Data Retention Policy
1. How this policy works
Each kind of data has a period. A job runs every night and deletes, or reduces to an anonymous count, whatever is past its period. Staff with the compliance permission can shorten some periods (and lengthen a few, within limits the law and our providers allow); this page always shows the period in force.
"Deleted" means removed from our live systems. "Anonymised" means only counts or figures remain, with nothing that identifies a person or a business.
2. Your account and workspace
| Data | How long | What happens at the end |
|---|---|---|
| Your account (name, e-mail, phone, sign-in settings) | While your account exists | Erased when you erase your account (after a cooling-off period of 14 days) or when the workspace is erased |
| Workspace and project data (sites, keywords, settings, approved changes, reports) | While the workspace exists | Deleted with the project or the workspace |
| Scan history | By plan, below | Older scans deleted daily; the Day 0 baseline and the latest scan of each site are kept while the project exists |
| Search Console, Analytics and Google Ads figures | While the project exists | Deleted with the project or the workspace |
| Signed-in sessions | 120 minutes without activity | Ended |
| Remembered device for two-step sign-in | 30 days | Forgotten |
| Sign-in log | 90 days | Deleted |
| Firewall events | 90 days | Deleted |
| Audit log | For the life of the workspace | Never edited; kept as evidence (IP addresses are keyed hashes) |
| Your personal data export files | 7 days | Deleted |
| Closed data subject requests | 3 years | Deleted |
| Invoices and payment records | As long as tax and company law requires | Deleted after that period |
| Link payment ledger | 7 years | Deleted |
Scan history per plan:
- Test Plan: 90 days
- Workspaces without a plan keep scan history for 10 years
3. Google Business Profile data
Copies of what we read from Google Business Profile are short-lived and refreshed from Google while you stay connected. A copy past its period is hidden at once and deleted the same night. Disconnecting Google, or detaching a location, deletes its copies straight away. What you wrote in SEOmise (replies, posts, photos you uploaded, approvals) is your own record and stays.
| Google Business Profile data | Kept for | How the age is counted |
|---|---|---|
| Business information | 30 days | counted from when SEOmise last fetched it from Google |
| Profile snapshots | 30 days | counted from when SEOmise last fetched it from Google |
| Reviews | 30 days | counted from when SEOmise last fetched it from Google |
| Questions and answers | 30 days | counted from when SEOmise last fetched it from Google |
| Posts | 30 days | counted from when SEOmise last fetched it from Google |
| Photo and video details | 30 days | counted from when SEOmise last fetched it from Google |
| Daily performance figures | 540 days | counted from the day or month the figure describes |
| Monthly search keywords | 540 days | counted from the day or month the figure describes |
4. The Data Vault
The Data Vault is our encrypted record of outside calls, answers, Ask Mise conversations, crawls and audits (see the Data Use Policy). Each record is kept for its channel's period, at most 1 year, and shorter where its source requires:
| Kind of record | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Customer Google data | 30 days (Google's limit) |
| Ask Mise conversations and consent records | As long as leads: 12 months |
| Data from third-party providers | Only while their licence and our "keep third-party data" switch allow, and never longer than the provider's period |
| Pages our crawlers fetched (their address, status and a fingerprint, not the page) | The channel's period |
| AI answers and our own data | The channel's period |
Records also go when the row they point to is deleted, when their workspace is erased, when a person is erased (the records they made) and when we delete a provider's stored data.
5. Ask Mise, pop-ups, leads and marketing
| Data | How long | What happens at the end |
|---|---|---|
| Leads from Ask Mise, pop-ups, demo bookings and the contact form (with their notes) | 12 months after their last change | Deleted |
| Ask Mise conversations on this website | 12 months after the last message | Deleted, with the details given in the chat and its website check |
| Unsaved free audits | 30 days | Deleted |
| Hosting statistics from audits (site name, network, score and response time) | 1 year | Deleted |
| Server location look-ups | 30 days | Deleted (the address is stored only as a keyed hash) |
| Pop-up statistics (daily counts) | 400 days | Deleted |
| Cookie consent records | 5 years | Deleted |
| Newsletter subscription | Until you unsubscribe | Your unsubscribe is remembered so we do not e-mail you newsletters again |
6. Intelligence and monitoring
| Data | How long | What happens at the end |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Core signal values (figures about your sites) | 2 years | Deleted; anonymous group figures are rebuilt from what is kept |
| AI answers observatory | 24 months | Deleted |
| Live view visitor sessions on your site | 30 days (or the period set for the site) | Deleted |
| Earlier page captures for Live view | 180 days | Deleted |
| ReFame evidence (page records and screenshots) | 2 years | Deleted with their files |
| Domain health DNS answers and blocklist results kept as evidence | 30 days | Deleted |
| Domain health check history (checks, scores, when findings were seen, mail-use changes) | 396 days | Deleted |
| API request logs and finished webhook deliveries | 30 days | Deleted |
| Security review runs of our own code | 1 year | Deleted (findings and their history are kept) |
7. Third-party data
Data we license from search, keyword and backlink providers is kept only as each provider's licence allows, with a period per source. Staff can also delete every stored copy of a provider's data at once ("Delete stored third-party data"), which removes it from the Data Vault too.
8. Backups
We keep encrypted backups: the latest 7 daily, 4 weekly and 6 monthly copies. Data deleted from the live system stays in older backups until they are replaced, so it is gone from every backup within about 6 months. Backups are encrypted and used only to recover from a failure.
9. When you cancel or close your account
- Cancelling a plan stops the renewal. Your data stays while the workspace exists; workspaces without a plan keep scan history as shown above.
- Closing the account (by an owner): nobody can sign in, the connectors show "Disconnected" and the subscription stops renewing. You can bring it back for free for 14 days. After that it is marked for deletion, and after 30 days it is erased for good, with its Data Vault records. Before closing, an owner can download the workspace's data.
- Erasing your own account (Account → Privacy) runs after 14 days, which you can cancel. Your name, e-mail and sign-in details are removed; work you did stays with the workspace without your name.
- Records the law requires us to keep (such as invoices) are kept for the legal period.