Link Building Strategies

We covered the topic of markdown files before but now we have more commentary from official representatives from Google and Bing on the topic. In short, they call markdown files messy, it can cause issues with finding errors, cause more crawl load and either way, the search engines use what people/humans can see over what bots can see.View the full article

Mike Ryan posted data on the percentage of invalid clicks on the Google Ad Network, broken down by fraudulent clicks or likely accidental clicks. It shows the Google Display Network has the most invalid clicks, but search partners have the most fraudulent invalid clicks.View the full article

Both Google and Microsoft reported its earnings today; Alphabet's Q3 2025 earnings and Microsoft's Q1 2026 earnings. Google reported ad revenues up by XX% with $ and Microsoft reported ad revenues up by XX%.View the full article

Google reported its earnings today, its Q4 2025 earnings report showed ad revenues up by 14% at $82.3 billion and overall revenue was up 17% at $113.8 billion. I specifically like to dig in as best as I can on the ad revenue side to see how Google Ads have performed.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

A month ago, Google added LLMs.txt files to many of its developer and documentation sites including the Search developer docs. As you know, Google pulled it off the Search developer docs within a day or so but the LLMs.txt files still remain on many of Google's other sites.View the full article

Google added an "Answer now" link or button to the Gemini app. Clicking "Answer now" will stop Google's Gemini from thinking and then give you an answer right away using Gemini 3 Flash model.View the full article

Google has added a new attribute to the Google Merchant Center availability options within vehicle listings. The new one is named "Build to order" and only works for Google Vehicle ads.View the full article

Google added a new user agent to the Googlebot's user-triggered fetchers documentation. The new user agent is for the Chrome Web Store named Google-CWS.View the full article

Google added Google NotebookLM to the list of Google crawlers, under the list of user-triggered fetchers. Google said they added this user-agent "based on feedback."View the full article

A couple of weeks ago, Google added a new help page titled Discover feed source overview. This page discusses those cards in the Google Discover feed and when Google gets the source name wrong, like for those entity Discover pages.View the full article

Several months ago, back in March, Google added a screen to request reviews by sharing a link or QR code with your customers. Now, it seems Google has added a new help page on how to use this feature.View the full article

Google has been saying that no one uses the LLMs.txt file, that Google won't use it, that it can be useless, and you probably should noindex it if you do use it. Well, Google itself uploaded an LLMs.txt file for the Google Search Central portal.View the full article

Google Ads top combinations report now has a Top Combinations option for PMax campaigns. This report should be able to quickly show you your top performing assets including logos, headlines, descriptions, images, sitelinks, and other assets.View the full article

Google Ads is celebrating its 25th birthday/anniversary today. Yes, Google launched AdWords 25 years ago today in 2000. In 2018, Google renamed AdWords to Google Ads and the ad labels and technology have drastically changed over the years.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

Can you imagine you manage hundreds of clients in your Google Ads Manager Accounts (MCC) gets hijacked. Or your Google Account and your ad campaigns gets hijacked due to an MCC hijack? Well, this stuff happens and it can be incredibly scary and painful.View the full article

Google has updated its Google Ads policies around suspensions yesterday. While no changes have been made to enforcement of these policies, Google has really updated a lot of the content, and examples provided in these policies. View the full article

Google Ads added a new channel control for Demand Gen to show ads in Google Maps. Some advertisers see the ability to select Maps as a placement in Demand Gen.View the full article

Google Ads has this section (not sure if it is new) named Advanced Plans. This feature allows you to select a "mix of ad types based on goals" and Google will create conversion creation and capture plans for you.View the full article

Google said it has made significant improvements to the Google Ads advertiser suspensions. Google said it reduced incorrect suspensions by 80%, appeals are addressed 70% faster and 99% of appeals are resolved within 24 hours.View the full article

Google is moving the Google Ads verification page to a new section within the Google Ads console. It is moving to the Admin, then Policy and Account section.View the full article

Google rolled out Ads Advisor, its AI-based chatbot for Google Ads, a couple of weeks ago. But some are noticing that if you have an MCC account, where you manage multiple advertisers under one account, the Ads Advisor responses can mix advice from one chat you had about one client account, to a new chat on a totally different client's account.View the full article

Google rolled out Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor a few weeks ago and did you know that it can reference and cite third-party external sources, outside of just Google's own help documentation? Well, it does.View the full article

Google is testing pushing advertisers to use Google Ads Advisor from within the Google Ads reporting section. Google Ads suggested questions and prompts at the top of the report, which it thinks you would find helpful to chat with an AI bot about.View the full article