Link Building Strategies

Google reportedly has a bug that displays incorrect product reviews in Google Search for a retailer. It is now pulling from text on the page that includes the Google Business Profile reviews, despite the product reviews not being there and not being marked up on the page.View the full article

Google is testing a number of new sports-related search features within Google Search. These include a "What's new" section, "Discover more" section, a Play-by-play section, What people are saying and more. And some of these features, when clicked, take you into AI Mode.View the full article

Google Ads recently added a beta to bring in videos from your social campaigns into your ad campaigns. And now, Google is testing bringing in videos in Merchant Center.View the full article

Google has updated the Google Business Profiles verification issues support form. This makes it easier to pick a specific issue you had when trying to verify a business within Google Business Profiles.View the full article

Google updated its JavaScript SEO documentation for the third time this week, this time to say that "while pages with a 200 HTTP status code are sent to rendering, this might not be the case for pages with a non-200 HTTP status code."View the full article

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

John Mueller from Google had Danny Sullivan from Google on the Search Off the Record podcast to talk about "Thoughts on SEO & SEO for AI." In short, they both said SEO for AI is the same as SEO for traditional search but then they got into it.View the full article

Google updated its JavaScript SEO best practices document with a new section on how to set the canonial URL when using JavaScript. Google wrote, "The best way to set the canonical URL is to use HTML, but if you have to use JavaScript, make sure that you always set the canonical URL to the same value as the original HTML."View the full article

Google is bringing Gemini 3 Flash to AI Mode, bringing much of Gemini 3's power without waiting too long - hence the "Flash" part of the name. Robby Stein from Google said, "Starting today, we're rolling it out globally in Search as the default model in AI Mode."View the full article

Back in October, many businesses reported that reviews left on their Google Business Profiles were disappearing. It wasn't happening to every business, but it was widespread. Last night, I was told the bug had been fixed and that the reviews should be returning.View the full article

Microsoft is also testing underlining the text of the Bing Ads search snippets and descriptions. I am not sure if those underlined words are links or not but I assume so.View the full article

After almost a month delay with the page indexing report within Google Search Console, the report is now back to its normal timeframe. This morning it was reading that the last updated date was November 21st. Now, it is reading December 14th, which is a normal delay for this report. View the full article

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

Google Discover is testing and maybe rolling out an option to "Tailor your feed." This allows you to tailor the feed with "Say in your own words what you want to see," and Google will try to figure it out.View the full article

If you submitted a review appeal within Google Business Profiles it will likely take longer than normal to hear back. Google's review appeals are delayed and Google cannot provide a specific response timeframe for pending cases.View the full article

Google is testing extremely long and expandable search result snippet descriptions in the search results. These are also AI-generated snippets, which we've seen before, but not this long. This goes on for eight lines of text.View the full article

Google has updated its Manage customer reviews help documentation to expand and clarify the "Understand what happens to your replies" section. It now specifies why a business reply to a review may be hold, how long it takes and more.View the full article

Microsoft is testing the ability to upload an image directly within the Bing search bar. You click on a plus sign and Bing shows you "search with an image" and "make an image." I get the search with an image feature but why add generative AI features, like make an image, in this search bar?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...View the full article

Nick Fox is the SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google was interviewed again on the AI Inside channel by Jason Howel and Jeff Jarvin. He said a lot of interesting things but said no, Google won't be offering standarized licensing deals for all publishers. He also said that optimizing for AI Search is the same as what you do for web search and normal SEO.View the full article

Google updated its JavaScript SEO documentation to warn against using a noindex tag in the original page code on JavaScript pages. Google wrote, "if you do want the page indexed, don't use a noindex tag in the original page code."View the full article

Google can not show ads in AI Overviews with the exact match type. This is a change from back in May, where Google said otherwise. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, wrote on X, "We have since updated this."View the full article

Earlier this month, we documented that the average position sharply increased for many sites when Google made that num 100 change blocking a lot of automated queries. Well, for some sites, that number is dropping again, which may mean that there is a workaround for the blocking of those bots and automated queries.View the full article

Google Search Console's performance report seems to finally be all caught up and up-to-date as of last night and this morning. I am seeing the normal two-hour or so delay, which has always fluctuated from an hour to five hours on a normal day.View the full article

After several months of testing, Google seems to be rolling out the "Read more" links at the end of some of the search results listings. We saw Google test variations of this back in July and it now seems to be live.View the full article