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 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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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 seems to have added a download option to the Google Merchant Center promotions section. when creating promotions in Google Merchant Center, the download button will be on the bottom right of the screen.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 new ad layout is driving accidental clicks on search ads...View the full article

Grokipedia, an AI-generated online encyclopedia launched a week ago with over 800,000 AI-generated pages, and both Google and Bing have already indexed hundreds, if not thousands, of those AI-generated pages.View the full article

A few weeks ago, Google launched a new ad layout with the large "Sponsored results" label that groups numerous ads under that one label, and then sticks a "Hide sponsored results" button after you have already seen the ads. Well, it is leading to accidental ad clicks based on what I am reading and hearing across the industry.View the full article

Google's John Mueller posted a PSA yesterday, reminding SEOs and developers to verify the host name of cloud providers they are using to host images, videos, and other content. Specifically, you should use a DNS CNAME to the bucket, then verify with DNS with Search Console.View the full article

Raptive, an advertising-sales company representing thousands of websites (content publishers), filed a 93-page complaint against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit says "Google has carried out a sophisticated, anticompetitive, and deceptive scheme for well over a decade" by "manipulating auctions for ad space across the Internet."View the full article

Reddit announced earnings late last week and it boggles me how people love this stock. I am not a financial expert of analysis but Reddit has been saying for some time that 50% of its traffic comes from Google Search. Reddit also said on this Q3 earnings call that its search traffic is flat and that AI is not a traffic driver, at least not yet.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 says Google Ads is not going away...View the full article

This week, we covered more Google Search ranking volatility mid-week. Google Search Console launched query groups reports. Disney's sitelinks in Google Search seemed to have been hacked. Google reminded us about...View the full article

Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, was interviewed on the Silicon Valley Girl channel by Marina Mogilko about AI Search at Google. He explained how to do SEO for AI Mode and he was crystal clear that Google Ads is not going away with the release of these new AI features.View the full article

Google may have a new chart in the Google Ads overview tab named cross campaign metrics. It seems similar to the Cross-Media Reach Measurement but this is shown in the overview tab and not in that specific report.View the full article

Microsoft is testing a way to change the country and region you are in when doing searches on Bing. There is a new country/region selector for this, similar to how Google handles it.View the full article

Google updated the Google Ads Gambling and Games policy this week to define that sweepstake casinos are not social casino games. Google said this update was added on October 28, 2025. This now prohibits sweepstake casinos from using Google Ads for advertising.View the full article