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Replace optional SEO guidelines with enforceable governance to ensure consistent signals and scalable visibility across the enterprise. The post The Modern SEO Center Of Excellence: Governance, Not Guidelines appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 has been expensive since its launch in July 2025, but this current price drop makes it a more reasonable buy. Right now, the 512GB unlocked model in Blue Shadow and Silver Shadow is down to $1,719.99 (originally $2,119.99) on Amazon—a $400 discount, and the lowest price it’s ever been, according to price trackers. You could also go with the Jet Black model, which is another $30 off at $1,689.99. At these prices, the 512GB model is just $120 more than the 256GB variant, effectively doubling your storage for a relatively small bump. If you tend to hold onto your phone for a few years or store a lot of photos, videos, or apps, that extra space is easier to justify. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Unlocked Android smartphone (512GB, Blue Shadow) $1,719.99 at Amazon $2,119.99 Save $400.00 Get Deal Get Deal $1,719.99 at Amazon $2,119.99 Save $400.00 What you’re paying for, beyond storage, is a device that feels distinct in a crowded smartphone market. Open it up, and the Z Fold 7 turns into a tablet-like screen that’s better suited for split-screen multitasking, reading, or watching videos without the letterboxing you’d see on a typical phone. Folded shut, it works like a large, conventional handset for quick tasks like replying to messages or navigating maps. Samsung has also refined the hinge this year, making it slimmer and more stable, which helps the phone feel less bulky and better balanced in everyday use. Camera performance holds up across lighting conditions, and video calls look crisp enough for work or casual use. If the book-style foldable doesn’t appeal to you, the Galaxy Z Flip 7 is also discounted right now. The 512GB version is selling for $1,019—less than the original $1,099.99 launch price of the 256GB model—while the 256GB option is down to $899.99. The same logic applies here: When the higher storage tier is priced so close to the base model, it’s often the better long-term choice. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 3 Noise Cancelling Heart Rate Wireless Earbuds — $199.99 (List Price $249.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $299.00 (List Price $349.00) Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 42mm, S/M Black Sport Band) — $299.00 (List Price $399.00) Fire TV Stick 4K Plus Streaming Player With Remote (2025 Model) — $29.99 (List Price $49.99) Amazon Fire TV Soundbar — $99.99 (List Price $119.99) Blink Video Doorbell Wireless (Newest Model) + Sync Module Core — $35.99 (List Price $69.99) Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen, 2-pack, White) — $59.98 (List Price $79.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

Google has posted that it may now use your search spam reports for manual actions and that the text used in those spam reports may be sent along “verbatim” to the site owner being reported. What Google said. Google wrote it has “Clarified that Google may use spam report submissions to take manual action against violations.” The new text says: “Ranking manipulation techniques that attempt to compromise the quality of Google’s search results violate our spam policies and can negatively impact a site’s ranking. Google may use your report to take manual action against violations. If we issue a manual action, we send whatever you write in the submission report verbatim to the site owner to help them understand the context of the manual action. We don’t include any other identifying information when we notify the site owner; as long as you avoid including personal information in the open text field, the report remains anonymous.” Spam reports used for manual actions. Google seemed to make it sound like this is just a clarification and that Google may use the spam reports for manual actions. This seems like a change to its previous communication that Google does not use spam reports for manual actions. So this seems like more than a clarification to me. Your spam report text sent along. Google also said it can and may likely sent the text you put in the spam report and pass it directly to the site owner. Google wrote, “send whatever you write in the submission report verbatim to the site owner to help them understand the context of the manual action. We don’t include any other identifying information when we notify the site owner; as long as you avoid including personal information in the open text field, the report remains anonymous.” Google warns you not to include any personal information or other infomration you do not want that site owner to know or have. Why we care. This does seem like a big change to how Google handles spam reports from previous years. If you do submit spam reports, you should be aware of these changes and adjust any reports as you see fit going forward. View the full article

