Link Building Strategies

Google announced a number of new tag, analytics and data strategies on Friday including a new Google tag gateway for advertisers. Google tag gateway for advertisers allows you to run your Google tags, be it client-side or server-side through your own website infrastructure, such as a content delivery network (CDN), load balancer, or web server.View the full article

Google has published two new help documents on the topic of AI; one on guidance on using generative AI content on your website and the second on AI features and your website. Google also published a blog post on the topics over here.View the full article

Google released its annual metrics on how well it did with fighting spam on Google Maps. In short, Google said it blocked or removed more than 240 million policy-violating reviews, blocked or removed more than 70 million policy-violating edits, removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles and placed posting restrictions on more than 900,000 accounts.View the full article

Google is once again testing a light blue color, cyan, for its title links in the search results. Google tested this on and off quite a lot over the years, but Google is testing it again.View the full article

Google AI Mode seems like it got a lot faster over the past day or so. Instead of going through the steps of saying thinking about this, searching for results, organizing results, it just now saying kicking off searches and then looking at sites and then quickly shows the AI Mode response.View the full article

Apple announced this week that it partnered with MICHELIN Guide; The Infatuation and Golf Digest to provide "insights, ratings, and reviews from expert sources" within Apple Maps. View the full article

Microsoft is testing a sticky footer in the Bing Search results that show related searches. So the related searches section sticks to the footer, making these related searches way more in your face.View the full article

Google added a new type of data point to the Google Business Profiles performance reports named Chat Clicks. Chat clicks show you how many people are clicking over from your chat conversations in the local and maps results within Google Search and Maps.View the full article

Google announced it will be removing the notifications and email archive section from Google Merchant Center into Google Merchant Center Next on June 25, 2025. After June 25th, Google Merchant Center will no longer have your email notifications archived there.View the full article

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

Google announced it has deprecated the Account level control for non personalized ads within Google AdSense's settings in privacy and messaging. Instead, Google said "use the IAB TCF framework for collecting and communicating users' consent decisions in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland."View the full article

Microsoft is testing shading the site names, the brand names, of retailers in the Bing Shopping search results. So the name Amazon is in a blue shaded background color as opposed to just saying Amazon.com.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 is rethinking its search stack from the ground up due to LLMs...View the full article

Google's AI crawler, Google-Extended, the crawler it uses for Gemini and other related AI services, does render itself and can render JavaScript, just like Googlebot, Google's main web search crawler.View the full article

Google announced it will be deprecating the Special announcement structured data on July 31, 2025. This structured data was introduced during COVID as a way to communicate special announcements from websites and businesses related to health and safety.View the full article

In February, we covered how Google's AI Overviews really hurt the click-through rate of the search results and paid ads. Well, several more recent studies have come out that back up this data.View the full article

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

Google has added video previews to the video verification within Google Business Profiles. Google's Lisa Landsman said this will help with "submitting, ensuring clarity and accuracy '" saving you valuable time and reducing the need for resubmissions."View the full article

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

About a year ago, we covered numerous tests with shaded site name and favicon sections of the snippet. Google continues to test this, but we're now seeing a blue gradient version of the style.View the full article

Google is testing a new recipe search feature that seems to be powered by AI Overviews, it also seems to be a Search Labs feature. This allows you to see recipe ideas, then filter by recipe replacements, ingredients, in this carousel format style.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 confirmed ads with AI Overviews make as much as ads without AI Overviews on the page...View the full article

Google is testing a new design for the crawl stats section in Google Search Console. Instead of the more list view section below the main chart at the top, this new interface is much more visual with numerous charts.View the full article

Google sent emails to Google Ads advertisers about new Local Service Ads additions to its terms for its providers that they must accept by June 5, 2025 or else their ads will no longer serve in Google Search or Google Maps.View the full article

Google Search seems to be super volatile today and yesterday, so I will call this the Google I/O 2025 Google unconfirmed update. I am seeing a spike in chatter within the SEO community along with many of the tools showing super heated volatility within the Google search results.View the full article