Link Building Strategies

Google launched its shopping / e-commerce card in the search results as a test several months ago. Since then, the card has undergone various tweaks. Now, Google is testing showing an animated/playable video in the shopping card block.View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...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's CEO, Sundar Pichai...View the full article

Microsoft is testing a new pagination bar for its Bing Search results. Instead of the left arrow, page numbers and then right arrow, Bing is testing showing a "Next" button and then a "Prev" button.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 AI Overviews hurt click-through rates...View the full article

A week or so ago, Google Analytics made some updates to how it handles campaign data quality and attribution reporting. Many are now seeing a new label named "Data not available" show up in their GA4 reporting.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

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

Nilay Patel of The Verge had a great one-on-one conversation with Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO. Nilay did put on the pressure around how the changes with AI Overviews and AI Mode in Google Search are impacting publishers in a very negative way, but Sundar seemed unconvinced that web publishing is dead.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

Google Posts/Updates are starting to disappear from the local panels within Google Search. I saw complaints about this yesterday and tested it by adding a post myself on my business, it was there, until it wasn't. Now I see a huge number of complaints that posts or updates are missing from Google local panels.View the full article

Since the weekend, Google has started to roll out Google Discover on desktop in many countries and regions. I personally can trigger it in Google New Zealand and some other locations but I am not yet able to trigger it on Google.com in the United States.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

Yep, we are seeing more Google search ranking volatility mid-week. I posted the monthly Google webmaster report for February. Google Ads has a new quality update that accounts for user navigation experience...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

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

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 has just given up on a third-party cookie alternative. Google announced it will maintain its "current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome, and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies."View the full article

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

Google's March 2025 core update finished yesterday, I have a standalone video on that, so check it out. The core update caused more volatility at the tail end of the rollout...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

We've seen variations of Google's popular products section in the search results show both article and video content reviews. But now we are seeing another format for it, one that even links to laptop reviews from 55 years ago, a good ten years before the Osborne 1 hit shelves.View the full article

Google is now pushing search ads on AI Mode and the desktop version of AI Overviews. Google's Vidhya Srinivasan said at Google Marketing Live, "we're expanding ads in AI Overviews to desktop, and bringing ads to AI Mode to create new opportunities for our customers."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

Google made what I would consider a logical clarification to its image SEO best practices help document. It now says don't upload the same image under different URL/file names to your site, even if you embed that image on different pages on your site. View the full article