Macy’s Inc is moving forward with additional store closures in 2026. According the retailer’s website, 14 stores are closing soon nationwide, with shoppers losing their local Macy’s in 12 states. The development is hardly surprising. In February 2024, Macy’s announced it would shutter 150 “underproductive locations” by the end of 2026, although it has since extended that timeline. The company announced the closures as part of “A Bold New Chapter” that will do three things: strengthen the Macy’s name plate, accelerate luxury growth, and simplify and modernize end-to-end operations. Macy’s also owns Bloomingdale’s, a higher-end department store than its namesake. At the time, Bloomingdale’s was outperforming Macy’s. “We are making the necessary moves to reinvigorate relationships with our customers through improved shopping experiences, relevant assortments and compelling value.” Macy’s CEO Tony Spring said at the time. In January 2025, Macy’s announced 66 stores set to close that year. Now, more locations are joining them. Which Macy’s stores are closing? Fourteen Macy’s stores nationwide are “closing soon” or have recently closed. The closures include two locations in both California and New Jersey, with the rest scattered across states like Georgia, Minnesota, and Texas. Four stores are already reported closed in California, Michigan, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. The timeline for additional closures was not immediately clear. Fast Company has reached out to Macy’s for comment and will update this post if we hear back. The stores closing are as follows: California Grossmont Center: 5500 Grossmont Center Drive, La Mesa, CA 91942 (already closed) West Valley Mall: 3200 Naglee Rd, Tracy, CA 95304 Georgia Northlake Mall: 4880 Briarcliff Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30345 Maryland Marley Station: 7900 Ritchie Highway, Glen Burnie, MD 21061 Michigan Rivertown Crossings: 3850 Rivertown Parkway SW, Grandville, MI 49418 (already closed) Minnesota Crossroads Center: 4101 West Division Street, St Cloud, MN 56301 New Hampshire Fox Run: 50 Fox Run Road, Newington, NH 03801 (already closed) New Jersey Livingston Mall: 112 Eisenhower Parkway, Livingston, NJ 07039 Interstate Shopping Center: 225 Interstate Shopping Center, Ramsey, NJ 07446 (already closed) New York Boulevard Mall: 1255 Niagara Falls Boulevard, Amherst, NY 14226 North Carolina Triangle Town Center: 3801 Sumner Boulevard, Raleigh, NC 27616 Pennsylvania Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills: 100 Pittsburgh Mills Cir, Tarentum, PA 15084 Texas La Palmera Mall: 5488 S Padre Island Dr Ste 5000. Corpus Christi, TX 78411 Washington Parkway Super Center: 17855 Southcenter Pkwy, Tukwila, WA 98188 View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. For some reason, I have painted a lot of stairs in my time. Exterior, interior—I’ve painted more stairs than I ever imagined I would. But sometimes, painting stairs is the easiest way to transform them. When my wife and I moved into our house, the stairs were covered in this truly awful green carpet. We tore that up almost immediately, and I figured I’d just paint the stairs as a short-term solution. But we wound up actually liking the paint, and just left it there. It’s getting a little worn, though, so it’s time to refresh the paint job, and we thought it was a good idea to change things up by painting the risers a lighter color, for contrast (we’re fancy like that). This gave me the chance to use one of my favorite little painting hacks: A wall edging pad on stair risers. I forget who showed this to me, but it makes the whole process a lot faster. In the past, painting something like stairs with all those angles and corners would mean a metric ton of painter’s tape and a stiff wrist from using a cut brush. (I’m pretty good with a cut brush these days and skip a lot of taping, but stairs still present a challenge.) But using a wall edging pad means I can skip all the tape and save my wrist a lot of strain. Everything you need to paint stairs Shur-Line 2006649 7-Inch Premium Pad Painter $20.59 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $20.59 at Amazon Shur-Line 2006645 7-Inch Premium Pad Painter Refill $13.49 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $13.49 at Amazon DAP Alex Ultra Advanced Latex Sealant, White, 10.1 Oz (7079818200) $7.98 at Amazon $9.46 Save $1.48 Shop Now Shop Now $7.98 at Amazon $9.46 Save $1.48 FrogTape Advanced Painters Tape, 2 Inch Wide (1.88-Inch x 45-Yard) Multi-Surface Tape with PAINTBLOCK, Conforms Around Curves & Contours, Tear-Free Removability, 1 Roll, Green $10.98 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $10.98 at Amazon Purdy Clearcut Glide Paint Brush, 2-1/2 in. 144152125 $14.98 at Amazon $16.25 Save $1.27 Shop Now Shop Now $14.98 at Amazon $16.25 Save $1.27 RUST-OLEUM 1 qt Zinsser 271009 White Zinsser, B-I-N Advanced Synthetic Shellac Primer Pack of 1 $24.80 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $24.80 at Amazon Bates- 9 Inch Paint Tray, 3 Pack, Black Plastic Paint Roller Tray 9 Inch, Deep Capacity, Textured Ridge $15.