Link Building Strategies

Google Ads has made the Campaign total budgets officially live as an open beta for any advertiser to sign up and use. Campaign total budgets are now available in Search, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns within Google Ads.View the full article

Google Ads has reportedly streamlined the selection capability of Manual CPC bidding during the campaign setup. Now the option can be found under the "Conversions" goal, labeled as "Manually set bids."View the full article

Google Ads is doing a limited test with some advertisers to allow them to run A/B tests with different product titles and images in Shopping Ads. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said it is "currently being tested with a small number of merchants."View the full article

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

Google is rolling out what it calls "Personal Intelligence" in the Gemini app and it will soon also come to Google Search within AI Mode. Google announced that Personal Intelligence in Gemini "connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search in a single tap."View the full article

Earlier this week, Google announced Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and it has a lot of the industry worried. Once SEO named Ramon Eijkemans said, "I hate to bring this, but SEOs: we're gonna be f$@*ed." John Mueller from Google responded on Bluesky and said, "I disagree."View the full article

While a number of Google Search features are impacted by Google's core update, favicons showing up or not is not one of them. Yes, your site can drop in the rankings, or not show up in Google Discover, or be removed from Top Stories and other features but favicons are not impacted by core updates.View the full article

We have seen ads in AI Mode before but there may be a new Google Ads format coming to AI Mode results, not the just the Direct Offer ads, but Explore guides and article ads.View the full article

Google has added Gemini to the Google Trends Explore page to help you find new and fresh search terms. It will also compare those search terms automatically for you, all in a new design. This is rolling out now, but you might not see it just yet.View the full article

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

The other day, I saw the Google News channel on X respond to claims that Google is going to allow merchants to overcharge you for products sold through the new AI checkout protocol. I found it crazy because Google has checks and balances to ensure merchants can't do this and Google responded as such.View the full article

Google's John Mueller was asked if it was acceptable to link your brand websites together on a brand page to communicate to your users that the company owns multiple brands. John said, it is pretty common to do so and if done as a reasonable scale, it is fine to do.View the full article

I am seeing a spike in complaints from Google AdSense publishers of earnings dropping again over the past 24-hours or so. This is similar to last week, and it also coincides with an unconfirmed Google search ranking update.View the full article

For the past few weeks, Google Ads has been rolling out a new and faster way to set up an account by using an existing campaign. The option reads, "Create an account with campaign for faster setup."View the full article

The Microsoft Advertising team released a new PDF guide named "From discovery to influence: AEO A guide to and GEO." This guide offers "Practical data strategies to empower retailers for AI search, AI assistants and AI browsers."View the full article

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

It is now official, Google confirmed it has entered "into a multi-year collaboration" with Apple to power Apple Intelligence features and Siri with Google's Gemini models and cloud technology.View the full article

Microsoft Advertising has expanded the number of search themes it allows to 50 search themes for Performance Max campaigns. This should be live now but Microsoft will announce it sometime this week.View the full article

I am seeing signs of a possible Google search ranking update or volatility around January 12, 2026. This is weird in that most of the tools, not all, are mostly calm, but the chatter has picked up and many SEOs are noticing ranking fluctuations. View the full article

Google Shopping is updating its promotions policy to now allow for promotions on subscription fees and abbreviations. This was updated as of this month, January 2026.View the full article

Google seems to have a bug that prevents searchers from leaving hotel reviews directly in the Google Search desktop interface. It works fine within Google Maps and Hotel search interfaces but not in the web search interface.View the full article

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

Google's Robby Stein reiterated that Google's AI experience, such as AI Mode and AI Overviews, integrates Google's core search signals. This helps Google provide more useful and helpful responses to users in the AI experiences. But it doesn't always get it right, as many of you know.View the full article

In a rare Sunday launch, Google announced new AI Mode ads named Direct Offers. Google also announced branded AI agents and a new open standard for agentic commerce it calls Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).View the full article

Google Ads has a new experiment feature for Performance Max campaigns that lets you A/B-test assets. This allows you to compare the performance of 2 different sets of assets within the same asset group to find out which creative combination works best for your Performance Max campaign.View the full article