Link Building Strategies

CNBC reports Google has been sued in the UK for <<£5 billion ($6.6 billion) in potential damages over allegations that the U.S. tech giant abused its "near-total dominance" in the online search market to drive up prices.View the full article

Google seems to have dropped showing the number of reviews are on a page, the review count, next to the review stars, for non-shopping/e-commerce pages. Google Search is now showing rating review values when using AggregateRating mark-up.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 admitted that if searchers don't use your page in the search results...View the full article

Google sent out emails yesterday through Google Merchant Center inviting some brands to manage and edit their brand content on Google Search. I suspect this is the visual brand profile ads/pages but I am not sure.View the full article

Google will update its advertising policy around gambling and gaming on April 14, 2025. Google posted a preview of the upcoming changes but said the final version may change, so this is just a draft.View the full article

Google's John Mueller responded to a concern on Reddit about a site that scored a D with its Pingdom score. Pingdom measures sites uptime and overall page speed metrics. John Mueller responded to the concern saying, "this is not affecting your SEO."View the full article

Google has made a number of updates to its Merchant Center product data specifications, including some that went into effect on April 8th and some that will go into effect on July 1, 2025.View the full article

Google's VP of Product at Google Search, Robby Stein, has responded to concerns from publishers around the new AI Mode. Specifically, the concerns around this new AI search interface not being all that encouraging for users to click over to publishers' sites.View the full article

Google confirmed it is fixing a bug where old, fake and previously removed reviews are resurfacing in your Google Business Profiles. It is unclear how many Business Profiles are impacted by this, but if you see more reviews pop up that were not previously there, this may be why.View the full article

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

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...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 says hotlinking protection is fine for search engines...View the full article

Google is testing yet another search feature that generates new queries on Google Search. This one is named "Ask a follow-up" and they are sported with the Gemini stars next to them.View the full article

18 year old, publicly traded education technology company, Chegg, has sued Google over its AI Overviews and how it has hurt their traffic and revenue. Chegg has "filed a complaint against Google, which has unjustly retained traffic that has historically come to Chegg, impacting our acquisitions, revenue and employees," said Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg.View the full article

Google has updated its Google Ads policies around suspensions yesterday. While no changes have been made to enforcement of these policies, Google has really updated a lot of the content, and examples provided in these policies. View the full article

Google has a new search refinement or expansion feature they are titling "Relevant topics." This reminds me of People also ask, Things to do, and the other ways Google tries to get you to search more after conducting your first search.View the full article

Mike Ryan put together the single most comprehensive third-party report on Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. It is free, super detailed, easy to read and chock-full of useful information. And guess what, Google's Ginny Marvin responded to some of the concerns in the report.View the full article

Google is testing a new recipe search feature that seems to be powered by AI Overviews, it also seems to be a Search Labs feature. This allows you to see recipe ideas, then filter by recipe replacements, ingredients, in this carousel format style.View the full article

Well, it seems to be official now. Starting April 14, 2025 Google will update its Unfair advantage policy to say it is allowed to show the same ad, from the same company, going to the same page, as long as the ad is in a different ad location. Google was just experimenting with this earlier and now it is officially going to be allowed.View the full article

Google Merchant Center has apparently added the ability to dispute and/or request a review in bulk. This does not work for all notices but it works for some and it can save you a lot of time, if the same disapproval is issued across a number of products or issues. View the full article

Google Search seems to have accidentally leaked its various AI Search options and features, that go beyond just AI Mode, which it recently launched. 47 different AI Search options are shown including Info Sleuth, Allium, QTalk, MedExplainer, Fantasy Sports Researcher, Smart Kitchen and many more.View the full article

Earlier this year, we spotted a new type of Google Ads campaign option named Search Max. Well, now it was spotted again, the configuration and set up of Search Max with a beta label on it.View the full article

Fabrice Canel from the Microsoft Bing team told SEOs that instead of focusing on traffic and rankings, they should focus on conversions and click value. He said on X, "SEOs should focus on conversion."View the full article

Initially when Google Ads released the ability to add negative keywords to your Performance Max campaigns, Google limited it to 100 keywords. We asked why only 100 back then. Well, Google listened to the ad community and increased that from 100 to 10,000 negative keywords.View the full article

Google's John Mueller does not want you to lump programmatic SEO with technical SEO. He said they are different things and that while technical SEO "will definitely continue to be a thing," programmatic SEO is another story.View the full article