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When considering the average tax rate for corporations, it’s crucial to acknowledge that the current rate stands at 21 percent, a significant drop from the historical average of nearly 32 percent. This decline reflects various fiscal policy changes over the years, impacting large firms differently, as their effective tax rate hovers around 16 percent. Comprehending these nuances, along with the role of pass-through entities, can illuminate broader implications for corporate taxation and business strategies. What might these trends suggest for future reforms? Key Takeaways The current U.S. corporate tax rate is 21 percent on net income. The historical average corporate tax rate from 1909 to 2025 is approximately 31.99 percent. In 2022, the average effective tax rate for firms over $100 million was 16.0 percent. U.S. corporate tax revenues account for about 1.3 percent of GDP, lower than many OECD countries. Pass-through entities report around 70% of business income, impacting overall corporate tax revenues. Overview of Corporate Tax Rates Corporate tax rates play a crucial role in shaping the financial environment for businesses in the United States. Currently, the corporate tax rate in the United States stands at 21 percent, which applies to a corporation’s net income. Historically, the average tax rate for corporations from 1909 to 2025 is around 31.99 percent, with significant fluctuations over the decades. For instance, the highest recorded corporate tax rate was 52.80 percent in 1968, whereas the lowest was just 1.00 percent in 1910. In 2022, corporations with net incomes exceeding $100 million reported an average effective tax rate of 16.0 percent. Compared to other wealthy countries, the U.S. corporate tax revenues accounted for approximately 1.3 percent of GDP, indicating a lower tax burden overall. Historical Trends in Corporate Tax Rates Although many factors influence corporate tax rates, an extensive look at historical trends reveals a significant evolution in the U.S. tax environment over the last century. The average corporate tax rate in the U.S. has been approximately 31.99 percent since 1909, with notable fluctuations. In 1968, the highest recorded rate reached 52.80 percent, whereas the lowest was just 1.00 percent in 1910. Since the late 1960s, federal corporate tax rates have typically declined, currently sitting at 21 percent. This downward trend reflects broader fiscal policy changes and aligns with data from the tax rates by president chart. Comprehending these historical trends can help you grasp the shifting terrain of corporate tax by nation and its implications on business behavior. Comparison of U.S. Corporate Tax Rates With Other Countries When you compare U.S. corporate tax rates to those in other wealthy OECD countries, you’ll find some notable differences. Whereas the U.S. has a federal statutory tax rate of 21 percent, many OECD countries have average rates around 13 percent, which can greatly affect overall business costs. Moreover, comprehending the impact of state and local taxes, in addition to the distinction between effective and statutory rates, is essential for grasping the full picture of corporate taxation in the U.S. U.S. vs. OECD Rates In comparing U.S. corporate tax rates with those of other OECD countries, it’s important to recognize that the U.S. federal statutory rate stands at 21 percent, which aligns closely with the average rates of 13 wealthy OECD nations. Nevertheless, the effective tax rate for U.S. firms earning over $100 million is around 16.0 percent, illustrating a disparity between statutory and actual tax burdens. Here’s a quick comparison of statutory rates: Country Statutory Tax Rate United States 21% Germany 30% France 26.5% Japan 30.62% Despite the U.S. rate being competitive, corporate tax revenues account for only 1.3 percent of GDP, lower than many peers. State and Local Taxes Grasping the impact of state and local taxes on the overall corporate tax burden is vital for businesses operating in the United States. During the federal statutory corporate tax rate is set at 21 percent, adding state and local taxes can greatly increase the total tax burden. The average top state rate stands around 6.5 percent, pushing the effective tax rate higher for many corporations. In comparison, countries like Ireland attract multinational corporations with a much lower corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent. As a result, U.S. corporate tax revenues, which were only 1.3 percent of GDP in 2022, reflect a decline relative to similarly wealthy countries, emphasizing the importance of considering state and local taxes in overall tax strategy. Effective vs. Statutory Rates Even though the statutory corporate tax rate in the U.S. is set at 21%, comprehending the effective tax rate reveals a more nuanced picture. For large firms, the average effective tax rate was 16% in 2022, showing significant differences because of deductions and credits. In comparison, countries like Ireland and Hungary have lower rates at 12.5% and 9%, respectively. Meanwhile, the average effective rate across OECD countries was about 23.5% in 2021. This data highlights that U.S. corporate taxes are relatively low among developed nations. Country Statutory Rate U.S. 21% Ireland 12.5% Hungary 9% OECD Avg. 23.5% Large U.S. Firms 16% Impact of Pass-Through Entities on Corporate Tax Revenues As the popularity of pass-through entities, like S corporations and partnerships, grows, the scope of corporate tax revenues is undergoing significant changes. Today, about 70% of business income in the U.S. is reported by these entities, which means more income is taxed at individual rates instead of the corporate tax rate. This shift has led to a substantial reduction in overall corporate tax revenues, as pass-through entities completely avoid the corporate income tax. For instance, in 2022, firms earning over $100 million had an average effective tax rate of just 16.0%, well below the statutory corporate tax rate of 21%. This trend highlights the increasing influence of pass-through entities on the framework of corporate taxation, warranting careful consideration. State and Local Corporate Tax Rates Corporate tax rates at the state and local levels play a significant role in shaping business environments across the United States. The average top state corporate income tax rate is 6.5%, with New Jersey at 11.5% and North Carolina at a low 2.25%. States like South Dakota and Wyoming attract businesses by not levying any corporate income tax. Here’s a summary of some notable state corporate tax rates: State Corporate Tax Rate New Jersey 11.5% Nebraska 5.2% Louisiana 5.5% North Carolina 2.25% South Dakota No Tax Twelve states, including Arizona and Arkansas, as well maintain rates at or below 5%, impacting profitability for businesses. Policy Options for Reforming Corporate Taxation To effectively address the challenges faced by the current corporate tax system, lawmakers are considering a range of policy options aimed at reforming corporate taxation. One approach involves broadening the tax base and eliminating certain tax expenditures that disproportionately benefit a few corporations. Adjusting the corporate tax rate could improve fairness and efficiency, ensuring that all companies contribute a fair share to federal revenues. Lawmakers are additionally examining the implementation of a minimum tax on large corporations, targeting those with substantial profits that currently pay low taxes. Implications of Corporate Tax Rates on Business Decisions Comprehending how corporate tax rates affect your business decisions is essential for effective financial management. With the current federal rate at 21 percent and an average effective rate of 16.0 percent for large firms, you might need to implement tax liability management strategies to optimize profitability. Furthermore, fluctuations in these rates can influence your choices regarding investment, growth opportunities, and whether to reinvest profits or distribute dividends. Tax Liability Management Strategies As the federal corporate tax rate in the U.S. stands at 21%, businesses must navigate a complex environment of tax liability management strategies to optimize their financial performance. In order to minimize liabilities, corporations often employ tax planning techniques, utilizing deductions and credits that can lead to effective rates as low as 16.0% for firms earning over $100 million in 2022. Furthermore, with the rise of pass-through entities, companies need to evaluate their business structures carefully to achieve better tax outcomes. Changes in tax legislation, such as the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (CAMT) at 15%, further require businesses to adapt their strategies. Investment and Growth Decisions The implications of corporate tax rates on investment and growth decisions are significant, as they directly influence how businesses allocate their resources. With the federal corporate tax rate currently at 21 percent, companies often find themselves with higher after-tax profits compared to the historical average of 31.99 percent. This lower rate may encourage reinvestment in expansion or research and development. Furthermore, firms earning over $100 million faced an effective tax rate of about 16.0 percent in 2022, which can drive mergers and acquisitions as businesses aim to optimize tax liabilities. In addition, the rise of pass-through entities has shifted more income to individual tax rates, prompting companies to reconsider their strategic planning to improve overall profitability and growth potential. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Average Corporate Tax Rate? The average corporate tax rate in the U.S. is currently 21 percent, effective until at least December 2025. Nevertheless, large corporations often pay a lower effective rate, around 16 percent, as a result of various deductions and credits in the tax code. Historically, rates have fluctuated markedly, peaking at 52.80 percent in 1968. Today, corporate tax revenues account for about 1.3 percent of GDP, reflecting a long-term decline in tax contributions relative to the economy. Why Is the Corporate Tax Rate 21%? The corporate tax rate is 21% primarily because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted in December 2017. This law aimed to boost U.S. business competitiveness globally by lowering the previous rate of 35%. The 21% rate aligns more closely with those of other developed nations, making it easier for U.S. corporations to operate effectively in the international market. Moreover, various deductions and credits can influence the effective tax rate for companies. Why Is My Blended Tax Rate 37%? Your blended tax rate is 37% since it combines the corporate tax rate of 21% with other taxes you may owe, such as personal income taxes and state or local taxes. If your business is structured as a pass-through entity, your profits get taxed at individual rates, potentially reaching the highest personal tax rate of 37%. Furthermore, if applicable, the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax adds a minimum tax burden of 15% on adjusted income. Are C Corps Taxed at 21%? Yes, C Corporations are typically taxed at a federal statutory rate of 21% on their net income. This rate was established by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 and is effective until at least December 2025. On the other hand, large corporations with net incomes exceeding $100 million may experience an effective tax rate of about 16% because of deductions and credits. Furthermore, certain corporations might face a Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax starting in 2023. Conclusion In conclusion, grasping corporate tax rates is vital for businesses and policymakers alike. The current U.S. statutory rate of 21 percent contrasts with an effective rate of 16 percent for large firms, reflecting complex tax strategies and the impact of pass-through entities. Historical trends show significant declines in tax rates over the last century. As debates on reform continue, the implications of these rates on business decisions and revenue generation remain critical for economic planning and growth. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Average Tax Rate for Corporations?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Google said it has “resolved” an issue with logging data within Google Search Console reporting. The logging issue happened between May 13, 2025 through April 27, 2026, about 50 weeks. The resolution did not fix the past data, but it did fix the issue going forward. What Google said. Here is what Google posted: “A logging error prevented Search Console from accurately reporting impressions from May 13, 2025 until April 27, 2026. This issue has been resolved. As a result, you may notice a decrease in impressions in the Search Console Performance report. Only impressions and related metrics – CTR and average position – were affected; clicks were not affected by the error, and this issue affected data logging only.” What was fixed. Just to be clear, Google has not fixed the data from May 13, 2025 through April 27, 2026 but just fixed the data going forward. So keep this in mind when reviewing the data in that date range. John Mueller from Google confirmed on Bluesky that this is only fixed going forward and the old data will not be fixed. Why we care. When reviewing your Search Console data, please note that for about 50 weeks, almost a year, the reports may be off and you may see a decrease in impressions, and thus click-through rate and average position data are also impacted. View the full article

