Link Building Strategies

A new study from Columbia Journalism Review showed that AI search engines and chatbots, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Deepseek Search, Microsoft Copilot, Grok and Google's Gemini, are just wrong, way too often. I have said this time and time again, when I see an AI Answer, at this point, I just skip over it because I know I cannot trust it and this proves that.View the full article

With Google Ads releasing AI Max globally back in September, more and more advertisers are trying it out. While some of the early data can show it underperforms, some are seeing success by using it for specific applications. That being said, one recent study showed that using AI Max helps broaden your work with exact match and phrase match keywords.View the full article

Adam Wathan the creator of Tailwind CSS posted that he had to let go of 75% of his engineering team because of AI. He said traffic to the Tailwind help documentation is down 40% and that is where most people learn about his solution and then buy commercial products. He added his revenue is down 80%.View the full article

Google is testing having the "Show More" button within AI Overviews jump you directly into AI Mode as opposed to loading more of the AI Overview beneath it. This appears to be a test, as I am unable to replicate it.View the full article

Google may have pushed out a Google search ranking update over the past couple of days. Although the chatter was somewhat quiet, it picked up today and some of the tools are also picking up on an update. I suspect the update and volatility started a couple of days ago, maybe on Monday, November 24th.View the full article

Since Google began rolling out AI Overviews in Google Search, publishers, site owners, SEOs, etc have been posting screenshots of their Google Search Console performance reports that show how clicks from Google start to drop, where impressions stay the same or go higher.View the full article

I am sad to report the passing of Andy Drinkwater, a super-experienced SEO and a friend to the search marketing industry. Andy was a UK-based SEO who loved educating his industry by contributing content and attending local events.View the full article

A few weeks ago, Google launched a new ad layout with the large "Sponsored results" label that groups numerous ads under that one label, and then sticks a "Hide sponsored results" button after you have already seen the ads. Well, it is leading to accidental ad clicks based on what I am reading and hearing across the industry.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

There may be an undocumented Google user agent named GeminiiOS. GeminiiOS is apparently used when a user clicks on a source link from the Gemini app on their iPhone.View the full article

Gary Illyes from Google said that if a URL has a status within Google Search Console as "URL is unknown to Google" that means that URL is really unknown to Google and has zero priority within Google Search systems.View the full article

Google emailed advertisers who are leveraging message leads within Google Local Service Ads telling them about the new value-based pricing. Basically, when a seacher uses the "Request multiple opinions" within local results, those leads may result now in higher discounts than the previous 50% discount you would get on those messages.View the full article

Liz Reid VP, head of Search at Google, was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal's Bold Names podcast. They spoke about AI, AI Search, how ads are impacted by AI results and other Google features, and AI-generated content's impact on the web and search, plus more.View the full article

Google seems to have fixed a bug with inviting others to access your Google Ads account. This bug appeared about a week ago and it Google seemed to start to roll out a fix for this bug on Friday.View the full article

Navah Hopkins sat down with the Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin, and spoke about the topic of what is changing with Google Ads. The interview is about an hour and is well worth watching or listening to.View the full article

We know Google has been using machine learning and more recently, AI, to generate search result snippets descriptions. Well, here is an example of Google getting a snippet not just wrong, but downright insulting. View the full article

Barry Pollard from Google did a long explanation on Bluesky on why Google Search Console says an LCP is bad but the individual URLs are fine. I don't want to mess it up, so I will copy what Barry wrote.View the full article

A few weeks ago, I reported on how Google was testing showing deeper Google AI Overviews, maybe powered by Gemini 2.0, with over 60 links and citations in them. Well, over the past few weeks, more and more of us are seeing these AI Overviews, with dozens of links within them. And we are asking ourselves, who will click on these links?View the full article

Initially, when Yahoo Search launched AI-generated answers, they did not contain sources or links. Now it seems Yahoo is adding "Learn more" links to these AI answer boxes in Yahoo Search.View the full article

Yahoo is continuing its AI Chat features within Yahoo Search, while also incorporating AI Answers into its search results. The AI powered answers and chat seemed to be powered by OpenAI.View the full article

Ever since we began seeing the new Yahoo Search AI features and AI Chat, we've been asking if they were powered by their own AI, by maybe OpenAI or maybe Microsoft Copilot. Well, it seems there is evidence that these features are powered by Microsoft Copilot.View the full article

Yahoo seems to be testing AI Chat within its search results. The chat feature loads on the right side for your query. You click on it and it loads an AI chat bot. View the full article