Link Building Strategies

Over the past few days, the local SEO community is pretty upset that Google appears to be testing removing the call button from the local results. I am not sure if this is a bug or part of the design of the new Web Guide interface that more people are seeing. Either way, I do think this must be an oversight and the call button should be added back, I would hope.View the full article

Lenny Rachitsky interviewed Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google, who we cited here numerous times over the past couple of years. The interview covers how AI is not replacing search, search is not dead, how AI Mode will be incorporated within Google Search, how to do AEO or SEO for AI answers, how AI Mode came to market and more.View the full article

Have you heard of the Google Goldmine Scoring System? It supposedly looks at your page, your content, and Google gives it a goldminePageScore, title tag factor, body factor, anchor factor, heading factor and more.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

Google has updated its Auto-Apply Recommendations setting within the Google Ads interface. The button moved to just above the regular recommendations section.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 Business Profiles has a new way to report review extortion scams...View the full article

For the original iTunes version...View the full article

Google has published a new help document on the topic of Google Business Profile negative review extortion scams. The document explains what they are, how to report the scam, what to expect and more importantly, what not to do.View the full article

Google is testing a new section within the Google Ads advertising console named "Missed Growth Opportunities." This section shows you the "performance you could've achieved in the last year if you'd adjusted your bids and budgets for campaigns with growth opportunities," according to Google.View the full article

There are a nice number of reports of GA4, Google Analytics, showing a huge surge in organic search traffic over the past couple of days, but Google Search Console is not showing any increase, it remains flat. Some are suspecting this is the result of fake bot traffic not being filtered by GA4, but others are not sure.View the full article

Google has updated its Voice Search models to be powered by Speech-to-Retrieval (S2R). Google said this allows it to "gets answers straight from your spoken query without having to convert it to text first, resulting in a faster, more reliable search for everyone."View the full article

The Microsoft Advertising blog posted about how to optimize for AI Search Answers. I thought it was weird to see this on the Microsoft Advertising blog and not on the Bing Search blog, because (a) it is an ad blog and (b) it was written by Krishna Madhavan, who is part of the Bing team, not ad team.View the full article

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

While I was offline, it seems the chatter within the SEO industry spiked around the topic of search ranking volatility. It is harder to confirm the volatility, now with the tools recalibrating, but it does seem something started around Tuesday, October 7th, into the 8th.View the full article

Google announced it will replace the "Ad networks" blocking control from Brand safety within in AdSense with a new "Authorized Buyers" blocking control. This will start on November 6, 2025, the company said.View the full article

Google AI Mode is now available in over 200 countries and territories. Google said they are expanding AI Mode to "more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries and territories."View the full article

Google upgraded the Try On feature to now support shoes, in addition to other forms of clothing. Plus, Try on will soon also work in Australia, Canada and Japan, Google announced.View the full article

Google seems to be testing a new Insights feature for Google Business Profiles. The new insights section shows you profile suggestions, like tips on getting more reviews, what to update on your profile and what information to share with your visitors - amongst other suggestions and insights.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

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

Google has added a new promotion option to Google Merchant Center. The new option is Google Wallet. Google doesn't detail what this promotion does but it likely lets you promote that you accept Google Wallet for purchases.View the full article

Microsoft is telling Bing Search users when it is using history for some of its search features. Bing will show section named "History" and then say what history is knows about your searches.View the full article

Google is testing a new, more publisher-friendly version of the AI Overviews for recipe results. The new design has the recipe cards at the top, citations at the bottom and a shorter AI response.View the full article

Google is testing using the italic font type for the links in AI Mode. So the links have a bit of a slant to them, compared to the other text in the AI Mode response.View the full article

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