Comparison of different bot exclusion methods

The following table shows different methods of excluding bots and how they compare to each other.

Method
Bot Rules
Exclude by IP Address
Customer attributes
Segmentation
3-rd party scoring + Segmentation
Suppress Server Call​​ for Bots at Runtime
Custom DB VISTA rule
Description of method for excluding data
​Exclude based on user-agent, IP address, or IP address range
IP address
​A flag in customer attributes that identifies ECID as a bot
​Criteria in an Analytics segment that identifies known bots based on bot behavior
​A 3rd party such as Perimeter X or Akamai Bot Manager assigns each page view a score on how likely it is to be a bot. Score is sent into Analytics and segments can be used to filter data out based on the score.
​Client-side logic stops the Analytics server call from being executed for bots.
​A VISTA rule will move traffic from bots that meet certain criteria to a separate report suite.
​Bot names are available for reporting?
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
​Able to see which pages are being visited by bots?
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
Incurs server call cost for bots?
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Bot data available in data feeds?
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Able to ​report on bot traffic as if they are actual server calls?
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Can retroactively remove data from a data set?
No
No
​Yes, once declared IDs are implemented
Yes
Yes, once scores are implemented
No
No
Is subject to Uniques limits in criteria?
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
Is s​ubject to additional cost?
No
No
​Possibly, depending on Analytics SKU
No
Yes
No
​Yes - cost to implement and maintain a VISTA rule
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