A reader writes: I work in higher education, in an area that is particularly under political fire. Due to anti-DEIA legislation, there have been people who have been targeted and fired due to anti-diversity advocacy. Some of the incidents have involved video that had been taken clandestinely and then edited for maximum damage. This has led to people losing their jobs and created a space of paranoia. I work in an environment that requires collaboration and collegiality in order to complete work. During a casual meeting with a friendly colleague, they mentioned that another colleague showed them a piece of tech that they were now carrying that allowed them to record the people around them without their knowledge. Think Meta glasses but actually more discreet (like an AI transcribing device you can carry in your pocket). This information was *kind of* given in confidence, as the person who told me was the only one would know that our colleague was walking around with it. I hope to circle back to have a deeper conversation about what could be shared once I get your advice. I walked away from that conversation kind of freaked out. My profession has specific norms around privacy that are definitely in contrast to this technology and our front-facing policies reflect those norms. But our policy norms are not the same as the larger workplace and there are definitely a small but loud minority of people who would try to argue for the use of the tech. Regardless, I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of this colleague wandering from meeting to meeting, recording coworkers without their knowledge. The space I work is intensely hierarchical and while I’m not at the bottom of the hierarchy, I don’t actually interact with this person. So I technically don’t have a way to directly make him stop. But I do have strong networks in administration that I could involve. This also brings larger issues about recording colleagues, trust in the workplace and current standards of privacy. I guess I’m asking, am I overthinking/overreacting? And if I’m not, what should be the next step and what recommendations can I make to try to make sure that my colleagues are aware that we have a recorder in our midst? You are not overthinking or overreacting. Most workplaces have policies or practices that assume or require that people be informed before they’re recorded, and having someone surreptitiously recording every work conversation they’re involved in (and then having the data sent elsewhere to be processed and stored by AI) raises enormous security issues. As these devices get more common, employers are going to need to come up with more explicit policies to address their use. In fact, are you sure that your organization doesn’t have existing policies that would cover this? It’s possible that they do, even if those policies didn’t envision this specific technology. Either way, though, this is a very, very reasonable thing to raise. In fact, I’d argue that now that you know about it, you have an obligation to raise it (doubly so if you’re in any kind of leadership or senior role). Go to those strong administration networks you mentioned, explain what you’ve become aware of, share your concerns, and ask how to address it. The post my coworker carries a hidden recording device everywhere appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

The Pentagon said Friday that it has reached deals with seven tech companies to use their artificial intelligence in its classified computer networks, allowing the military to tap into AI-powered capabilities to help it fight wars. Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Reflection and SpaceX will provide their resources to help “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” the Defense Department said. Notably absent from the list is AI company Anthropic, after its public dispute and legal fight with the The President administration over the ethics and safety of AI usage in war. The Defense Department has been rapidly accelerating its use of AI in recent years. The technology can help the military reduce the time it takes to identify and strike targets on the battlefield, while aiding in the organization of weapons maintenance and supply lines, according to a report in March from the Brennan Center for Justice. But AI has already raised concerns that its use could invade Americans’ privacy or allow machines to choose targets on the battlefield. One of the companies contracting with the Pentagon said its agreement required human oversight in certain situations. Concerns about military use of AI arose during Israel’s war against militants in Gaza and Lebanon, with U.S. tech giants quietly empowering Israel to track targets. But the number of civilians killed also soared, fueling fears that these tools contributed to the deaths of innocent people. Questions about military use of AI still being worked out The Pentagon’s latest contracts come at a time of anxiety about the potential for over-reliance on the technology on the battlefield, said Helen Toner, interim executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “A lot of modern warfare is based on people sitting in command centers behind monitors, making complicated decisions about confusing, fast-moving situations,” said Toner, a former board member of OpenAI. “AI systems can be helpful in terms of summarizing information or looking at surveillance feeds and trying to identify potential targets.” But questions about the appropriate levels of human involvement, risk and training are still being worked out, she said. “How do you roll out these tools rapidly for them to be effective and provide strategic advantage?” Toner asked, “While also recognizing that you need to train the operators and make sure they know how to use them and don’t over trust them?” Such concerns were raised by Anthropic. The tech company said it wanted assurances in its contract that the military would not use its technology in fully autonomous weapons and the surveillance of Americans. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the company must allow for any uses the Pentagon deemed lawful. Anthropic sued after President Donald The President, a Republican, tried to stop all federal agencies from using the company’s chatbot Claude and Hegseth sought to label the company a supply chain risk, a designation meant to protect against sabotage of national security systems by foreign adversaries. OpenAI had announced a deal with the Pentagon in March to effectively replace Anthropic with ChatGPT in classified environments. OpenAI confirmed in a statement Friday that it was the same agreement it announced in early March. “As we said when we first announced our agreement several months ago, we believe the people defending the United States should have the best tools in the world,” the company said. One company’s agreement with the Pentagon included language that said there should be human oversight over any missions in which the AI systems act autonomously or semiautonomously, according to a person familiar with the agreement who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. The language also said the AI tools must be used in ways that are consistent with constitutional rights and civil liberties. Those resemble sticking points for Anthropic, though OpenAI has previously said that it secured similar assurances when it made its own deal with the Pentagon. The Pentagon’s point of view Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, told CNBC on Friday that it would have been irresponsible to rely on only one company, an acknowledgment of the friction with Anthropic. “And when we learned that one partner didn’t really want to work with us in the way we wanted to work with them, we went out and made sure that we had multiple different providers,” Michael said. Some of the companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, have long worked with the military in classified environments, and it was not immediately clear if the new agreements significantly altered their government partnerships. Others, such as chipmaker Nvidia and the startup Reflection, are new to such work. Both companies make open-source AI models, which Michael has described as a priority to provide an “American alternative” to China’s rapid development of AI systems in which some key components are publicly accessible for others to build upon. The Pentagon said Friday that military personnel are already using its AI capabilities through its official platform, GenAI.mil. “Warfighters, civilians and contractors are putting these capabilities to practical use right now, cutting many tasks from months to days,” the Pentagon said, adding that the military’s growing AI capabilities will “give warfighters the tools they need to act with confidence and safeguard the nation against any threat.” In many cases, the military uses artificial intelligence the same way civilians do: to take on rote tasks that would take humans hours or days to complete, said Toner, of Georgetown University. AI can be used to better predict when a helicopter needs maintenance or figure out how to efficiently move large amounts of troops and gear, she said. It can also help determine whether vehicles on a drone’s surveillance feeds are civilian or military. But people shouldn’t become overly dependent on it. “There’s a phenomenon called automation bias, where people can be prone to assume that machines work better than they actually do,” Toner said. O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Follow the AP’s coverage of artificial intelligence at https://apnews.com/hub/artificial-intelligence. —Ben Finley and Matt O’Brien, Associated Press View the full article

