Link Building Strategies

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

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...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

Google has updated its Manage customer reviews help documentation to expand and clarify the "Understand what happens to your replies" section. It now specifies why a business reply to a review may be hold, how long it takes and more.View the full article

Google is testing extremely long and expandable search result snippet descriptions in the search results. These are also AI-generated snippets, which we've seen before, but not this long. This goes on for eight lines of text.View the full article

If you submitted a review appeal within Google Business Profiles it will likely take longer than normal to hear back. Google's review appeals are delayed and Google cannot provide a specific response timeframe for pending cases.View the full article

Google Discover is testing and maybe rolling out an option to "Tailor your feed." This allows you to tailor the feed with "Say in your own words what you want to see," and Google will try to figure it out.View the full article

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

I am sad to report the passing of Andy Drinkwater, a super-experienced SEO and a friend to the search marketing industry. Andy was a UK-based SEO who loved educating his industry by contributing content and attending local events.View the full article

Here are the most popular articles on the Search Engine Roundtable by number of comments. In other words, these are the articles with the highest number of comments posted in 2025.View the full article

Google has posted the New Year's Eve Doodle and New Year's Day Doodle on the Google.com home page for when it is New Year's Eve for you and New Year's Day for you.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. The Google December 2025 core update is done rolling out...View the full article

Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, has been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to some recipes. Adam calls its Google's AI Frankenstein recipes, where it pulls parts of the recipes from recipe bloggers, says it is the brand's recipe, but changes it enough where the recipe is not real and tastes horrible.View the full article

Microsoft Bing is testing loading more people also ask options as you click on them. This is something Google has done for a long time now, but now when you click on an option under the people also ask section within Bing, Bing may load more beneath them - to show you more options.View the full article

Google Search is showing a carousel in the merchant / retailer panel that lets you scroll through the merchant's delivery, return and payment options. This information has been in the Google Search results for a while, but this carousel feels new to me - is it?View the full article

Google has removed the visit website button from the first screen of the Google Maps hotel results. Instead, you first need to click on the "Check availability" to get to the visit website button.View the full article

Microsoft made a small update to the Microsoft Advertising console where there is now an "All accounts" tab. This lets you see all your accounts in one place with quick access to account summaries, recommendations and more.View the full article

Google's December 2025 core update is now done rolling out, it took 18 days and 2 hours to complete. The core update started on December 11, 2025 at around 12:25 pm ET and ended on December 29, 2025 at around 2:05 pm ET...View the full article

Google is testing swapping out the Gemini button at the top right of the Chrome browser, with a "Browse with AI" button. The button is more colorful and in your face, which probably gets more users to notice it.View the full article

A report from The Information outlined a number of avenues OpenAI is looking at for ad formats in ChatGPT. The main one that is reportedly being thrown around at the AI company is to show sponsored content within the AI responses given by ChatGPT.View the full article

This week in search, we covered an update on the Google December 2025 core update. Google Search traffic to news publishers continues to vanish, but there is Google Discover. A report shows Google has deleted a ton...View the full article

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

Google's John Mueller questioned the need for all websites to use ccTLDs, different domain names, to take their websites international. He said on Reddit, "you both make things harder on yourself, but you also make it harder for search engines to understand each of these sites."View the full article

Microsoft has added the ability to add custom columns to the Microsoft Advertising user interface and advertising console. But it doesn't offer every metric, including missing the segment by conversion action metric.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 questions the need for ccTLDs for all websites that go international. Google's John Mueller calls some SEO content...View the full article