Link Building Strategies

Google seems to have removed the minimum required budget for Local Service Ads. It is not clear if this is intentional or a bug but the box to stop you from setting a budget too low, seems to not be there anymore.View the full article

Google seems to be no longer showing the events carousel, event rich results, in the desktop search results. I see them on mobile search but I cannot trigger them on any browser on desktop search.View the full article

Google seems to have dropped showing the number of reviews are on a page, the review count, next to the review stars, for non-shopping/e-commerce pages. Google Search is now showing rating review values when using AggregateRating mark-up.View the full article

Google's John Mueller announced Google is "simplify the search results page" by removing "some features that aren't being used very often and aren't adding significant value to users." This means more structured data types will be removed, but for some reason, Google did not specify exactly which ones are going away.View the full article

Google has shut down, turned off, and disabled, its new page annotations feature. The feature where Google hijacked your content, placed links in your content, links you didn't add yourself, and directed your content to Google Search. It is no longer, Google shut it down. View the full article

Google launched education Q&A carousel back in 2022 for English languages only. Now, Google has expanded support to include also Spanish and Vietnamese language. Spanish is supported in Mexico while Vietnamese is supported in all Google regions.View the full article

Google is now (past few weeks?) sending out emails when it detects fake or incentivised reviews on your Google Business Profile. Google also says it has removed the fake or incentivised reviews that were identified. View the full article

Last month, we covered how we saw an "Incentivized" label on some product reviews within Google Search. Now, Google is emailing merchants and advertisers notifying them that they must properly tag incentivized reviews for Google.View the full article

A couple of days ago, Google sent out an email to owners of Google Business Profile listings. The email was a reminder about the Google Business Profile policies, and it highlighted policies around reviews.View the full article

Google AdSense has ended its Parked Domains (AFD) as an ad surface within the Search Partner Network effective February 10, 2026. Google wrote, "Parked Domains (AFD) will cease to be an ad surface within the Search Partner Network effective February 10, 2026."View the full article

Google added a number of new features to the event rich results search feature within Google Search. Some of these might not be new, but now on these event results you can share the event, add it to your calendar, see similar events, get more details on the venue and find nearby food and drinks.View the full article

Google quietly updated its AI Overviews ad documentation to say that ads in AI Overviews are supported in Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, and US. Previously, it just said it was available in the US and "will expand to select English speaking countries soon."View the full article

Google has rolled out AI Overviews to more European regions after we caught them testing these AI Overviews earlier this month. AI Overviews are now officially live in Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.View the full article

Google has expanded where the Structured data carousels (beta) search feature works and for what types of queries. When it first launched, about a year ago, it was available for flights queries in Germany, France, Czechia, and the UK. Now it is available for queries related to ground transportation, hotels, vacation rentals, local business, and things to do (for example, events, tours, and activities) in all European Economic Area (EEA) countries.View the full article

Google said it is expanding its AI Overviews and Knowledge Panels to offer more medical and health related answers. Plus, those are being expanded in more counties and languages. Also, Google launched a new "What People Suggest" search feature that shows you what other people are saying on the web about those topics.View the full article

Google looks to have expanded its enforcement of its site reputation abuse policy to European regions this week. Google began enforcement in the US back in May but Google seems to have issued a ton of these manual actions (manual penalties) to European based sites.View the full article

Google has once again expanded the reach of its site reputation abuse policy, beyond the US enforcement from from May and beyond limited European regions last week - we are now seeing enforcement in the massive German market.View the full article

Google has updated its manual actions documentation around site reputation abuse, to expand on the next steps and actions you can take if you receive this manual action. Google now more clearly says that you should not block that content with your robots.txt file, if you use the noindex rule.View the full article

In February, Google announced that UCP, Universal Commerce Protocol, powered checkout is available in AI Mode. Well, now you can use UCP powered checkout in the main search results for some retailers like Wayfair.View the full article

Google is now showing the "What to know" section within web search, not just AI Mode, within the product summary bar on the right side. This shows up when you click on a product.View the full article

Google posted a new blog post named Inside Googlebot: demystifying crawling, fetching, and the bytes we process alongside episode 105 of the Search Off the Record segment named Google crawlers behind the scenes.View the full article

Google's John Mueller revealed an interesting tip on Bluesky the other day for anyone still disavowing links. John explained that site owners can indeed disavow entire TLDs if they want to. Note...View the full article

Google just announced it is looking into ways to allow websites to specifically opt out of Google using its content in the Search generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. This comes based on UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) new requirements for Google Search.View the full article

Google will sometimes fall back to showing featured snippets when it is unable to generate AI Overviews for a query. And when that happens, it sometimes looks like an AI Overview, but it is not an AI Overview, it is a featured snippet.View the full article

Google has been adding AI features to Google Finance - like what can go wrong? Recently Google's Rose Yao announced Google Finance added live audio, instant transcripts and AI insights.View the full article