Link Building Strategies

Google is sending out emails with updates on how Google Business Profiles may verify your business details. Google said it may "reach out using automated messages via call, text, or WhatsApp to the verified phone number on your Business Profile."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 Console performance reports may be off again. A teen SEO wants to save his family business...View the full article

Google is losing one of its main sources of information for its Knowledge Graph, the CIA World Factbook. This was a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency between 1962 and 2026 with almanac-style information about the countries of the world.View the full article

As you know, OpenAI said they would release ads in ChatGPT and then about ten days ago, said the ads went live for a limited number of users. Since then, we have not seen reports of anyone seeing ads in the wild within ChatGPT until now.View the full article

Google may be testing a new ad unit named Sponsored Places. I think this is new, I mean, have any of you seen this before in the search results? Instead of it saying "Sponsored results" or a local pack with sponsored listings.View the full article

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

Google has added 53 new languages to AI Mode, which means the AI Mode works in just under 100 languages. This was announced by Nick Fox from Google on X yesterday.View the full article

Google's John Mueller responded to a concern about having bad title tags and how that might impact your site in Google Search. He said on Bluesky "I don't think our systems have a "we don't like this one guy's titles" filter."View the full article

There has been an uptick in complaints from businesses around Google local reviews disappearing or being removed. We had something similar last October and it was fixed in December and now I am seeing more complaints about reviews going missing.View the full article

The other day, Google released the Google Search Console AI-powered configuration tool and we continued to wonder when the other features, like branded queries and the social channels would go live. Well, Google's John Mueller confirmed Google is still testing those two features before they are more fully rolled out to more users.View the full article

Google is rolling out an update for Google Ads advertisers to certify for some cryptocurrency and complex speculative financial products. This is "incrementally to all advertisers over a period of time and not all advertisers and certification applications will be affected immediately," Google wrote.View the full article

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

Google has finally fully rolled out the Google Search Console AI-powered configuration tool. Google wrote on LinkedIn, "The Search Console's new AI-powered configuration is now available to everyone! Have you already tried it?"View the full article

Earlier this month, we covered Google testing what we called contextual overlay link cards in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Well, Google officially began rolling them out yesterday, and they are more like hover-over pop-up link cards.View the full article

Google Ads may be automatically enabling paused keywords in your advertising accounts. I am waiting for a statement from Google on this but there are reports that this is being done through the low activity system bulk changes.View the full article

Google Ads is now showing in the "When and where ads showed" report, the ability to see PMax, Performance Max, reporting. So you can see the placement, type, network and impressions you are getting from your PMax campaigns.View the full article

Google seems to be testing links in AI Overviews, that link to more AI Overview responses. These recipe AI Overviews linked to entities that then load a hybrid knowledge panel with an AI Overviews.View the full article

We covered the topic of markdown files before but now we have more commentary from official representatives from Google and Bing on the topic. In short, they call markdown files messy, it can cause issues with finding errors, cause more crawl load and either way, the search engines use what people/humans can see over what bots can see.View the full article

Google Ads has this new feature that lets advertisers calculate your conversion value for new customers. It says, "Select a lower target ROAS to adjust the incremental conversion value used to bid for new customers."View the full article

Google's John Mueller warned one site owner not to load "not available" in the JavaScript before the actual content that loads is available. It can lead Google to believe the page does not exist, preventing indexing and ranking in Google Search.View the full article

There is some new data out that shows that yes, Google's AI Overviews are causing a huge decline in clicks to websites organically but it is also showing that for e-commerce queries, there is a massive increase in clicks on search ads and product/shopping ads.View the full article

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

Did you know that the Google AI Overviews link citation paperclip icons are blue before you click to see more of the overviews and then after you click on them, that icon turns to a gray color.View the full article

A few weeks ago, we reported Google was exploring ways to allow sites to opt out of showing up in Google's AI features, like AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google's Sulina Connal said at the FT Strategies News in the Digital Age conference that this is a "huge engineering project."View the full article

There is a bug impacting a number of Google AdSense publishers where the anchor and vignette ads won't close for users. This has been an issue since February 13th and Google is reportedly working on a fix for the issue.View the full article