Link Building Strategies

Last week, Shameem Adhikarath spotted a sponsored label on top of the "People also consider" box within the Google Search results. I figured it was a bug with ads not loading but then Shay Harel spotted the same thing a week later. Is this another bug or is this a new ad unit?View the full article

Google Ads is asking some advertisers to re-verify their accounts during an active email support conversion. While the support thread is going on, Google may ask you to re-verify you are who you say you are, for security purposes. View the full article

There are a number of advertisers in the local space who are complaining that the lead quality has been worse than ever in the past few months. They blame the new automated ad credits system, which removed the method for advertisers to manually request lead credits for poor quality leads.View the full article

Google seems to be working through the Google Business Profile support, reinstatement, and suspension appeal requests. As we reported twice already, once back in mid-February and then again earlier this week, Google confirmed the delay.View the full article

Microsoft is now showing why it selects or chooses to show a specific ad directly in the Bing search results. When you click on the arrow down by the URL of the search ad snippet, you will get window dialog that may explain why the ad was shown.View the full article

Google has this new "Know before you go" section in the search results. I mean, it is new for search, not new for Google Maps and not new for local. But I've never seen a Know before you go box in the search results before.View the full article

Google sent out emails to Local Service Ads advertisers notifying them that their Google Business Profile accounts are not affiliated to your Local Service Ads account. That means your reviews will only be accepted through your Google Business Profile link and not the Local Service Ads link.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

Over the weekend Google launched Product Studio AI features to Google Business Profiles products. Now when you add/edit products on your local Google Business Profile, Google will let you "change the background scene of your product with Product Studio, a generative AI tool which helps you create engaging imagery to showcase your products," Kara from Google said.View the full article

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

Google's March 20025 core update is now done rolling out, it took 14 days, starting on March 13, 2025 at around 12:23 pm ET and ending on March 27, 2025 at around XX ET. Google posted saying, "The rollout was complete as of March XX, 2025."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 reported earnings last night and their ad revenue continues to grow...View the full article

On Friday afternoon, Danny Goodwin covered a 170 or so page PDF that Search Engine Land received from an anonymous tip named "Preference Ranking Guidelines." It looks to me similar to the Google Quality Raters guidelines that continuously leaked until Google began publishing them for all to see.View the full article

Google has updated its Merchant Listing structured data documentation to now support, in beta, membership loyalty pricing property types. Google also updated the docs to provide more examples and instructions around active prices, sale prices, strikethrough prices, and member prices in JSON-LD.View the full article

Microsoft is now placing quick buttons or tabs to quickly jump from the Bing Copilot Answer to Bing image or video search results. I am not sure why or when Bing decides to show this but they are, for some (not all) queries that respond with a Copilot Answer. View the full article

Google sent out an email to advertisers yesterday about changes coming to Google Tag Manager. Specifically, Google Tag Manager will send events before loading a Google tag and Google calls this a "small change" that "will not harm measurement performance."View the full article

Google sent out notifications to Google Ads advertisers with upcoming changes to customer match lists. Google will set a new maximum membership duration of 540 days for customer match lists starting on April 7, 2025.View the full article

Initially, when Yahoo Search launched AI-generated answers, they did not contain sources or links. Now it seems Yahoo is adding "Learn more" links to these AI answer boxes in Yahoo Search.View the full article

Google posted a new Google Ads update for Response search ads (RSAs) where up to two RSA headlines can serve in the space that previously only sitelinks were eligible for when Google's system predicted they would improve performance.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 November, Google began using AI to generate review summaries in Google Maps. Well, now they seem to be showing up in the local knowledge panels on the right side of the Google Search results page.View the full article

Google has been using AI to write parts of the knowledge panels for some time now. But now it seems, when Google does that, it will show references and link cards, like it does in the AI Overviews.View the full article

Google is testing various link formats in AI Mode. Initially Google launched AI Mode with those tiny paperclip links, but Google, like they've done in AI Overviews, is testing in AI Mode, anchor text links and URL links within the text of the AI response.View the full article

Google now accepts RVs (recreational vehicles) and campers in Google Vehicle Ads. Google posted this on Friday afternoon and wrote, "Vehicle ads will be expanding to include recreational vehicles (RVs) and campers."View the full article

John Mueller from Google said on Bluesky that he sees some SEOs over-focusing on the tiniest SEO metrics and that they should spend their time focusing on more important things.View the full article