Link Building Strategies

Google released an update to Nano Banana yesterday named Nano Banana Pro and it is super impressive as an image generation tool. But it is also incorporated into Google Search via Google AI Mode and available within Google Ads to help you make ad creatives.View the full article

We've only covered the Department of Justice vs Google documents here and there but here are some documents that may be of interest to the community here. Google said Navboost is not a machine learning system, instead it is more of a big table. And there are more documents including one on hand crafting signals and another on a debugging interface.View the full article

A month ago, we reported Google added a new form to report negative review extortion scams on your Google Business Profiles and local listings. Google also listed some tips on how to handle these extortion attempts. But I am glad to report that some local SEOs are saying this form is working and those extortion reviews are being removed by Google.View the full article

On Wednesday, Google announced a number of new AI features, which we covered (links below) but one other feature Google spoke about was "AI-powered article overviews." This is an experiment Google News is trying with a handful of publishers.View the full article

Last month we reported that Google News Publisher Center changes are coming, well those changes should have happened and been fully completed by today. Google updated its help document on the topic to say "Google News is fully transitioning to automatically generated publication pages in late March 2025."View the full article

Google is now sending email notifications for when Google Business Profiles has removed the restrictions on your reviews and ratings. The email says, "Restrictions on your reviews and ratings have been removed" and it comes from the Google Business Profiles team.View the full article

Back in October, we saw Google testing having the "Show more" button in the AI Overviews within Google Search jump you to AI Mode with follow-up questions. Well, Google's Robby Stein announced on X yesterday that this is being tested (after it was tested already) in the mobile search results.View the full article

Brad Geddes dug into how he felt "AI Max can The President your existing exact and phrase match keywords and then claim credit for the conversions and revenue." And then Google's Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin responded to those specific examples on why this happened and what Google is changing in the future with Google Ads AI Max.View the full article

Last week, Google announced Opal, a Google Labs project, expanded to more regions. Well, it also explained how you can use this tool to create optimized content in a scalable way - consistently and quickly, without much human intervention. Yea, does this seem like something that might be against the Google Search guidelines? View the full article

Google announced it has added Waze ads inventory to Performance Max for store goals campaigns and Channel performance reporting is now available in all Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads.View the full article

Google's Robby Stein confirmed (again) that Google is personalizing some of the AI experiences, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. He said this on the CNN, Terms of Service podcast with Clare Duffy.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 has officially launched scheduling and multi-location publishing for Google Posts in Google Business Profiles. This was a feature Google tested last month and is now fully live.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

Last November, Google announced it was dropping support for a number of structured data types and search features. One of those was practice problem structured data types, and now, Google has removed the help documentation along with it.View the full article

Google announced that Preferred Sources is now rolling out globally, after launching just in the US and India in August, following its beta period in June. Plus, Google announced Spotlighting subscriptions are coming to Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.View the full article

Google is experimenting more with shopping carousels, this time, showing products and then which articles are recommending those products. These can be shown in best of articles and recommended in articles. View the full article

Google reportedly has a bug that displays incorrect product reviews in Google Search for a retailer. It is now pulling from text on the page that includes the Google Business Profile reviews, despite the product reviews not being there and not being marked up on the page.View the full article

Google is now using generative AI, and labeling it as such, within the Google Search product details overlay. When you click on a product listing in Google Search, the overlay window has a section called top insights. That section can be generated using AI.View the full article

Google is promoting AI Mode in its search results with a large banner ad. The banner ad says, "New! Try Al Mode. Get Al-powered responses & ask follow-ups with a new experiment. Try now..."View the full article

Google proposed a number of changes in the ''¬2.95B EU antitrust fine over its ad technology. The changes include changes to Google Ad Manager and increasing the interoperability between its tools. Google still plans to appeal the ruling.View the full article

Google's John Mueller posted a PSA yesterday, reminding SEOs and developers to verify the host name of cloud providers they are using to host images, videos, and other content. Specifically, you should use a DNS CNAME to the bucket, then verify with DNS with Search Console.View the full article

Google is making more changes to the Google Publisher Center, in March Google News will fully transition to automatically generated publication pages in March.View the full article

Anish Kattukaran, CPO at Google Home & Nest announced in the Google Gemini forums that Gemini will not be replacing Google Assistant by the end of 2025. He wrote, "We're adjusting our previously announced timeline to make sure we deliver a seamless transition, and will continue our work to upgrade Assistant users to Gemini on mobile devices into 2026."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