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $15.99 at Amazon SEE 4 MORE You can see here what the stairs looked like before I began—obviously, they needed a little attention. Before. Credit: Jeff Somers I gathered my supplies: I bought this pad painter from Shur-Line. The 7-inch size is about right for stair risers, and it features a swivel pad holder that locks into the angle you need. I picked up a refill pad, too, just in case. A tube of painter’s caulk so I could fill in any gaps that have opened up over the years. Some painter’s tape, just to be safe—even the best painting trick sometimes runs into trouble. Some cut brushes for the same reason—these are old stairs that haven’t seen a 90° angle in years, so I anticipated some spots where a brush might be necessary. Primer and a paint tray—the actual paint color will match the walls. Equipped with everything, I got to work. How to paint your stair risers with an edging padI didn’t bother taping off the treads—I just filled the pan with primer and grabbed the pad. The black button in the middle locks the pad at whatever angle you need; it’s easy to press it with your thumb to adjust on the fly. You can slide the pad out (and a new one in) by pressing the lock tab in the middle. Then you dip the pad into the paint/primer and press it out a bit to get rid of excess paint: Loading up the paint pad. Credit: Jeff Somers When the pad isn’t dripping, and you’ve got it loaded with a manageable amount of paint that you can control, just place it against the stair riser and move it horizontally: Painting the riser with the paint pad. Credit: Jeff Somers Since the pad is rectangular, it produces a straight, sharp line without taping or cutting, and it doesn’t have as many lines as a brush. And since it’s flat and designed to be used as an edger (and painting stair risers is essentially just working all edges), you can get right to the edge, which you can’t do when using a roller. Sometimes it’s useful to slide the pad out of the holder and use it manually, because the pad is more flexible and bendy, so you can have a little more control in tight corners. It takes a bit of practice to get it right, but once you have the hang of it, you can breeze through those risers very quickly. If you want to cut down your prep and painting time on stairs, using an edger pad like this is the way. Here's my final product: After! Credit: Jeff Somers The stairs are old and don't have any straight lines left, but the risers turned out pretty neat—all without taping. I probably saved myself about an hour of work painting these stairs this way. View the full article

Padel has taken the sports world by storm. In a smaller but growing circle, it’s also become a way to date. Much of that runs through Playtomic, a booking app for racquet sports where players join “open matches” with strangers, chat through the app, and meet people they wouldn’t otherwise encounter. For some, those connections carry off the court. “People are meeting each other on the court . . . [and then] grabbing a beer or coffee from the grounds,” says Pro Padel League CEO Michael Dorfman. That kind of interaction is exactly what the app Playtomic is designed to facilitate, and increasingly, to scale. In 2017, co-founder Pablo Carro set out to solve a basic problem: booking a court. “ We didn’t find any user-friendly app[s] that was convenient for making a reservation for court bookings,” he says. “It all started with that very basic necessity because we were not able to find a court or someone to play with.” At the time, padel itself was still emerging globally, having originated in the late 1960s in Acapulco, Mexico, and later gaining traction in Spain. But that timing turned out to be an advantage. Instead of retrofitting old systems, Playtomic grew alongside a new sport. “ The thing is that padel is a new sport,” says Carro. “So it’s a new club, it’s a new business, and every single new business [is] considering the tech side.” Rather than digitizing a legacy ecosystem like tennis, the company positioned itself as infrastructure for a category being built in real time. It developed a two-sided marketplace connecting clubs and players, handling everything from bookings and payments to matchmaking. That last piece, matchmaking, is what sets it apart. “ Open matches are the perfect example of how socially adapted and how community driven we are,” says Carro. Users are assigned a “Playtomic rating,” starting with a questionnaire that places them between Level 0 and 7. That baseline evolves based on match performance, helping pair players of similar skill. Around that system, the app layers in social features: profiles, chat, match uploads, even photo sharing. The result is less a scheduling tool than a lightweight social network organized around play. It’s also one that reflects how people actually use the sport. Padel’s structure naturally lends itself to interaction. “Because of the dynamic of play . . . the velocity . . . there are four people in a kind of small place, [and] it’s easy to learn, the real driving force of the sport was the social aspect,” says Carro. And while Playtomic didn’t create that dynamic, the company did turn it into a product. Today, Playtomic operates across 66 countries, partnering with more than 6,700 clubs and serving 4 million registered users. Its 2025 Global Padel report found that 3,282 new clubs opened worldwide in 2024, averaging nearly nine per day. That growth has given Playtomic a front-row seat to how communities form around the sport. “ The most surprising thing is the fact that countries that we did not expect that social appetite were behaving extremely social like the UK,” says Carro. “If you think about [the] south of Europe, you will tend to think that people are friendly, social, [and] community driven. But if you think about the UK . . . We didn’t expect [that] level of social appetite.” (To his point: More than 20% of bookings in the UK are open matches.) User behavior also evolves over time. Early on, players tend to book classes or structured events. As they improve, they shift toward open matches, using the app less as a scheduler and more as a network. That progression helps explain why the platform has become central to how people experience padel, including off the court. Daniel Dios, padel