Link Building Strategies

Microsoft reported its second quarter 2026 earnings and it showed that its search and advertising revenue was up for 10% but growth is down over the past two quarters. The previous quarter it was up 16% and the one before that was 21% and this quarter, it is only up 10%.View the full article

Google has released version 23 of the Google Ads API, this is a major release with dozens of updates. Updates include Performance Max reporting data with Ad Network type breakdown, more incentives, reporting and conversion controls - plus much more.View the full article

We covered the topic of Google's AI Frankenstein recipes and how bad it is for recipe bloggers and publishers. But when you have Google's Personal Intelligence serve up these Frankenstein chunks of content, it makes it so much worse.View the full article

Google is moving the Google Ads verification page to a new section within the Google Ads console. It is moving to the Admin, then Policy and Account section.View the full article

Google seems to be testing showing up to 10 sitelinks on some of the search result snippets. Normally, Google will show about 4 sitelinks, but here Google is showing 6 more.View the full article

I ran a poll yesterday on X asking Would you block Google from using your content for AI Overviews and AI Mode. About 33% of the over 350 responses said they would block Google from using and showing their content in the AI search experiences. 42% said they would not block Google and 25% are not sure yet.View the full article

As you know, January was an incredibly intense month of Google Search ranking volatility. It surprised me that Google has still not confirmed that a Google search ranking update took place. Now, John Mueller of Google was asked about it and said, "Unfortunately, I don't have any insights / updates to share."View the full article

Google may have hit those self-promotional and self-serving listicle articles in one of the more recent unconfirmed Google search ranking updates. Lily Ray dug into a pattern she spotted with these types of pieces of content, mostly in the SaaS space, being hit hard with the January Google updates.View the full article

Google's John Mueller responded to a question on the pros and cons of serving raw markdown pages to LLM crawlers and bots. John didn't say much but he did list a number of concerns and things you should be on top of, if you do go down that avenue. View the full article

Mike Ryan posted data on the percentage of invalid clicks on the Google Ad Network, broken down by fraudulent clicks or likely accidental clicks. It shows the Google Display Network has the most invalid clicks, but search partners have the most fraudulent invalid clicks.View the full article

We have known for a long time that Google can crawl web pages up to the first 15MB but now Google updated some of its help documentation to clarify that it will crawl the first 64MB of a PDF file and the first 2MB of other supported file types.View the full article

Google posted its first Winter Olympics Doodle, special logo, for the 2026 Winter Olympics. The first sport Google covered is curling. The Doodle is an animated GIF of an Olympian pushing the curling stone down the ice.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 search algorithms, spam detection...View the full article

Google's John Mueller said that when it comes to AI Search and the changes that come with that, Google's core search algorithms, spam detection methods, spam policies, and other search systems do not fundamentally change.View the full article

Bing Search has rolled out what it calls multi-turn search in Bing globally. This is something we saw Microsoft Bing test back in June, when we saw a floating Copilot follow up search box at the footer of the Bing search results page show up as you scroll. It is now globally live for all to use.View the full article

OpenAI seems to be jazzing up its ChatGPT responses by showing more visual responses, like Google's knowledge panels and top stories. This goes across people, places, products, and ideas, OpenAI said.View the full article

Gary Illyes, along with Martin Splitt, of Google posted a podcast explaining the top crawling challenges Google noticed amongst its 2025 year of crawling. The top challenges Google had with crawling included faceted navigation, action parameters, irrelevant parameters, calendar parameters and other "weird" parameters.View the full article

Google's John Mueller said he would "caution against assuming that you need to do this level of analysis for all URLs on a website in order to achieve optimal SEO" when it comes to reviewing bad redirects or CSP settings. Why, because bad redirects or CSP settings are often simply visible when doing normal browsing, and if you see it, then that is enough.View the full article

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

Several weeks after Google rolled out support for Preferred Sources globally, Google added official help documentation for site owners to use to help them understand what it is all about and how to encourage their readers to subscribe to your site as a preferred source.View the full article

This week, we covered more ongoing Google search ranking volatility - January was a heated month. Google AI Overviews show more button officially flows to AI Mode...View the full article

January has been an insane month with Google Search ranking volatility, and I guess it is no surprise to see the most heated time right now, as we end the month. I am seeing a significant spike in SEO chatter and many of the tools are showing very heated Google search ranking volatility over the past 24 hours or so.View the full article

Google is testing showing third-party endorsement content on Search ads, a Google Ads spokesperson confirmed. This "third-party endorsement content" may include content from third-party websites under the ad description, including the site's name, logo, and a short endorsement from that site.View the full article

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

Before the December holidays, Google posted a notice that review appeals for Google Business Profiles were delayed. Well, Google just removed the notice, which likely means the extended delays for review appeals are no longer an issue.View the full article