic blocking/filtering rule will be created. It can be edited or deleted from the rules dashboard.
Mass Edits To Rules
Above the existing traffic blocking/filtering rules you’ll notice four buttons that allow you to make instant changes to all of the rules in the system:
Set All Rules To Block – This option will set all of the existing rules in the system to block. Please refer to the block definition above if you’re unsure how this works.
Set All Rules To Filter – This option will set all of the existing rules in the system to filter. If you’re confused between traffic filtering and traffic blocking please refer to the above definitions.
Set All Rules To Active – This option will set all of the existing rules to active. Active rules are denoted with a green check mark under the active column. To set an individual rule to “inactive” click on the green check mark.
Set All Rules To Inactive – This option will set all of the existing rules to inactive. Inactive rules are denoted with a red x under the active column. To set any individual rule to “active” click on the red x.
Editing A Rule
To edit an existing rule simply click the edit link next to the rule you want to edit and make the necessary adjustment in the fields. Click the “Edit Rule” submission button to save.
Deleting A Rule
To delete a rule click the delete link next to the existing traffic blocking/filtering rule.
Traffic Blocking/Filtering Reporting
To ensure your rules are blocking/filtering to your specifications you’ll notice a reporting system that allows you to see the exact click(s) that are being filtered. Under existing traffic blocking/filter rules you’ll notice three columns that are important for reporting. They include: logged, recorded, and filtered.
Logged – The logged column includes all of the clicks that have met one or more of the existing rules. If your installation has been upgraded from a previous version of iMobiTrax you’ll notice these fields are 0 until you begin running new traffic through the system. These clicks are logged in the filtered database.
Recorded – These are clicks that are in the main click database that meet one of the existing rules. If you upgraded from a previous version of iMobiTrax you’ll notice this number is highlighted in red. You can click on the number and view the exact clicks that meet this rule. If you choose to have these clicks filtered (updating your existing stats) you can do so by clicking the corresponding “Filter” link in green.
Filtered – These are clicks in the main database that have been filtered out because they met one of the existing rules. This number is highlighted in blue and you can click on it to view the exact clicks to ensure the proper traffic is being blocked/filtered.
Viewing Blocked/Filtered Clicks
As noted above you can click on number beside the rule that was triggered to view the exact clicks that were filtered. You’ll notice important information such as campaign ID, sub ID, rule name, rule type, rule target, IP address, user agent, and referrer. A green check mark will display beside the click(s) that were successfully blocked/filtered based on your rules:
