Link Building Strategies

Google Analytics real time reporting seems to be lagging again this morning. I woke up to a ton of complaints on social about the real time reporting reports in GA4 are simply not working as expected.View the full article

Google Business Profiles has another bug, this time with the toggle to hide or show the business address. The toggle for "Show business address to customers" just does not work - I even tried it myself and it is not working for my business.View the full article

Google Ads now lets you quickly hide all recommendations with the click of a button. Previously you had to hide each recommendation one-by-one, but now you can hide them all with one click.View the full article

Google's John Mueller said having "four identical links on a page to another page seems fine & common to me." He said, don't worry if you have that in your navigation, and implied it won't have an impact on your SEO.View the full article

Google seems to be testing removing the green checkmark from the Local Service Ads. I was able to replicate this for the same query, and the same set of advertisers. In one case it has the Google Screened checkmark in green and in the other, it does not.View the full article

Google is testing a new link feature in the search results, it is in the form of a link box, in the search result snippet, that when you click on it, it anchors you down on the page to a specific portion of that text.View the full article

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

Google now is showing Performance Max terms in the Google Ads search terms report. Plus this report shows the new negative keywords terms that is now supported for PMax campaigns.View the full article

Google seems to be testing showing author names and website citations in the AI Overviews. I am honestly not sure if this is new but Christian Kunz said it was and posted about it on his blog and on X.View the full article

Google seems to have added a new section to music knowledge panels named "Behind the music." It seems that this is generated using Google's Gemini AI and gives you a bit of background on the song.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 AI Mode is now out in the wild, drops waitlist...View the full article

Google added a new way to search for your products in the Google Merchant Center console. There is a new search button named "Search for Products" that you can click on and will let you pick from a pre-defined set of searches or you can type your own search.View the full article

Microsoft is not only testing removing the name "Microsoft Bing" from its search bar and logo, Microsoft is also testing shortening the underline under the search tab to about half the length.View the full article

While Google keeps saying it values publishers and knows how important it is to link to publishers and site owners from Search and AI Overviews, well, it is just as important for Google to link to their own search results for AI Overviews. Google is testing adding links, more visible and clickable links, right in the AI Overviews, to its own search results.View the full article

Google will stop showing reviews and ratings on school listings in Google Search and Google Maps. Google Business Profiles said, "Starting April 30, 2025, your school's associated Business Profile will no longer allow reviews and ratings."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 Search ranking volatility is heating up now...View the full article

OpenAI has begun rolling out shopping search features directly into ChatGPT Search across fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics categories. These are not ads or affiliate-driven, but they are powered by structured data from third-party sources.View the full article

Google Ads has added explanations for your performance changes directly in the charts and graphs in your Google Ads console. You can click the highlighed section of the graph to see explanations for your performance changes, like cost increases or decreases. 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. OpenAI added shopping search features to ChatGPT Search...View the full article

Microsoft is testing removing its name, i.e. Microsoft Bing, next to the logo in the Bing Search bar. Normally the search bar has the Microsoft Bing name next to the logo on the left side of the search bar, now Microsoft is just testing showing the logo.View the full article

Google has confirmed that Apple will be adding its Gemini AI service to Apple Intelligence by the end of 2025, reports are saying. We knew this would happen but we should also expect Apple to add not just Gemini but other AI services to Apple Intelligence. 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 Search is not just having its AI Overviews link back to itself but also search features like Things To Know. This is all while Google touts how it is seeing impressive growth in search results (artificially inflated?) and while supposedly prioritizing traffic to publishers (made up also?).View the full article

Google admitted in a video published on its own Search Central YouTube channel that if searchers do not use your page(s) in the search results, those pages may stop showing up in the search results. Martin Splitt said this in a recent YouTube short he posted where he said, "if pages fall off the index again... users don't really use them in search results."View the full article

A month ago, we reported that Google Business Profiles support was backlogged and delayed. Well, the delay is not getting any better. Victoria Kroll from Google posted an update on Friday afternoon in the Google Business Profiles to inform us that the delay is still there.View the full article