Link Building Strategies

To fuel the debate in the SEO world of the topic of structured data and LLMs and AI engines, we are hearing that once again, AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity are not using structured data in any special way. View the full article

The Google preferred sources deeplink button feature is broken and has been since at least last Wednesday. When you click on a button to make a site a preferred source, such as for this site, it does not pre-fill in the site's URL in the box, as it should. You can retype it in the box but it does not pre-fill it for you.View the full article

It was a heated weekend, the Google Search ranking volatility was pretty heated and there was a lot of chatter within the SEO industry. Not all the tools are showing big swings but many are. And everyone is asking, what happened with Google confirming core updates - is that over?View the full article

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

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

A month ago, Google added LLMs.txt files to many of its developer and documentation sites including the Search developer docs. As you know, Google pulled it off the Search developer docs within a day or so but the LLMs.txt files still remain on many of Google's other sites.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

Google's Danny Sullivan said on the Search Off the Record podcast that was published yesterday that Google does not want you to turn your content into bite-sized chunks to rank well in LLMs. He said, "we don't want you to do that" and he even spoke to Google engineers about this.View the full article

This week, yep, we had another story on Google Search ranking volatility. I posted the Google webmaster report for January 2026. Google Discover seems to be showing too many...View the full article

Google Ads seems to be slowly rolling out a new Google Ads experimental feature in the Google Ads Lab section named Brand Linking. Brand linking lets you "Link customers to brands," it reads.View the full article

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

The Microsoft Advertising team released a new PDF guide named "From discovery to influence: AEO A guide to and GEO." This guide offers "Practical data strategies to empower retailers for AI search, AI assistants and AI browsers."View the full article

I am seeing a spike in complaints from Google AdSense publishers of earnings dropping again over the past 24-hours or so. This is similar to last week, and it also coincides with an unconfirmed Google search ranking update.View the full article

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

Over the past few weeks, Google has been showing AI Overviews for local packs, leading some businesses to see huge drops in visibility for their Google Business Profile and local listings. Some businesses are seeing 50% declines or more because of the local pack change.View the full article

It is another week and more Google Search ranking volatility but this was a weird one. Google launched Personal Intelligence in the Gemini app and it is coming to AI Mode in Google Search. Google AI Mode new ad format...View the full article

Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind CEO, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Google does not have "any plans" to bring ads to Gemini. This comes even after OpenAI announced ads are coming to ChatGPT.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. Apple to have two different releases of Siri and Apple Intelligence, powered by Google Gemini...View the full article

Google Ads has a new help document named Campaign Mix Experiments (Beta). This describes how advertisers can test multiple campaign types, budgets, and settings across campaigns in a single experiment. View the full article

The Google Search rankings continue to be super volatile and heated even through today. This started back throughout most of January and it has really heated up even more so since January 21st or so.View the full article

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

This week, we covered more ongoing Google search ranking volatility - January was a heated month. Google AI Overviews show more button officially flows to AI Mode...View the full article

Bing Search has rolled out what it calls multi-turn search in Bing globally. This is something we saw Microsoft Bing test back in June, when we saw a floating Copilot follow up search box at the footer of the Bing search results page show up as you scroll. It is now globally live for all to use.View the full article

Google has released its first core update of 2026, which is focused on just Google Discover. Google named it the February 2026 Discover core update. This one is rolling over the next two weeks or so just English language users in the US and at some point will roll out beyond that to all countries and languages.View the full article

We are seeing volatility in the Google search results this week, Thanksgiving week. Google Ads accounts are being hijacked and it is super concerning. Gemini 3 now powers Google AI Mode for more complex queries...View the full article