director at WME, met his wife while playing in Sweden. “We started playing little by little,” he says. “Then, we got to know each other.” Even more infrequent players describe the same pull. “I don’t have much time to play. But, I like to play when I’m here in Miami or [on] vacation. I like to play a little bit with friends. It’s a fun game,” says Brazilian tennis star João Fonseca. As Playtomic expands, it is now trying to replicate those dynamics in newer markets, particularly the U.S. “The sport has been growing between 20% to 25% annually, which means that its numbers multiply by two every four or five years,” says Dios. “So we are seeing this evolution of the sport, especially now of course in the U.S. being adopted so quickly.” In 2025, more than 10,000 open matches were played in the U.S., according to the company. That growth is starting to attract brands as well. Through WME, companies are beginning to treat padel clubs as a new kind of consumer touchpoint. “ This is ultimately the place . . . where consumers connect and where brands want to be present,” Dios says. Carro has relocated to Miami to watch the shift up close. “It is close to becom[ing] the most important city in the world,” he says. “Every single headquarter is moving here. Every single tech entrepreneur is moving here. Miami is extremely vibrant these days . . . I started to see a clear trend, and every single club has more American people playing every day.” View the full article

Roll the clock back five, 10, or 15 years, and a PPC practitioner’s value was directly tied to tactical proficiency. Not anymore. Today, Google and Microsoft automate much of the tactical work. Machine learning and AI manage bids, test creatives, and find audiences faster and more efficiently than any human could. Unfortunately, this reality has left many veteran practitioners in a mid-career identity crisis. If algorithms pull the levers, what exactly are we getting paid to do? Where is our sustainable value to the business? Here’s what that evolution looks like in practice and how the hard skills in your playbook have changed. PPC shifted from tactical execution to designing systems I’ve been in the paid search trenches for 24 years — long enough to witness the wild west of early Overture, the rise of Google AdWords, the shift to mobile, and now, the total “algorizing” of the ad platforms. It used to be that if you could diligently research thousands of new keywords, methodically change bids, split-test ad copy until your eyes bled, and sculpt the perfect exact-match account structure, you were a lean, mean PPC advertising machine. If your toolbox is still mostly tactical execution, you’re positioning yourself as a backroom lever-puller, and your days in this industry are numbered. Today’s most valuable practitioners aren’t media buyers. They’ve made the leap to become true engineers of revenue and profit. An engineer doesn’t blindly pull levers. They design systems. Our sustainable value is in programming the coordinates and telling the machine where to go. If you want to be a revenue and profit engineer, you must: Be an expert at data analysis and signaling. Possess deep business acumen to understand how the company or your client makes money. Cultivate your executive presence to explain your strategy confidently to the C-suite. That intersection is your career golden ticket. The next four steps will help you achieve just that. Dig deeper: 10 keys to a successful PPC career in the AI age 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 1. Map the account directly to the P&L If you sit in an interview, client pitch, or meeting with your boss and say, “I’m going to reexamine your metrics,” you sound like every other media buyer. They’ll politely nod and move on. But if you say, “I’m going to map your paid search program directly into your profit and loss statement so every dollar we spend is engineered for maximum margin,” you instantly become the most valuable person in the room. You’re no longer selling clicks. You’re selling an unfair business advantage. Most PPC accounts are structured around a website’s navigation — a campaign for shoes, a campaign for shirts, etc. While not inherently wrong, this approach reflects limited thinking. You build a more nuanced, precise account structure that aligns directly with what drives the P&L, moves inventory, or generates high-value leads. How to execute this While every business is unique, the process to get there follows a universal framework. The margin interrogation: Sit down with your client or your finance team and work to learn the profit margins on their core offerings. You will often find that the product driving the most volume has the tightest margin, while an obscure, niche service has massive profitability. The architecture shift: Restructure your campaigns by margin tier and business value, not just product category. You should have completely different target ROAS (tROAS) or target CPA (tCPA) goals based on what the business can afford to spend to acquire that specific customer type. If you treat a low-margin conversion the same as a high-margin conversion in your account architecture, you’re risking revenue and profit leak — no matter how pretty your in-platform metrics look. Separate the engine room from the boardroom Once mapped, you must segregate your metrics. In the “engine room” (your daily platform optimizations), you still look at click-through rates (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). They