There’s a fundamental battle happening in search right now. On one side is topical authority — the darling phrase of every SEO consultant who needs to sell more content. On the other is brand authority — something marketers have talked about for decades, while much of search treated it as optional, vague, or something the brand team could handle after the sitemap was fixed. Now AI has walked into the room, kicked over the furniture, eaten half the traffic, and exposed the real problem. Search still matters. The global economy runs on people looking, comparing, buying, and solving problems through it. But the industry has a marketing problem. And it shows. Too many SEOs have lost the plot on why people choose, remember, trust, search for, recommend, and buy from brands. AI search is making that ignorance harder to hide. That’s why brand authority wins — but not in the way most SEO dashboards suggest. Topical authority was never supposed to mean content landfill Before we get to AI, we need to define what topical authority was meant to be. At its best, it’s simple. You publish useful work, create evidence, and share expertise. Others cite you, journalists mention you, communities discuss you, and customers search for you. Over time, your brand becomes associated with the topic. That’s authority. It’s also brand building. The problem is that much of the SEO industry hasn’t sold it that way. In practice, topical authority became a convenient commercial wrapper for content production. SEO retainers were built around three pillars: technical, content, and links. Technical SEO became more specialized. Links were outsourced, packaged, renamed, earned through digital PR, or bought in one way or another. Content, meanwhile, remained the dependable agency engine — easy to sell, scope, and report. Think 4-8 blog posts a month, a topical map, a content hub, a cluster, a pillar page, and another 2,000 words on something nobody asked to read. This wasn’t always wrong. In the pre-AI search world, content had real labor behind it. A decent article required research, writing, editing, optimization, internal linking, and promotion. That work had value. Good content could rank, attract links, build email lists, support commercial pages, and create some advertising effect through exposure. Back in the day, we built what were often called power pages — strategic assets designed to earn links, rank, get shared, and pass equity to commercial pages. They had a purpose. They weren’t created just because the spreadsheet had another empty cell. Topical authority changed that logic. It turned “let’s create something worth citing” into “let’s cover every possible keyword in the topic map and hope Google mistakes volume for expertise.” That was the original sin. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with Authority is what others say about you Authority isn’t created by what you publish on your own site. It’s created when you become a recognized source. Former Google engineer Jun Wu described this in terms of “mention information” — how search engines analyze natural language, identify topic phrases and sources, cluster related terms, and map associations between sources and topics. In plain English, they can recognize when certain brands, people, domains, and entities are repeatedly mentioned in relation to specific topics. Today, SEOs call that brand co-occurrence. The idea isn’t new. When authoritative sites, journalists, communities, reviewers, experts, and customers consistently mention your brand in relation to a topic, you become associated with it — not because you published hundreds of near-identical articles, but because the wider web treats you as relevant. Topical coverage is what you say about yourself. Authority is what the market says about you. AI search makes that difference hard to ignore. The smash burger test Suppose you want to become an authority in the smash burger industry. You probably don’t, but some topical authority consultant calling themselves a “semantic SEO” is likely pitching it to a fast food brand right now. An SEO version of topical authority would probably begin with a map: What is a smash burger? Best meat for smash burgers. History of smash burgers. Smash burger recipes. Smash burger toppings. Smash burger glossary. Best smash burger restaurants. How to make a smash burger at home. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. If you run a serious smash burger publication, restaurant group, food brand, or equipment business, some of it might be useful. But authority doesn’t come from publishing those pages. Real authority looks different. You create original data on the fastest-growing smash burger chains. You publish an index of the best-rated smash burger restaurants in the U.S. and U.K. You interview chefs, test meat blends, and produce videos people actually watch. You become a source journalists use when covering the category. Food creators reference your data. Restaurant owners subscribe to your newsletter. People search for your brand plus “smash burger report.” That’s topical authority. It’s also brand authority. The thin SEO version is publishing thousands of keyword pages and internally linking them until your CMS starts begging for death. The real version is becoming known. AI has broken the old content economics The old commercial defense of topical authority was traffic. Brands didn’t hire search marketers because they had a deep spiritual yearning to become encyclopedias. They hired them for organic revenue growth — to appear when customers searched, and to drive clicks, leads, and sales. Informational content was sold, in part, as advertising. Someone searches a question, lands on your article, and sees your brand. Maybe they join your email list, return later, or buy. That model was always more fragile than the industry admitted. Most users don’t sit around thinking about your B2B SaaS platform, your dog food brand, or your running shoe category page. Ask someone to name 10 toothpaste brands, and they’ll struggle, despite a lifetime of exposure. Ask them to recall the last ten TikToks they watched, and watch their face collapse. Advertising works through memory structures, distinctive assets, repeated exposure, and relevance. A single accidental visit to a generic “what is” article was never the brand-building miracle some content marketers claimed. Now AI has made the economics worse. For many informational searches, answers are increasingly synthesized before the click. From the user’s point of view, that’s often a better experience. My dad is in his 70s. He loves AI Overviews. He doesn’t want to click through three ad-infested recipe pages, dodge newsletter popups, reject cookies, scroll past a life story, and finally find how long to boil an egg. He wants the answer. Users aren’t mourning your lost organic session. They’re getting on with their lives. That’s the uncomfortable truth. If the click disappears, much of the supposed advertising effect of informational content disappears with it — no logo exposure, no distinctive assets, no remarketing pixel, no email capture, and no carefully designed journey. Just your content absorbed into a synthesized answer, and maybe a small source link on the side. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. AI citations aren’t the same as human citations This brings us to another emerging industry obsession: AI citations. The small source boxes in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and other AI search experiences are being treated as the new holy metric. Agencies, tools, and consultants are already building around it. The SEO industry loves a single metric — domain authority, traffic, keyword positions, share of voice, and now AI visibility. The problem is that an AI citation isn’t the same as a human citation. An AI citation is often a helpful link — a reference, a retrieval artifact. It’s directionally useful. It can show what sources a system uses to support an answer, and whether your content is accessible, relevant, and being surfaced in certain contexts. But it’s not the same as: A journalist choosing to cite your research. A customer recommending you in a forum. A creator reviewing your product. A trade publication naming your brand as an expert source. Human citations are evidence of market recognition. AI citations are evidence of machine retrieval. Don’t confuse the two. The goal isn’t to be scraped. It’s to be recommended. Brand search is the cleaner signal If you want a better proxy for whether your authority is growing, look at brand search. People search for brands they know, are considering, have bought from, or were recommended. Brand search isn’t perfect, but it’s much closer to commercial reality than counting how often a chatbot footnotes your blog post. That’s why share of search matters. It gives you a directional view of market demand and mental availability. If more people are searching for your brand relative to competitors, something is happening. Your advertising, PR, product, reviews, word of mouth, content, partnerships, social presence, and customer experience are creating demand. This is where the “but this is just SEO” crowd starts clearing its throat. It’s not “just SEO.” Or rather, it’s only SEO if you define it so broadly that it includes every activity that might influence a search result. That’s strategic ambiguity. It lets everyone claim they were doing the future all along. Most SEO retainers weren’t building brand fame. They were producing content, fixing technical issues, buying or earning links, and reporting rankings. Sometimes it worked — sometimes very well. But the average topical authority strategy wasn’t a sophisticated brand visibility program. Traditional SEO still matters None of this means you abandon traditional SEO. Buyer-intent rankings, category pages, product pages, local pages, technical SEO, internal linking, structured data, reviews, and crawlability matter. Search still works as a shelf. Many brands are discovered for the first time in supermarkets. The same is true in Google. If someone searches “emergency locksmith near me,” “best trail running shoes,” or “meeting intelligence software,” you want to appear. Being found still matters, but it’s not the same as being recommended. Traditional SEO helps you get found, while brand authority drives recommendation. AI search shifts the balance toward the latter, synthesizing options, reducing uncertainty, and often naming brands, products, and solutions directly. The new job is meaningful visibility Semrush accidentally said the quiet part out loud with its April Fools’ “Brand Visibility Expert” stunt, where employees changed their titles on LinkedIn. It was a joke, but not entirely. The company later described AI visibility tools that track brand visibility, mentions, prompts, perception, and competitor presence in AI search. That’s where the market is going. The future of search marketing isn’t just search engine optimization. It’s brand visibility across the network. That means increasing meaningful visibility in the places where humans and AI systems encounter information: Search engines. AI answers. Review sites. Communities. YouTube. Reddit. Trade media. News sites. Podcasts. Influencers. Comparison pages. Customer reviews. Social platforms. Partner ecosystems. Your own site. The web is now the surface, and your website is just one part of it. This is the shift many SEOs don’t want to face. Many are used to optimizing owned pages for search engines. The next era is about optimizing a brand’s presence across the web. That requires different work. Start with positioning If you want to build brand authority in AI, start with positioning. Who are you for? What problem do you solve? How do you solve it better? What should the market associate with you? What proof supports that claim? These aren’t fluffy brand questions. They’re search questions now. A locksmith isn’t only an emergency locksmith. They may install commercial locks, repair window locks, replace garage locks, secure doors, and provide security advice. A running shoe retailer may want to be known for trail running expertise, fast delivery, wide range, gait analysis, competitive pricing, or specialist advice. A SaaS platform may want to be known for extracting meeting intelligence that helps sales teams improve conversion. These are performance attributes — the reasons people choose you. Your search strategy should reinforce them. If your pet food brand specializes in sensitive stomachs, you need to be visible around dog dietary problems — not just on your blog, but in vet commentary, buyer guides, reviews, creator content, journalist coverage, customer stories, comparison pages, and data studies. These are the places where humans and AI systems learn what’s credible. That’s brand authority. Create things worth being cited by humans The rule for AI-era content is simple. Every piece of content should have real-world marketing value at publish. If one person encounters it, they should understand your brand better, feel more positively about it, remember something useful, or be more likely to trust you. If content only makes sense as an SEO asset after it ranks, it’s probably weak. This means you stop creating “dead” content. Instead: Create original research. Publish category data. Build useful tools. Share expert commentary. Produce strong product comparisons. Release reports journalists can cite. Create opinionated guides. Review products properly. Explain problems better than competitors. Make videos people want to watch. Turn internal data into public insight. Build assets that earn links and mentions. Do fewer things. Make them better. Promote them harder. Brands have limited budgets — smaller ones have even less room for waste. Spending thousands on a content library that repeats known information may be less effective than using the same budget to create one excellent data study, seed it with journalists, get creators talking, earn reviews, improve product pages, and run ads that make people search for your brand. Ask yourself, “What use of this budget is most likely to increase brand search, links, mentions, reviews, and recommendations?” Fitness times visibility equals success A useful idea from network science applies here: success is driven by fitness multiplied by visibility. Fitness is your ability to outperform alternatives — product, service, price, expertise, speed, range, design, convenience, proof, reviews, and customer experience. Visibility is how often and how meaningfully the market encounters those signals. Fitness without visibility is a brilliant brand nobody knows. Visibility without fitness is hype — and it usually collapses. That’s how preferential attachment starts. Brands that are talked about get talked about more. Brands that are searched get searched more. Brands that earn links earn more links. Brands that become default sources are cited more often. Brands that sell more get more reviews, more mentions, more data, and more presence. AI accelerates this dynamic, consuming the web faster than humans and reinforcing those signals at scale. If your brand has dense, consistent, and credible associations with the problems you solve, you reduce uncertainty that you’re a good recommendation. See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with What actually wins in AI search Brand authority wins in AI — because real topical authority was always brand authority. The version of topical authority that deserves to survive is the one where a brand becomes a genuine source in its category — creating useful information, earning mentions, building demand, getting searched, getting cited, and becoming associated with the problems it solves. The version that deserves to die is the one where a brand publishes endless keyword-targeted sludge and calls the result authority. AI hasn’t killed SEO. It’s killed the illusion that mediocrity deserves traffic. The search marketers who win next won’t be the ones who publish the most. They’ll be the ones who make brands more meaningfully visible across the internet. They’ll understand positioning, PR, content, technical SEO, reviews, creators, category demand, links, mentions, and brand search as one connected system. The goal isn’t to optimize for search engines, but for the network they use to understand the world. Build the brand. Make it visible. Make it worth recommending. Everything else is just content with delusions of grandeur. View the full article

Your boss can make or break your job experience: a good boss, smooth sailing ahead. A bad boss? Misery. According to a new workplace study, most employees are dealing with the latter. The research comes from Harris Poll’s Thought Leadership Practice who just conducted its Toxic Boss survey, which included online responses from 1,334 employed U.S. adults. It defined a toxic boss as someone who “exhibits harmful workplace behaviors, including unfair preferential treatment, lack of recognition, blame-shifting, unnecessary micromanagement, unreasonable expectations, being unapproachable, taking credit for others’ ideas, acting unprofessionally, or discriminating against employees based on personal characteristics.” A staggering six out of 10 workers said they currently have a toxic boss. Meanwhile, 70% say they’ve had a toxic boss at some point in their career. This rises to 75% for LGBTQIA+ workers. The impact is significant. Nearly half (47%) say their boss’s bad behavior is stressing them out, burning them out, or causing their mental health to slide downhill. Meanwhile, one-third say bad bosses have caused them to lose money, either because their behavior caused them to miss out on financial rewards or stalled their chances at a promotion. Most workers cope by working harder. The majority of workers (66%) say they’ve responded to toxic bosses by trying to meet their demands — working on weekends and on days off. Two-thirds of workers also say they’ve changed jobs because of a toxic job. But either way, workers are seeking mental health care to cope with how they feel about the situation. More than half (53%) have gone to therapy over their toxic boss. And while some workers say they avoid reporting their bosses’ behavior at all costs to avoid deepening the conflict, many are pushing back. More than half (55%) say they’ve taken at least one action to push back against their boss’s harmful behavior. Interestingly, it’s Gen Z who is stepping up the most: 73% of workers have pushed back against a toxic boss. Largely, workers say bad bosses are a result of external pressures: 71% blamed current economic conditions for high stress around the office. The AI race is playing an important role in driving toxic boss energy, too: 44% of workers said that their company invests more in AI than things like providing one-on-one coaching for people managers, and training the next generation of leaders within the company. “We’re in the largest technology investment cycle in a generation, and the human side of work is being left behind,” says Libby Rodney, Chief Strategy Officer at The Harris Poll. “Toxic leadership isn’t a character flaw. It’s an investment failure. These are today’s managers who were never trained or held to a standard, and now we’re asking them to lead through a transformation they weren’t equipped for before AI even arrived.” For the majority of employees, the solution is clear. It’s not less of an emphasis on AI, or even better pay: it’s more support. Sixty-four percent of workers said better leadership training is the best way to reduce toxic behavior and build healthier workplaces. View the full article

The AI chatbots are coming for your smart home. Both Alexa+ and Gemini for Home are now rolling out to users who've opted in to the upgrades, replacing standard Alexa and Google Assistant, respectively. Once you get access, they'll do everything we've become familiar with from these next-gen AI assistants—natural language conversations, complex queries and responses, various hallucinations—while retaining all the previous smart-home functionality, whether that's turning off lights or checking in on video doorbells. I got access to these two upgrades within the space of a week, giving me the opportunity to test them against each other. With an Amazon Echo Show, a Google Nest Hub, and a selection of Philips Hue smart lights, I got to work. Upgrading to Alexa+ and Gemini for HomeUpgrades to both Alexa+ and Gemini for Home appear in the relevant apps on your phone. You'll be prompted to set up the new AI assistant, then taken through a few basic configuration steps (like choosing a voice for the AI). With that done, it's a case of simply saying "hey Alexa" or "hey Google" to the app on your phone or one of the smart devices you've got, and talking. Alexa+ does have one advantage in terms of its web app: If you use it via a browser, you get a smart home controls section you can switch to. Gemini on the web won't understand or implement any smart-home-related commands you give it, though rather confusingly it does sync chats you've had on your phone app, which will include these commands if you look back at them. The Alexa app updated with Alexa+ Credit: Lifehacker Both these AI apps only offer the basics for free when it comes to smart home controls (switching things on and off). With Alexa+, if you want the full conversational AI experience, it's going to cost you $19.99 per month—though it's also available as part of Amazon Prime, which is $14.99 a month. Note that this is separate from any Ring subscriptions you need to archive your video recordings. With Gemini for Home, the conversational AI is paywalled, as is the video recording history. You can opt to pay $10 or $20 a month, depending on how much video history you want (these plans replace the old Nest Aware ones). The higher tier also gets you AI-powered event descriptions and summaries for what's happening in any recorded video clips ("a delivery driver arrived at 1pm" and so on), and if you already pay Google $19.99 or more a month for one of the other Gemini AI plans, you get Gemini for Home included. How Alexa+ and Gemini for Home stack up against each other With the AIs up and running, I asked about which days I'd need an umbrella. While both assistants accurately understood the question and told me the weather forecast for the week, I preferred Gemini's answer: It was more comprehensive, and actually answered the question about the umbrella for each day (Alexa+ just gave me the chance of rain each day, and left me to make my own mind up about an umbrella, though the graphics were nicer). The Google Home app updated with Gemini. Credit: Lifehacker I requested some tips on bathroom cleaning, and both Alexa+ and Gemini for Home gave me answers that were informed and free from errors (as far as I could tell). They both accurately summarized several movies for me without a hitch, too, though Alexa+ was more cautious when it came to spoilers. These are the type of questions and prompts you can put through Alexa+ and Gemini—but it's the smart home integration I was most interested in looking at. When you update to Alexa+ or Gemini for Home, all of your existing devices with smart assistant access get the upgrade too. How Alexa+ and Google for Home integrate with smart home devicesIt's in controlling your smart home devices where things get trickier for Alexa+ and Gemini for Home, because they first have to recognize that you're providing a simple command—and then they must carry it out, rather than launching into a long answer about the features of smart lights or the best affordable smart cameras for families. I was expecting a few mistakes and bugs here, but was pleasantly surprised by both AIs: I was able to easily change my smart-light settings with my voice, including their color and their brightness, as well as whether or not they were switched on. Setting a smart light routine with Alexa+ Credit: Lifehacker Scheduled actions worked well, too: I got Gemini for Home to turn on my smart lights at a certain time, and told Alexa+ to turn them back off at a later time, and my instructions were followed exactly. You can set up these routines to repeat across certain time periods too, and they get saved in the app if you need to make edits. If you've got an Amazon or Google smart display, you can set up widgets for your smart home devices, and control them with a few taps. Both my Echo Show and my Nest Hub let me control light status, color, and brightness from the screen, and both worked flawlessly with barely any lag at all. I also tested reminders and timers—two other features you're likely to want to access through your smart speakers or smart displays. Again, both Alexa+ and Gemini for Home did what they were told, correctly recognizing a direct command rather than a more complex AI prompt, and carrying out the instructions. Setting a smart light routine with Gemini for Home. Credit: Lifehacker With no smart home cameras or doorbells installed, I couldn't test out the video features offered by these AIs. Anecdotal evidence suggests they can be a bit hit-or-miss when identifying what's going on in a clip and summarizing it for you—so you shouldn't always expect them to be perfectly accurate. In general, I found Alexa+ and Gemini for Home to be reliable, smart, and useful. View the full article

Why do good companies stumble? I’m talking about the organizations that were once on top. The ones that seemed to lead their category. Today, we’d call them legacy brands or some euphemism that acknowledges the significance they once had and their staying power to stick around. However, somehow or another, they lost the plot along the way, and if only they had fixed this, changed that, or done this one thing, they would have continued winning. It’s a “If/then” proposition straight out of an MBA case study. A clear villain with an easy fix. As satisfying as that framing might be, it’s almost always never that simple. Instead, it’s typically a litany of factors at play that undermine an organization’s intentions and, ultimately, their outcomes and subsequent standing. And these factors are mainstay characters of change. So, the real question isn’t, “Why do good companies stumble,” but why do companies stumble navigating change? So, we invited Nick Tran on this week’s episode of the FROM THE CULTURE podcast to talk about change—how organizations endure it, maneuver around it, and occasionally turn it into something useful. Tran is the kind of marketer CMOs name when asked what CMOs they admire. That’s not surprising considering the brands he’s led (i.e., Taco Bell, Samsung, Hulu, and TikTok) and the changes he’s helped them navigate. Every one of those companies, he’ll cheerfully admit, was either a dumpster fire when he arrived or about to become one. Now, as President and CMO of First Round Collective, he no longer thinks the pattern is a coincidence; he thinks it’s a calling, which makes him the perfect person to talk to if we are to interrogate navigating change. What Tran said early in our conversation, almost as a throwaway, is the line I haven’t been able to forget. Most companies have good instincts. The leaders have experience that enables them to make good choices. Their understanding of who they are and who they serve was, at one point, at least, hard-won and clear. The reason they end up in trouble is rarely because their instincts disappeared but typically because the noise grew too loud and drowned out their instincts. The noise is familiar. Board demands. Shareholder pressure that prioritizes the next twelve weeks instead of the next twelve years. Executives incentivized to prioritize their career over the sustainability of their stakeholders. The cacophony of these inputs’ cumulative effect doesn’t destroy a leader’s good instincts; it just makes them increasingly less audible and harder to flow. This is where our conversation with Tran throws its hardest punch, and it’s the move I’d recommend any leader navigating change steal immediately. You have to remove self. Death to ego. You aren’t running the company; you’re a steward of it. It’s the spine of what Robert Greenleaf called servant leadership, and it remains countercultural for the same reason it always has: the C-suite is shaped by incentives that reward the opposite posture. For instance, by any measure, Tran has won the awards game. However, the stat that matters most on his scorecard is how many people who once worked for him have gone on to become CMOs themselves—at the time of our conversation, the number was seven. Ego counts what a leader led. Stewards count who they grew. One focuses on self and others focuses on others, which inherently quiets the noise and makes a leader’s instinct more pronounced. In a sound recording, like a song, for example, its steward is thinking about the listener, the performances of the musicians and vocalists who contributed to it, as well as the broader industry murmurs that will evaluate the song’s performance in the market. The steward (i.e., the music producers, the Quincy Jones’ of the world) is balancing all the sounds of all the stakeholders to create the best song possible. Their focus is the song, not themselves. The same goes with organizational stewards; they are custodians of the music, bringing out the most important parts and softening the sounds that are a part of the composition but need only be atmospheric and less pronounced. It’s not about them; it’s about the organization. Boards, shareholders, and quarter-watchers aren’t going anywhere. That’s just the nature of the beast. It’s the room noise that will always be present in a sound recording, but not its focus. And the song’s steward knows this, just as much as they know to add more volume to the vocals and less to the cowbell. The same thing goes with organizational stewards; they must balance all the sounds to ensure that their instincts are pronounced. Death to ego, it turns out, is mostly about clearing space. For the instinct to come back. For the people you lead to outgrow you. For the company to be handed off to whoever’s next in better shape than you found it. Most companies already know what to do. The leader’s job is to get out of the way long enough to let them remember. Check out our full conversation with Nick Tran on the latest episode of FROM THE CULTURE here. View the full article

With the right approach, webinars can evolve from awareness tools into consistent drivers of pipeline and revenue. The post How To Run A Webinar Program That Actually Drives ROI appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

GameStop Corporation has proposed to buy the online auction giant eBay Inc. for $125 per share, or a total of roughly $56 billion. “The offer represents a 46% premium to eBay’s unaffected closing price on February 4, 2026, the day GameStop started accumulating its position in eBay,” reads a press release from the video game retailer. “GameStop has built a 5% economic stake in eBay through derivatives and beneficial ownership of common stock.” Here’s what you need to know about the unusual move: What did GameStop propose? The deal, as proposed, would comprise 50% cash and 50% GameStop stock. Ryan Cohen, who took over as GameStop’s CEO in 2021, would remain as CEO of the combined company, should the bid be accepted. How has eBay responded? On Monday morning, eBay confirmed receipt of the offer, saying “it had no discussions with or outreach from GameStop prior to receiving the proposal.” It further said that its board of directors, “in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, will carefully review and consider the unsolicited proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interests of the company and all eBay shareholders.” This is not a common thing, right? What makes the news so surprising is that it was unsolicited, for one. And second, eBay is a much larger company than GameStop. As of the end of last week, GameStop’s market capitalization was $11.9 billion, while eBay’s was more than $46 billion. However, that isn’t slowing down Cohen, who even sent a letter to the chair of eBay on Sunday, explaining that he wanted to cut costs, combine GameStop’s physical stores with eBay’s large online presence, and create a company that could go toe-to-toe with Amazon—something that Cohen told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. For those who could read the tea leaves, Cohen did hint at GameStop taking a big swing back in January. In an interview with CNBC, he mentioned that GameStop wanted to try to acquire a much bigger public company that could drastically increase GameStop’s value. That has now come to fruition with his bid for eBay. Cohen, too, is putting the new proposed company’s success on his shoulders. “Following close, I will serve as Chief Executive Officer of the combined company,” he wrote in his letter to eBay Chair Paul Pressler. “I will receive no salary, no cash bonuses, and no golden parachute – I will be compensated solely based on the performance of the combined company.” How have the companies’ stock reacted? As markets opened on Monday, shares of eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) were up about 6.58% to $110.92. Notably, that’s not quite as high as the $125 that GameStop says it’s offering. Shares of GameStop (NYSE: GME), which famously led the meme stock craze of 2021, were down 4.26% on Monday. However, the stock is up about 23% year to date. View the full article

