Link Building Strategies

Now that the Google March 2025 core update is done, I wanted to share some polls I spotted on this update, including some I posted myself. The theme is, most said their rankings stayed the same, while many saw declines and improvements with the update. Which tells us, this was a normal core update.View the full article

Google is reportedly going to pay $100 million to settle a 14-year-old class action case for allegedly having its Google Ads (as then known, AdWords) serve ads outside of the geographic regions the advertisers targeted.View the full article

Well, it seems to be official now. Starting April 14, 2025 Google will update its Unfair advantage policy to say it is allowed to show the same ad, from the same company, going to the same page, as long as the ad is in a different ad location. Google was just experimenting with this earlier and now it is officially going to be allowed.View the full article

Last month we reported that Google News Publisher Center changes are coming, well those changes should have happened and been fully completed by today. Google updated its help document on the topic to say "Google News is fully transitioning to automatically generated publication pages in late March 2025."View the full article

Google confirmed it is fixing a bug where old, fake and previously removed reviews are resurfacing in your Google Business Profiles. It is unclear how many Business Profiles are impacted by this, but if you see more reviews pop up that were not previously there, this may be why.View the full article

Google Business Profile edits may have a bug or some sort of glitch. A number of local SEOs are reporting seeing the message, "Your edit was not approved" when trying to make simple edits to Business Profiles.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's March core update is done, I dig into what we know about it...View the full article

Google's March 2025 core update finished yesterday, I have a standalone video on that, so check it out. The core update caused more volatility at the tail end of the rollout...View the full article

We've seen the clipable coupons within the search results for several years now and in store listings and many places, but have we seen them in local knowledge panels? Maybe, I am not sure.View the full article

Google announced a number of features across Google Search, Maps, Lens and other areas around travel and vacation planning. Some of the features were already out there but let's recap some of the more interesting features.View the full article

Google is testing a "contactless" label in place of the curbside pickup labels in the shopping search results. The curbside label became popular during COVID and has stuck around as a convenience factor for shoppers after.View the full article

Google Ads conversation started goals section, where you setup WhatsApp messages within Google Ads, has new tabs. Google added diagnostics, store diagnostics, and webpages.View the full article

19 months ago, Google released a feature named SGE while browsing, and later changed it to AI while browsing. Well, that feature is no longer - Google has deprecated it and put it in the Google graveyard.View the full article

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

Google's March 20025 core update is now done rolling out, it took 14 days, starting on March 13, 2025 at around 12:23 pm ET and ending on March 27, 2025 at around XX ET. Google posted saying, "The rollout was complete as of March XX, 2025."View the full article

Google is sometimes showing a hyperlink at the bottom of its search results named "About this data." This links to a Google help document in Merchant Center support named "How Google sources and uses information in the brand profile."View the full article

Google made a really small change to its spam policies documentation to say, "In the context of Google Search, spam refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems into ranking content highly."View the full article

Google seems to be working through the Google Business Profile support, reinstatement, and suspension appeal requests. As we reported twice already, once back in mid-February and then again earlier this week, Google confirmed the delay.View the full article

Google added a number of new features to the event rich results search feature within Google Search. Some of these might not be new, but now on these event results you can share the event, add it to your calendar, see similar events, get more details on the venue and find nearby food and drinks.View the full article

Google is testing replacing the low key website / URL button in the knowledge panels within Google Search, with a large blue button. I mean, this blue button makes it was more clickable, a much larger and more visible call to action, than the normal button you see in Knowledge Panels.View the full article

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

As you know, the Google March 2025 core update was announced on March 13th and it should be just about done rolling out. We saw some volatility related to that core update a few days into the update, then a lot of confusion later on, and now at the tail end of the update, we are seeing more volatility. View the full article

Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said that you may see a shift in Top/Absolute Top Impression rate and/or a change in overall CTR as a result of the double serving Google Ads experiment. This is where Google can show the same ads in different ad locations because it has different auctions for each ad location.View the full article

Google's John Mueller responded to a concern on Reddit about a site that scored a D with its Pingdom score. Pingdom measures sites uptime and overall page speed metrics. John Mueller responded to the concern saying, "this is not affecting your SEO."View the full article

Google has rolled out AI Overviews to more European regions after we caught them testing these AI Overviews earlier this month. AI Overviews are now officially live in Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.View the full article