Link Building Strategies

Google is updating the Google Ads Misrepresentation policy concerning Dishonest Pricing Practices. This will require advertisers to disclose the payment model or full expense that a user will incur before and after purchase, and clarify any false or misleading impressions of the cost of a product or service.View the full article

Google Maps is getting an update from Gemini where you can ask Google Maps questions about locations, where Google Maps can give you more human directions and Google Maps with Lens can tell you more about a store or location.View the full article

Google Search Console has a bug with its API when filtering on the searchAppearance dimension. This bug occurs when using the notEquals or notContains operators, it will only return rows with the excluded value, instead of excluding those rows.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 new ad layout is driving accidental clicks on search ads...View the full article

A few weeks ago, Google launched a new ad layout with the large "Sponsored results" label that groups numerous ads under that one label, and then sticks a "Hide sponsored results" button after you have already seen the ads. Well, it is leading to accidental ad clicks based on what I am reading and hearing across the industry.View the full article

Reddit announced earnings late last week and it boggles me how people love this stock. I am not a financial expert of analysis but Reddit has been saying for some time that 50% of its traffic comes from Google Search. Reddit also said on this Q3 earnings call that its search traffic is flat and that AI is not a traffic driver, at least not yet.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 says Google Ads is not going away...View the full article

Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, has been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to some recipes. Adam calls its Google's AI Frankenstein recipes, where it pulls parts of the recipes from recipe bloggers, says it is the brand's recipe, but changes it enough where the recipe is not real and tastes horrible.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

Microsoft is testing a way to change the country and region you are in when doing searches on Bing. There is a new country/region selector for this, similar to how Google handles it.View the full article

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

Google posted a new help document that says it will delete accounts without any campaigns after 6 months. "If an account does not have any campaigns, it'll be permanently deleted by Google Ads 6 months after cancellation," Google wrote.View the full article

OpenAI announced shopping research within ChatGPT, "a new experience in ChatGPT that does the research for you to help you find the right products," as OpenAI put it. This is clearly OpenAI's response to Google's AI Mode and Gemini 3 shopping experiences.View the full article

Google Ads seems to be experimenting with setting the New Customer Value within New Customer Acquisition campaigns without the consent of the advertiser. Technically, New Customer Value can be turned off, but this is confusing some advertisers and impacting reporting and ad performance for some.View the full article

Google has launched what it calls Multi-party approval for Google Ads. "Multi-party approval (MPA) is a security feature for Google Ads designed to protect your account from unauthorized activity by requiring a second account administrator to verify high-risk changes," Google wrote.View the full article

Google rolled out Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor a few weeks ago and did you know that it can reference and cite third-party external sources, outside of just Google's own help documentation? Well, it does.View the full article

Google announced that Gemini can now respond to your local questions with local results in a "rich, visual format." Google will visually lay out the local results to include photos, ratings, and real-world info from Google Maps data.View the full article

We have seen ads in AI Mode before but there may be a new Google Ads format coming to AI Mode results, not the just the Direct Offer ads, but Explore guides and article ads.View the full article

Google has updated its Voice Search models to be powered by Speech-to-Retrieval (S2R). Google said this allows it to "gets answers straight from your spoken query without having to convert it to text first, resulting in a faster, more reliable search for everyone."View the full article

Over the past few days, the local SEO community is pretty upset that Google appears to be testing removing the call button from the local results. I am not sure if this is a bug or part of the design of the new Web Guide interface that more people are seeing. Either way, I do think this must be an oversight and the call button should be added back, I would hope.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 has a new way to report review extortion scams...View the full article

There are a nice number of reports of GA4, Google Analytics, showing a huge surge in organic search traffic over the past couple of days, but Google Search Console is not showing any increase, it remains flat. Some are suspecting this is the result of fake bot traffic not being filtered by GA4, but others are not sure.View the full article

Google had a bug in Google Discover that showed the publisher's name and logo twice on a story. The publisher's name showed once at the top and once at the bottom of the article card in the Google Discover feed.View the full article

Google Search is testing a new carousel to promote AI Mode named "Ask AI Mode anything." It gives you ideas on how to "Explore" new or related topics in AI Mode.View the full article

Google will update how it handles multi-channel products, products sold both online and locally in the store, to help with managing inventory. Google emailed merchants that this applies to and the changes go into effect this March.View the full article