are vital leading indicators used to steer the ship. But in the “boardroom” (leadership reporting), you never lead with them. Your conversation is strictly about the engineered outcome: “We shifted budget into the high-margin tier and successfully protected our $150 CPA target, ensuring our overall profitability remained stable.” Dig deeper: Why PPC teams are becoming data teams 2. Master the art and science of signal engineering This is the most critical hard skill for the modern paid search profit engineer. Algorithms are hungry, but they inherently lack intelligence and the ability to reason. They only know what you tell them. In our brave new world of automated bidding, properly “feeding the machine” is what separates the experts from the obsolete. If you only feed Google Ads data about who filled out a form, the machine will go find you more people who like to fill out forms — even if those people are terrible leads who never actually convert. A massive part of your job today is understanding and analyzing first-party backend data and strategically feeding it back to the machine to get the best results. You’re no longer optimizing the bid. You’re optimizing the signal. How to execute this You have to move past basic pixel tracking. You must implement robust offline conversion tracking (OCT) or direct CRM integrations (like HubSpot or Salesforce into Google Ads). If you’re managing larger, more complex programs, leveraging enterprise tools like Search Ads 360 (SA360) or similar platforms is a massive advantage for signal engineering. These tools allow you to seamlessly ingest, weight, and share these critical business signals across multiple search engines from a single centralized hub. For lead generation Stop optimizing for a generic lead. Map your client’s sales stages directly into the ad platform. Assign specific monetary values to each stage based on historical close rates. For example, tell the algorithm a raw lead is worth $10, a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is worth $50, and a closed/won deal is worth $500. Then switch your bidding strategy from Maximize Conversions to value-based bidding (Target ROAS). You’re programming the AI to pursue lead quality and pipeline revenue, not just form-fill volume. For ecommerce Ecommerce is a distinct beast with its own complexities. Tracking top-line revenue to hit a basic ROAS target is table stakes. To truly engineer profit, you must manipulate signals around inventory, margins, and lifetime value: Feed engineering: The modern ecommerce practitioner doesn’t just upload a product feed; they strategically engineer it. Use Custom Labels to segment products by business reality — such as inventory velocity (overstocked vs. low inventory) or historical return rates. If a specific apparel item has a 40% return rate, pushing it heavily destroys backend profitability, even if the in-platform ROAS looks incredible. Profit margin bidding: Don’t just track gross revenue. Use custom conversion variables (or cart data integration) to pass profit margin data back into the ad platform. When the algorithm understands the difference between a $100 sale with a 10% margin and a $100 sale with a 90% margin, it fundamentally changes how it bids in the auction. New customer acquisition (NCA): Algorithms gravitate toward the path of least resistance, which often means taking credit for returning brand loyalists. You must integrate your first party customer lists to differentiate a net-new buyer from a repeat buyer, allowing you to bid aggressively for market share on the former while protecting margins on the latter. Dig deeper: Why better signals drive paid search performance Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 3. Debug the post-click pipeline Because ad platforms are largely automated, your biggest performance bottlenecks rarely sit inside ad accounts. Your revenue and profit leaks happen after the click. True profit engineers don’t just throw traffic over the fence and hope for the best; they take responsibility for the entire user journey. If your campaigns drive highly qualified traffic but the backend system is suboptimal, the business still loses money. You have to debug the pipeline. How to execute this Make it a quarterly habit to mystery-shop your client’s business and tear down the post-click experience. Stress-test the sales handoff (lead gen): Submit a test lead through the website. How long does it take the sales team to call you back? If it takes 48 hours, it doesn’t matter how finely tuned your value-based bidding is — the sales team is letting those expensive leads go cold. You need the data to show the CEO that the leak isn’t the traffic; it’s the speed-to-lead. Audit the checkout flow (ecommerce): Go through the process of buying a product from your client’s site. Is checkout a clunky, five-step ordeal? Do unexpected shipping costs appear at the end? If your drop-off from add-to-cart to purchase is massive, your ROAS isn’t suffering from a bad keyword match type. It’s suffering from UX friction. Listen to the tape: Ask the client or the call center for call recordings of leads generated specifically by paid search. Are the leads complaining about pricing? Are they confused about the specific service offered? When you walk into a boardroom and say, “I listened to 15 sales calls this week, and your team is struggling to overcome pricing objections, so I’ve updated our ad copy to explicitly pre-qualify users on price,” you instantly elevate yourself from a disposable media buyer to an indispensable business partner. Dig deeper: How to diagnose and fix the biggest blocker to PPC growth 4. Cultivate executive presence You can be the most brilliant revenue engineer in the world, properly weighting every CRM signal into the algorithm, but if you can’t communicate that strategy like a true business partner, the rest doesn’t matter. You’re in a never-ending battle of misconceptions about what PPC is and what the expectations are. