Link Building Strategies

Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison, posted a reminder on LinkedIn, encouraging advertisers to ensure the email settings are all configured properly. You can get monthly invoices, billing alerts, account notifications, ad and keyword rejection notices, optimization and performance tips and more.View the full article

In September, we posted about a number of local pack design tests from Microsoft Bing. But now, Bing might be testing a more retro, older-looking interface for the local pack in the Bing search results.View the full article

Microsoft announced its AI-agents agentic experiences under the names of Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents. Copilot Checkout lets you shop and checkout directly in the Copilot chat experience and Brand Agents lets you add AI-chat experience to your site, and the AI is trained on your product data.View the full article

Google's Danny Sullivan said on the Search Off the Record podcast that was published yesterday that Google does not want you to turn your content into bite-sized chunks to rank well in LLMs. He said, "we don't want you to do that" and he even spoke to Google engineers about this.View the full article

Google's Danny Sullivan and John Mueller spoke on the Search Off the Record podcast about whether hiring an AEO/GEO or buying an AI-optimization tool is any different than hiring an SEO or buying an SEO tool. In short, the advice is the same - both Googlers said.View the full article

This week, yep, we had another story on Google Search ranking volatility. I posted the Google webmaster report for January 2026. Google Discover seems to be showing too many...View the full article

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

Google Ads seems to be slowly rolling out a new Google Ads experimental feature in the Google Ads Lab section named Brand Linking. Brand linking lets you "Link customers to brands," it reads.View the full article

Google announced new Business Agents, branded AI Agents, a "new way for shoppers to chat with brands, right on Search," Google said. "It's like a virtual sales associate that can answer product questions in a brand's voice, enabling retailers to connect with consumers during critical shopping moments and help drive sales," Google added.View the full article

Google Ads has a new experiment feature for Performance Max campaigns that lets you A/B-test assets. This allows you to compare the performance of 2 different sets of assets within the same asset group to find out which creative combination works best for your Performance Max campaign.View the full article

In a rare Sunday launch, Google announced new AI Mode ads named Direct Offers. Google also announced branded AI agents and a new open standard for agentic commerce it calls Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).View the full article

Google's Robby Stein reiterated that Google's AI experience, such as AI Mode and AI Overviews, integrates Google's core search signals. This helps Google provide more useful and helpful responses to users in the AI experiences. But it doesn't always get it right, as many of you know.View the full article

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

Google seems to have a bug that prevents searchers from leaving hotel reviews directly in the Google Search desktop interface. It works fine within Google Maps and Hotel search interfaces but not in the web search interface.View the full article

Google Shopping is updating its promotions policy to now allow for promotions on subscription fees and abbreviations. This was updated as of this month, January 2026.View the full article

I am seeing signs of a possible Google search ranking update or volatility around January 12, 2026. This is weird in that most of the tools, not all, are mostly calm, but the chatter has picked up and many SEOs are noticing ranking fluctuations. View the full article

Microsoft Advertising has expanded the number of search themes it allows to 50 search themes for Performance Max campaigns. This should be live now but Microsoft will announce it sometime this week.View the full article

It is now official, Google confirmed it has entered "into a multi-year collaboration" with Apple to power Apple Intelligence features and Siri with Google's Gemini models and cloud technology.View the full article

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

The Microsoft Advertising team released a new PDF guide named "From discovery to influence: AEO A guide to and GEO." This guide offers "Practical data strategies to empower retailers for AI search, AI assistants and AI browsers."View the full article

For the past few weeks, Google Ads has been rolling out a new and faster way to set up an account by using an existing campaign. The option reads, "Create an account with campaign for faster setup."View the full article

I am seeing a spike in complaints from Google AdSense publishers of earnings dropping again over the past 24-hours or so. This is similar to last week, and it also coincides with an unconfirmed Google search ranking update.View the full article

Google's John Mueller was asked if it was acceptable to link your brand websites together on a brand page to communicate to your users that the company owns multiple brands. John said, it is pretty common to do so and if done as a reasonable scale, it is fine to do.View the full article

Google has updated its tips to get more reviews help documentation with a new section on tips to write better review replies. This section includes how to make your replies positive and relevant and a section on giving helpful responses to negative reviews. View the full article

Google just announced it is looking into ways to allow websites to specifically opt out of Google using its content in the Search generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. This comes based on UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) new requirements for Google Search.View the full article