Link Building Strategies

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 has sent out an email to its Google Local Service Ads advertisers, notifying them that they are now letting searchers use a booking link to schedule an appointment or service, when the booking link is detected on the Google Business Profile of that business.View the full article

A few weeks ago, we saw Microsoft testing green colored sponsored URLs for the Bing search results. Now I am seeing reports of both underlined and bolded URLs and titles of the sponsored results, where the organic/free listings are not underlined or bolded.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

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

Microsoft seems to be testing a more fully AI-powered search engine, which may be named Copilot Search. Copilot is the name of Microsoft's AI features, formerly known as Bing Chat. View the full article

Some sites, hosted on some CDNs (content delivery networks), are experiencing a big spike in server response times for crawling, while seeing a drop in total crawl requests. So technically, the crawling has dropped but Google is taking much longer to crawl a lot less.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 is testing opening the normally closed/collapsed AI Answer box. Meaning, normally you need to manually tap to expand the answer, here Google is testing opening these boxes by default, without you needing to click expand.View the full article

The Google Search Console API has been delayed for the past several days. Data is days behind the web interface and causing issued for those who use Looker Studio, Big Query and other solutions to see the Search Console data when accessed through the API.View the full article

Google seems to have added, for some merchants, a new section named Physical Stores to the Google Merchant Center Next console. In this section is random data from within the store's Google Business Profiles listing.View the full article

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

A few weeks ago, I reported on how Google was testing showing deeper Google AI Overviews, maybe powered by Gemini 2.0, with over 60 links and citations in them. Well, over the past few weeks, more and more of us are seeing these AI Overviews, with dozens of links within them. And we are asking ourselves, who will click on these links?View the full article

I will start off by saying, I am super confused by this Google Ads email but it says Google is "Improving offline conversion quality in Smart and PMax Campaigns with Store Goals." Starting on February 28, 2025 Google will "increase focus on locally engaged users on channels with higher local intent."View the full article

Microsoft is at it again with its search engine - Bing. Previously, when you searched for Google, they tricked you to think you were searching Bing and then hide Google completely from its search results. Now when you search for Chrome, Gemini, Grok or even Perplexity - you are given a banner to use Microsoft products and not use Google, X or Perplexity.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

Apple seems like it may be preparing integration Google Gemini in Apple Intelligence as an option for its users to select. Aaron Perris from MacRumors spotted hints in the iOS 18.4 beta code that Google is listed alongside OpenAI as a "third party model."View the full article

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

We had more ranking volatility with the Google Search results, this time we reported on it on Thursday. There are some rumors of a local update where Google would remove an organic listing when it shows in the local pack...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 is testing a new box that highlights that you can book the hotel at the official site, the hotel's direct website. This does not look like a sponsored result, but just a way to highlight the official website of the hotel.View the full article

Microsoft has this new style for some of the Bing Search Copilot answers. They can show a card or box that has a tabbed carousel where you can swipe through different sections of an article to get different categories of answers for the topic.View the full article

Google will soon stop placing your Google Ads on parked domain names by default. Instead, you will need to opt in to showing your ads on these parked domains. View the full article

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