We are highly confident that this could end up a car crashView the full article

If you’re looking to maximize your shopping benefits, consider joining free loyalty programs that cater to your spending habits. Programs like My Best Buy Rewards and Starbucks Rewards offer points and stars for purchases, whereas Target Circle and Sephora Beauty Insider provide personalized discounts and exclusive rewards. Furthermore, Mywalgreens improves your health-related shopping with cash back. Each program is designed to boost your savings and improve your experience, making it worthwhile to explore these options. Key Takeaways My Best Buy Rewards offers free shipping, points on purchases, and exclusive discounts for electronics shoppers. Starbucks Rewards allows members to earn stars on purchases, redeemable for free items, with personalized offers and mobile ordering. Target Circle provides 1% back on purchases, exclusive discounts, and birthday rewards, enhancing the shopping experience at Target. Sephora Beauty Insider offers tiered benefits, exclusive rewards, and personalized offers, making it ideal for beauty enthusiasts. Mywalgreens allows members to earn cash back on purchases, access personalized deals, and support health causes with their rewards. Best Buy My Best Buy Rewards If you frequently shop for electronics, the My Best Buy Rewards program could be an excellent fit for you. It’s a free loyalty program that offers several benefits for members. You’ll enjoy free standard shipping with no minimum purchase, making it convenient for shopping. Plus, you earn points on every purchase, which can be redeemed for discounts on future buys, enhancing your long-term savings. For those looking for more, My Best Buy Plus, at $49.99/year, provides perks like free 2-day shipping and exclusive member prices. If you’re tech-savvy, consider My Best Buy Total for $179.99/year, which includes protection plans like AppleCare+, 24/7 tech support, and a 20% discount on repairs. This program is available to residents in all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, making it one of the top free rewards programs for electronics enthusiasts. Starbucks Rewards Starbucks Rewards is a popular loyalty program that allows you to earn valuable rewards while enjoying your favorite coffee. For every dollar you spend, you earn 2 stars, and once you accumulate 150 stars, you can redeem them for a free drink or food item. The program also provides personalized offers, in addition to opportunities to participate in exclusive games and challenges, allowing you to earn even more rewards. With a mobile-first approach, you can save your favorite coffee orders and use mobile ordering for added convenience. Moreover, members enjoy free refills on brewed coffee and tea, which improves the overall value of the program. Currently, nearly 30 million members contribute to 53% of store spending through Starbucks Rewards, highlighting its significant impact on customer engagement and sales. Joining this program can maximize your coffee experience and rewards at Starbucks. Target Circle Target Circle is a free membership program aimed to improve your shopping experience at Target. As a member, you earn 1% back on every purchase, which you can redeem for discounts later. You’ll gain access to exclusive discounts and personalized offers customized to your shopping habits, making it easier to save on items you love. Moreover, Target Circle celebrates your birthday with special rewards, elevating your overall experience. You can likewise participate in community giving initiatives by voting on projects that matter to you, cultivating a sense of connection. To help you visualize the benefits, here’s a quick overview: Feature Description Benefits Cash Back Earn 1% back on purchases Redeem for discounts Personalized Offers Exclusive discounts based on habits Save on preferred items Birthday Rewards Special treats on your birthday Improved shopping experience Community Voting Influence local giving initiatives Connect with your community With the Target app, tracking your rewards and offers is simple and convenient. Sephora Beauty Insider As you explore the domain of beauty products, the Sephora Beauty Insider program offers a straightforward way to improve your shopping experience. By joining, you’ll earn one point for every dollar spent, and once you reach 500 points, you can redeem them for exclusive products and rewards. The program features three tiers: Insider, VIB, and Rouge, which require spending $0, $350, and $1,000, respectively. Each tier reveals increasing benefits, including special discounts during events. Members also enjoy personalized offers, birthday gifts, and access to exclusive events, enhancing their overall experience. Furthermore, Sephora frequently provides opportunities for bonus points and double points days, encouraging you to shop more often. With over 25 million active members, the program plays a significant role in nurturing customer loyalty and repeat purchases, making it a valuable option for beauty enthusiasts looking to maximize their shopping rewards. Mywalgreens When you join myWalgreens, you can take advantage of a free loyalty program intended to improve your shopping experience at Walgreens. As a member, you’ll earn 1% cash back on every purchase and 5% on Walgreens-branded products, making it easy to save during your shopping. The program tailors personalized deals and promotions based on your shopping habits, enhancing your overall experience. Additionally, myWalgreens celebrates your birthday with special rewards, encouraging more engagement throughout the year. You can track your points conveniently through the myWalgreens app or website, allowing you to redeem them for discounts on future purchases. Moreover, the program emphasizes community involvement by enabling members to donate their rewards to support health-related causes, promoting a sense of connection and purpose. Frequently Asked Questions What Company Has the Best Loyalty Program? Determining which company has the best loyalty program depends on your preferences and spending habits. Starbucks Rewards offers significant benefits, allowing you to earn stars for free drinks and food. Amazon Prime provides value with shipping and streaming perks. Sephora’s tiered system rewards beauty purchases, whereas Dunkin’ Rewards gives you points for coffee. Target Circle offers cash back and discounts. Evaluate these options based on what aligns best with your lifestyle and purchasing choices. What Is the World’s Most Generous Rewards Program? The world’s most generous rewards program often varies by individual preferences. Starbucks Rewards is popular, offering 2 stars per dollar spent, with 150 stars redeemable for a free drink. Amazon Prime improves loyalty through free shipping and exclusive deals. Delta SkyMiles provides miles that never expire, whereas Hilton Honors allows points for free nights. Sephora’s Beauty Insider Program features tiered rewards, offering points for purchases and exclusive access, boosting customer retention. What Are the Best Loyalty Programmes? When considering the best loyalty programs, you should evaluate options like Starbucks Rewards, where you earn stars for purchases, and Sephora Beauty Insider, which offers tiered rewards. Target Circle gives you 1% back with personalized deals, whereas Kohl’s Rewards provides 5% back and Kohl’s Cash for extra savings. Finally, myWalgreens offers cash back and customized promotions, enhancing your shopping experience through its app. Each program has unique benefits worth exploring. What Are the 3 R’s of Loyalty? The 3 R’s of loyalty are Reward, Recognition, and Retention. Reward involves offering tangible benefits, like points or discounts, to encourage repeat purchases. Recognition focuses on acknowledging loyal customers through personalized offers or tiered memberships, making them feel valued. Retention aims to keep customers engaged by providing a seamless experience and customized promotions. Effectively implementing these elements can lead to increased customer satisfaction and higher sales, as loyal customers tend to buy more. Conclusion Joining free loyalty programs like My Best Buy Rewards, Starbucks Rewards, Target Circle, Sephora Beauty Insider, and Mywalgreens can improve your shopping experience as you save money. Each program offers unique benefits customized to your preferences, whether you’re looking for discounts, points, or exclusive rewards. By signing up for these programs, you can maximize your shopping value and enjoy personalized offers. Consider enrolling in one or more of these programs to make the most of your purchases. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "5 Best Free Loyalty Programs You Should Join" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

From beyond the museum walls Monday, works of art will move and take shape as the glitterati of guests from Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman to Venus Williams will fashionably ascend the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s steps and exhibit their creative interpretations of this year’s dress code, “Fashion is art.” The question of whether fashion is art has long been topic of conversation for fashion insiders, and this first Monday in May the dress code is leaving nothing up for debate. The dress code for the starry fundraising event calls for guests to “express their relationship to fashion as an embodied art form.” Fashion has long drawn inspiration from works of art, leaving guests with no shortage of artistic references to show off. Embodying art But will guests pull from the fashion archives on Monday or wear custom artistic creations from fashion houses? Archival fashion looks have become a red carpet phenomenon with fashion savvy stars wanting to get their hands on some of the rarer pieces of fashion history. Designer Elsa Schiaparelli famously collaborated in 1937 with Spanish artist Salvador Dalí to design a white silk dress with a lobster printed on the front. Years later, Yves Saint Laurent would design shift dresses filled with Piet Mondrian’s blocks of color in 1965, and more recently, Marc Jacobs collaborated with artist Takashi Murakami in 2002 to add his designs to Louis Vuitton. Monday’s carpet is also chance for celebrities to deliver their own performance art. The late designer Alexander McQueen was heavily regarded by fashion insiders as an artist. He closed his Spring 1999 show with a piece of performance art when machines sprayed Shalom Harlow’s white dress with black and yellow spray paint as she posed on a rotating turntable. Past Gala dress codes have honored designers and pulled from literature. Last year, the art of tailoring was center stage with the dress code “Tailored for you.” The high-profile event raises money for the museum’s Costume Institute, and each year the dress code for the gala takes cues from the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition. On display this Spring, the “Costume Art” exhibit will “examine the centrality of the dressed body.” The relationship between fashion and art has not always been embraced. Art historian and author Nancy Hall-Duncan writes in her book, “Art X Fashion: Fashion Inspired by Art” that in the 19th century, art was perceived as classical and fashion was frivolous. When Yves Saint Laurent held the Met’s first fashion exhibit in 1983, the exhibit was met with heavy criticism. Since then, the museum has held countless fashion exhibits throughout the years with museums around the world following suit. The Louvre put on its first fashion exhibition “Louvre couture” last year. The dress code set by Wintour and the Met’s Costume Institute curator, Andrew Bolton, is the final seal of approval that fashion is art, Hall-Duncan told The Associated Press. “Isn’t that a giant step?” she said. “It will indeed change perceptions.” How to watch the Met Gala carpet and celebrity looks Didn’t snag one of the pricey tickets or a spot on the ultra-exclusive guestlist? The red carpet spectacle is available for all to watch online with the Vogue livestream. Ashley Graham, La La Anthony and Cara Delevingne will be hosting the livestream starting at 6 p.m. with Emma Chamberlain interviewing guests throughout the night. The Associated Press will have a livestream of celebrities leaving a pair of New York hotels on their way to the gala beginning at 4:30 p.m. on APNews.com and YouTube. It’s the first chance to see what attendees will be wearing before they hit the gala’s carpet. —Beatrice Dupuy, Associated Press View the full article

