Link Building Strategies

Google is now (past few weeks?) sending out emails when it detects fake or incentivised reviews on your Google Business Profile. Google also says it has removed the fake or incentivised reviews that were identified. View the full article

The Google Search Console page indexing report seems to be missing a chunk of data. The missing data is from December 15th and earlier, but we do have data from December 15th (14th) through today.View the full article

Some are wondering when the Google Search ranking volatility will begin to cool down a bit. While many of the tools continue to show heated volatility over the past weeks, some are starting to show signs of cooling.View the full article

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

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week...View the full article

Google's John Mueller said that he discourages large sites from force indexing its pages to Google Search. He said on a comment on LinkedIn, "I strongly recommend not relying on trying to force indexing."View the full article

As I noted in my story yesterday about Google reviews dropping out, Google has updated the Google Business Profiles review policies, the Prohibited & restricted content section.View the full article

Google sent out an email to some Google Ads advertisers about changes coming to Google Ads budget pacing for ad scheduling. These changes go into effect on March 1, 2026.View the full article

As you know, OpenAI said they would release ads in ChatGPT and then about ten days ago, said the ads went live for a limited number of users. Since then, we have not seen reports of anyone seeing ads in the wild within ChatGPT until now.View the full article

Google may be testing a new ad unit named Sponsored Places. I think this is new, I mean, have any of you seen this before in the search results? Instead of it saying "Sponsored results" or a local pack with sponsored listings.View the full article

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

Google has added 53 new languages to AI Mode, which means the AI Mode works in just under 100 languages. This was announced by Nick Fox from Google on X yesterday.View the full article

Google's John Mueller responded to a concern about having bad title tags and how that might impact your site in Google Search. He said on Bluesky "I don't think our systems have a "we don't like this one guy's titles" filter."View the full article

There has been an uptick in complaints from businesses around Google local reviews disappearing or being removed. We had something similar last October and it was fixed in December and now I am seeing more complaints about reviews going missing.View the full article

The other day, Google released the Google Search Console AI-powered configuration tool and we continued to wonder when the other features, like branded queries and the social channels would go live. Well, Google's John Mueller confirmed Google is still testing those two features before they are more fully rolled out to more users.View the full article

Google is rolling out an update for Google Ads advertisers to certify for some cryptocurrency and complex speculative financial products. This is "incrementally to all advertisers over a period of time and not all advertisers and certification applications will be affected immediately," Google wrote.View the full article

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

Google has finally fully rolled out the Google Search Console AI-powered configuration tool. Google wrote on LinkedIn, "The Search Console's new AI-powered configuration is now available to everyone! Have you already tried it?"View the full article

Earlier this month, we covered Google testing what we called contextual overlay link cards in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Well, Google officially began rolling them out yesterday, and they are more like hover-over pop-up link cards.View the full article

Google Ads may be automatically enabling paused keywords in your advertising accounts. I am waiting for a statement from Google on this but there are reports that this is being done through the low activity system bulk changes.View the full article

Google Ads is now showing in the "When and where ads showed" report, the ability to see PMax, Performance Max, reporting. So you can see the placement, type, network and impressions you are getting from your PMax campaigns.View the full article

Google is losing one of its main sources of information for its Knowledge Graph, the CIA World Factbook. This was a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency between 1962 and 2026 with almanac-style information about the countries of the world.View the full article

There is a bug impacting a number of Google AdSense publishers where the anchor and vignette ads won't close for users. This has been an issue since February 13th and Google is reportedly working on a fix for the issue.View the full article

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

A few weeks ago, we reported Google was exploring ways to allow sites to opt out of showing up in Google's AI features, like AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google's Sulina Connal said at the FT Strategies News in the Digital Age conference that this is a "huge engineering project."View the full article