Link Building Strategies

Raptive, an advertising-sales company representing thousands of websites (content publishers), filed a 93-page complaint against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit says "Google has carried out a sophisticated, anticompetitive, and deceptive scheme for well over a decade" by "manipulating auctions for ad space across the Internet."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 added a new user agent to the list...View the full article

Google added a new promotion method in Google Merchant Center for Top-performing products. This lets you just promote your best performing products in Google Shopping and Google Search.View the full article

Google added a new navigation button to Google Merchant Center labeled "Creative Content." I believe this is where you access Product Studio, and all your videos and assets for your Merchant Center campaigns.View the full article

Google has completed the rollout of the August 2025 spam update, following a 27-day rollout cycle. This update started on August 26, 2025 and 12 pm ET, and was completed on September 22, 2025. This was a broad spam update, not a link spam update and was a pretty big and widespread update, similar to the December 2024 spam update but took 20 days longer to rollout.View the full article

Google is testing moving your query from the left top position to the right top position of the AI response within AI Mode. This is a subtle change but it is interesting to see Google test these small changes to AI Mode.View the full article

Google updated its Other restricted businesses: Government documents and services policy to say it may label some search ads to say, "Not a government website." View the full article

Google is testing a blue progress bar under the Shopping Ads carousel in the search results. As you scroll the carousel to see more products, the blue progress bar will indicate how much of the carousel is remaining to be seen.View the full article

A year ago, we learned that Google would transition from Google call ads, call-only ads, to using call assets within responsive search ads (RSAs) but we didn't know the dates. Now, Google said this will happen in two phases: February 2026 and February 2027.View the full article

Microsoft will be shutting down its Microsoft Advertising Ads for Social Impact ad grant program. It will officially be discontinued in December 2025.View the full article

Google updated the wording in the title documentation for Merchant Center, now suggesting you can use your own brand or company name in the short title of your products. That is, if you manufacture your own products.View the full article

Google is testing a new, more publisher-friendly version of the AI Overviews for recipe results. The new design has the recipe cards at the top, citations at the bottom and a shorter AI response.View the full article

Google upgraded the Try On feature to now support shoes, in addition to other forms of clothing. Plus, Try on will soon also work in Australia, Canada and Japan, Google announced.View the full article

Google AI Mode is now available in over 200 countries and territories. Google said they are expanding AI Mode to "more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries and territories."View the full article

While I was offline, it seems the chatter within the SEO industry spiked around the topic of search ranking volatility. It is harder to confirm the volatility, now with the tools recalibrating, but it does seem something started around Tuesday, October 7th, into the 8th.View the full article

The Microsoft Advertising blog posted about how to optimize for AI Search Answers. I thought it was weird to see this on the Microsoft Advertising blog and not on the Bing Search blog, because (a) it is an ad blog and (b) it was written by Krishna Madhavan, who is part of the Bing team, not ad team.View the full article

Google is testing a new section within the Google Ads advertising console named "Missed Growth Opportunities." This section shows you the "performance you could've achieved in the last year if you'd adjusted your bids and budgets for campaigns with growth opportunities," according to Google.View the full article

A couple of weeks ago, Google added a new help page titled Discover feed source overview. This page discusses those cards in the Google Discover feed and when Google gets the source name wrong, like for those entity Discover pages.View the full article

Google has updated its Misrepresentation policy for both Shopping ads and free listings within Google Merchant Center. Google said the "update provides additional examples of what the policy covers, more guidance on how to be compliant, and more information about our appeals process."View the full article

When you go to the Google AI Mode home screen, the quick way to do that is to go to google.com/ai. You may see a small disclaimer under the search box that says "Based on your Google activity."View the full article

Microsoft is testing placing search refinement tabs or buttons above the shopping ads within the Bing Search results. And when you click on those refinements, you are taken into Bing Shopping Search.View the full article

New data from AlsoAsked put AI-generated people also ask in Google Search at 38%. These are people also ask responses labeled as AI generated and that number jumped from 17.8% just a few months ago.View the full article

There may have been another unconfirmed Google search ranking update that occurred between October 15th and October 18th. The bulk of the volatility seemed to be around Thursday, the 16th.View the full article

Google Ads seems to be experimenting with setting the New Customer Value within New Customer Acquisition campaigns without the consent of the advertiser. Technically, New Customer Value can be turned off, but this is confusing some advertisers and impacting reporting and ad performance for some.View the full article

Google AdSense added a new breakdown option named Confirmed Click status breakdown. This breakdown is available on all your reports under the "Breakdowns" dropdown selector at the top left.View the full article