Link Building Strategies

Google is testing extremely long and expandable search result snippet descriptions in the search results. These are also AI-generated snippets, which we've seen before, but not this long. This goes on for eight lines of text.View the full article

Google launched its shopping / e-commerce card in the search results as a test several months ago. Since then, the card has undergone various tweaks. Now, Google is testing showing an animated/playable video in the shopping card block.View the full article

Google Search is not just having its AI Overviews link back to itself but also search features like Things To Know. This is all while Google touts how it is seeing impressive growth in search results (artificially inflated?) and while supposedly prioritizing traffic to publishers (made up also?).View the full article

A court document from the Department of Justice Google monopoly case shows Google internally discussed six different options for giving (or not giving) publishers control over AI usage. The options range from do nothing new to add options to opt out of just AI Overviews (formerly known as SGE).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

Google Ads announced they will "now allow relevant Search ads from advertisers who showed amongst top ads to also participate in the bottom ads auction." Honestly, I thought this update happened last month when they started to allow double serving ads (well, Google now says it is not double serving, so maybe that is the announcement here...).View the full article

Google will stop showing reviews and ratings on school listings in Google Search and Google Maps. Google Business Profiles said, "Starting April 30, 2025, your school's associated Business Profile will no longer allow reviews and ratings."View the full article

Google is working on fixing an issue where some searchers are seeing squished images within the Google Search knowledge panels. I personally cannot replicate this but it seems to be happening for a number of searchers.View the full article

Google updated its Other restricted businesses: Government documents and services policy to say it may label some search ads to say, "Not a government website." 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

Rajan Patel, the VP of Engineering for Search, said on X that Google is making "changes to ranking" to remove prediction content from showing up in the Google Search top stories and news sections. This comes after some sites are posting "prediction" content, predicting that some sports trades may happen, that have not happened yet, and those "stories" show up in the news section as actually having occurred. View the full article

Google said it will be strict in enforcing accurate pricing for lodging listings on Google, both for ads and free booking links. There is no policy change but they will have a "higher standards for price accuracy."View the full article

Google sent out a notification that it will automatically opt you into using content from your email campaigns to help Google know what to show in Google Search, Shopping, and Maps. It will look for content around new arrivals, sales or ongoing promotions, social media profiles, and others.View the full article

Google is sending emails to some advertisers letting them know that they can opt out of a test, where Google will use AI to automatically create backgrounds for their images in Google Shopping Ads.View the full article

Google is showing AI-generated review summaries on some top quality store pages. So when you click on a specific retailer or merchant's top quality store link, at the top of the reviews you may see an AI-generated summary of those reviews.View the full article

Google is now showing a "top search" definition box below the auto suggestions within Google Search for some searches. I guess it is a quick way for Google to give you a definition for a word.View the full article

Google is testing a feature to let you get notified if there is a deal for the product(s) you are searching for directly in Google Search. It is named "Track deals from this search" and it has a slider to toggle on the notification.View the full article

Google has added Gemini to the Google Trends Explore page to help you find new and fresh search terms. It will also compare those search terms automatically for you, all in a new design. This is rolling out now, but you might not see it just yet.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 updated its Google iOS app and with that, the most noticeable change was it updated the super G logo, with a more blended version of the logo. I am not sure if this is going to be the new logo going forward of this is a temporary change for an event, maybe like I/O.View the full article

Google updated its core update documentation to say it does smaller core updates and does not announce those updates. This is not new; Google told us this back in 2019. What is new is that Google added it to its search developer documentation.View the full article

Google has switched from updating its googlebot.json file, the file that contains the list of IP addresses Googlebot uses, from weekly to daily. Gary Illyes from Google said this was done based on feedback from the community.View the full article

Google updated its JavaScript SEO best practices document with a new section on how to set the canonial URL when using JavaScript. Google wrote, "The best way to set the canonical URL is to use HTML, but if you have to use JavaScript, make sure that you always set the canonical URL to the same value as the original HTML."View the full article

Google has made a number of updates to its Merchant Center product data specifications, including some that went into effect on April 8th and some that will go into effect on July 1, 2025.View the full article

Google seems to be testing showing call assets on Vehicle Ads within Google Search. So on the Vehicle Ads there is a way to call the dealer or seller, like you see on some other ads.View the full article