Link Building Strategies

Microsoft is testing placing a new tag on some sponsored ads within the Bing Search results. This tag is in blue and says "Local Business," which I guess helps promote local businesses near you.View the full article

Google has posted an update on the reviews bug we first reported on a week ago, that it later confirmed this past Monday and we saw a fix rolling out starting on Tuesday. The short, it is not yet fully fixed but it should be in the coming few days.View the full article

Google has released version 2.9 of the Google Ads Editor. This new update brings a number of new features including support for manager account (MCC) owned labels, shopping ads on excluded brands, age exclusions in PMax campaigns, enhanced CPC deprecation, multi-tab export/import to Google Sheets, ad previews for RSA and asset groups and more.View the full article

Last April 2024, Gary Illyes from Google said he was on a mission to make web crawling more efficient, he wanted to "figure out how to crawl even less, and have fewer bytes on wire." Gary updated us saying "there's lots more in works" for this but implies some improvements have already been made.View the full article

Microsoft is testing another user interface and experience for the links they show within its AI Answers, the Copilot responses. These links show with a hyperlink icon and the domain name spelled out, and then when you mouse over it, it has a carousel you can flip through for more links.View the full article

18 year old, publicly traded education technology company, Chegg, has sued Google over its AI Overviews and how it has hurt their traffic and revenue. Chegg has "filed a complaint against Google, which has unjustly retained traffic that has historically come to Chegg, impacting our acquisitions, revenue and employees," said Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg.View the full article

Google Search is showing a snippet that has a date in the future. Normally the snippets have dates from the past; such as this content was found by Google X days or Y hours ago. But this one is now showing "in 7 days" from now.View the full article

Google has released version 19 of the Google Ads API, v19 adds enhanced video assets for Performance Max campaigns, updates to brand guidelines and tons of other additions, changes and removals. View the full article

Google has made a number of updates to the product analytics section within Google Merchant Center Next. Organic conversions have been renamed to Purchases. Plus, Google lets you specify it's traffic to PDPsm instead of products, and labels.View the full article

No surprise here - Google will be testing and experimenting with ads in Google AI Mode. Google told Adweek that they will be "explore bringing ads into" Google AI Mode.View the full article

Google seems to be no longer showing the events carousel, event rich results, in the desktop search results. I see them on mobile search but I cannot trigger them on any browser on desktop search.View the full article

Google Ads had a bug with the sitelinks creation page, where the prefill functionality was not working right. Google confirmed the issue and said it was "very limited and was not widespread." View the full article

Google's John Mueller pretty much said that using image streaming techniques will not result in an SEO friendly outcome. He actually said, "It's a great way to prevent your images from being found through search engines."View the full article

Google has this feature in its search results that lets you find results based on the images you've view within Google Image Search. It places this button in the search results that reads, "Find results based on images you've viewed" with a link to "more like these."View the full article

Google is testing a new design for the shopping ads format, one that looks a bit more like the image pack design than shopping ads. View the full article

Google Search is testing a feature to quiz you on the product you are looking for and then to give you more tailored recommendations for product suggestions. This box is titled "get tailored recommendations" and it reminds me of the AI powered recommendation ads, but these are different.View the full article

Google is testing removing the numbers from the pagination menu at the footer of the Google Search results page. The normal pagination bar shows the page number you are on, the test just shows a next button.View the full article

Google is now using a much larger font for the knowledge panels shown in Google Search. The font size looks jumbo and it does not seem to be test, it seems to be live - I think.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 now supports images as part of your questions...View the full article

Google reported earnings and their ad revenue is up again year-over-year, with an increase of 8.5%, and overall revenue is also up 12%. I should note, it is down from Q4 because Q4 is always Google's best performing quarter, which is why you don't really compare the it to the last quarter, but rather the same quarter from a year ago.View the full article

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

Retailers have been complaining for the past several days that there is a bug in Google Merchant Center when trying to add the shipping rates and costs. Step four of that process just bugs out and it is preventing some merchants from completing their details and advertising with Google Ads or listing free listings in Google Shopping.View the full article

Google has upgraded the emails Google Business Profiles sends when your verification has failed. It now shows the reason(s) a verification has failed and what you need to do to become verified in Google Business Profiles.View the full article

For the past few years or so, Google has had a more detailed, almost survey-style review questionnaire for some local results, especially restaurants. Now, according to Claudia Tomina, Google has expanded the questions it asks on those surveys.View the full article

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