Germany’s SPRIND, the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, and Sweden’s Vinnova, the country’s innovation agency, are two bodies that traditionally haven’t worked hand in hand. But the challenges the world currently faces have brought the two public innovation agencies together to back teams from across Europe building systems that can defend airports, nuclear plants, and civilian sites from hostile drones. One team, led by Martin Saska, a robotics professor at Czech Technical University in Prague, is among those being backed by the agencies to develop anti-drone technology. Beyond supporting a single company, the partnership offers Europe a way to stand firm amid shifting alliances elsewhere. Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness made clear that the continent was falling behind in the speed and scale at which radical ideas reach the market. The SPRIND-Vinnova partnership, formalized last year, is a deliberate effort to change that. “We need to have a fundamentally different way of funding innovation if we want to see different results,” says Jano Costard, head of challenges at SPRIND. “If we as SPRIND would have just copied what everybody else did, then what would be our added value?” Both agencies are modeled on DARPA, the U.S. defense agency credited with creating and later popularizing the internet and GPS, but with the military framing stripped away. SPRIND, founded in 2019 and operational from 2020, was given unusual legal latitude in how it spends money, including a 2023 act of parliament in Germany that allowed it to take equity stakes in startups, something most German public bodies cannot do. Vinnova, more than 20 years older, has operated with a similar playbook for years. Sweden, with a population of just 10 million, produced more than 500 IPOs in the past decade, more than Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands combined. “Europe as a whole needs to invest more in radical breakthrough innovation, and we also need to figure out ways of really supporting the journey to scale,” says Darja Isaksson, director general of Vinnova. The aim, she adds, is to “make it easy for private sector VC to spot that and to crowd in.” The choice of drones for the agencies’ first joint initiative is no accident. Beyond the integral role drones are playing in Middle Eastern conflicts, repeated drone sightings over European airports in late 2025 have rattled governments. There is also growing anxiety about the role of Russian- and Chinese-made hardware in critical infrastructure, making anti-drone technology a key focus for European police forces and militaries. The challenge is that Europe’s drone sector remains highly fragmented. Costard argues that without coordinated demand across member states, no startup can build a viable business in the space. “If every police force that would like to buy drone interceptors posts different requirements, that’s a nightmare for any small startup,” he says. For founders like Saska, whose company EAGLE.ONE builds drones that hunt other drones, the agencies’ support has made a tangible difference. Winning a SPRIND challenge round in 2024, he says, “got a lot of leads, and this helped us really get into the German market.” Saska argues that Europe needs sovereign drone capability for deeper security reasons: police forces and some armies across the continent still rely on consumer drones from Chinese manufacturer DJI. Bringing together two countries’ innovation agencies helps pool expertise and accelerate the pace at which solutions can emerge. “Iteration speed is a superpower,” says Costard, borrowing a line from OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman. “If these young teams rely on the funding that we provide, the slower we are, the slower they are.” Success tends to breed success, and the model is beginning to spread. The Netherlands has announced a SPRIND-style agency of its own, and the European Innovation Council has been tasked with piloting challenge-driven funding. Sweden is also exploring an expanded version of what Vinnova already does, while the European Commission renegotiates its next research framework with Draghi’s recommendations on the table. “Our mission is to solve the grand challenges of our time,” says Costard. “They’re typically not unsolved because nobody has thought about them—it’s typically because they’re very hard to solve.” View the full article

This week, a meme-based generational civil war is breaking out on TikTok, and only one side knows it's even happening; a throwaway tweet from rapper Young Thug has me looking into why so many rappers put "ASAP" in front of their names, and we're going back in time to 2012, when prank videos ruled the internet. TikTok’s Le Snack Demon and why it signals a generational riftTikTok has been around since 2016; Instagram, since 2010. Both have lived long enough to see long-time users butting heads with newcomers, and generational battle lines are being drawn around a little AI cartoon character called Snack Demon. It started on (older-coded) Instagram, where this video from an AI slop account went viral: You don't have to be 17 years old to see that this meme is dumb and bad. It speaks to something most younger people don't care about: wanting to avoid eating snacks because you're on a diet. It is exactly the kind of meme someone's mom would post. This fact was not lost on TikTok, as illustrated by @nataliethebrownie in this video: So the stage was set for Snack Demon to operate on both a sincere level and an ironic one. TikTok moms and the mom-adjacent are taking the meme at face value and posting videos like these. The younger generation are responding with similar videos meant to mock how lame the original posts are. The ironic versions of Snack Demon videos tend to feature a different AI-generated main character—a gray Snack Demon—and often mention current meme-target Arby's, but the dance, annoying song, and cutesy-slop vibe remain the same. I especially love that they refer to it as "Le Snack Demon," an ironic dig at the way older generations of online people used to dunk on lame internet "rage comics" headed "le me." That's a double dose of irony! Ultimately, younger generations don't understand that they can't actually win this war. First, because the number of people who appreciate irony has never been huge and it seems to shrinking rapidly in 2026, and secondly, because it doesn't matter how cool you are when you're young. Everyone who lives long enough will be eventually be mocked online for posting their own version of Snack Demon. Why rappers are using “ASAP” in their namesRapper Young Thug recently tweeted that he was changing his name. His real first name is "Jeffery" and he doesn't want a connection to Epstein. I'm only writing about this because the tweet says "I'm changing my f**king name asap bro," and at first I thought he said he was changing his name to "ASAP Bro," joining A$AP Rocky, ASAP Lou, A$AP Ferg, ASAP Twelvyy, A$AP NAST, and about a hundred other rappers and producers who have chosen "ASAP" or "A$AP" as part of their stage name. Classically, “ASAP” means “as soon as possible,” and that's how Young Thug meant it in his tweet. As much as I’d like it to be, A$AP Rocky’s stage name is not “As Soon As Possible, Rocky.” "A$AP" or "ASAP" indicates an affiliation with the ASAP Mob, a New York hip-hop collective started by ASAP Yams, ASAP Bari, and ASAP Illz way back in 2006. As for what the letters actually stand for in terms of rap names, it depends on who you ask. Some say ASAP is short for “Always Strive And Prosper.” Some say it means, “Assassinating Snitches and Police.” If you work at NASA, ASAP means "Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel," and it's “Always Say a Prayer” if you’re religious, but I like A$AP Rocky’s preferred definition best: “Acronym Symbolizing Any Purpose.” Viral video of the week: yelling food ordersOver 50 million people have watched the video below, in which TikToker @pablopyee pretends to be hearing-impaired so they can yell their orders at the beleaguered worker behind the counter at a fast food place. There's more where that came from. This TikToker has a little cottage industry of prank-style videos in which he bellows at fast food workers, pronounces words incorrectly, aggressively compliments strangers, and otherwise causes mild mayhem. Yeah, it sucks to make people uncomfortable in public, especially if they're working, but most of his subjects seem like they're at least amused, and no one is getting hurt—unlike past generations of prank videos that were sometimes as simple as "walk up to a stranger and slap them across the face" or "drive a car while blindfolded." And I like that this TikToker is bucking the trend of his peers, whose generation-defining trait is being afraid to do anything (socialize, have a drink, take risks, have sex, make friends) for fear of appearing "cringe" on social media. And at least it isn't AI. He's out there being loud and embarrassing in the flesh. Educational brainrot videos take over TikTokIf the young person in your life is watching AI-generated slop videos on TikTok all day, don't assume that they're watching mindless content. Sure, most AI-made videos online richly deserve the "brainrot" name, but there's a growing, oxymoronic trend online of educational brainrot videos. The format seems to have begun with the Skeleton and Socrates videos I discussed a few weeks ago, and has since expanded beyond Greek history. Here are a few channels that are making (semi) worthwhile brainrot. MoggyBoi: This channel features videos explaining hygiene and grooming, with skeletons. Law by Skele: This channel uses skeletons to explain basic legal concepts. jessicaer45: There are no skeletons here. This channel is a weird combination of sea shanties and grotesque scientific and medical situations that answers questions like, "what would happen if you were trapped inside a giant oyseter?" These videos all seem wholly AI-generated, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the facts contained within them, but they seem to be at least aiming at truth, which beats most brainrot. View the full article

