Link Building Strategies

Just like with Christmas day every year, so to with New Year's Day - Google's John Mueller and often other Googlers, are out and looking to respond to some questions on Google Search and SEO. John Mueller so far posted a few times on Reddit this morning, January 1, 2026.View the full article

This is weird. It is 2026, and Google.com, the Google Search home page, is still showing yesterday's New Year's Eve doodle of 2025 going into 2026. But it is after 7 am ET here on January 1, 2026, and on all my devices, I see yesterday's Google Doodle.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 Business Profiles adds new help page for requesting reviews via links or QR codes. Google Ads search term report has quick filters...View the full article

Google is testing prefilling the search bar in a new Chrome tab, with teasers to encourage you to search deeper with AI Mode. Google is putting in the search box, "Research a topic," "Write something new," "Ask Google," and "Make a plan."View the full article

Every year, for the past 18 or so years, Google's John Mueller has been working on Christmas to provide support to those who need help with their Google Search ranking and SEO concerns. This year is no different; John Mueller has responded to several concerns on Reddit and other social media platforms today.View the full article

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

Earlier this year, Google lowered the size of your data segment customer lists to 100 active visitors for the Google Display Network. Now, Google updated that to also be 100 active visitors for the Search Network and YouTube.View the full article

Google has confirmed there is a bug with Google Ads dynamic remarketing tracking where the data is not flowing into the reporting. Adesh, from the Google team, responded that the Google "teams are actively reviewing this and working toward a resolution."View the full article

For the past 15 or so years, Google would post holiday-specific decorations at the top of its search results for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. Well, this year Google did not. Google did post an Easter egg in the search results, which they do every year, and it posted the season's greeting Doodle, but not the holiday-specific decorations. View the full article

Fabrice Canel and Krishna Madhavan from the Microsoft Bing team posted a useful blog post named Does Duplicate Content Hurt SEO and AI Search Visibility? The short answer is yes, and the long answer is also yes.View the full article

Google is testing pushing advertisers to use Google Ads Advisor from within the Google Ads reporting section. Google Ads suggested questions and prompts at the top of the report, which it thinks you would find helpful to chat with an AI bot about.View the full article

Microsoft is testing a "more sources" section within the Bing Search results. This seems to load a different user interface, with long card-shaped search results that you can slide through as a carousel.View the full article

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

Some Google Ads MCC, Manager Accounts, are seeing channel performance reporting. This does not seem to have been rolled out to all advertisers yet, but Mike Ryan noticed it was rolling out on some of his MCC accounts.View the full article

Google Ads added a new channel control for Demand Gen to show ads in Google Maps. Some advertisers see the ability to select Maps as a placement in Demand Gen.View the full article

Google Search has been sending 25 percentage points less traffic to news publishers over the past two years, according to the folks over at Newzdash. In 2023, Google Web Search made up over 51% of traffic from Google surfaces to news publishers; that number is now down to 27%.View the full article

Anish Kattukaran, CPO at Google Home & Nest announced in the Google Gemini forums that Gemini will not be replacing Google Assistant by the end of 2025. He wrote, "We're adjusting our previously announced timeline to make sure we deliver a seamless transition, and will continue our work to upgrade Assistant users to Gemini on mobile devices into 2026."View the full article

Google reportedly has a bug that displays incorrect product reviews in Google Search for a retailer. It is now pulling from text on the page that includes the Google Business Profile reviews, despite the product reviews not being there and not being marked up on the page.View the full article

This week, we have a status update on the ongoing Google December 2025 core update. Google also said it does not pre-announce core updates or quality updates. Gemini 3 Flash now powers Google AI Mode. Google Search...View the full article

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

On Friday, Google announced it had filed a lawsuit against SerpApi for scraping the Google search results. Google alleges that SerpApi is running an "unlawful" operation that bypasses Google's security measures to scrape search results at an astonishing scale.View the full article

As you all know, Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, we saw some significant volatility hit early on December 13th and then it seemed to cool a bit towards the middle of the week. Now, I am seeing signs of more intense volatility hit on Saturday, December 20th.View the full article

OpenAI has added local knowledge panels to the ChatGPT results. When you ask for local information and then click on a business name, ChatGPT will load a local knowledge panel on the right side.View the full article

Google is testing appending "learn more" links to the end of the Google search ads text. So the Google Ad will have its normal ad description and at the end, Google is testing adding "Learn more" with an arrow to the right, in blue anchor underlined text.View the full article

Have you seen those Google Discover notifications that pop up and seem like news notifications from the Google app but what they do is drive you into Google AI Mode. I find them incredibly annoying, because every time I click on it, I think I am going to a news article but instead, I am given an AI-generated AI Mode answer.View the full article