Link Building Strategies

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been numerous reports of reviews disappearing, being removed, or being deleted from local business profiles on Google Search and Google Maps. Supposedly, this is now a known bug and is being actively worked on by the Google team.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 local reviews are disappearing...View the full article

Google's John Mueller was asked what is the best CMS, content management system, is for SEO and ranking well on Google Search. John replied that all the modern CMS platforms are fine and there are no big differences, SEO-wise, between any of them.View the full article

There may be an undocumented Google user agent named GeminiiOS. GeminiiOS is apparently used when a user clicks on a source link from the Gemini app on their iPhone.View the full article

Google added a new user agent to the Googlebot's user-triggered fetchers documentation. The new user agent is for the Chrome Web Store named Google-CWS.View the full article

Did you know that Google Merchant Center will automatically crop your product images in Google Shopping if it thinks it will look better in Google Search? Did you know that you can also opt out of what they call "Smart Cropping"? 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 has been adding AI features to Google Finance - like what can go wrong? Recently Google's Rose Yao announced Google Finance added live audio, instant transcripts and AI insights.View the full article

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

Last week, Google announced Opal, a Google Labs project, expanded to more regions. Well, it also explained how you can use this tool to create optimized content in a scalable way - consistently and quickly, without much human intervention. Yea, does this seem like something that might be against the Google Search guidelines? View the full article

There have been a number of threads on LinkedIn over the past week about how poorly Google Ads AI Max is performing compared to other match types. The conversions or conversion value is greatly below other match types, in early tests, despite Google saying it should deliver 14% more.View the full article

Microsoft announced on Friday afternoon that Copilot now has its own dedicated search experience. Plus, because Microsoft knows how important publishers are to the ecosystem, it is making citations and links way more prominent and clickable. View the full article

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

Semrush will be acquired by Adobe, the two companies announced today. "Adobe and Semrush announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Adobe will acquire Semrush, a leading brand visibility platform, in an all-cash transaction for $12.00 per share, representing a total equity value of approximately $1.9 billion," the press release said.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

If you search for [events near me], Google may not show you any events near you. It seems like Google is not serving that events carousel right now. I suspect it is a bug and I wonder if this is related to the serving bug from Friday afternoon?View the full article

This is a programming note that Tuesday and Wednesday are Sukkot and I will be offline the next two days. I will be offline on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 7th and October 8th.View the full article

Google announced it will replace the "Ad networks" blocking control from Brand safety within in AdSense with a new "Authorized Buyers" blocking control. This will start on November 6, 2025, the company said.View the full article

Google's John Mueller said that there was no change to how fast and frequently the Google Search Console API sends data. This comes after some are questioning the speed of the API and why there may be recent data slowdowns.View the full article

Microsoft has added support for the data-nosnippet HTML Attribute for Bing Search. This was previously not supported but yesterday, Microsoft announced it is "introducing the data-nosnippet HTML attribute."View the full article

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week we covered the new Google Ads label, which Google says improves navigation but in my opinion...View the full article

Google now supports Sitelinks for local search ads in the Google Maps interface. They show in the form of a carousel, under a sponsored ad listing in the Google Maps interface.View the full article

Google has added price tracking data charts for each retailer within Google Search. On the right side, after you click on a product, Google may show a price chart with pricing over time. Google may also let you click on the available merchants and retailers to see how the price has changed for that specific merchant over time.View the full article

Google added a new "sources" column to the AI Max search term report. This helps you understand where your traffic was matched from in AI Max searches.View the full article

Google may be testing displaying different-sized cards for recipe results in the Google Search results. The cards show large and small graphics that make the results look misaligned. View the full article