The other day, I was putting together my version of a Lumascape of answer engine optimization (AEO) tools — I’m kidding, my computer doesn’t have that kind of bandwidth. Instead of mapping every tool — which would be outdated in minutes — I’m focusing on the ones I actually use to grow clients’ AI search presence. This is a deliberately short list: four tools I rely on, plus three I’m testing before adding them to my team’s stack. 1. AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) Used thoughtfully, large language model (LLM) assistants are research and analysis tools in their own right. For AEO work specifically, they serve several distinct purposes: Competitive landscape research. Content gap analysis. Prompt testing. Entity and topical coverage audits. Structured content drafting. The key distinction from passive use is intentionality — using these tools with a defined AEO research methodology rather than ad hoc. Why they’re essential AEO requires a fundamental understanding of how AI systems process and represent information. The most direct way to develop that understanding is to work regularly and analytically within those systems. Querying AI assistants with the same prompts your target audience uses — and carefully analyzing what they return, what sources they cite, what entities they associate, and how they structure answers — gives you peerless ground-level intelligence. Competitive strengths Each platform has its own strengths worth noting: ChatGPT is widely used and offers broad general knowledge synthesis, making it useful for understanding how mainstream AI handles queries in your category. Claude tends toward more nuanced, caveated responses and is strong for analytical tasks. Perplexity is citation-heavy by design and particularly valuable for AEO research precisely because it surfaces its sources explicitly. You can see in real time which domains are being pulled and why. What you can’t do without them Firsthand research on your brand’s current AEO status, which includes: Manual prompt testing: See how your brand and content are being represented. Competitive research: Query AI systems with category-level questions to see which competitors appear and how they are framed. Topical gap analysis: Identify questions AI systems answer where your brand is absent. Structural content analysis: Understanding the answer formats (lists, definitions, comparisons, how-tos) that AI systems prefer for your query types. Caveats AI assistant outputs are non-deterministic and vary by platform, model version, session context, and even time of day. Manual prompt testing is qualitative and difficult to scale. These tools are best used to build intuition and generate hypotheses, which should then be validated with quantitative data from platforms like Profound. Also worth noting: querying AI systems for competitive research can quickly become a rabbit hole, so before you truly dig in, build a structured testing framework and stick to it. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with 2. Profound Profound is purpose-built AEO intelligence that monitors how AI platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, etc.) discover, surface, and cite your brand and content. It also tracks brand mention frequency and sentiment, competitors’ share of voice, and the specific prompts or query types that trigger your content to appear in AI-generated answers. Why it’s essential If you want to understand where your brand stands in the AI answer ecosystem, it’s currently the most direct way to get that data. It shifts the question from “where do we rank?” to “when AI answers a question in our category, are we in the answer?” Competitive strengths The cross-platform coverage is the tool’s most distinctive feature. Rather than measuring a single AI engine in isolation, it provides a comparative view across the major platforms simultaneously. The competitive benchmarking functionality is particularly useful: you can see both your own AI citation share and how it stacks up against named competitors. It’s the kind of context that transforms data into strategy. What you can’t do without it Some fundamental capabilities, like: Quantifying your brand’s presence in AI-generated answers at scale. Tracking citation share over time and across platforms. Identifying which content types and topics drive AI mentions — and which competitors are winning the queries you’re losing. It’s a pretty expensive tool. If you want to justify the expense to your C-suite, tell them, “This will show us exactly where we’re losing to {most hated competitor}.” Caveats The tool is evolving quickly, which it needs to do as the AEO landscape morphs in real time. The data it surfaces reflects AI outputs at the time the query is made. Outputs are inherently variable because AI systems don’t return the same answer to the same prompt every time. Treat metrics as directional signals and trend data rather than precise, static rankings. It also won’t tell you why you’re being cited or not. That’s on you and your team to analyze. 3. Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner Google Trends tracks the relative search interest for queries over time, across geographies, and in comparison to related terms. Google Keyword Planner provides search volume estimates and demand forecasting, originally designed for paid search planning but equally useful for organic and AEO strategy. Why they’re essential AEO strategy lives and dies by understanding demand signals. Before optimizing content to appear in AI answers, you need to know what questions people are actually asking, how that demand is trending, and whether the topic has enough volume to warrant investment. Google’s tools remain the most reliable source of this data at scale — and crucially, they reflect the same underlying search behavior that feeds into AI engine training data and query patterns. Competitive strengths Google Trends is uniquely powerful for directional trend analysis. It doesn’t give you absolute volume, but it gives you relative momentum — which is often more strategically valuable when you’re trying to anticipate where audience interest is heading rather than just where it has been. For AEO specifically, rising query trends can signal emerging answer opportunities for you to address before your competitors do. In my experience, Keyword Planner’s forecasting features are underused. They can help you prioritize content investment based on projected demand rather than historical data alone. What you can’t do without them Build a truly dynamic AEO strategy in which you: Understand whether demand for a topic is growing, stable, or declining before building content around it. Identify seasonal patterns that should shape content publishing calendars. Surface related queries and rising breakout terms that expand your AEO content coverage. Validate whether a topic has enough search demand to justify the content investment. Caveats As you probably noticed when I recommended those tools, neither reflects AI-native query behavior directly. They measure traditional search, not prompts submitted to ChatGPT or Perplexity. As information-seeking behavior shifts toward AI interfaces, these tools will increasingly undercount true demand. Use them as a strong proxy and directional guide, not as a complete picture. Worth noting: Keyword Planner also requires an active Google Ads account, and volume estimates in low-competition or niche categories can be imprecise. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 4. Google Search Console and Google Analytics Google Search Console (GSC) provides direct data on how your site performs in Google Search: which queries trigger impressions, click-through rates, average positions, and indexing status. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tracks on-site behavior — how users arrive, what they do, how long they stay, and where they exit — including referral traffic sources that reveal whether visitors are arriving from AI-adjacent platforms. Why they’re essential For AEO practitioners, these tools serve critical diagnostic functions. GSC tells you whether the content you’re optimizing for AI citation is also performing in traditional search, which matters because Google AI Overviews and traditional organic results draw from overlapping content pools. GA4’s referral traffic data is increasingly important for detecting direct traffic from AI platforms: as users click through citations in tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT’s browsing mode, that activity shows up as referral or direct traffic. That’s worth segmenting and monitoring, even if, given the scorching rise of zero-click activity, it paints a very incomplete picture of your AEO impact. Competitive strengths GSC’s query data is irreplaceable. No third-party tool has access to the same level of Google-sourced search performance data. The ability to see exactly which queries are driving impressions (even without clicks) is foundational for identifying content that has topical authority but may not be converting visibility into AI citations. GA4’s cross-channel attribution and audience analysis capabilities help you understand where AEO-driven traffic comes from and what that traffic does when it arrives — which is the commercial case for the discipline. What you can’t do without them Develop a true understanding of AEO business impact — and AEO blockers — by: Measuring whether your AEO content investments translate into actual traffic and engagement. Identifying content with high impression share but low CTR — a common signal of AI Overview cannibalization. Monitoring referral traffic from AI platforms as that ecosystem matures. Diagnosing indexing or crawlability issues that prevent AI systems from accessing your content. Caveats GSC data has well-documented limitations: it samples at scale, attribution can be murky, and data is typically available with a 48-72 hour lag. Critically, it only reflects Google. It tells you nothing about how you perform in Bing-powered AI search or standalone AI platforms. GA4 still has UX rough edges, so you’ll need to confirm that your event tracking and conversion configuration is solid before drawing strategic conclusions from the data. Rapid-fire roundup That shortlist leaves, oh, thousands of tools left to consider. I recommend putting these on your radar and testing them to gauge their value as the AEO ecosystem develops. 5. AI Trust Signals AI Trust Signals focuses on the credibility and trustworthiness signals that influence whether AI systems choose to cite a source. This is an emerging and underexplored dimension of AEO: it goes upstream from content relevance and helps brands understand whether an AI system “trusts” a domain enough to surface it as an authoritative reference. It’s worth monitoring as the understanding of AI citation mechanics matures. 6. Ahrefs Ahrefs is a mature SEO platform with deep backlink analysis, content gap tooling, site auditing, and keyword research capabilities. Its relevance to AEO is primarily indirect, but it’s significant: authority signals, including referring domain quality and topical authority depth, are widely believed to influence AI citation likelihood. Ahrefs is a benchmark tool for understanding and building that authority infrastructure. Its Content Explorer is also a practical tool for identifying high-performing content in your category that AI systems are likely to draw from. 7. Roadway AI Roadway AI positions itself as an AI-native platform with a focus on scaling growth marketing activities. Where it helps is building agents that can help attribute AEO signals into revenue, so you can better understand impact. As a newer entrant, it’s worth evaluating as part of a toolkit audit, especially if you’re looking for tooling built specifically for AEO use cases. The category is moving fast, and platforms like Roadway AI may gain significant mindshare within 12 months, which also means more competitors are coming soon. See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with The reality of AEO tools: Fast-moving and imperfect AEO tooling is still catching up to AEO as a discipline, which will likely be the dynamic for the next few years, at least. Everything is changing so fast, and AI-driven discovery is evolving as users adopt new behaviors that vary by vertical. What matters is consistently applied measurement, strong analysis, and testing that lead to actionable insights. You won’t get your setup perfect. Like much of marketing, solidly directional is probably as good as you’re going to get. With any tool, if you can explain and measure how it improves your AEO efforts, that’s a great start. Before you sign any contracts, see if you can find an industry colleague with real-life experience using the tool, and ask them for their take. Unless they’re staunch advocates, chances are you can either find an alternative that does the same thing better or cheaper, or you can wait another month for one to emerge. 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After months of uncertainty, the long-struggling Spirit Airlines has permanently ceased operations. Now the low-cost U.S. carrier will begin liquidating its assets to repay its creditors as much as possible—a process that is expected to take months. However, its customers have more immediate issues: figuring out what to do now if they had upcoming Spirit flights booked or had other ongoing dealings with the airline. Here’s what they need to know. What’s happened? On Saturday, May 2, Spirit Aviation Holdings, Inc., the company that owns Spirit Airlines, announced what it called “an orderly wind-down of operations,” which went into effect immediately. In other words, the airline is going out of business. While devastating to the airline’s employees and customers, the news was not wholly unexpected. For years, the low-cost airline struggled financially, especially after a failed merger with competitor JetBlue in 2024. That merger was blocked by a federal judge. After the merger was denied, Spirit filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and was forced into bankruptcy again less than a year later due to rising debt levels. For years, the company had struggled to compete against America’s air-travel giants like Southwest Airlines, which often offered similar low-cost fares and had wider route coverage. But the final nail in Spirit’s coffin was sparked not by business but geopolitics. Announcing its cessation of operations, Spirit blamed the recent surge in airline fuel prices resulting from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran as the primary driver behind its decision. In the airline’s announcement, Spirit CEO Dave Davis said that the company had reached a restructuring agreement in March. Unfortunately, that agreement was reached around the same time that the Middle East conflict erupted, which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important fuel shipping lanes. As a result of its wind-down, Spirit abruptly canceled all of its remaining flights, leaving customers with bookings wondering what would happen next. Will Spirit ticket holders get their canceled flights refunded? If there’s any good news surrounding Spirit’s demise, it’s that most people who have had their Spirit bookings canceled by the airline will receive a full, automatic refund. If you purchased your canceled Spirit flights with a debit or credit card directly through the airline, Spirit says it will refund the full price you paid to your original payment method. However, those who booked their canceled Spirit flights through third-party travel providers should request a refund through the travel provider. Refunds become a bit less certain for those who booked flights using methods such as Free Spirit points, vouchers, or credits. Spirit says refunds of bookings using those methods “will be determined at a later date through the bankruptcy court process.” Will additional fees be refunded? If you paid for checked baggage, Wi-Fi, or other add-ons with your flight, Spirit says those fees will also be refunded. When will I get my Spirit refund? Spirit Airlines says it has already issued refunds for those who purchased directly through the airline. However, refunds may take some time to show up on your original payment method. If you purchased your tickets through a third party, you should contact that provider to see how long your refund will take. What happens to my Free Spirit points? Unfortunately, anyone with remaining Free Spirit points will find them unusable. This is because Spirit will no longer operate any flights, so the points cannot be redeemed for anything. Free Spirit points are also not transferable to another airline’s points program. Will Spirit rebook me on a flight with another airline? Unfortunately, Spirit is not offering to rebook customers whose flights have been canceled. That means if you still need to reach your canceled destination, you will need to book a new flight directly with another airline. However, some airlines are offering concessions to Spirit passengers who have had their flights canceled. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), “America [sic] Airlines, United, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, Allegiant, Frontier, Avelo, and Breeze have all agreed to support impacted Spirit passengers in different ways.” Specifically, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United are capping ticket prices for Spirit passengers who need to rebook on similar routes. Eligible Spirit customers will need to provide proof of payment and a Spirit confirmation number to receive capped fares, and capped fares will only be available for a short time: 72 hours for JetBlue and Southwest 5 days for Delta Air Lines 14 days for United Airlines What if I have outstanding lost baggage with Spirit? If you have any outstanding lost luggage or other items with Spirit Airlines, the defunct operator says you can check their status here. I have more questions. Who can I contact? All affected Spirit customers are encouraged to check out the company’s support page for guests. Affected individuals should also check out the U.S. Department of Transportation’s notice about the airline’s collapse. Spirit says those with questions can contact the airline’s claims agent, Epiq, by phone at (855) 952-6606 or by email at SpiritAirlinesInfo@epiqglobal.com. View the full article

