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Hi there, I have a robots.txt query which I haven't tried before and as we're nearing a big time for sales, I'm hesitant to just roll out to live! Say for example, in my robots.txt I disallow the URL 'example1.html'. In reality, 'example1.html' 301s/302s to 'example2.html'. Would the robots.txt directive also apply to 'example2.html' (disallow) or as it's a separate URL, would the directive be ignored as it's not valid? I have a feeling that as it's a separate URL, the robots disallow directive won't apply. However, just thought I'd sense-check with the community.

Google's announcement last month about depreciating their AJAX crawl directive and Distilled's recent article have got me thinking a lot about how this change impacts frameworks like AngularJS. For those of you that use or are considering using frameworks like AngularJS, does this change impact you? Has it changed your mind about services like Prerender etc? All discussions relating to AJAX crawling welcome. Some resources to get started: https://prerender.io/js-seo/angularjs-seo-get-your-site-indexed-and-to-the-top-of-the-search-results/ https://www.distilled.net/resources/prerender-and-you-a-case-study-in-ajax-crawlability/

Hi all, I was wondering if you have any recommendations for a code monitor? We'd like to keep track of any code and content changes on a couple of websites. We've taken a look at Page Monitor: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page-monitor/pemhgklkefakciniebenbfclihhmmfcd?hl=en but I'm not sure if it tracks code changes? Any suggestions for free or paid tools would be appreciated. Edit: We'd also like to avoid a tool that requires any tracking code changes or anything that involves a database/FTP connection.

We've all seen the news recently that Google will be closing its engineering offices in Russia due to new data protection laws coming into place in January 2015. The same law has also led to Adobe pulling out of Russia earlier in the year. I was wondering how you think this will impact SEOers and small/medium businesses that market _to _Russia, but are based outside of the country? Personal data has been defined in the new legislation as: Personal data means any information directly or indirectly related to any identified or potentially identifiable person. It includes, among other things, first name and family name, date and place of birth, address, information about family status, education, profession, income Source For those businesses which don't process personal data (affiliates etc), will there be any foreseeable impact? On the flipside, are there any benefits here for affiliate businesses inside of Russia? I'm using affiliates as an example to get the ball rolling, but I'm sure there's numerous more. Personally, I'd be interested to hear if you think this may impact corporate websites which don't process personal data, but operate outside of Russia.

Hi guys, I was wondering if you could help me with an SEO query for language usage in Hong Kong? Specifically, I'm aware that in mainland China it's preferred to use simplified Chinese. However, in Hong Kong, if you want to rank well in Google and Yahoo! HK, should you be use traditional or simplified Chinese in your web content? Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Hi there, While you can now filter out bots and spiders in Google Analytics, I'm interested in how you identify a bots and spiders in the first place. For example, it used to be thought that Googlebot wouldn't appear in GA as it 'couldn't process Javascript' but now Google has announced new developments for its crawler with regards to interpreting javascript and CSS, this argument isn't as cut and dry. I'm not suggesting Googlebot appears in Google Analytics, but I am saying that you can't make the case that it won't appear only because it can't interpret JavaScript. So, I'm interested to see what metrics you use to identify a bot? For me, the mix of Users > Browser, Users > Operating System Version is still quite handy, but is it possible to identify individual bots and spiders within Google Analytics? And would Googlebot appear?

Hi guys, Hoping one of you have come across this before. While taking a look at the source code for a website I've recently started working on, I spotted some 'display:none' code in the footer of the page. Here's a snapshot of the code: close XMETAhead title : 404 Page Not Found | ( 39 chrs ) [http://www.omiod.com/chrome-extensions/meta-seo-inspector/info.php?meta=description&cont=404 Page Not Found.](<a href=)" title="more about description" target="_blank" class="ad_seo_link">description : 404 Page Not Found( 170 chrs )[http://www.omiod.com/chrome-extensions/meta-seo-inspector/info.php?meta=keywords&cont=404, 404 error page,](<a href=) " title="more about keywords" target="_blank" class="ad_seo_link">keywords : 404, 404 error page ( 7 items )SCRIPThttp://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.google-analytics.com">www.google-analytics.com http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js <div< a="">class="ad_seo_title">HTML5 report</div<>Doctype is not HTML5, there are no HTML5 tags, but at least no obsolete HTML tags were found. 1/5

Bit of a specific one, but if there's anyone that can help it's you guys. If a .co.uk website is looking to rank in Baidu with a .co.uk/cn subdirectory, would we require an Internet Content Publishing License? Taking a step back, it might be there's two parts to my question: How likely is it a .co.uk. could rank in Baidu, with simplified Chinese language content? In order to have a chance of ranking, would we require an Internet Content Publishing License?

Hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me. Reading about GTLDs, I came across this quote from TSO Host: 'What we don’t know is whether an extension can double up as a keyword, which is picked up by Google and treated identically to the rest of a domain name. I.e. - would ‘bristolguitars.music’ have more ranking potential than ‘bristolguitars.com’ as ‘music’ is a relevant search word?' Source: https://www.tsohost.com/blog/how-do-new-gtlds-affect-seo Does anyone know if a GTLD extension does double up as a keyword? For example, if Nike buys 'Nike.shoes', does this double as the keyword 'Nike shoes', or is Google and other search engines just looking at the domain name _before _the GTLD extension? I'm looking at .photography for examples (not my niche) and seeing folks are having mixed results ranking for 'Keyword + Photography', so would be keen to hear your thoughts.

I'm hoping someone in the Moz community can help me with this one! Essentially, we have a .co.uk brand which wants to have more of an international presence. My question is, purely based on the fact that we're a .co.uk, will we find it more challenging to develop a search engine presence in European/BRIC markets? In a perfect world, we'd have a .com/country or a .es/ etc, but if this isn't possible, how hindered are we if we stick with the .co.uk and want to build a presence in Spain?