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard from clients or in-house bosses things like: “Why aren’t we in Position 1?” or “If we increase spend by X, then we’ll get Y more leads.” How you handle that battle dictates your career trajectory. How to execute this Executive presence means you don’t flinch when a CEO challenges your spend in a boardroom. You don’t get defensive, you don’t blame the algorithm, and you never dive into a nervous rant about impression share. You calmly control the room by anchoring your response in the business’s goals: “We deliberately pulled back spend on the low-margin product line to fund the enterprise push you mentioned in last month’s all-hands meeting. Top-line lead volume is down by 10%, but because we engineered our data signals to target MQLs, our projected pipeline revenue is actually up 14%.” Adopt the “So what?” reporting model. For every metric you present, ask yourself, “So what?” and answer it before they have to. Speak the language of the boardroom: pipeline velocity, profit margin, customer acquisition cost, and lifetime value. Dig deeper: How to deliver PPC results to executives: Get out of the weeds 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 Sweating the small stuff (the right way) Years ago, I wrote that you need to “sweat the small stuff” — meaning you need to know every detail of your account. That principle remains exactly the same today, but the definition of the small stuff has changed. Today, sweating the small stuff doesn’t mean manually adjusting a bid by three cents. It means: Obsessing over data hygiene. Understanding exactly how your client’s CRM tags a lead so your signal engineering doesn’t break. Having the guts to tell your boss bad news — like their backend sales process is broken, and no amount of algorithmic bidding will fix it until they do. The machines have taken many repetitive tasks off our plates. Good riddance. Today, you have the freedom — and the obligation — to step into the role of a revenue and profit engineer. Master your data signals, stop playing in the weeds, start engineering the P&L, and watch your career take off. Dig deeper: What 10 years of PPC testing reveals about breaking best practices View the full article

Google has posted a clarification that says it now "Google may use spam report submissions to take manual action against violations." The update was posted here and added to the report spam page.View the full article

Disengagement is expensive, and most organizations know it. A 2025 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimates that disengagement costs about $5 million a year for every 1,000 employees and that’s before accounting for what’s harder to measure. Teams deliver—narrowly avoiding burnout—but the creativity, the discretionary effort, the genuine spark of someone who truly cares? That’s becoming a rare commodity in today’s turbulent working world as AI continues its disruption. Sure, most AI is exceptional at scale, speed, and synthesis. It learns from what already exists, optimizes from the middle, and produces output that is arguably an average of everything that came before it. What AI cannot do on its own is care. It cannot bring the specific, idiosyncratic passion of a person who is genuinely, deeply invested. It cannot replicate the creativity of a mind that views the world differently, the trust that builds when colleagues show up more openly, or the desire and persistence to solve complex problems. Passion can be that capability; however, in most organizations it remains untapped, an invisible resource that is being asked to take a back seat. Passion is the answer, and most organizations are leaving it completely to chance. Bring on the ‘woo woo’ To business, passion sounds too personal, immeasurable, and weirdly evangelical; the province of spa retreats, not boardrooms. Yet, the outcomes of passion at work are neither vague nor difficult to prove. When people can bring their passion into their work—in any form, however small—the psychological benefits are well-documented: increased confidence, a stronger sense of identity, deeper social connection, and a greater feeling of belonging. These are not nice-to-haves. They are the conditions under which people do their best work. The organizational benefits follow directly. Greater trust between colleagues. Richer, more creative collaboration. The kind of shared experience that builds high-performing teams from the inside rather than engineering them from the outside. Passion is defined as a motivational force, so if an organization wants to drive positive momentum and results, then it makes sense to tap directly into that fuel. In practice, it looks like this. Mike: Finance Guy, and Holiday Cookie Champ Mike (I’ve changed his name) is a finance guy in a growing professional services firm. His Monday-to-Friday is back-to-back calls, spreadsheets by the mile, and the usual drinking from a firehose. By every professional measure, he is good at his job. Outside of work, he is a