Link Building Strategies

Every year, for the past 18 or so years, Google's John Mueller has been working on Christmas to provide support to those who need help with their Google Search ranking and SEO concerns. This year is no different; John Mueller has responded to several concerns on Reddit and other social media platforms today.View the full article

Navah Hopkins, the Ads Liaison for Microsoft Advertising, made it crystal clear that exact match is prioritized even over Ad Rank. Navah Hopkins wrote on X and LinkedIn, "Exact match will get the priority if it's there, otherwise Ad Rank determines everything."View the full article

Google's John Mueller said on Reddit that when picking a site name, make sure to pick something that you can reasonably expect to rank for. In short, don't go online and complain that your site is named Best SEO blog and you don't rank in the number one position in Google Search for [best SEO blog].View the full article

Google is testing placing the search results in the center of the screen, instead of aligning it more to the left of the screen. This is an ongoing test we have seen on and off over many many years and it is still going on.View the full article

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

Google's John Mueller questioned the need for all websites to use ccTLDs, different domain names, to take their websites international. He said on Reddit, "you both make things harder on yourself, but you also make it harder for search engines to understand each of these sites."View the full article

Google is testing an option to read aloud the AI Overviews by clicking on a speaker icon at the top of the AI Overview within Google Search. And the crazy thing, this is being tested in the US. View the full article

Google's December 2025 core update is now done rolling out, it took 18 days and 2 hours to complete. The core update started on December 11, 2025 at around 12:25 pm ET and ended on December 29, 2025 at around 2:05 pm ET...View the full article

Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, has been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to some recipes. Adam calls its Google's AI Frankenstein recipes, where it pulls parts of the recipes from recipe bloggers, says it is the brand's recipe, but changes it enough where the recipe is not real and tastes horrible.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. The Google December 2025 core update is done rolling out...View the full article

Google has posted the New Year's Eve Doodle and New Year's Day Doodle on the Google.com home page for when it is New Year's Eve for you and New Year's Day for you.View the full article

The Search Engine Roundtable is made up of what you, the search community, are talking about. What are you, the search community, noticing in the search results, whether it be ranking changes, user interface changes, or beyond...View the full article

The Search terms report within Google Ads has this quick dropdown filter that lets you filter by search terms, search terms and landing pages from AI Max, search terms from Dynamic Search Ads and search terms and landing pages from Dynamic Search Ads.View the full article

This is weird. It is 2026, and Google.com, the Google Search home page, is still showing yesterday's New Year's Eve doodle of 2025 going into 2026. But it is after 7 am ET here on January 1, 2026, and on all my devices, I see yesterday's Google Doodle.View the full article

Just like with Christmas day every year, so to with New Year's Day - Google's John Mueller and often other Googlers, are out and looking to respond to some questions on Google Search and SEO. John Mueller so far posted a few times on Reddit this morning, January 1, 2026.View the full article

Google has been saying that 404 error codes are a normal part of the web, that 404s are not a low quality signal and that they don't use up your crawl budget. Now, John Mueller of Google explained why 404s don't matter for SEO.View the full article

Now that the December 2025 core update is officially done, some are looking at the damage it caused. A number of very visible news publishers saw some significant declines in Google Search visibility with this latest core update.View the full article

Google completed the December 2025 core update this week and it hit some news publishers incredibly hard. I posted the annual Google algorithm update infographic. Google's Frankenstein AI-recipes are a complete horror. Google questioned the need for ccTLDs for international SEO...View the full article

Google added a new button to the Google Ads Change history report that lets advertisers quickly jump to different campaigns and ad groups in this report. It should be a big time saver for some advertisers.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 Discover seems to show X posts way too often and some searchers don't like it...View the full article

In this week's recap, we covered that the Google December 2025 core update was unleashed. Google also said more core updates are definitely on their way and one should be coming soon Google also updated its...View the full article

Google has confirmed there is a bug with Google Ads dynamic remarketing tracking where the data is not flowing into the reporting. Adesh, from the Google team, responded that the Google "teams are actively reviewing this and working toward a resolution."View the full article

This week in search, we covered an update on the Google December 2025 core update. Google Search traffic to news publishers continues to vanish, but there is Google Discover. A report shows Google has deleted a ton...View the full article

Google is testing swapping out the Gemini button at the top right of the Chrome browser, with a "Browse with AI" button. The button is more colorful and in your face, which probably gets more users to notice it.View the full article

Microsoft has added the ability to add custom columns to the Microsoft Advertising user interface and advertising console. But it doesn't offer every metric, including missing the segment by conversion action metric.View the full article