Link Building Strategies

Google Merchant Center Next added new analytics data to the Promotions tab/section. This shows you two new analytics charts including "Your promotions at a glance" and "Performance in the last 28 days." These are summary cards to see how well your promotions are performing in Google Search.View the full article

Google updated the Google Ads Gambling and Games policy this week to define that sweepstake casinos are not social casino games. Google said this update was added on October 28, 2025. This now prohibits sweepstake casinos from using Google Ads for advertising.View the full article

Google's John Mueller reminded us about when case sensitivity matters for Google Search and SEO when it comes to your URLs. In short, Google will probably figure it out based on two URLs having the same content on it but why leave it up to Google, so make sure to be consistent with your URLs so Google doesn't need to figure it out.View the full article

Microsoft is testing a way to change the country and region you are in when doing searches on Bing. There is a new country/region selector for this, similar to how Google handles it.View the full article

Microsoft Advertising advertiser web interface is down and Microsoft's Navah Hopkins said the "engineering team is investigating this issue with priority." This only impacts the web interface, according to Hopkins and ad serving does not seem to be impacted.View the full article

Both Google and Microsoft reported its earnings today; Alphabet's Q3 2025 earnings and Microsoft's Q1 2026 earnings. Google reported ad revenues up by XX% with $ and Microsoft reported ad revenues up by XX%.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 Search ranking volatility is heating up again...View the full article

There may have been another Google Search ranking algorithm tweak around October 28th or so. I am seeing some rumblings both within the SEO community chatter and the third-party Google tracking tools. It seems some are noticing big search ranking swings around October 28th.View the full article

We all knew it was coming and now Google is roll out early access to Gemini for Home voice assistant in the U.S. You can either say "Hey Google" to your speaker or display to request specific help or answers, or talk naturally with Gemini Live by saying "Hey Google, let's chat."View the full article

Google Merchant Center now lets some merchants and advertisers define an audience for a promotion. This allows you to restrict who sees the promotion in Google Search for your Merchant Center shopping listings.View the full article

Microsoft will be shutting down its Microsoft Advertising Ads for Social Impact ad grant program. It will officially be discontinued in December 2025.View the full article

Google had a bug in Google Discover that showed the publisher's name and logo twice on a story. The publisher's name showed once at the top and once at the bottom of the article card in the Google Discover feed.View the full article

Google Search is testing a new carousel to promote AI Mode named "Ask AI Mode anything." It gives you ideas on how to "Explore" new or related topics in AI Mode.View the full article

Google updated the wording in the title documentation for Merchant Center, now suggesting you can use your own brand or company name in the short title of your products. That is, if you manufacture your own products.View the full article

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

This is a programming note that Tuesday and Wednesday are Sukkot and I will be offline the next two days. I will be offline on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 7th and October 8th.View the full article

If you search for [events near me], Google may not show you any events near you. It seems like Google is not serving that events carousel right now. I suspect it is a bug and I wonder if this is related to the serving bug from Friday afternoon?View the full article

Google is testing having the "Show More" button within AI Overviews jump you directly into AI Mode as opposed to loading more of the AI Overview beneath it. This appears to be a test, as I am unable to replicate it.View the full article

As we reported earlier, Microsoft said a new Bing Places update is coming soon. Well, now it is rolling out to businesses in Bing Places for Business.View the full article

Google was previously testing placing AI-generated snippet summaries below each search result snippet. Now, Google is testing replacing the search result snippet's description with its own AI-generated description. View the full article

Google has rolled out the new, more compact, menu bar for Google Merchant Center Next. This was part of a slew of user interface updates that Google has been slowly rolling out for Merchant Center Next over the past several months.View the full article

Did you know Google can label some of the reviews in the product reviews section as "incentivized"? I am not sure I've seen this before, have you?View the full article

Google is testing another variation to the title links in the Google Search results - a light gray effect. So when you hover your mouse cursor over the snippet, the title link turns grayed and washed out.View the full article

Barry Pollard from Google did a long explanation on Bluesky on why Google Search Console says an LCP is bad but the individual URLs are fine. I don't want to mess it up, so I will copy what Barry wrote.View the full article

Microsoft is testing using really large images in the Bing Search Copilot ads. I don't believe I've seen such large ads in this ad unit before, so it seems new to me.View the full article