Link Building Strategies

Google announced a couple new Google Lens features; (1) they are expanding how AI Overviews show on Google Lens results and (2) Chrome and Google's iOS app now let you search your screen with Google Lens.View the full article

Recently, I've been complaining that Google is linking many of its search features back to more search results, this is also includes the AI Overviews. Well, Bing Search is also doing this for some of their AI-based answer snippets.View the full article

Google looks to have expanded its enforcement of its site reputation abuse policy to European regions this week. Google began enforcement in the US back in May but Google seems to have issued a ton of these manual actions (manual penalties) to European based sites.View the full article

Google has released its annual Google Ads Safety report and the big number that stands out to me is that Google has suspended over 200% more advertiser accounts in 2024 than it did in 2023; 39.2 million versus 12.7 million. Google also removed 5.1 billion ads, restricted over 9.1B ads, restricted ads on 1.3 billion publisher pages and took broader site-level enforcement action on over 220,000 publisher sites.View the full article

Google Search representatives often tell us to use the feedback link when we see something that is off or needs improvement with Google Search. Well, what happens when you use that feedback link?View the full article

Google's John Mueller said that there is no persistent shortcut to faster crawling. Yes, you can expedite crawling for specific situations and times, but there is no way to just tell Google you want them to crawl you faster, all the time.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 search ranking volatility seems to be spiking once again...View the full article

Earlier this month, the Google Ads industry had a lot of confusion around if and in what cases the Google Ads API accept or support placement exclusions for Performance Max campaigns. Well, Google's Ginny Marvin clarified this the other day in an email to Navah Hopkins.View the full article

John Mueller from Google said that merging content is always more challenging than a basic site move. Meaning, when you take a look at your content on your site and decide to merge a bunch of the content into fewer URLs, that takes longer for Google to handle than moving a site from domain A to domain B with no other changes.View the full article

Google Search is testing the frequently saved label not just in the main search results but also on the local results, the places section, of the Google Search results. View the full article

Google is testing a new filter for its shopping results in the mobile search results. Instead of showing a single filter menu, Google is showing a product image carousel line first and then a filter menu for additional search filters.View the full article

Google has announced a new Google Ads search campaign feature named AI Max. Google says AI Max for Search campaigns is a "new, one-click feature suite" that brings you a "suite of targeting and creative enhancements" of "the best of Google AI to your Search campaigns."View the full article

Google is testing a new shortcut location for AI Mode in the Google App on Android. Google is placing the shortcut button directly in the search bar.View the full article

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

Google Search is now sometimes showing the ability to filter products in its search results by product rating. I am not sure if this is new or not, but I cannot replicate this but some are seeing the product rating filter/refinement option when searching.View the full article

We recently covered how you can now drag and drop menu items for your restaurant in your Google Business Profiles. But Google also seemed to add the ability to move menu items between sections of your menu and the ability to batch edit pricing of menu items.View the full article

On Friday, we reported that the Google local reviews seem to be disappearing or being counted wrong. Well, Google finally confirmed the issue, just minutes ago, in the Google Business Profiles Forums.View the full article

Microsoft is testing yet another variation for its favicons in the Bing Search snippets. This one uses a dark gray background, with a circle formatted favicon, next to the search result snippets.View the full article

It looks like Microsoft is testing search ads that auto expand to reveal sitelinks under those ads within the Bing Search results. You don't need to click or do anything and the ad will dynamically expand to show more sitelinks underneath the search ad unit.View the full article

The first week of January, we reported on an interesting local update we named the January 2025 local search update. Well, this might be more of a diversity update, where Google removes the URL for the core organic results, when that URL is also present in the local pack results. View the full article

Google has launched several new charts within the Google Ads interface. We recently saw the table tree view (which was not 100% new, I was told) and now we are seeing new stacked bar chart, stacked column chart, combo chart, stacked area chart and 100% stacked area chart.View the full article

Google announced three updates to its image and assets system including its generative AI can now generate people and faces. Google also announced asset audience recommendations and asset testing for feed-only Performance Max campigns.View the full article

Google Ads has made two updates around advertiser verification recently. One, in some countries, Google will no longer require certification for some advertisers. Second, Google has updated and reorganized the Google Ads Advertiser Verification documentation.21View the full article

The folks at Seer put together a study looking at how the click-through rates of the Google organic and paid search results are impacted by having AI Overviews on the page. And the short answer is, AI Overviews seem to be hurting the click-through rates in a big way.View the full article