Profiles in WebSpy Vantage are WebSpy’s own site categorization system. The categorization is done using keyword matching on the entire URL of the website, and the results of this can be seen in Reports and Summaries Analyses. Vantage comes with some sample profiles included which can be fully customized to suit your own categorization requirements.
Site categorization using WebSpy’s Profiles is done by keyword matching on the URL. Each keyword that is entered can be matched anywhere along the entire URL of the hit recorded, even if it’s part of a larger word. Therefore it’s important to be careful with small words as these can easily be matched even when you don’t intend them to. For example, the keyword ‘sex’ is found in www.msexchange.com.
The site is categorized by the first keyword that is matched, and each hit can only be classified into 1 profile, so if your URL contains keywords for multiple profiles, then the first one that is found searching the URL from left to right, is the one that the hit will classified into.
For example, if you visit:
http://www.baseball.com/arcade.jpg
This URL contains the keywords ‘baseball’ which is part of the Sport profile, and ‘arcade’ which is part of the Entertainment profile. This hit would be classified into the Sport profile as the keyword ‘baseball’ is the first one found.
Each profile has both Includes and Excludes keywords. This gives you greater control over what is matched, and false positives such as the one described above. In this instance, we could add the keyword ‘sex’ to the Adult profile as an Includes keyword, but add the keyword ‘msexchange’ as an Excludes keyword in the Adult profile to ensure that hits to the Microsoft Exchange website are not classified as Adult.
When an Includes keyword is matched for a Profile, WebSpy then checks the rest of the URL for any Excludes keywords for that Profile. If an excludes keyword is found, then that hit will not be included into that Profile, and WebSpy will continue checking the URL for any other Includes keywords so that this hit may be classified into another profile.
The details of Profiles in WebSpy Vantage can be viewed and customized by going to Modules | Profiles on the main menu, or clicking on the Profiles tab across the top of the software. Here you can see the existing profiles that come with the software, and you can click on the name of any profile to view it’s keywords and edit them.
To edit the keywords for an existing profile:
1. Go to Profiles in Vantage
2. On the left click on the name of the profile who’s keywords you wish to edit
3. Click on the keyword you wish to edit in either the Includes or the Excludes list, then click the Edit button above the list of keywords to edit it, or click the Delete button to remove the keyword
4. Click the Add button above either keyword list to add a new keyword to that list.
To add a new Profile click the New Profile link on the left, then give your profile a name and a description if you like. To remove a Profile completely, click on the name of the profile, then click the Delete Profile link on the left.
You can also save your Profiles, and reopen saved files using the Save Profiles and Open Profiles links. And you can export your Profiles to a CSV file, and reimport them again using the Export to CSV and Import from CSV links, to help you manage keywords more easily.
The Troubleshoot Profiles link will allow Vantage to check through all of the keywords in your profiles, and suggest any possible problems, such as full or partial duplicates, or superfluous includes or excludes.
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