Link Building Strategies

Google Ads is testing adding a new column to its Performance Max reports named "Used Since." This column is visible on the asset level and it shows the date an asset was added.View the full article

Microsoft seems to be testing a more fully AI-powered search engine, which may be named Copilot Search. Copilot is the name of Microsoft's AI features, formerly known as Bing Chat. View the full article

Martin Split from Google said that having an audio version of a page or a blog post, does not impact your Google rankings. He said it is good for your users, but has no SEO impact.View the full article

Google is testing a new "share list" button for local packs, place results, in the Google Search results. I assume this lets you share the local listings you see with a friend or colleague.View the full article

So after Google literally paid Reddit for its content and then ranked them incredibly well in Google Search and its search features, Reddit during its earnings call blamed Google's search algorithm for not hitting its expected user growth.View the full article

Google is testing a new job carousel in the search results titled "jobs at similar employers." This likely pulls from the Google Jobs postings schema and more but it can come up if you are just searching for products from that company.View the full article

Earlier we reported that Google was testing AI-organized restaurant results in the Google Search results. Now, Google is doing the same for local events; and organizing them with AI.View the full article

Google is now testing using generative AI to write descriptions within the popular products section in Google Search. We've seen this with knowledge panels, local listings and many other parts of Google Search but I don't think I've seen it for the popular products section.View the full article

Google has officially announced Google AI Mode, after hearing rumors about it for months and then seeing leaked screenshots of it a few weeks ago. Google said AI mode gives you more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions.View the full article

It's time for the monthly Google Webmaster Report - the April 2025 version. This month we had the Google March 2025 core update kick off and finish rolling out. Google launched AI Mode, AI Overviews are now powered by Gemini 2.0, we saw some weird AI search tests, expansion of AI Overviews and a whole slew of AI changes.View the full article

Google has posted a notice in the Google Ads console reminding advertisers about the upcoming brand guidelines changes that are now slotted for March 2025. This change was communicated numerous times and the deadline has been pushed off here and there.View the full article

On Thursday, January 23rd, Google updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF document. The last time Google updated this document was for the March 2024 spam update changes, over ten months ago. This update seems to focus on on spam and adds some additional details.View the full article

One can always find weird bugs in the Google and Bing Search results but these two really caught my eye. Bing Search seems to have a bug for some searchers where the URL in the search result snippet is being cut off. And Google might have a bug that leads to way too much white space between search result snippets.View the full article

Google added a new developer document and video explanation on how to use Google Analytics data and Google Search Console data together. One of the biggest confusions I see is when people try to compare the data between those two analytics tools - they measure different things in different ways.View the full article

The Google Search Console API has been delayed for the past several days. Data is days behind the web interface and causing issued for those who use Looker Studio, Big Query and other solutions to see the Search Console data when accessed through the API.View the full article

Have any of you heard of the Google Ads mystery shopping rating? Well, it may be used by Google for the overall store rating, which is calculated from customer reviews and a "Mystery Shopping Rating," according to a Google Ads rep.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. I posted three different Google March 2025 core update polls...View the full article

Microsoft published its new Microsoft Advertising features that it released over the past month. This goes across Performance Max tools, reporting, new values, targeting, and more.View the full article

There is some chatter in the SEO community that Google Image Search may be down ranking, lowering the rankings, of AI-generated images, in favor of non-AI-generated images within the Google Image search results.View the full article

Google has announced it made some updates to its ad quality where it now takes into account better measurements for understanding the user navigation experience and if that user will or will not be happy with the ad landing page.View the full article

I am seeing a lot of renewed chatter within the SEO industry of a possible unconfirmed Google search ranking update touching down in the past 24-hours or so. The weird thing is that the tools are not really showing much of a spike in volatility but the chatter seems incredibly high.View the full article

I am seeing the SEO community starting to chatter around a lot of Google Search ranking volatility. Keep in mind, the third-party tracking tools currently seem relatively calm. Often, I see the chatter kick in before the tools catch on but not always.View the full article

Here is a weird one - doing a site command and Google presenting an AI Overview summary of the results. In this case, the AI Overview was dead wrong - which is not all that uncommon - but why show an AI Overview here? View the full article

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

Google has updated its "How the Google Ads auction works" page to add a line that says that Google will run different auctions for each ad location.View the full article