passionate baker, spending his spare time honing his cookie-making skills. One December, he spent a night baking hundreds of cookies and brought them into the office the following day for everyone to enjoy. His team saw a version of him they had never encountered—creative, skilled in an entirely different way, visibly in his element. New relationships were formed that morning. Trust deepened in ways that months of team meetings had not managed. He felt more fully himself at work than he had in years, and it became an annual tradition, proof that the firm valued individual passions in their quest to be a “best place to work.” Priya: Compliance Leader with a Project Manager’s heart Priya (I’ve changed her name, as well) has climbed the corporate ladder to lead a compliance function with skill and commitment, previously spending years in project management. Despite her success, she misses the impact of those days — the knowledge that she was improving her team’s lives through the efficiency she created. Priya didn’t want to quit her job. But what if she had the opportunity to join a cross-functional committee, spending several hours per month using her expertise to improve the organization’s systems? That would represent a gain for her and the business, but would only happen if she were brave enough to articulate it to her leader, and if the committee program existed. Two people. Two different passions. Both have a tangible impact on performance, connection, and culture. The reason why experiences like these happen is not luck. It’s a direct result of leaders building the programs, the openness, and the deliberate culture that nurtures passion every day. Three ways to cultivate passion It starts with conversation. A leader who understands their people’s passions is being given pure gold – essential information that transcends strengths to what truly makes their team tick. That understanding happens because of consistent, open communication that respects boundaries. It’s not so much “How was your weekend?” as “Tell me one thing that lit you up this week”—and being willing to hear an answer that may not fit in that person’s immediate job description. Secondly, every company needs to walk the walk in formalizing its commitment, whether it’s a sabbatical to enable team members to explore their curiosity for new activities, or a new L&D strategy to encourage the sharing and development of passions. Finally, as with any cultural imperative, when a CEO articulates and demonstrates their own passion—for the work and for what they love outside it—employees feel the freedom to do the same. It starts from the top. The edge that cannot be copied In the vanilla-ization of the business world, the differentiators that remain are human. The specific passions of the people in a team, the curiosity, the craft, the unexpected expertise, the deep investment in something that matters to them, are entirely particular to that organization. No competitor can replicate them; they cannot be bought in or built overnight. They are already there, in the people who show up every day. Organizations that learn to see this, name it, and create conditions for it to flourish will have something genuinely difficult to compete with. Passion as a performance strategy is a deliberate commitment to treat the full humanity of a workforce as the competitive asset it actually is. View the full article

A few months ago, we saw Google testing recurring, repeating Google Posts options. Well, now that option is officially live. This is in addition to the ability to schedule Google Posts.View the full article

Independence vs. Transacting: The Facts Behind Each Pathway, with Bob and Doug Lewis, Visionary Group May 13, 4-5 pm ET Register here | Learn more Go PRO for members-only access to more Center for Accounting Transformation. View the full article

Independence vs. Transacting: The Facts Behind Each Pathway, with Bob and Doug Lewis, Visionary Group May 13, 4-5 pm ET Register here | Learn more Go PRO for members-only access to more Center for Accounting Transformation. View the full article

Today, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, is Tax Day. During trying economic times, the tax deadline can feel like a punishment. It’s difficult to watch money being taken out of hard-earned paychecks when household budgets run on thin margins. To take the sting out of Tax Day, many businesses have special deals to soften the blow. Freebies and deals for Tax Day 2026 Many restaurants are ready to make your stomach happy should you need consoling on Tax Day. If you need the food to come to you, 7-Eleven has you covered. Use the 7NOW Delivery app to get $10.40 off of orders of $25 or more. Just remember to enter the promo code WRITEOFF on April 15. Another delivery service, Grubhub, makes yumminess convenient. It not only recently announced the elimination of delivery fees on $50+ restaurant orders, but it is also giving away $100,000 in Grubhub credit. All you have to do to be eligible for this “return” is go to GrubhubFeeReturn.com and upload a receipt from any delivery service. You might just win $20 in Grubhub credit. The Grubhub deals don’t stop there. You can get $10.40 off $50+ orders from Sweetgreen, Krispy Kreme, or Chili’s. First-time users can utilize code FEERETURN10 for $10 off the first $50+ restaurant order. Don’t delay because all of these deals only last until 11:59 p.m. ET on April 15. Speaking of Krispy Kreme, you can also go straight to the source on Tax Day. If you