The conversation has shifted. We’re spending less time optimizing for clicks and more time trying to fix the AI ROI story. AI now sits at the center of discovery, shaping what gets seen, summarized, and cited. Here’s what’s working right now, what your peers are doing, and why SMX Advanced will feel different this year. The SparkToro wake-up call: Influence happens everywhere The foundation of any serious 2026 content strategy has to start with Rand Fishkin’s landmark March 2026 study, “Influence Happens Everywhere,” an analysis of the 5,000 most-visited sites on both mobile and desktop. The finding that rattled the industry: while Google still commands 73% of search traffic, search itself is merely a response to influence created elsewhere. People don’t wake up and search for a brand in a vacuum. They read, watch, and listen across a fragmented web of news, social media, and niche communities before they ever hit a search bar. AI tools, despite their rapid growth, still account for a fraction of total web visits compared to the “big incumbents.” But the trajectory is unmistakable. The fundamental problem with attribution in 2026 is that search gets over-credited because it captures demand at the finish line, while the fragmented channels — email, news, specialized content — get under-credited for creating that demand in the first place. When creating content, your job is to win the influence phase so thoroughly that when a user eventually turns to an AI assistant or a search bar, your brand is the only logical answer. That framing is the strategic backbone behind sessions at the upcoming SMX Advanced in Boston, June 3-5, and the lens through which your entire editorial calendar should be rewritten. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with What your Search Engine Land colleagues are already doing Before we discuss tactics, it’s worth pausing to note that this publication’s own contributor base has been sounding the alarm in complementary ways. Read them together and a clear picture emerges. Dave Davies, principal SEO manager at Weights & Biases and a regular SMX Advanced speaker, published a rigorous piece in December 2025, “Mentions, citations, and clicks: Your 2026 content strategy.” Drawing on Siege Media’s two-year content performance study covering more than 7.2 million sessions, Grow and Convert’s conversion research, and Seer Interactive’s AI Overview findings, Davies made the case that the metrics we’ve lived by — impressions, sessions, CTR — “no longer tell the full story.” Mentions, citations, and structured visibility signals, he argued, are becoming the new levers of trust and the path to revenue. Carolyn Shelby, who appeared in a recent SMX Munich 2026 recap for her session “Inside Google’s Head,” crystallized what many of us have only half-articulated: AI doesn’t discover new brands — it selects from known entities. The implications are stark. If you haven’t built entity recognition across the web’s key reference points — Wikipedia, Reddit, LinkedIn, authoritative press coverage — you don’t get selected. My own October 2025 piece for this publication compared how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and DeepSeek differ in their data sources, live web use, and citation rules. The conclusion I reached then is truer today: a single-platform AI strategy isn’t a strategy. Each model has different retrieval logic, different trust signals, and different recency weighting. Jordan Koene made the same point in January 2026, noting that different LLMs win different jobs. This heterogeneity is the fundamental reason why “write good content” is both correct and insufficient as advice. What ‘full-stack content’ actually means In 2024, we were impressed if an AI tool could write a decent 500-word blog post. Today, writing is the least interesting thing AI does. Jasper’s 2026 Enterprise Suite is a useful illustration. It doesn’t just draft text, it: Pulls real-time performance data from Google Search Console. Identifies content gaps where competitors are gaining ground. Generates a multimodal package: a 1,500-word deep dive, three vertical videos for YouTube Shorts, and custom infographics, all calibrated to a brand-voice model trained on your last five years of successful campaigns. We have moved from “Help me write this” to “Help me dominate this topic.” But tools don’t solve strategy problems. The harder question is “what should the content actually say?” AI can’t produce the original research, the proprietary case study, or the hard-won perspective that makes an LLM choose you over a dozen lookalike alternatives. This is why the most interesting SMX Advanced session on content this year may be the one by Purna Virji of LinkedIn, who opens the conference with a keynote on fixing the broken AI ROI story before budgets get cut. Her argument — that AI investment must generate measurable business outcomes “at the P&L level,” not just activity, efficiency, or content volume — is a direct challenge to teams that have been celebrating output metrics while their revenue dashboards flatline. Google Vids and the democratization of video: A genuine inflection point Perhaps the most significant platform shift for content creators in 2026 was Google moving Google Vids out of its Workspace-only silo. You can now create, edit, and share videos at no cost directly within the Google ecosystem, powered by the Veo 3 generative model. For years, video production was protected by a high barrier to entry: expensive tools, specialist skills, and days of editing time. Google Vids collapses that barrier. Drop a Google Doc or a URL into the “Help me create” prompt, and you get a full-motion storyboard with AI-generated voiceovers, licensed music, and transitions in minutes. The practical consequences are arriving fast: Small agencies are now producing video-first content calendars that previously required five-figure budgets. The “if only we had video” excuse has expired. Hyper-localization is becoming a baseline expectation. Using Vids’ automated dubbing and visual swapping, a single “hero” video can be localized for 20 different markets in an afternoon. AI-generated summaries are already threatening video metadata. YouTube recently tested swapping video titles for AI-generated summaries. Brands that have not invested in clear entity signals and structured descriptions may soon find their video content renamed by an algorithm — not a person. The strategic implication is the same as it was for text: AI tools lower the floor but raise the bar. Every competitor now has access to cheap video. But who has something worth saying in that video? GEO, AEO, and the language problem Depending on which Search Engine Land article you read in the past few weeks, the dominant framework for surviving this shift is either generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO). A growing number of contributors argue these terms are marketing noise for what is, at bottom, just good search everywhere optimization plus structured data plus earned media. That debate is genuinely worth having, and it will be had at SMX Advanced. But for the practitioner who needs to make decisions next week, here’s what the evidence actually supports: eMarketer’s Nate Elliott put it plainly in a recent FAQ: “Almost every GEO response is different from every other GEO response.” Between 40% and 60% of cited sources change month-to-month across Google AI Mode and ChatGPT, making AI visibility far less stable than organic search rankings. That volatility is the real risk, not the terminology debate. Similarweb’s 2026 GenAI Brand Visibility Index, reported by Digiday, found that major publishers like Reuters and The Guardian receive less than 1% of referral traffic from AI platforms despite being frequently cited. Yet, The Washington Post found that visitors arriving from AI platforms convert to subscriptions at four to five times the rate of traditional search visitors. The volume-versus-value tension has never been more acute. The practical translation of all of this: In 2006, we optimized press releases for keyword density: In 2026, optimize for entity association: linking your brand to specific solutions in the AI’s knowledge graph. Long-form blogs become modular content: Snippets, FAQs, and data tables designed for “chunk-level” ingestion by fetcher bots. Gated white papers become open data: Making unique research crawlable so AI credits you as the source in an overview, not a competitor who summarized your findings. Your robots.txt file now has strategic consequences: Allowing OAI-SearchBot but blocking GPTBot is a choice — one that determines whether you show up in real-time AI search citations versus model training data. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. The human premium isn’t a platitude As AI-generated content reaches its peak volume, the value of the human voice has skyrocketed — but not for the reasons most think-piece writers suggest. The standard argument runs like this: Audiences can smell AI slop. Authentic human writing wins. That’s partially true, but it understates the mechanism. The deeper reason human-authored content is winning in AI-mediated search is structural. Human authors who’ve built genuine reputations across years of bylined, cited, and cross-referenced work have, in effect, built entity graphs that AI systems can navigate. That isn’t something a prompt can replicate. The classic example: an AI-generated 2026 review of a new electric vehicle might be factually flawless, listing every spec and battery range. But it loses to a human-authored piece that says, “I drove this through a New England blizzard and the door handle froze shut.” AI can’t freeze. It can’t feel frustration. It can’t have a bad morning. Those human frictions are now genuinely valuable SEO assets — not because they’re charming, but because no language model can fabricate them with any credibility. Readers, trained by years of exposure to AI content, have developed a reliable instinct for the difference. The Siege Media data Davies cited adds a quantitative dimension: across 7.2 million sessions, the content that earned sustained citations and conversions shared a consistent profile — original data, expert voice, and clear structure that an AI system could extract and attribute. Volume without those properties is, as the headline puts it, just noise. What to watch at SMX Advanced 2026 — and what it tells us about where this is going The SMX Advanced agenda is the clearest available signal of where the practitioner community thinks the critical problems are right now. A few sessions deserve particular attention from anyone focused on content creation. Virji’s keynote, “Your AI ROI story is broken: How to fix it before budgets get cut,” opens Day 2. Virji isn’t arguing that AI investment is wrong. She’s arguing that almost every organization is measuring it incorrectly — and that the correction required is organizational, not tactical. Davies’ session, “Predicting and influencing AI citations with retrieval signals,” on June 4, is the direct technical counterpart to the strategic framing above. If Virji is asking “what does success mean,” Davies is asking “how do you engineer it.” SMX Master Classes ran in April, and SMX Next follows in November. If there’s a throughline across the entire 2026 SMX calendar, it’s this: the search marketing community has collectively decided that the era of isolated channel optimization is over. Content, paid, technical, and brand are now one discipline, or they are failing disciplines. What you need to actually do in the second half of 2026 Broad strategic advice is easy to nod at and ignore. Here is the specific and uncomfortable version: Audit your AI visibility before you touch your content: Query ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity with the prompts your customers actually use. Note which brands appear. Note which sources get cited. If you’re not among them, adding more content isn’t the first fix — fixing your entity signals is. Stop treating your unique research as a lead-generation gate: Crawlable, citable original data earns AI attribution. A PDF behind a form wall earns nothing except a diminishing number of direct downloads as discovery migrates to AI interfaces. Invest in community platforms as a first-party strategy, not an afterthought: LLMs pull heavily from Reddit, YouTube, and Wikipedia. eMarketer’s Max Willens has noted that Reddit alone has 100 million daily active users generating brand conversations. Your brand’s absence from those conversations isn’t neutral. It creates a vacuum that your competitors or your critics will fill. Optimize for citatability, not just rankability: The new KPI isn’t the visit — it’s the attribution. If an AI Overview uses your data but doesn’t name your brand, you’ve been mined, not cited. Use clear entity markup, structured FAQ sections, and “quotable” conclusions that make it easy for an LLM to attribute rather than anonymize. Diversify your robots.txt strategy intentionally: Different bots serve different purposes. Allowing OAI-SearchBot (real-time citation) while blocking GPTBot (model training) is a legitimate strategic choice. Most organizations have not made it deliberately. Make it deliberately. Measure differently: The eMarketer-recommended framework allocates 40% of your optimization budget to core SEO fundamentals, 25% to digital PR, 20% to data and reporting, 10% to training, and 5% to experimentation. If your current allocation looks nothing like that, the gap explains more about your AI visibility struggles than any content audit will. So, combining SEO and PR is even more important today than it was back in the old days when I started speaking and writing about search. See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with The bots are crawling: Are you worth citing? The age of the proxy is over. You can no longer hide behind a ghostwriter or a simple prompt and expect to build a brand. But the deeper truth — the one that doesn’t make it into most AI content trend pieces — is that this transformation benefits people who’ve been doing the hard work all along. If you’ve been building genuine expertise, publishing original data, earning bylines in authoritative publications, and cultivating real presence in the communities where your customers actually talk — then you already have most of what you need. The AI infrastructure of 2026 is, in many ways, a system that rewards exactly the things good content has always required. The difference is that the competition is now generating plausible-sounding content on a scale that would have been impossible to imagine four years ago. Being good isn’t enough to stand out. You have to be citable, structured, and present in all the right places at precisely the right time — which is a harder, more interesting, and ultimately more durable strategic problem than keyword density ever was. See you in Boston. View the full article

A month ago, Google posted that between the dates of May 13, 2025 through April 27, 2026, just about 50 weeks, there was a "logging error prevented Search Console from accurately reporting impressions." Google updated the post to now say "This issue has been resolved."View the full article

IAC, the owners of Ask.com, have decided to get out of the search business and shut down one of the oldest and most legendary search engines of all time - Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves. IAC wrote, "As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com."View the full article

Google Ads has added a new option (although, I think Google has said this is coming) under the "add product source" section where you can select how to add products to your Google Ads account. The option reads, "Use AI to add products - beta."View the full article