Link Building Strategies

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

Microsoft Bing is testing a new home page design where it promotes its AI-powered search and answer engine, Copilot. It seems to be a limited test and is not fully live yet, but it is a big change to the home page, which normally has the Bing custom background, search box, and the news feed below.View the full article

Last November, Google announced it was dropping support for a number of structured data types and search features. One of those was practice problem structured data types, and now, Google has removed the help documentation along with it.View the full article

Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, and it already has a significant impact on Google Search results. The most noticeable day of the impact was Saturday, December 13th, but there are plenty of signs it started to hit hard on Friday, December 12th.View the full article

Google updated its core update documentation to say it does smaller core updates and does not announce those updates. This is not new; Google told us this back in 2019. What is new is that Google added it to its search developer documentation.View the full article

14 months ago, Google updated its documentation around its shopping related structured data warning not to generate your structured data dynamically through JavaScript. Yesterday, at the Search Central Live event in Zurich, a Google engineer explained why - it's because the shopping bot crawls a lot and fast.View the full article

Google is testing incorporating Ads Advisor into the contact us page for Google Ads support. Google was doing this for policy disapproval support requests as well. View the full article

Google has told us that core updates impact visibility within Google Discover, but that may have changed at some point. Andy Almeida from the Google Trust and Safety spoke about Google Discover and one of his slides wrote, "Minimal alignment to Search ranking..."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 updated its search documentation to state that it does smaller core updates more often without confirming them. Google Discover is now minimally aligned to search rankings...View the full article

Google has officially expanded the Web Guide to the "All" tab. Originally when it launched as a Search Labs beta, it was under the "Web" tab but as we saw, Google began expanding it to the "All" tab.View the full article

Microsoft is testing out the new Google Ads sponsored results label, ad grouping and hide button with its own Bing Search results ads. Microsoft Advertising search ads in Bing are testing grouping multiple search ads under one "Sponsored results" label, and then at the bottom, there is a "Hide" and then "Show" button.View the full article

In June, Google moved Offerwall out of its AdSense beta, making it available to all. Now, if you are using Offerwall, Google will opt you into Offerwall optimization.View the full article

Google announced that Preferred Sources is now rolling out globally, after launching just in the US and India in August, following its beta period in June. Plus, Google announced Spotlighting subscriptions are coming to Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.View the full article

Google announced it has updated the links in AI Mode to encourage searchers to click more. Google also introduced contextual introductions to embedded links in AI Mode responses.View the full article

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

Google officially announced the rollout of the December 2025 core update on Thursday at around 12:25 pm ET. This core update is expected to take about 3 weeks to roll out. Google said this "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."View the full article

Google is now sending email notifications for when Google Business Profiles has removed the restrictions on your reviews and ratings. The email says, "Restrictions on your reviews and ratings have been removed" and it comes from the Google Business Profiles team.View the full article

On Wednesday, Google announced a number of new AI features, which we covered (links below) but one other feature Google spoke about was "AI-powered article overviews." This is an experiment Google News is trying with a handful of publishers.View the full article

Google Maps is updating its share buttons by removing the options to share on X and adding the options to share on Reddit and Facebook. View the full article

Brad Geddes dug into how he felt "AI Max can The President your existing exact and phrase match keywords and then claim credit for the conversions and revenue." And then Google's Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin responded to those specific examples on why this happened and what Google is changing in the future with Google Ads AI Max.View the full article

Google announced that Gemini can now respond to your local questions with local results in a "rich, visual format." Google will visually lay out the local results to include photos, ratings, and real-world info from Google Maps data.View the full article

In this week's recap, we covered that the Google December 2025 core update was unleashed. Google also said more core updates are definitely on their way and one should be coming soon Google also updated its...View the full article

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

Nick Fox is the SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google was interviewed again on the AI Inside channel by Jason Howel and Jeff Jarvin. He said a lot of interesting things but said no, Google won't be offering standarized licensing deals for all publishers. He also said that optimizing for AI Search is the same as what you do for web search and normal SEO.View the full article

Microsoft is testing the ability to upload an image directly within the Bing search bar. You click on a plus sign and Bing shows you "search with an image" and "make an image." I get the search with an image feature but why add generative AI features, like make an image, in this search bar?View the full article