Link Building Strategies

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

Here is a weird one - doing a site command and Google presenting an AI Overview summary of the results. In this case, the AI Overview was dead wrong - which is not all that uncommon - but why show an AI Overview here? View the full article

Google is now sending emails to business owners when a Google Business Profile information edit was rejected. The email subject line says "A recent information edit was rejected," and then it tells you more details on why and allows you to read the policy and then appeal the decision.View the full article

For the past week or so, news publishers from Brazil have not been happy with Google. It seems that Google Discover is broken for a lot of Brazilians, showing irrelevant content to users and searchers, and not showing content from the typical publishers based in Brazil.View the full article

We've seen variations of Google's popular products section in the search results show both article and video content reviews. But now we are seeing another format for it, one that even links to laptop reviews from 55 years ago, a good ten years before the Osborne 1 hit shelves.View the full article

Google is testing a new ad groups interface for the Google Ads Search campaigns console. This seems to be a simpler interface with fewer options than the current version.View the full article

Jerry Dischler, the almost 20 year Google executive, is reportedly leaving Google a year and a half after he stepped down from that position. Jerry Dischler was involved in a lot of the Department of Justice negativity around Google's ad business, which may or may not be related to him stepping down in 2023 and now reportedly leaving Google in 2025.View the full article

Six years ago, Google dropped some of its search tools date filters and then added new operators for before: and after: that let you filter content by specific dates. Well, six years later, that feature is still in beta.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 is testing replacing the local pack in the search results with AI Overviews...View the full article

Google may be testing replacing local pack at the top of the Google Search results for "near me" related queries with an AI Overview. So instead of showing a map and the three or so local listings, Google is showing an AI Overview with some local information.View the full article

Google is testing a new label or green text on its shopping ads to tell you when the price of that item is low. The label says "Lowest in 30 days," which says the price is the lowest it has been in the past month.View the full article

Google's AI crawler, Google-Extended, the crawler it uses for Gemini and other related AI services, does render itself and can render JavaScript, just like Googlebot, Google's main web search crawler.View the full article

Google Ads search themes for Performance Max campaign has a limit of 25 search themes per asset group. Well, according to Thomas Eccel, Google is testing doubling that limit to 50 search themes per asset group.View the full article

Google announced a number of new tag, analytics and data strategies on Friday including a new Google tag gateway for advertisers. Google tag gateway for advertisers allows you to run your Google tags, be it client-side or server-side through your own website infrastructure, such as a content delivery network (CDN), load balancer, or web server.View the full article

Google AdSense will remove the ability to block the video games category of ads. So if you previously told AdSense not to show ads related to video games on your site or in your apps, that block will soon not be respected.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 AI Mode is now out in the wild, drops waitlist...View the full article

This week we covered the ongoing Google Search ranking volatility. I posted the big Google webmaster report for May. Google admitted in a deposition that it used its search data for Gemini AI. Google Search Console leaked that it was showing desktop data...View the full article

Google is expanding AI Mode both in terms of features and access. Google is testing AI Mode in the wild with a limited number of searchers. Google also opened up its waitlist to all 18+ U.S. users. Google added product and place cards to the AI Mode results. Plus, Google added a history tab.View the full article

Google added a new way to search for your products in the Google Merchant Center console. There is a new search button named "Search for Products" that you can click on and will let you pick from a pre-defined set of searches or you can type your own search.View the full article

Navah Hopkins sat down with the Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin, and spoke about the topic of what is changing with Google Ads. The interview is about an hour and is well worth watching or listening to.View the full article

Google Ads is updating its Ads Transparency policy to specify that it will display the payment profile name as the payer name for verified advertisers, if that name differs from their verified advertiser name, starting this month.View the full article

Microsoft is not only testing removing the name "Microsoft Bing" from its search bar and logo, Microsoft is also testing shortening the underline under the search tab to about half the length.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 AdSense ads are coming to third-party AI Chatbots. Apple Intelligence will soon make a deal to show Gemini results...View the full article

Here is our monthly Google Webmaster Report - the May 2025 edition - where I summarize the past 30 days or so of the big organic Google related news in one place. Google did not have any official Google ranking updates but we sure did see several days of intense ranking volatility.View the full article

Google AdSense has been testing serving and displaying ads within AI Chatbots. Bloomberg reported Google has already begun testing this within AI search apps iAsk and Liner and plans to allow other AI Chatbot providers to include AdSense ads in their chat responses.View the full article