Link Building Strategies

Over the past couple of days, especially since the Google August 2025 spam update officially completed, the Google search results have been rumbling. It is a bit hard to track due to the changes with the third-party rank checking tools, but there has been a lot of chatter within the SEO community over the past few days.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

Google is testing another variation to the title links in the Google Search results - a light gray effect. So when you hover your mouse cursor over the snippet, the title link turns grayed and washed out.View the full article

Google has added a new promotion option to Google Merchant Center. The new option is Google Wallet. Google doesn't detail what this promotion does but it likely lets you promote that you accept Google Wallet for purchases.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

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 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

Google has released version 22 of the Google Ads API, this is a major release with dozens of updates. Updates include smart bidding exploration expansion, improvements to DemandGen, PMax campaigns, App campaigns for installs, and more.View the full article

Google posted a new help document that says it will delete accounts without any campaigns after 6 months. "If an account does not have any campaigns, it'll be permanently deleted by Google Ads 6 months after cancellation," Google wrote.View the full article

Ten months ago, Google said on stage at Google Search Central Live event in the Google Zurich office that we should expect more core update, more update. We now have about two months left of the 2025 year and we are in no way going to see more core updates, more often from Google.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

I believe generally when you search Bing and get a Copilot answer at the top, Bing will just immediately show you the answer. Now, Microsoft is testing an animated response where Bing writes out the answer like a chatbot.View the full article

We all knew it was coming and now Google is roll out early access to Gemini for Home voice assistant in the U.S. You can either say "Hey Google" to your speaker or display to request specific help or answers, or talk naturally with Gemini Live by saying "Hey Google, let's chat."View the full article

Microsoft Advertising advertiser web interface is down and Microsoft's Navah Hopkins said the "engineering team is investigating this issue with priority." This only impacts the web interface, according to Hopkins and ad serving does not seem to be impacted.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. And one of the questions she asked was on how to show up in these Google AI responses. Robby Stein essentially said there is a lot of overlap between normal SEO for web search but the key difference are the "the kinds of questions" people ask AI versus traditional search.View the full article

A few weeks ago, Google launched a new ad layout with the large "Sponsored results" label that groups numerous ads under that one label, and then sticks a "Hide sponsored results" button after you have already seen the ads. Well, it is leading to accidental ad clicks based on what I am reading and hearing across the industry.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

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 will fix its Google Discover fake AI news problem. Google is now showing search ads, not just shopping ads...View the full article

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

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

We know Google has been using machine learning and more recently, AI, to generate search result snippets descriptions. Well, here is an example of Google getting a snippet not just wrong, but downright insulting. View the full article

Google added a carousel to the top of the image tab within some Google Search apps, I think it might be a test. The carousel lets you scroll through some ideas to get you started with your image search.View the full article

Over the years, we have written that service areas are not used as a local ranking factor by Google Search. Well, the API leak document also implies this to be true. View the full article

Google announced that Gemini can now respond to your local questions with local results in a "rich, visual format." Google will visually lay out the local results to include photos, ratings, and real-world info from Google Maps data.View the full article