Link Building Strategies

Microsoft reported its third quarter 2025 earnings and it showed that its search and advertising revenue was up 21%, again. The previous quarter it was up 21% as well, then the quarter before that was up 18%, then 19% but before than it was 12% and 8%.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 may be heating up today...View the full article

It has been a couple of weeks since we last reported on a Google search ranking update, I bet a ton of you were wondering if I was feeling off. But it has been relatively calm for the past couple of weeks, that is until today. I am seeing renewed volatility over the past 24-hours and the SEO community chatter is picking up on it as well.View the full article

Google is expanding AI Mode both in terms of features and access. Google is testing AI Mode in the wild with a limited number of searchers. Google also opened up its waitlist to all 18+ U.S. users. Google added product and place cards to the AI Mode results. Plus, Google added a history tab.View the full article

A few weeks ago, I reported on how Google was testing showing deeper Google AI Overviews, maybe powered by Gemini 2.0, with over 60 links and citations in them. Well, over the past few weeks, more and more of us are seeing these AI Overviews, with dozens of links within them. And we are asking ourselves, who will click on these links?View the full article

Google released its annual metrics on how well it did with fighting spam on Google Maps. In short, Google said it blocked or removed more than 240 million policy-violating reviews, blocked or removed more than 70 million policy-violating edits, removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles and placed posting restrictions on more than 900,000 accounts.View the full article

Google announced that AI Mode now lets you search by uploading a photo or image from your device. Before the new AI Mode only allowed you to search with text, but now, like you can with other Google Search features, you can use multimodal capabilities in Lens with AI Mode.View the full article

We've seen a similar format in the Google Shopping results with a show more button to show more shopping ads but now we are seeing something similar within the main Google Search results. Google is testing overlaying a show more button on the second row of Google Shopping ads in the main search results.View the full article

Google announced a number of new goals and image controls that are now available on Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. Google added customer lifecycle goals and reporting and additional image controls.View the full article

As you know, the Google March 2025 core update was announced on March 13th and it should be just about done rolling out. We saw some volatility related to that core update a few days into the update, then a lot of confusion later on, and now at the tail end of the update, we are seeing more volatility. View the full article

Google is testing a "Shuffle" button in some of its AI generated answers within the Google Search results. When you click the shuffle button, it seems to redo or change up the response Google's AI gives you.View the full article

Google is testing removing the site names from the search result snippets and just showing the site's URL at the top - title link - position of the snippet. View the full article

For the past few weeks or so, Google has a bug where the right side knowledge panel goes missing for business owners when you try to bring up your business listing in Google Search. This is not impacting everyone and it can be random but Google is supposedly aware of the issue and is fixing it.View the full article

Last week, Google sent out a bulk load of reverification requests to Google Business Profiles. Well, according to Google's Rick Saxe, it was a bug and the bug should be fixed as of the past day or so.View the full article

I am hearing reports that the Google Search Console API and tools that use the API, including Big Query exports, bulk exports and third party tools, are stuck with data from April 22nd but nothing sooner. It seems like there is something stuck in the data pipes within the API.View the full article

Google recently said it made Search "much faster," at least that is what Rajan Patel, the VP of Engineering at Google Search said on social. There is a larger blog post that Google wrote up on this, which I initially decided not to cover but I changed my mind.View the full article

Google said it again - structured data does not help your site rank any better. John Mueller of Google said this on Bluesky, "Structured data won't make your site rank better." He said, all it is "used for displaying the search features listed in" this search gallery document.View the full article

Did you know that you can quickly add parameters to the end of your Google Search URL to see search results in a specific language and/or country? Yes, you can do this from the advanced search settings screen in Google Search but you can also append &hl=(languagecode) + &gl=(countrycode) URL parameters, if you want to save some clicks.View the full article

There are tons of complaints in the Google Business Profile Help Forums about a bug during the setup process of a Google Business Profile. When you get to the screen about adding your phone number and website address, the next button won't take you to the next screen - it just won't let you go to the next step.View the full article

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week we covered Google's March 2025 core update being released. Google responded to some complaints or concerns about Google's new AI Mode. A study showed Google grew 22% over the past year...View the full article

Microsoft seems to be serving produt and shopping results within the Bing Copilot Answer boxes. When I first saw this I thought this was a bug, but it keeps happening and I can replicate this.View the full article

On Friday, Google published its findings from its experiment of removing some EU news publishers from its search results. The results said that Google had no visible loss of search ad revenue when the news publishers were removed.View the full article

Microsoft Bing announced some interesting updates for IndexNow including how it works now with product schema and that Shopify now supports it and soon Amazon will. This will help Bing and search engines that use IndexNow have more accurate and up-to-date products for their shopping results and shopping ads.View the full article

Google Search Console's API will soon add support for the 24-hour hourly data view, plus, this will give you access to not just the past 24 hours but the past 8-days by hour. View the full article

Google announced a new bidding update to Google Ads named Smart Bidding Exploration. Google said this is the "biggest update to bidding in over a decade." View the full article