Link Building Strategies

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

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

Google Search is now sometimes showing the ability to filter products in its search results by product rating. I am not sure if this is new or not, but I cannot replicate this but some are seeing the product rating filter/refinement option when searching.View the full article

Google announced three updates to its image and assets system including its generative AI can now generate people and faces. Google also announced asset audience recommendations and asset testing for feed-only Performance Max campigns.View the full article

John Mueller from Google said that merging content is always more challenging than a basic site move. Meaning, when you take a look at your content on your site and decide to merge a bunch of the content into fewer URLs, that takes longer for Google to handle than moving a site from domain A to domain B with no other changes.View the full article

For the past week or so, news publishers from Brazil have not been happy with Google. It seems that Google Discover is broken for a lot of Brazilians, showing irrelevant content to users and searchers, and not showing content from the typical publishers based in Brazil.View the full article

Microsoft is testing different colored URLs for its organic (free) results and its sponsored (paid) results. The organic URL slugs are bold black colored and the sponsored URL slugs are bold green colored.View the full article

Google has a new Search Labs feature named Ask for me. Ask for me will have Google call businesses for you, to figure out the cost of the service and when it can be scheduled for you. It is like that Duplex feature we saw years ago, where Google would try to schedule a restaurant reservation for you.View the full article

Six years ago, Google dropped some of its search tools date filters and then added new operators for before: and after: that let you filter content by specific dates. Well, six years later, that feature is still in beta.View the full article

Google Ads is offering some advertisers the option to book a tagging appointment with a Google Ads representation through the Google Ads console. This will help you set up an appointment to have a Google rep help you set up proper tracking of your campaigns.View the full article

Google is no longer showing the price of Bitcoin when you search for it in Google Search. Google's VP, Engineering for Search, Rajan Patel, said this is "Not intended" and he will investigate the issue.View the full article

Google announced a couple new Google Lens features; (1) they are expanding how AI Overviews show on Google Lens results and (2) Chrome and Google's iOS app now let you search your screen with Google Lens.View the full article

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

The first week of January, we reported on an interesting local update we named the January 2025 local search update. Well, this might be more of a diversity update, where Google removes the URL for the core organic results, when that URL is also present in the local pack results. View the full article

The big Google review count bug, that we first reported on Friday and that later Google confirmed on Monday afternoon, is now being fixed. We can now see review counts climbing again and many small business owners and local SEOs are reporting improvements.View the full article

Google is testing a new ad format that overlays more product ads when you click on a "more" button. This is different from expanding a product carousel, in that this overlays on top of the current search results interface.View the full article

Google is testing a slightly different layout for its search result snippets. Google seems to be indenting the title link, URL and description to the right and placing the favicon indented to the left of that placement.View the full article

John Mueller from Google noted that he finds it "interesting" how those who spend time in our industry "can often recognize made-for-search-engine content fairly quickly." Meaning, we are good at seeing a piece of content on the web and knowing if it was created to perform well in search or written by a normal user trying to help others.View the full article

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

The folks at Seer put together a study looking at how the click-through rates of the Google organic and paid search results are impacted by having AI Overviews on the page. And the short answer is, AI Overviews seem to be hurting the click-through rates in a big way.View the full article

Ever since we began seeing the new Yahoo Search AI features and AI Chat, we've been asking if they were powered by their own AI, by maybe OpenAI or maybe Microsoft Copilot. Well, it seems there is evidence that these features are powered by Microsoft Copilot.View the full article

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

We know Google can show reviews from third-party sources in Google Business Profile listings. We've seen Google take reviews from Yelp, travel sites and other third-party websites. But these days, more often than not, you see reviews only from Google. But have you ever seen a review from Yandex on Google?View the full article

Microsoft is now showing the sources it used to generate its AI-based "from sources across the web" section in Bing Search. If you click on the little i icon, Bing will show you where it pulled the list together from.View the full article

Over the weekend, the Super Bowl LIX weekend, there has been a lot of chatter about ranking volatility and traffic losses. Truth is, I feel there is often chatter about traffic losses over a Super Bowl weekend, as many are watching the Super Bowl and not spending time searching Google as much.View the full article