Link Building Strategies

OpenAI has updated its spider/crawler it uses for ChatGPT, OAI-SearchBot. The AI company updated the description and details of the crawler information removing that it is used for links and to train OpenAI's generative AI foundation models.View the full article

Microsoft is testing moving the ad labels in the Bing Search results from the left side of the ad to the right side of the ad. I am not sure which makes it harder to see the label or not but I assume Microsoft is testing this to see which will get more clicks.View the full article

14 months ago, Google updated its documentation around its shopping related structured data warning not to generate your structured data dynamically through JavaScript. Yesterday, at the Search Central Live event in Zurich, a Google engineer explained why - it's because the shopping bot crawls a lot and fast.View the full article

Google is testing incorporating Ads Advisor into the contact us page for Google Ads support. Google was doing this for policy disapproval support requests as well. View the full article

Google has told us that core updates impact visibility within Google Discover, but that may have changed at some point. Andy Almeida from the Google Trust and Safety spoke about Google Discover and one of his slides wrote, "Minimal alignment to Search ranking..."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 updated its search documentation to state that it does smaller core updates more often without confirming them. Google Discover is now minimally aligned to search rankings...View the full article

Google has officially expanded the Web Guide to the "All" tab. Originally when it launched as a Search Labs beta, it was under the "Web" tab but as we saw, Google began expanding it to the "All" tab.View the full article

In June, Google moved Offerwall out of its AdSense beta, making it available to all. Now, if you are using Offerwall, Google will opt you into Offerwall optimization.View the full article

Google announced that Preferred Sources is now rolling out globally, after launching just in the US and India in August, following its beta period in June. Plus, Google announced Spotlighting subscriptions are coming to Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.View the full article

Google announced it has updated the links in AI Mode to encourage searchers to click more. Google also introduced contextual introductions to embedded links in AI Mode responses.View the full article

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

Google is now sending email notifications for when Google Business Profiles has removed the restrictions on your reviews and ratings. The email says, "Restrictions on your reviews and ratings have been removed" and it comes from the Google Business Profiles team.View the full article

Google Maps is updating its share buttons by removing the options to share on X and adding the options to share on Reddit and Facebook. View the full article

Brad Geddes dug into how he felt "AI Max can The President your existing exact and phrase match keywords and then claim credit for the conversions and revenue." And then Google's Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin responded to those specific examples on why this happened and what Google is changing in the future with Google Ads AI Max.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

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

On Friday, Google announced a number of updates around translation, language, audio, voice interactions and thus Search Live. Google said it released a more "fluid and expressive conversations when you go Live with Search."View the full article

After several months of testing, Google seems to be rolling out the "Read more" links at the end of some of the search results listings. We saw Google test variations of this back in July and it now seems to be live.View the full article

Google Search Console's performance report seems to finally be all caught up and up-to-date as of last night and this morning. I am seeing the normal two-hour or so delay, which has always fluctuated from an hour to five hours on a normal day.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...View the full article

Google has updated its Manage customer reviews help documentation to expand and clarify the "Understand what happens to your replies" section. It now specifies why a business reply to a review may be hold, how long it takes and more.View the full article

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

If you submitted a review appeal within Google Business Profiles it will likely take longer than normal to hear back. Google's review appeals are delayed and Google cannot provide a specific response timeframe for pending cases.View the full article

Google Discover is testing and maybe rolling out an option to "Tailor your feed." This allows you to tailor the feed with "Say in your own words what you want to see," and Google will try to figure it out.View the full article

Microsoft is also testing underlining the text of the Bing Ads search snippets and descriptions. I am not sure if those underlined words are links or not but I assume so.View the full article