Link Building Strategies

Google may be testing a new ad unit named Sponsored Places. I think this is new, I mean, have any of you seen this before in the search results? Instead of it saying "Sponsored results" or a local pack with sponsored listings.View the full article

Google's John Mueller said he still recommends you have visible anchor text for your links in order to "provide more context for search engines." Don't just use title elements in the link attribute; make sure the link has actual visible anchor text.View the full article

Google announced it will be deprecating the Special announcement structured data on July 31, 2025. This structured data was introduced during COVID as a way to communicate special announcements from websites and businesses related to health and safety.View the full article

CNBC reports Google has been sued in the UK for <<£5 billion ($6.6 billion) in potential damages over allegations that the U.S. tech giant abused its "near-total dominance" in the online search market to drive up prices.View the full article

18 year old, publicly traded education technology company, Chegg, has sued Google over its AI Overviews and how it has hurt their traffic and revenue. Chegg has "filed a complaint against Google, which has unjustly retained traffic that has historically come to Chegg, impacting our acquisitions, revenue and employees," said Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg.View the full article

On Friday, Google announced it had filed a lawsuit against SerpApi for scraping the Google search results. Google alleges that SerpApi is running an "unlawful" operation that bypasses Google's security measures to scrape search results at an astonishing scale.View the full article

Over the weekend, the Super Bowl LIX weekend, there has been a lot of chatter about ranking volatility and traffic losses. Truth is, I feel there is often chatter about traffic losses over a Super Bowl weekend, as many are watching the Super Bowl and not spending time searching Google as much.View the full article

Google announced a number of new tag, analytics and data strategies on Friday including a new Google tag gateway for advertisers. Google tag gateway for advertisers allows you to run your Google tags, be it client-side or server-side through your own website infrastructure, such as a content delivery network (CDN), load balancer, or web server.View the full article

Google's Danny Sullivan and John Mueller spoke on the Search Off the Record podcast about whether hiring an AEO/GEO or buying an AI-optimization tool is any different than hiring an SEO or buying an SEO tool. In short, the advice is the same - both Googlers said.View the full article

Google's John Mueller does not want you to lump programmatic SEO with technical SEO. He said they are different things and that while technical SEO "will definitely continue to be a thing," programmatic SEO is another story.View the full article

Google is expanding AI Mode both in terms of features and access. Google is testing AI Mode in the wild with a limited number of searchers. Google also opened up its waitlist to all 18+ U.S. users. Google added product and place cards to the AI Mode results. Plus, Google added a history tab.View the full article

Google is testing a "new" label in the search result snippets. Several people are noticing this "new" label next to search result snippets that have new content. View the full article

There have been several complaints over the past week about Google showing searchers its old Google Search design. Some of those search results seem to lead to a broken interface, while others just look like they are from a decade or so ago.View the full article

Google is testing showing favicons logos in its shopping ads, in the carousel of sponsored product results. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, confirmed this with me on X last night.View the full article

Google seems to be testing showing up to 10 sitelinks on some of the search result snippets. Normally, Google will show about 4 sitelinks, but here Google is showing 6 more.View the full article

Google is testing a new version of AI Mode responses in the wild, directly in the Google Search AI Mode interface. Google even tells the searcher, "You're giving feedback on a new version of Al Mode. Which response do you prefer?"View the full article

Google is now testing a new accommodations carousel in the search results for hotel-related queries. The new accommodations carousel shows up under the hotel pack.View the full article

Google was previously testing placing AI-generated snippet summaries below each search result snippet. Now, Google is testing replacing the search result snippet's description with its own AI-generated description. View the full article

Google is testing ways to get more people to try AI Mode with a new AI Mode button in the Google Search bar on the Google home page. We've seen Google test AI Mode promotions with banners in the search results but now Google is placing large buttons in the search bar to get people to use AI Mode.View the full article

Google is testing a new shortcut location for AI Mode in the Google App on Android. Google is placing the shortcut button directly in the search bar.View the full article

We generally see the AI Overviews show at the top of the Google search results page, I mean, it is an overview, so you'd expect them at the top. But we've seen them show up in the middle of the search results, sometimes even in position two. Now we are seeing examples of them showing at the botton of the search results page.View the full article

Google is testing replacing the "Dive deeper in AI Mode" button with "Follow up in AI Mode." This is the button you can sometimes see at the bottom of the AI Overview, after you expand the AI Overview within Google Search.View the full article

While we've seen AI Overviews in the United States for a while now, and while Google has expanded them to 100+ countries - they are still not officially launched in many European countries like Germany, Switzerland, Italy and others. Well, now we are hearing that Google is testing AI Overviews in those countries.View the full article

Google is testing moving the AI Overviews from the top position of the search results page (also known as position zero), to the middle of the search results page. We saw Google test this with featured snippets over the years, so it makes sense Google would test this with AI Overviews.View the full article

Google seems to be on the verge of rolling out AI Overviews in within Google Search in more countries and regions. We are seeing signs of Google testing AI Overviews in the wild in Turkey, Sweden and the Netherlands. This is a week or so before Google's big conference, Google I/O.View the full article