Freelance Digital Marketing Consultant
If you look at your stats in Google Analytics on a daily basis as I do, then you can’t have helped notice an increase in the “not provided” phrase at the top of your organic traffic results.
What is this “not provided” in Google Analytics?
So, it’s been a few weeks since Matt Cutts let it slip that Google will be penalising sites for “over optimisation” when he spoke at a Q&A session at SXSW 2012.
In a panel, hosted by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, and including Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Bing’s webmaster program, Cutts said big G would be “levelling the playing field”. Rather than just regurgitate Matt’s quote, you can read and listen to what he said here.
I’m not going to add to the speculation as to what the details of this new cull may be but as a bread-and-butter SEO and webmaster I’m in two minds about this change. Here’s why:
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I don’t often post about search-related issues on my blog because I’m usually so “up to my neck in it” I spend more time rolling my sleeves up and doing SEO than writing about it. But this morning a lack of information regarding the latest updates to Google’s Webmaster Tools (GWT) has prompted me to write.
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I recently received an unsolicited email from someone at a website that I’ve noticed has been quite proactive in promoting itself recently. The business seems to have had a fairly good amount of media attention in the last couple of years, so their brand-building exercises are quite effective. They have good links from, and good … Read more
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On Twitter this morning Matt Cutts highlighted an interesting article by John C. Dvorak from PC Mag. Dvorak writes about SEO: I really don’t know where to start. Dvorak’s piece entitled SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization seems like an all-out attack on SEO and coming from such a decorated columnist in a … Read more