Bob Dylan said that 'too much of nothing, can make a man ill at ease' and that can certainly be the case in SiteCatalyst.

When you view many standard reports, including just about all of those produced in the Finding Methods, Campaigns, and SearchCenter menus, the largest numeric value is assigned to None. This is accurate enough - when looking at a report of paid search keywords for example the None value reflects the visits or revenues that didn't come via any paid search keyword.

But these large None values can be disconcerting in the tabular data and just plain mess up the charts by ruining their scale. (Click the graphic to enlarge)

There are two solutions we've found. The first is to simply sort on a metric where None isn't the largest value - this pushes the None value to the bottom and knocks it out of the chart. Often that is enough to produce reports that satisfy.

The trickier solution is to use the Advanced Search dialog box, and enter None into the 'None of these words' option. In other words, find results without the word 'None'. There are a few reports where this doesn't work, but it usually works great. Bookmark your new None-free report and you're done with none.

We hope this trick is someday made obsolete by a simple toggle up in the yellow options area which would eliminate none, and/or by an option in the Display Options to universally turn off the display of what we usually find to be excess data.

{{ This is one of an occasional series of tips, tricks, and ideas for Omniture SiteCatalyst. Comments and additional suggestions are welcomed. }}