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 AI Mode has better link cards to recipe sites now...View the full article

Google has removed a whole section from its JavaScript SEO documentation because it was outdated and Google says loading content with JavaScript does not make it hard for Google Search.View the full article

Google is testing a new AI Mode widget within the main search results that drives searchers away from the core search results and recipe listings/cards and into AI Mode, which then shows those horrible AI-generated Frankenstein recipes.View the full article

Google seems to be rolling out a new format for some of the AI Overviews it shows within search. This format shows a drop-down, expandable, accordion-style interface that you can expand to show more.View the full article

Google announced it updated AI Mode to link to more recipe sites and bloggers. "Starting today, when you search for meal ideas like 'easy dinners for two,' you can tap on the dish to see links to relevant recipe sites, plus a short overview of the dish to help with inspiration," Robby Stein from Google said on X.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

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

OpenAI announced GPT-5.3 Instant and said it "delivers more accurate answers, richer and better-contextualized results when searching the web, and reduces unnecessary dead ends, caveats, and overly declarative phrasing that can interrupt the flow of conversation."View the full article

Google is testing bolding the site names in the search results. We've seen Google bold many other elements of the search result snippet, but I don't think I've covered Google testing bolding the site name portion of the search snippet.View the full article

Google has posted a new help document named Things to know about Google's web crawling. This document currently lists 9 things on how Google's web crawling works. View the full article

Google Search may have rolled out an update for the images it shows in the search results All tab. For some queries, Google is showing a full-width image pack, but with only four wider images, not the five images we saw before.View the full article

Google has reportedly confirmed that the Google Discover feed has recently increased how often it shows social media posts in the feed. We covered this in January, and while we know Google does show social media in the Discover feed, it seems Google is more likely to show these social media posts more often now.View the full article

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

Google AI Mode doesn't always pass referrer data from the links on the sidebar. This is supposedly being looked at by the Google Search team and hopefully will be fixed soon, if not, already.View the full article

Google seems to be rolling out colorful sections in the knowledge panels. Sometimes you will see gray, sometimes blue, sometimes orange and sometimes green and maybe more. We saw this on mobile over a decade ago, so this does seem new, especially on desktop.View the full article

Google updated its image SEO best practices and Google Discover documentation to clarify how Google picks a preferred image thumbnail for Google Search and Google Discover. Google wrote it "uses both schema.org markup and the og:image meta tag as sources when determining image thumbnails in Google Search and Discover."View the full article

Google has updated or is updating a number of Google Ads and Google Merchant Center policies. This goes across alcohol, prescription drugs, gambling and games and government documents and services policies.View the full article

Google has published a new help document titled About the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and UCP-powered checkout feature on Google. This was published in the Google Merchant Center help documentation 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. There is a Google patent document that implies Google Search might send searchers to AI-generated page of your site...View the full article

There is a Google patent named AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user. It describes the use of AI to create custom landing pages and when a user performs a search, Google Search sends the user to the AI-generated page instead of the page on the company's website.View the full article

Google Search rankings remain heated into March - I mean, I can post about this every day but now I am at the point of just doing it weekly. We thought things might be cooling a bit, but the volatility really has not cooled much at all.View the full article

Google might be allowing publishers to claim their profiles and publications on Google Discover. I mean, there were forms of this for Google News, Google Business Profiles, even Google Search over the years, but there are hints this is coming to Google Discover.View the full article

Are you ready for the monthly Google Webmaster report...View the full article

Google Ads has often used dynamic labels for some of the ad groupings. I mean, we've seen tons of variations of these and I am not sure if they mean anything specific. But here is one that caught my eye, this is titled "Sponsored options in the area."View the full article

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