Link Building Strategies

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

The crawl stats report in Google Search Console is missing a day of data again. The data gap is for October 14, 2025. If you look at the chart, you will see a hole in the data, where it is missing a full day of data.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

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

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

Google Ads is celebrating its 25th birthday/anniversary today. Yes, Google launched AdWords 25 years ago today in 2000. In 2018, Google renamed AdWords to Google Ads and the ad labels and technology have drastically changed over the years.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 ranking volatility is heating up again...View the full article

Google Merchant Center Next added new analytics data to the Promotions tab/section. This shows you two new analytics charts including "Your promotions at a glance" and "Performance in the last 28 days." These are summary cards to see how well your promotions are performing in Google Search.View the full article

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

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

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 new ad layout is driving accidental clicks on search ads...View the full article

We had a few unconfirmed but big Google search ranking updates but we are still waiting on an official core update...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's Robby Stein announced three new agentic capabilities within AI Mode - (1) booking event tickets (2) booking beauty appointments and (3) wellness appointments.View the full article

As VP of Engineering for Search at Google, Rajan Patel said months ago - "We're experimenting with various approaches to X in Discover." Google has been super busy with testing various approaches to Google Discover. Here are some of the more recent tests I found via Damien (andell) and Gagan Ghotra over the last few weeks.View the full article

Google said it has made significant improvements to the Google Ads advertiser suspensions. Google said it reduced incorrect suspensions by 80%, appeals are addressed 70% faster and 99% of appeals are resolved within 24 hours.View the full article

Google is now showing the "What to know" section within web search, not just AI Mode, within the product summary bar on the right side. This shows up when you click on a product.View the full article

OpenAI announced shopping research within ChatGPT, "a new experience in ChatGPT that does the research for you to help you find the right products," as OpenAI put it. This is clearly OpenAI's response to Google's AI Mode and Gemini 3 shopping experiences.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 quietly updated its AI Overviews ad documentation to say that ads in AI Overviews are supported in Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, and US. Previously, it just said it was available in the US and "will expand to select English speaking countries soon."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

Cloudflare announced Content Signals Policy, a new addition to robots.txt that allows you to express your preferences for how your content can be used after it has been accessed. This aims to block Google from using your content in AI Overviews, but Google would have to comply, which they have not yet, for this to work.View the full article