Link Building Strategies

Some Google Ads MCC, Manager Accounts, are seeing channel performance reporting. This does not seem to have been rolled out to all advertisers yet, but Mike Ryan noticed it was rolling out on some of his MCC accounts.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 Search has been sending 25 percentage points less traffic to news publishers over the past two years, according to the folks over at Newzdash. In 2023, Google Web Search made up over 51% of traffic from Google surfaces to news publishers; that number is now down to 27%.View the full article

Google is testing prefilling the search bar in a new Chrome tab, with teasers to encourage you to search deeper with AI Mode. Google is putting in the search box, "Research a topic," "Write something new," "Ask Google," and "Make a plan."View the full article

Have you seen those Google Discover notifications that pop up and seem like news notifications from the Google app but what they do is drive you into Google AI Mode. I find them incredibly annoying, because every time I click on it, I think I am going to a news article but instead, I am given an AI-generated AI Mode answer.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. We had big Google search ranking volatility over the weekend, likely from the end of the December core update...View the full article

Google is testing appending "learn more" links to the end of the Google search ads text. So the Google Ad will have its normal ad description and at the end, Google is testing adding "Learn more" with an arrow to the right, in blue anchor underlined text.View the full article

GMBapi posted data that looks at tens of thousands of Google Business Profiles across multiple countries and showed that review deletions have increased significantly over the year, compared to previous periods.View the full article

Google quietly updated its AI Overviews ad documentation to say that ads in AI Overviews are supported in Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, and US. Previously, it just said it was available in the US and "will expand to select English speaking countries soon."View the full article

Anish Kattukaran, CPO at Google Home & Nest announced in the Google Gemini forums that Gemini will not be replacing Google Assistant by the end of 2025. He wrote, "We're adjusting our previously announced timeline to make sure we deliver a seamless transition, and will continue our work to upgrade Assistant users to Gemini on mobile devices into 2026."View the full article

OpenAI has added local knowledge panels to the ChatGPT results. When you ask for local information and then click on a business name, ChatGPT will load a local knowledge panel on the right side.View the full article

As you all know, Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, we saw some significant volatility hit early on December 13th and then it seemed to cool a bit towards the middle of the week. Now, I am seeing signs of more intense volatility hit on Saturday, December 20th.View the full article

On Friday, Google announced it had filed a lawsuit against SerpApi for scraping the Google search results. Google alleges that SerpApi is running an "unlawful" operation that bypasses Google's security measures to scrape search results at an astonishing scale.View the full article

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

This week, we have a status update on the ongoing Google December 2025 core update. Google also said it does not pre-announce core updates or quality updates. Gemini 3 Flash now powers Google AI Mode. Google Search...View the full article

Google reportedly has a bug that displays incorrect product reviews in Google Search for a retailer. It is now pulling from text on the page that includes the Google Business Profile reviews, despite the product reviews not being there and not being marked up on the page.View the full article

Google is testing a number of new sports-related search features within Google Search. These include a "What's new" section, "Discover more" section, a Play-by-play section, What people are saying and more. And some of these features, when clicked, take you into AI Mode.View the full article

Google Ads recently added a beta to bring in videos from your social campaigns into your ad campaigns. And now, Google is testing bringing in videos in Merchant Center.View the full article

Google has updated the Google Business Profiles verification issues support form. This makes it easier to pick a specific issue you had when trying to verify a business within Google Business Profiles.View the full article

Google updated its JavaScript SEO documentation for the third time this week, this time to say that "while pages with a 200 HTTP status code are sent to rendering, this might not be the case for pages with a non-200 HTTP status code."View the full article

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

John Mueller from Google had Danny Sullivan from Google on the Search Off the Record podcast to talk about "Thoughts on SEO & SEO for AI." In short, they both said SEO for AI is the same as SEO for traditional search but then they got into it.View the full article

Google updated its JavaScript SEO best practices document with a new section on how to set the canonial URL when using JavaScript. Google wrote, "The best way to set the canonical URL is to use HTML, but if you have to use JavaScript, make sure that you always set the canonical URL to the same value as the original HTML."View the full article

Google is bringing Gemini 3 Flash to AI Mode, bringing much of Gemini 3's power without waiting too long - hence the "Flash" part of the name. Robby Stein from Google said, "Starting today, we're rolling it out globally in Search as the default model in AI Mode."View the full article

Back in October, many businesses reported that reviews left on their Google Business Profiles were disappearing. It wasn't happening to every business, but it was widespread. Last night, I was told the bug had been fixed and that the reviews should be returning.View the full article