Filtering xDB reports by IP address

Question

Repost from Stack overflow

I have analytics report for my website. I hadn't configured robot detection service while setting up solution.

I am not using Sitecore GeoIP service. I would like to filter my existing analytics report to exclude our own traffic.

Can we do that on existing report? Does xDB store IP addresses information for visits by default, if yes; is there any way to extract that information to create custom report

Answer 1

Add a your IP-addresses to Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config. This method does allow the use of single IP addresses, ranges and subnets. Those IP addresses will not be tracked anymore. However, I'm not sure if these settings are applied to existing records in the XDB:

Supported values and formates: IP address, e.g. 10.2.3.4; IP range, e.g. 10.1.2.3 - 10.1.2.30; Subnet, e.g. 10.2.3.*

If you want to remove the interactions based on those IP-addresses from the XDB, please note that you need to write some custom logic. Anders Laub wrote a nice blogpost on this subject: https://laubplusco.net/sitecore-dms-visits-specific-ip-addresses/

The IP-address is stored in the Interactions table (fieldname: IP), but the IP-address stored as a binary object.

*please note: all IP addresses might be stored as a hash in the XDB about that.

edit: confirmation on the hashed IP addresses by @Matthias Gmur from the Sitecore slack channel:

<!--  ANALYTICS - REDACT IP ADDRESS
       Determines if the IP addresses that initiated the interaction are redacted when writing to the database.
       Note: IP addresses are hashed by default. Setting this value to true removes your ability to determine the actual IP address that initiated the interaction.
       When the setting is enabled, the database stores an empty IP address (0.0.0.0) instead of the actual IP address.
       Default value: false
 -->
 <setting name="Analytics.RedactIpAddress" value="false" />

Answer 2

The Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config file contains a list of IP addresses and user agents to exclude. If a visitor comes to your website from one of the IP addresses in the exclude list, or is a user agent in the exclude list, then the request to view the page is ignored and not tracked.

You can edit this list manually by adding the user agents that you want to block under the node and IP addresses under the node.

To filter by user agent: Navigate to the Website\App_Config\Include folder and open the Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config file.

Under the node, enter each user agent that you want to block on a separate line.

For example: UserAgent 1.0 UserAgent 2.0 UserAgent 2.0

To filter by IP address: Navigate to the Website\App_Config\Include folder and open the Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config file. Under the node, enter each IP address that you want to block on a separate line. For example: 10.1.2.3 12.9.2.2 35.2.5.4

Note

Ensure that IP addresses conform to the following supported formats:

IP address example 10.2.3.4

IP range example 10.1.2.3 - 10.1.2.30

Here you find more information: https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/setting_up__maintaining/xdb/robot_detection/configure_the_robot_detection_component#_Excluding_user_agents