Link Building Strategies

Google is testing showing an AI Mode history button within the local panel in Google Search. When you are viewing a specific business or organization, there may be an AI Mode button in a history enclosure under the call, directions, buttons.View the full article

Google is testing using different colored map pins in the map embed within Google AI Mode. The map pins can be in red, blue, yellow and maybe orange? View the full article

As you may have heard, the latest AI-powered web browser launched yesterday, the much-anticipated OpenAI ChatGPT web browser. OpenAI named its web browser Atlas. The built-in search features seem to be mostly powered by Google Search, for some reason.View the full article

The Google Search Console performance reports seem to be stuck and not updating since October 19/20th for all profiles and websites. The weird thing is that the 24 hour view does seem to have data but when you view it over the 7 day filter, it doesn't show anything from October 19th and onwards (some see October 20th).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 Search Console performance report chart is stuck. Google again says you can't fix quality issues with links...View the full article

Google updated the Google Ads Gambling and Games policy this week to define that sweepstake casinos are not social casino games. Google said this update was added on October 28, 2025. This now prohibits sweepstake casinos from using Google Ads for advertising.View the full article

Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, was interviewed on the Silicon Valley Girl channel by Marina Mogilko about AI Search at Google. He explained how to do SEO for AI Mode and he was crystal clear that Google Ads is not going away with the release of these new AI features.View the full article

Reddit announced earnings late last week and it boggles me how people love this stock. I am not a financial expert of analysis but Reddit has been saying for some time that 50% of its traffic comes from Google Search. Reddit also said on this Q3 earnings call that its search traffic is flat and that AI is not a traffic driver, at least not yet.View the full article

Google is supposedly testing an endless, infinite scroll for Google Discover. When I scroll through Google Discover, it eventually just stops and doesn't keep going. But Gagan Ghotra said he is seeing it go on and on forever. View the full article

Google seems to have fixed a bug with inviting others to access your Google Ads account. This bug appeared about a week ago and it Google seemed to start to roll out a fix for this bug on Friday.View the full article

Google's John Mueller confirmed that Google is not killing off all forms of schema and structured data support for Google Search. The question came up in a Reddit thread after Google's announcement about more structured data support and search features going away.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

Google was previously testing placing AI-generated snippet summaries below each search result snippet. Now, Google is testing replacing the search result snippet's description with its own AI-generated description. View the full article

Google added Google NotebookLM to the list of Google crawlers, under the list of user-triggered fetchers. Google said they added this user-agent "based on feedback."View the full article

There are a nice number of reports of GA4, Google Analytics, showing a huge surge in organic search traffic over the past couple of days, but Google Search Console is not showing any increase, it remains flat. Some are suspecting this is the result of fake bot traffic not being filtered by GA4, but others are not sure.View the full article

Google has published a new help document on the topic of Google Business Profile negative review extortion scams. The document explains what they are, how to report the scam, what to expect and more importantly, what not to do.View the full article

Have you heard of the Google Goldmine Scoring System? It supposedly looks at your page, your content, and Google gives it a goldminePageScore, title tag factor, body factor, anchor factor, heading factor and more.View the full article

Over the past few days, the local SEO community is pretty upset that Google appears to be testing removing the call button from the local results. I am not sure if this is a bug or part of the design of the new Web Guide interface that more people are seeing. Either way, I do think this must be an oversight and the call button should be added back, I would hope.View the full article

This is a programming note that Tuesday and Wednesday are Simchat Torah and I will be offline the next two days. I will be offline on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 14th and October 15th.View the full article

Google has officially launched the new grouped sponsored label in the search results. This is where Google groups multiple ads under one larger sponsored label, and then places a "hide" button at the end of the sponsored results.View the full article

Google has updated the list of Google products and services that use the Google Read Aloud user agent. The updated page also says that the "service provides an audio version of web pages by understanding their content through help of AI" but adds, "no data from the page is retained for AI model training."View the full article

Google Ads will be updating the Google Ads Healthcare and Medicines policy to reflect the changes it will require to the approach to advertiser use of prescription drug terms. View the full article

Five weeks ago, Google announced a new feature named "Text'¬'­ guidelines'¬'­" at the Think Retail event. Google said these would roll out "over time this Fall." Well, some are now seeing the new feature.View the full article

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

Google is testing another variation of the AI-generated product summaries in Google AI Mode, this one is named "What to know." It is made up of user reviews and web sources, according to the disclaimer.View the full article