Link Building Strategies

There are reports that Google is showing more free product listings from Google Merchant Center in the Google AI Overview responses. I am told there are two variations of this AI Overview response: one where the favicon and price appear as an overlay, and another where the free listings look more like a map pack.View the full article

Google updated its Circumventing systems policy to add a new section for Advertiser verification. In short, and as Google wrote, "Providing false or fraudulent information as part of our Advertiser verification programs is not allowed."View the full article

Google is testing a tinted brownish/yellowish background color for the search results page. It turns the white background into a brownish/grayish/yellowish background and then the gray boxes into a darker color.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

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 dropped a number of search features and structured data types...View the full article

As VP of Engineering for Search at Google, Rajan Patel said months ago - "We're experimenting with various approaches to X in Discover." Google has been super busy with testing various approaches to Google Discover. Here are some of the more recent tests I found via Damien (andell) and Gagan Ghotra over the last few weeks.View the full article

Google added a new navigation button to Google Merchant Center labeled "Creative Content." I believe this is where you access Product Studio, and all your videos and assets for your Merchant Center campaigns.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

Google announced it has added Waze ads inventory to Performance Max for store goals campaigns and Channel performance reporting is now available in all Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads.View the full article

Google added a new promotion targeting option to Google Merchant Center for audience targeting. The option is labeled "preferred audience" and is available when setting up a promotion.View the full article

Google dropped a number of search features and structured data types. Google is testing a new version of AI Mode. Google AI Mode gained three new agentic capabilities. Google AI Overviews continue to result in a drop in click-through rates...View the full article

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

Starting maybe late Thursday, into Friday, November 7th, I started to feel a Google Search ranking update and volatility brewing. Like I've been saying since the num=100 parameter change, it has been harder to validate those feelings, but based on the chatter I have been seeing in the SEO community and some of the third-party Google Search tracking tools, I think there was a Google update around November 7, 2025.View the full article

Google seems to have fixed a bug with inviting others to access your Google Ads account. This bug appeared about a week ago and it Google seemed to start to roll out a fix for this bug on Friday.View the full article

Last week, Google announced Opal, a Google Labs project, expanded to more regions. Well, it also explained how you can use this tool to create optimized content in a scalable way - consistently and quickly, without much human intervention. Yea, does this seem like something that might be against the Google Search guidelines? View the full article

Google's John Mueller responded with SEO advice on how a company can use two different TLDs for its company. The company wants to use the .co.uk for normal search and web traffic but .digital as a TLD for some of its marketing campaigns.View the full article

There have been a number of threads on LinkedIn over the past week about how poorly Google Ads AI Max is performing compared to other match types. The conversions or conversion value is greatly below other match types, in early tests, despite Google saying it should deliver 14% more.View the full article

Microsoft announced on Friday afternoon that Copilot now has its own dedicated search experience. Plus, because Microsoft knows how important publishers are to the ecosystem, it is making citations and links way more prominent and clickable. 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. Late last week, into this weekend...View the full article

Google Ads is now showing summaries of your budget settings in the budget and bidding optimization setting. This will summarize what your settings are configured for, at a glance.View the full article

Google will be updating its Unacceptable phone number policy on December 10, 2025 and that update is causing some anxiety for some advertisers. The policy update says that "phone numbers found to be associated with fraudulent activity or with a history of policy violations are unacceptable."View the full article

Google has documented a new user agent, a user-triggered fetcher, named Google-Pinpoint. "The Google-Pinpoint fetcher requests individual URLs that Pinpoint users specified as sources for their personal collections of documents," Google posted in its updated documentation.View the full article

Google has confirmed it is testing a feature to import campaigns and assets from X and other social networks into your Google Ads campaign. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, confirmed this on LinkedIn yesterday. View the full article

Google has updated the review snippet documentation to explain that site owners should avoid using multiple ways of indicating what's being reviewed, the search company announced. This is to make it clear about how nesting in reviews and aggregate ratings are interpreted and handled by Google Search.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 will fix its Google Discover fake AI news problem. Google is now showing search ads, not just shopping ads...View the full article