Link Building Strategies

Did you know there is a quick way to directly generate an access request for Service Area Businesses in Google Maps? This is apparently not so new but also not widely known.View the full article

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

Google is now sending emails to business owners when a Google Business Profile information edit was rejected. The email subject line says "A recent information edit was rejected," and then it tells you more details on why and allows you to read the policy and then appeal the decision.View the full article

Google is now using generative AI, and labeling it as such, within the Google Search product details overlay. When you click on a product listing in Google Search, the overlay window has a section called top insights. That section can be generated using AI.View the full article

Google is testing moving the about results text, where it shows the count of results, to within the search tools menu. So when you click on "Tools" under the search bar, you may find the "about results" section.View the full article

Google is experimenting more with shopping carousels, this time, showing products and then which articles are recommending those products. These can be shown in best of articles and recommended in articles. 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 is testing using AI to generate backgrounds automatically for your shopping campaign images...View the full article

If you embed resources on your pages, those embedded resources can be cached longer than other parts of the page in Google Search. View the full article

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

Microsoft is testing different colored URLs for its organic (free) results and its sponsored (paid) results. The organic URL slugs are bold black colored and the sponsored URL slugs are bold green colored.View the full article

For the past week or so, news publishers from Brazil have not been happy with Google. It seems that Google Discover is broken for a lot of Brazilians, showing irrelevant content to users and searchers, and not showing content from the typical publishers based in Brazil.View the full article

Google Merchant Center recently began showing AI-generated summaries for how well your performance is doing with Merchant Center in Google Search. These are labeled as "experimental" and "AI-generated."View the full article

We know Google can show reviews from third-party sources in Google Business Profile listings. We've seen Google take reviews from Yelp, travel sites and other third-party websites. But these days, more often than not, you see reviews only from Google. But have you ever seen a review from Yandex on Google?View the full article

Google has a new Search Labs feature named Ask for me. Ask for me will have Google call businesses for you, to figure out the cost of the service and when it can be scheduled for you. It is like that Duplex feature we saw years ago, where Google would try to schedule a restaurant reservation for you.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 posted new data that says they answer over 5 trillion queries per year...View the full article

While this month was not as busy as last month, it was still a pretty stressful month for a lot of site owners and SEOs. I was expecting more core updates this past month, but we had none, whereas the previous report, we covered three confirmed Google updates.View the full article

Did you ever want to validate to see if Google or other search engines can see your tabbed (hidden in a tab) navigation or content? Well, John Mueller from Google listed some ideas on how to do so.View the full article

Microsoft seems to be testing a more fully AI-powered search engine, which may be named Copilot Search. Copilot is the name of Microsoft's AI features, formerly known as Bing Chat. View the full article

Google is testing adding filters to the latest post carousel. These filters can show recent posts, video posts, posts from Instagram, or Facebook. View the full article

John Mueller from Google noted that he finds it "interesting" how those who spend time in our industry "can often recognize made-for-search-engine content fairly quickly." Meaning, we are good at seeing a piece of content on the web and knowing if it was created to perform well in search or written by a normal user trying to help others.View the full article

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

Here is a weird one - doing a site command and Google presenting an AI Overview summary of the results. In this case, the AI Overview was dead wrong - which is not all that uncommon - but why show an AI Overview here? View the full article

It's been almost two weeks since I last reported on a Google Search ranking update (unconfirmed) and that may be a recent record. But that being said, I am now seeing some signs of another unconfirmed Google update. The tools are starting to spike, and I am seeing some limited chatter within the SEO community.View the full article

Google.com will soon be the only way to access Google Search. The ccTLD versions of Google will redirect to Google.com. That means if you try to go to Google.ca, Google.fr. Google.co.uk and so on, those will all redirect to Google.com.View the full article

Google Business Profiles now can add backgrounds to the images you upload to your Google Posts, using AI. Victoria Kroll from Google wrote that you can now "can create an engaging AI-generated background for the photos you plan to use in the post."View the full article