Link Building Strategies

Google has added a new promotion option to Google Merchant Center. The new option is Google Wallet. Google doesn't detail what this promotion does but it likely lets you promote that you accept Google Wallet for purchases.View the full article

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

Google added Google NotebookLM to the list of Google crawlers, under the list of user-triggered fetchers. Google said they added this user-agent "based on feedback."View the full article

Google seems to be testing a new Insights feature for Google Business Profiles. The new insights section shows you profile suggestions, like tips on getting more reviews, what to update on your profile and what information to share with your visitors - amongst other suggestions and insights.View the full article

Google upgraded the Try On feature to now support shoes, in addition to other forms of clothing. Plus, Try on will soon also work in Australia, Canada and Japan, Google announced.View the full article

Google AI Mode is now available in over 200 countries and territories. Google said they are expanding AI Mode to "more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries and territories."View the full article

Google announced it will replace the "Ad networks" blocking control from Brand safety within in AdSense with a new "Authorized Buyers" blocking control. This will start on November 6, 2025, the company said.View the full article

While I was offline, it seems the chatter within the SEO industry spiked around the topic of search ranking volatility. It is harder to confirm the volatility, now with the tools recalibrating, but it does seem something started around Tuesday, October 7th, into the 8th.View the full article

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

The Microsoft Advertising blog posted about how to optimize for AI Search Answers. I thought it was weird to see this on the Microsoft Advertising blog and not on the Bing Search blog, because (a) it is an ad blog and (b) it was written by Krishna Madhavan, who is part of the Bing team, not ad team.View the full article

Google has updated its Voice Search models to be powered by Speech-to-Retrieval (S2R). Google said this allows it to "gets answers straight from your spoken query without having to convert it to text first, resulting in a faster, more reliable search for everyone."View the full article

There are a nice number of reports of GA4, Google Analytics, showing a huge surge in organic search traffic over the past couple of days, but Google Search Console is not showing any increase, it remains flat. Some are suspecting this is the result of fake bot traffic not being filtered by GA4, but others are not sure.View the full article

Google is testing a new section within the Google Ads advertising console named "Missed Growth Opportunities." This section shows you the "performance you could've achieved in the last year if you'd adjusted your bids and budgets for campaigns with growth opportunities," according to Google.View the full article

Google has published a new help document on the topic of Google Business Profile negative review extortion scams. The document explains what they are, how to report the scam, what to expect and more importantly, what not to do.View the full article

For the original iTunes version...View the full article

Google Business Profile performance reports seem to be missing a chunk of call data from last week. The call data is missing from October 14 through October 16, 2025.View the full article

As you may have heard, the latest AI-powered web browser launched yesterday, the much-anticipated OpenAI ChatGPT web browser. OpenAI named its web browser Atlas. The built-in search features seem to be mostly powered by Google Search, for some reason.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. OpenAI released its web browser named ChatGPT Atlas...View the full article

Google Ads is celebrating its 25th birthday/anniversary today. Yes, Google launched AdWords 25 years ago today in 2000. In 2018, Google renamed AdWords to Google Ads and the ad labels and technology have drastically changed over the years.View the full article

The Google Search Console performance reports seem to be stuck and not updating since October 19/20th for all profiles and websites. The weird thing is that the 24 hour view does seem to have data but when you view it over the 7 day filter, it doesn't show anything from October 19th and onwards (some see October 20th).View the full article

Google held the Search Central Live event in Dubai just a couple of days ago. It seems like the vast majority of what was presented at the event was presented at prior events. But I wanted to share that Google again said that links or site moves or technical SEO won't fix your rankings if you have overall quality issues with your site.View the full article

Google is testing showing the option ot track price changes for hotel results by email. We saw Google announce a similar feature back in March but now it is showing in the local hotel pack results in core 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 Search Console performance report chart is stuck. Google again says you can't fix quality issues with links...View the full article

Google is testing using different colored map pins in the map embed within Google AI Mode. The map pins can be in red, blue, yellow and maybe orange? View the full article

Google has updated AI Mode for fantasy sports including adding in integration with FantasyPros. And OpenAI has improved the GPT-5 Instant model for signed-out users.View the full article