Link Building Strategies

Google has this new "Know before you go" section in the search results. I mean, it is new for search, not new for Google Maps and not new for local. But I've never seen a Know before you go box in the search results before.View the full article

Google sent out emails to Local Service Ads advertisers notifying them that their Google Business Profile accounts are not affiliated to your Local Service Ads account. That means your reviews will only be accepted through your Google Business Profile link and not the Local Service Ads link.View the full article

Google can now show the "price at checkout" within the Google Shopping listings, both paid and organic. I am not sure if this is new, being that Google has had policies about suspending merchants who change their pricing at checkout and even allows Googlebot to add items to the cart for this reason.View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web...View the full article

Google is testing showing AI Overviews on the right hand side of the search results page. I am not sure if this is specific to local queries and a replacement of sorts for the local panel, I hope not.View the full article

The Financial Times has a detailed interview with the newish Head of Google Search, Elizabeth Reid. The interview can be gated, so here are some of the quotes that stood out most to me from this interview.View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google's March core update is done, I dig into what we know about it...View the full article

Google is sometimes showing a hyperlink at the bottom of its search results named "About this data." This links to a Google help document in Merchant Center support named "How Google sources and uses information in the brand profile."View the full article

Google seems to be working through the Google Business Profile support, reinstatement, and suspension appeal requests. As we reported twice already, once back in mid-February and then again earlier this week, Google confirmed the delay.View the full article

Microsoft Bing's shopping carousel results have a "buy now" button that now links directly to the checkout page of the merchant. So when you click on buy now, it adds that item directly to the cart of the merchant's website.View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...View the full article

Google had some more ranking volatility around the Super Bowl weekend. Reddit blamed Google for not meeting its expected user growth. Google Search is now faster for some users. Google had a reviews count bug that it later confirmed and later fixed...View the full article

Microsoft is now showing why it selects or chooses to show a specific ad directly in the Bing search results. When you click on the arrow down by the URL of the search ad snippet, you will get window dialog that may explain why the ad was shown.View the full article

Google has posted some fresh data, saying they answer over 5 trillion searches per year. The last time we saw this data was in 2016, when Google was at 2 trillion searches per year and then 1.2 trillion in 2012.View the full article

Google sent out notifications to Google Ads advertisers with upcoming changes to customer match lists. Google will set a new maximum membership duration of 540 days for customer match lists starting on April 7, 2025.View the full article

Google is now showing AI Overviews within the movie review summaries in Google Search. Under the review summaries is a disclaimer that reads, "Al overviews are experimental."View the full article

Rajan Patel, a VP, Engineering for Search at Google and the Co-founder of Google Lens, is now also offering an assist to Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liason. For the past several weeks, Rajan Patel's X profile also was tagged as being associated with the Google Search Liaison account.View the full article

Google seems to be adding links to review publishers when you hover over some of the product results, popular products, snippets. The links show only after the box expands, and it includes a snippet of content and then a link to the source.View the full article

Microsoft is testing adding a new box to the knowledge panels within Bing that show related searches. This is obviously to encourage searches to do more queries, to generate more ads and more revenue. Or maybe to help searchers find a more diverse set of topics to search for.View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google seems to be ranking Reddit's AI-translated pages all too well...View the full article

As you know, Google is okay with linking its AI Overviews back to more Google Search results. But is Google okay with linking the same query, to the same query, over and over again, through the AI Overviews?View the full article

Google needs even more queries, the 10% growth isn't enough, so Google AI Overviews is testing query expansion tabs at the top of the AI Overviews. We've seen variations of this within the AI Overviews, but now they are testing them at the top of the AI Overviews.View the full article

Microsoft Advertising has temporarily suspended the ability for agencies to send out client connection requests. Instead, the agency needs to reach out to Microsoft support and wait 5-7 days to hear back to be able to manage their client's ad campaigns on Microsoft.View the full article

Microsoft is testing outlining the individual search result snippets within Bing Search. So when you look at a snippet, it has this outline around it, and then when you hover your cursor over it, it highlights more.View the full article

Google now accepts RVs (recreational vehicles) and campers in Google Vehicle Ads. Google posted this on Friday afternoon and wrote, "Vehicle ads will be expanding to include recreational vehicles (RVs) and campers."View the full article