Link Building Strategies

In June, Google began testing showing a new answer box for emoji related queries. So when you search for a specific type of emoji, Google will give you the emoji options that you can copy directly from the search results page instead of going to a third-party publisher site. Well, that seems fully live as of today.View the full article

Google Search is showing a snippet that has a date in the future. Normally the snippets have dates from the past; such as this content was found by Google X days or Y hours ago. But this one is now showing "in 7 days" from now.View the full article

Google's John Mueller said at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich today that Google is still working on the next core update. This update should be out soon, but it is unclear if it will happen in the next couple of days or after the holiday season.View the full article

Google said it is now able to catch "20-times the number of scammy pages," that it did in the past, leading to a reduction of "these scams by more than 80% in Search." Google credits investments in AI-powered scam detection systems and improved scam classifiers. View the full article

Google Search is testing a new section in the search results titled or named "Background." This includes articles from news publishers, with I guess, more background information than you would find from others.View the full article

Google is testing removing the numbers from the pagination menu at the footer of the Google Search results page. The normal pagination bar shows the page number you are on, the test just shows a next button.View the full article

Google is testing a number of new sports-related search features within Google Search. These include a "What's new" section, "Discover more" section, a Play-by-play section, What people are saying and more. And some of these features, when clicked, take you into AI Mode.View the full article

Google is testing a new sub or secondary menu under the search bar in Google Search. This secondary menu, or sub-menu, is below the main search vertical options and is missing the bubble format that we've seen Google use for this sub-menu.View the full article

Google is testing a shaded box design for the stock pricing and information in the Google Search results. Google has these shaded designs in other areas as well but for now, this may just be a test.View the full article

Google is testing a blue "Send" button in the search query box on its home page. When you type in your query, you can click "Send" to search Google for that query.View the full article

Google is testing a new sponsored ads section in the search results named Featured Stores. This reminds me of the from online stores but that was organic/free, not ads.View the full article

Google Search is testing the frequently saved label not just in the main search results but also on the local results, the places section, of the Google Search results. View the full article

Google is testing placing vertical gray bars by the search results titles and descriptions, indenting them in a bit, for stylist purposes. I am not sure what this adds to the search results, but Google decided to test it.View the full article

Google is testing a new job carousel in the search results titled "jobs at similar employers." This likely pulls from the Google Jobs postings schema and more but it can come up if you are just searching for products from that company.View the full article

Google is testing a new link feature in the search results, it is in the form of a link box, in the search result snippet, that when you click on it, it anchors you down on the page to a specific portion of that text.View the full article

Google is testing more favicon designs within Google Search. I mean, we cover these way too often but hey, I like favicons, don't you? View the full article

Google is testing moving the about results text, where it shows the count of results, to within the search tools menu. So when you click on "Tools" under the search bar, you may find the "about results" section.View the full article

Google is testing a new design for its search results that are more of a grid format, more of a boxed in design. They are not on all the search results elements but more of the search features.View the full article

Google is testing a "recently viewed" label in the search results, next to search result snippets that you have clicked on in your recent search history. This is similar to the you visit often label and the other recently visited examples we've seen over the years.View the full article

Google is testing a tinted brownish/yellowish background color for the search results page. It turns the white background into a brownish/grayish/yellowish background and then the gray boxes into a darker color.View the full article

Google is testing showing the vertical search category a query belongs to in its autocomplete search suggestions. When you click into the Google Search box, even before you begin typing your query, Google shows search suggestions and some of those search suggestions have a label that says "short videos," "images," etc.View the full article

Google Search has been sending 25 percentage points less traffic to news publishers over the past two years, according to the folks over at Newzdash. In 2023, Google Web Search made up over 51% of traffic from Google surfaces to news publishers; that number is now down to 27%.View the full article

Google can show search ads with video formats. I mean, Google has been doing this for a while now, but they are kind of rare to see. This latest one is a video ad from Adidas.View the full article

Google confirmed a new search algorithm update - well, this is just a weather feature - but it is a stormy one. Well, maybe not. Google said Google Search's weather results were updated to what they call WeatherNext 2 - Google's "most advanced and efficient forecasting model."View the full article

Pretty much every data provider that tracks AI Overviews in Google Search are showing that Google is showing AI Overviews more often today than they were a month ago. I am sure this is no surprise to many of you, I mean, we see them so often now.View the full article