Link Building Strategies

Cloudflare announced Content Signals Policy, a new addition to robots.txt that allows you to express your preferences for how your content can be used after it has been accessed. This aims to block Google from using your content in AI Overviews, but Google would have to comply, which they have not yet, for this to work.View the full article

Google is updating the Google Ads Misrepresentation policy concerning Dishonest Pricing Practices. This will require advertisers to disclose the payment model or full expense that a user will incur before and after purchase, and clarify any false or misleading impressions of the cost of a product or service.View the full article

Google announced that Search Live is now fully live in the US and no longer requires opt in to Search Labs. In July, Google released it on mobile in the U.S. for users enrolled in the AI Mode Labs experiment but now it is open to everyone in the US in English'"no Labs opt-in needed.View the full article

Google updated its Other restricted businesses: Government documents and services policy to say it may label some search ads to say, "Not a government website." View the full article

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

Microsoft Bing is testing colorful lines and separator sections in the Bing Search results. The colors are in blue, orange and gray (and maybe more).View the full article

Microsoft is testing showing text attributes that can say things like "Free Shipping on Qualified Orders" with an icon next to the search ads on Bing Search. This is not just the CTA buttons that these ads have supported for a while but additional text attributes.View the full article

Google is testing a new sponsored ads section in the search results named Featured Stores. This reminds me of the from online stores but that was organic/free, not ads.View the full article

Google is testing a shaded box design for the stock pricing and information in the Google Search results. Google has these shaded designs in other areas as well but for now, this may just be a test.View the full article

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

Google AI Mode has had travel planning for some time but according to some in the travel industry, Google recently began rolling out more of these features in the wild. These include dynamic day-by-day trip plans, hotel add-ons, tickets, and dining stitched into a single AI conversation.View the full article

Google's John Mueller posted saying "Authentication for your personal crawlers & SEO tools is going to be more and more of a topic." I believe, but I can be wrong, this is alluding to the num parameter being disabled and how tools are having issues now with scraping Google.View the full article

Microsoft is testing bolding the title links in the Bing search results for both the organic and paid listings. I am not sure if this was a bug or a test, but I suspect it was a test.View the full article

Microsoft is testing various interfaces for the sitelinks in Bing Search. We've seen and reported on Bing testing sitelinks many, many times here, so here are a few more variations.View the full article

Google is testing moving your query from the left top position to the right top position of the AI response within AI Mode. This is a subtle change but it is interesting to see Google test these small changes to AI Mode.View the full article

This is a programming note that Tuesday and Wednesday are Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and I will be offline the next two days. I will be offline on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 23rd and September 24th...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 completed the rollout of the August 2025 spam update today...View the full article

Google has completed the rollout of the August 2025 spam update, following a 27-day rollout cycle. This update started on August 26, 2025 and 12 pm ET, and was completed on September 22, 2025. This was a broad spam update, not a link spam update and was a pretty big and widespread update, similar to the December 2024 spam update but took 20 days longer to rollout.View the full article

Google is testing a new AI Search based option codenamed Darksteel. This reminds me of when we caught Google testing 47 different AI Search options back in March but Darksteel was not one of them.View the full article

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

Google Search ranking volatility is heating up today, June 4th. Many of the tools and some of the chatter within the SEO community are showing signs of a Google ranking update of some sorts. Again, Google has not confirmed an update since the March 2025 core update but we've seen volatility since then almost every week.View the full article

Microsoft is testing putting a shopping bag icon on its "Shop Now" Bing Ads layout. I cannot replicate this but normally Bing shows a button that says "Shop Now" and that is it, but in this test, Bing is adding a bag icon before the "Shop Now" text.View the full article

We generally see the AI Overviews show at the top of the Google search results page, I mean, it is an overview, so you'd expect them at the top. But we've seen them show up in the middle of the search results, sometimes even in position two. Now we are seeing examples of them showing at the botton of the search results page.View the full article

Google is now testing summarizing the stories listed on Google Discover with generative AI. Some are calling this adding AI Overviews to Google Discover, which I guess is about the same thing. Of course, publishers may be worried that these AI summaries will reduce clicks from Google Discover.View the full article

You may remember the page includes search result snippet in Google Search. Well, now Google is testing making those clickable links that go to more search results.View the full article