I am seeing a rating of NONE when I run reports with category ratings in them.

Products

• SG-510
• SG-810

Issue/Introduction

Why do I see this category of NONE at all?

How often should I see the rating of NONE?

Resolution

Given the vastness of the Web, and the fact that new content is constantly being added, it is normal to see URLs that are not categorized in Reporter. These typically represent a small fraction of the overall Web usage in any organization. To ensure good ongoing coverage, the WebPulse system monitors overall access to uncategorized traffic on a daily basis and automatically assigns the most-visited sites to be reviewed and categorized by our Web Content Analysis team.   This Guarantees that unrated sites receiving significant numbers of visits across our customer base will be rated within a 24 hours.

Here are some some highlights of the Webpulse system:

• The typical BlueCoat WebFilter (BCWF) customer has about 90-95% of their web traffic rated via the database on their proxies, which should indeed continue to serve ratings even if they lost connection to WebPulse (as would a non-BCWF filtering database on the SG for that matter).
• If their users are primarily English-speaking, I would expect the BCWF database rating coverage to be closer to the 95% end of the scale.
• Non-BCWF databases  typically produce similar coverage; i.e., Most vendors have the "most commonly visited 10% of the internet" in their database (which covers 90% of the traffic), and then different tiny patches of "the other 90%".
• WebPulse's DRTR component will boost us by a few extra percentage points, so that overall coverage is closer to 96-98% for English.

 

NOTE: The BCWF database should continue to supply ratings even if it looses connectivity to the bluecoat datacenters. The WebPulse service has been continuously operational for at least the past four years, so it is very unlikely that a customer would not have access to WebPulse unless there is a connectivity issue of some sort.

Reporter will store the NONE rating  even while it collects other ratings for the same Website. It does not replace NONE with a real rating  once the real once is seen in the access log, it merely adds in the real category. This is because Reporter can store up to 4 categories for each in it's database, and it does not realize that "NONE" actually means nothing, and becomes meaningless, once you get a real rating. The only way the "NONE" rating is lost  is through it being expired out.