Link Building Strategies

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 testing letting searchers select the Gemini 3 model they want to use directly in the Google Search bar. The options can include, Pro, Fast or Auto, from what I can see. View the full article

A few weeks ago, we uncovered the beta self-serve Ads Manager for ChatGPT Ads. It was before it officially launched but now OpenAI officially announced its "beta self-serve Ads Manager that allows advertisers in the US to sign up and purchase ads directly to appear in ChatGPT."View the full article

The Google Local Service Ads account access tab has not been loading and working for advertisers for the past several days. There are numerous reports of it failing throughout the day and it has become a huge frustration for a number of Google advertisers.View the full article

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

Google seems to be suspending Google Business Profiles due to user account restrictions. There may have been a wave of suspensions over the past several days related to this issue and local SEO experts are unclear if this is a bug or some other issue.View the full article

Microsoft, during its earnings call last week, announced that Bing hit a huge milestone of 1 billion monthly active users. Krishna Madhavan from Microsoft later confirmed these "users" do not include AI agents but are real actual humans.View the full article

Google has posted an update and emailed advertisers on changes to its Google Ads data retention policy. What changed? Here is what Google said.View the full article

Similarweb published some data sharing the click-through rates for OpenAI's ChatGPT ads. The overall CTR for ChatGPT ads are 0.68%, the top quartile is 1%, the best brands are 1.57% and the peak CTR is 5.4%.View the full article

Google posted new developer documentation for how to authenticate requests with Web Bot Auth. This is a "new cryptographic protocol that helps websites to validate that bots are authentic," Google wrote.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 explained how using AI in isolation works better for them...View the full article

A month ago, Google posted that between the dates of May 13, 2025 through April 27, 2026, just about 50 weeks, there was a "logging error prevented Search Console from accurately reporting impressions." Google updated the post to now say "This issue has been resolved."View the full article

IAC, the owners of Ask.com, have decided to get out of the search business and shut down one of the oldest and most legendary search engines of all time - Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves. IAC wrote, "As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com."View the full article

Google Ads has added a new option (although, I think Google has said this is coming) under the "add product source" section where you can select how to add products to your Google Ads account. The option reads, "Use AI to add products - beta."View the full article

Nikola Todorovic, Director of Software Engineering at Google Search, spoke about a presentation he gave at Zurich in December at Google Search Central live (I was there). He dug into it on a recent Search Off the Record named How AI Is Changing Google Search and SEO. In there, he explained how AI and machine learning have been used in isolation within Google Search.View the full article

Google is testing a new label for the search results snippet named "Fresh updates." This was spotted on a weather website result, Accuweather. View the full article

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

This week in search, we are seeing yet again more Google search ranking volatility. Google sent out notifications about back button hijacking penalties to those sites that have the problem. Google AdSense vignette ads may trigger the penalty...View the full article

SEOs and site owners are always complaining about indexing issues with Google Search. Why is this page not indexed, why is that page not indexed. But some seasoned SEOs are asking if Google is more picky about what it indexes in the past month or so, than it was maybe a year ago.View the full article

Google annnounced a number of new updates for AI Max within Google Ads. These include (1) AI Brief, (2) text disclaimers and (3) Expansion with AI Max for shopping and Search Campaigns for travel.View the full article

Back in December, Google expanded Preferred sources globally, but only for English-language content. Now, according to The Verge, Google's preferred sources support all languages globally.View the full article

Google is showing a new label on the Discover feed that says "You asked to see." This label is added to items in your feed that are customized based on the Tailor Your Feed feature.View the full article

I missed last month's Google Webmaster Report, so I am combining both April and May into one big report. Google completed rolling out the March 2026 spam update in March, and started the March core update, which completed in April. We also had a lot of other ranking volatility throughout.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 and Microsoft reported earnings...View the full article

Microsoft Advertising has added conversion and spend metrics to the PMax Website Publisher URL report. So if you check out the report, you will see a bunch more insight and data into the performance of those ads.View the full article