Andy Langton's blog

_{Please note that we are not able to advise on the legal implications of GDPR, none of our suggestions below constitute legal advice and we suggest you should seek legal advice before making any changes.}

You may have seen recent communications from Google regarding data retention in Google Analytics. If you log-in to your account, you may see a message like the below:

Referrer spam in Google Analytics (and other systems) is a growing problem, distorting genuine traffic numbers and making extracting useful data all the more difficult. Fortunately, it's easy to fix.

Why are you reading this? And how did you get here? All are reasonable questions, as is the following:

• Which mechanism is quickest for trigger a crawl to a recently-registered .co.uk domain?

The only way to answer that question, of course, is to try different methods and see which one emerges as the victor. And that's what this post is.

Also note: are there separate dates for first discovery and for evaluation? Does this post include a time machine?

Here at SEO[Thing] we're always interested in technological innovation, so we're proud to be associated with the launch of an innovative new system designed to help restaurants (and others in the hospitality industry) improve customer service via the use of mobile.

Get Waiter combines a mobile app which you, as a customer, can use in a restaurant or bar with a web-based system for merchants. The way it works is:

With an apparent Panda update underway, we decided to take a look at statistics for commonly cited victims of the original Panda update. Google have suggested the update will be 'softer' than previous ones. Could it bring the recovery that many are hoping for?

Choosing sites and data source

Our personal preference for a source of data on general visibility is Searchmetrics - who have a broad data set in addition to several years' worth of data.

Update: the developers of the Transposh plugin appear to have resolved the issue identified in this article - you should now be able to rank translated pages using Transposh.

Keyword density is a phrase that (rightly) sends shudders down the spines of SEOs everywhere - even those who used to use keyword density as a basic way to assess their on-page targeting. So what's wrong with keyword density, and what should you be using instead?

What does keyword density even mean?

Update: we've updated this spreadsheet to the new Google Docs format - no more 50 limit on importxml lookups (and hopefully, more reliable results).

If you like this, also check out our spreadsheet to scrape the top 100 results and other Google Docs spreadsheets for SEO.

The good folks of WebmasterWorld have an interesting thread at the moment titled Techies gone astray - Many .gov sites don't resolve without the "www". Members there have spotted that many US .gov domains simply don't work if you don't type the www in front of the website address.

Almost every SEO will know that this is an issue known as "canonicalisation" - forcing or specifying which is the best URL for any item of content. Failing to do this can mean:

Fed up with adding "&pws=0" to your address bar to bypass Google's search personalisations? Sick of your friend's mugshots showing up in Google search results? Then be fed up no more with this handy bookmarklet!

What Google Personal Search does

Based on your search history, Google Plus connections, activity and more, Google re-orders your search results, to place sites you have an association with higher in the rankings. Here's a quick example: