Link Building Strategies

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 was ruled an illegal monopoly once again...View the full article

Google's John Mueller was quick to debunk a claim that owning an .esports domain will have no positive SEO effect. He said on Bluesky, "There's no positive SEO effect from a TLD like that."View the full article

We are less than a week after the Google March 2025 core update finished rolling out and we are seeing some heated volatility again, maybe more heated than what we saw during the last core update.View the full article

Google Ads now lets you quickly hide all recommendations with the click of a button. Previously you had to hide each recommendation one-by-one, but now you can hide them all with one click.View the full article

OpenAI has begun rolling out shopping search features directly into ChatGPT Search across fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics categories. These are not ads or affiliate-driven, but they are powered by structured data from third-party sources.View the full article

Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, said that the Google Ads team is working on improvement the advertiser support experiences and some improvements have been rolling out. "There are ongoing efforts to improve experiences and outcomes for the millions of businesses and agencies around the globe that use Google Ads," Ginny Marvin wrote on X.View the full article

Microsoft is testing a new design and user experience for the Bing sitelinks and related searches. The sitelinks have this hover over shadow effect, while the related searches go from a rounded pill design to line separator design.View the full article

Google is testing a new version of the mobile search results snippets where the URL is now blue, still clickable. Also, a variation where they are switching the placement of the URL and the site name.View the full article

Last December, we reported how Google was showing a payments option section in the retailer/merchant knowledge panel. Google is now testing a clearer version of it, while adding shipping and return information to the payments section.View the full article

Google is testing showing favicons logos in its shopping ads, in the carousel of sponsored product results. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, confirmed this with me on X last night.View the full article

Google will stop showing reviews and ratings on school listings in Google Search and Google Maps. Google Business Profiles said, "Starting April 30, 2025, your school's associated Business Profile will no longer allow reviews and ratings."View the full article

Google Ads has updated the number of characters you can add for the Performance Max campaigns descriptions to all be 90 characters long. Previously, there was a short description of 60 characters, but now they have all been updated to show 90 characters.View the full article

Google is testing showing images within the sitelinks carousel in Google Ads and sponsored results. We've seen images in sitelinks before, numerous times, but here is a version of them in the ads extension.View the full article

Google seems to be testing hiding the citations, link icons, for the AI Overviews default view. So when the AI Overview first loads in the Google Search results, the link icon is hidden.View the full article

About a week ago, if you searched for mortgage related math questions in Google Search, Google stopped giving you the answer. Google first introduced its mortgage calculator features a decade ago but suddenly the features disappeared last weekend.View the full article

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

Google sent out a notification that it will automatically opt you into using content from your email campaigns to help Google know what to show in Google Search, Shopping, and Maps. It will look for content around new arrivals, sales or ongoing promotions, social media profiles, and others.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. OpenAI added shopping search features to ChatGPT Search...View the full article

Google needs even more queries, the 10% growth isn't enough, so Google AI Overviews is testing query expansion tabs at the top of the AI Overviews. We've seen variations of this within the AI Overviews, but now they are testing them at the top of the AI Overviews.View the full article

Google Ads seems to be rolling out the expected age exclusions feature for Performance Max, PMax, campaigns. In January, Google told us it would be coming and then we saw the Google Ads Editor add the feature in version 2.9. And now, some are seeing it in the Google Ads advertiser console user interface. View the full article

Google is testing a new quick view button/link within the Google Search results for hotel and lodging results. When you click on the quick view button you are taken to the Google Business Profile listing but when you click on the main result you are taken to the website directly (or maybe the other way, I cannot tell for sure).View the full article

Google's John Mueller does not want you to lump programmatic SEO with technical SEO. He said they are different things and that while technical SEO "will definitely continue to be a thing," programmatic SEO is another story.View the full article

Google Analytics real time reporting seems to be lagging again this morning. I woke up to a ton of complaints on social about the real time reporting reports in GA4 are simply not working as expected.View the full article

While you can access Google AI Mode directly at google.com/aimode, there is currently no way to go direclty to something like google.com/aimode?q=QUERYGOESHERE. But that might come, said Robby Stein, VP, Product at Google Search.View the full article

Google is testing a new link feature in the search results, it is in the form of a link box, in the search result snippet, that when you click on it, it anchors you down on the page to a specific portion of that text.View the full article