Link Building Strategies

Google has updated its Merchant Listing structured data documentation to now support, in beta, membership loyalty pricing property types. Google also updated the docs to provide more examples and instructions around active prices, sale prices, strikethrough prices, and member prices in JSON-LD.View the full article

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

A couple of days ago, Google sent out an email to owners of Google Business Profile listings. The email was a reminder about the Google Business Profile policies, and it highlighted policies around reviews.View the full article

A year or more ago, Google added a toggle switch to use Gemini directly in the iOS Google Search app. Well, that was removed this week and you now need to go to the native Gemini app to use Gemini, you cannot use the Google app.View the full article

If you go to Google Shopping and enter a query that is not shopping related, Google will add a button above the shopping results asking you to search Google for that query.View the full article

Google has posted some fresh data, saying they answer over 5 trillion searches per year. The last time we saw this data was in 2016, when Google was at 2 trillion searches per year and then 1.2 trillion in 2012.View the full article

Microsoft is testing another user interface and experience for the links they show within its AI Answers, the Copilot responses. These links show with a hyperlink icon and the domain name spelled out, and then when you mouse over it, it has a carousel you can flip through for more links.View the full article

Microsoft is now showing the sources it used to generate its AI-based "from sources across the web" section in Bing Search. If you click on the little i icon, Bing will show you where it pulled the list together from.View the full article

If you try to access your Google Business Profile page right now, you likely won't be able to. It seems Google Business Profile edit section within Google Search is broken and serves a 500 error when you try to do anything.View the full article

Some sites, hosted on some CDNs (content delivery networks), are experiencing a big spike in server response times for crawling, while seeing a drop in total crawl requests. So technically, the crawling has dropped but Google is taking much longer to crawl a lot less.View the full article

A new report released by Rand Fishkin at Sparktoro with the help of Datos' panel measure web browser activity showed that about 1/3rd of active web users don't use Google all that much, by that much it means they only do 1-20X searches per month.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

Google seems to have added, for some merchants, a new section named Physical Stores to the Google Merchant Center Next console. In this section is random data from within the store's Google Business Profiles listing.View the full article

Google has released version 19 of the Google Ads API, v19 adds enhanced video assets for Performance Max campaigns, updates to brand guidelines and tons of other additions, changes and removals. View the full article

It is time for the monthly Google Webmaster Report. We are now in March as we continue to wait for the first Google core update of 2025. We did have a number of big unconfirmed Google updates, as documented below. View the full article

Microsoft is testing outlining the individual search result snippets within Bing Search. So when you look at a snippet, it has this outline around it, and then when you hover your cursor over it, it highlights more.View the full article

Microsoft is now showing why it selects or chooses to show a specific ad directly in the Bing search results. When you click on the arrow down by the URL of the search ad snippet, you will get window dialog that may explain why the ad was shown.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. We are seeing new shuffling with the Google search results...View the full article

Google may be rolling out the high value new customer mode for Google Ads advertisers, after it has been in beta for some time. This setting lets you set different bidding priorities for high value new prospects, regular new customers and existing ones.View the full article

Google is testing adding filters to the latest post carousel. These filters can show recent posts, video posts, posts from Instagram, or Facebook. View the full article

Google Ads had a bug with the sitelinks creation page, where the prefill functionality was not working right. Google confirmed the issue and said it was "very limited and was not widespread." 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

Did you ever want to validate to see if Google or other search engines can see your tabbed (hidden in a tab) navigation or content? Well, John Mueller from Google listed some ideas on how to do so.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 Local Service Ads opts advertisers into booking links, by default...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