buy a dozen doughnuts, you will get an additional Original Glazed dozen for free. What a BOGO. If you use the app or order online, use the code TAXBREAK. Another sweet treat option comes from Paris Baguette. Rewards members are eligible for a free pastry with the purchase of any drink on Wednesday, April 15. Pizza lovers have two deals to choose from on April 15. BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse is offering $10 off $40 or more orders. You can dine in or get takeout. The cheesy promo code is TAXDAY. Round Table Pizza’s deal extends the deadline even further. From April 15-19, you can get 15% off your order by using the promo code RTP978. Kroger offerings also extend past Tax Day. From April 15-22, Kroger loyalty ID members can get 50% off of a Private Selection frozen meal when they purchase one. All you need is the digital coupon from your Kroger account. Where does federal tax revenue actually go? According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the federal government spent $6.9 trillion in 2024. About 71% of that figure or $4.9 trillion was funded by taxes. The difference was made up by borrowing money. The majority of federal government spending falls into four categories. The largest is healthcare, coming in at 24% of the 2024 budget. This means that Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act cost about $1.7 trillion. Social Security made up 21% of the budget or $1.5 trillion. These funds help retired workers make the most of their golden years. It also aids disabled workers and their dependents. Possibly the most controversial category is national defense spending. It made up $872 billion, or 13% of the 2024 budget. Another 13% of the budget is spent on debt interest. Since the federal government is not solely funded by tax revenue, it has to borrow money to make up the difference. View the full article

Starting a small business requires careful planning and execution. First, you’ll need to refine your business idea to meet consumer needs effectively. After that, creating a detailed business plan is essential for outlining your mission, target market, and financial goals. Furthermore, you must assess your finances and explore funding options to secure the necessary capital. The next steps involve selecting a legal structure and registering your business. Interested in learning how to build a team and craft a marketing strategy? Key Takeaways Refine your business idea by addressing consumer needs and conducting market research to validate demand. Write a comprehensive business plan outlining your mission, market analysis, and financial projections. Assess your finances, calculate startup costs, and explore various funding options for your business. Choose an appropriate legal structure, register your business, and obtain necessary licenses and permits. Build a skilled team and establish a marketing strategy to effectively engage your target audience. Refine Your Business Idea Refining your business idea is a crucial first step in launching a successful venture. Start by identifying a clear concept that addresses specific consumer needs or problems, using your personal passion or expertise. Conduct thorough market research to gauge demand, understand your target demographics, and analyze competitors to validate your business concept. This research will help you define your business’s purpose and establish measurable goals that guide your strategy. Next, create an extensive value proposition that articulates how your product or service stands out from the competition and meets customer needs. As you form your small business, consider potential financing options early on. This guarantees you have the resources needed to support startup costs and bring your idea to fruition. Write a Comprehensive Business Plan Writing a thorough business plan is critical for laying the groundwork of your small business, as it serves as a strategic roadmap that outlines your vision and objectives. Your plan should detail your mission, target market, and competitive analysis, helping you understand where you fit in the marketplace. Financial projections, including startup costs and revenue expectations, are fundamental to demonstrate the viability of your business idea. Furthermore, clearly outline your marketing strategies to show how you plan to reach and engage your audience through various channels. Remember, a business plan isn’t a static document; it needs regular updates to reflect changes in the market and your goals. Utilizing a business plan template can simplify this process, ensuring you cover all important components, making it easier to present to potential investors or lenders. This thorough approach will guide you toward achieving success in your venture. Assess Your Finances and Explore Funding Options Once you have your business plan in place, it’s time to assess your finances and explore funding options to turn your vision into reality. Start by calculating your startup costs, which can vary widely depending on your business type. Don’t forget to plan for more funding than you think you’ll need to avoid running out of cash. Conducting a break-even analysis is vital; it helps you understand when your business will become profitable, guiding your financial goals and pricing strategies. Explore various funding options like personal savings, loans, crowdfunding, and investments. Each has different implications for ownership and control. Consider smaller community banks for better support and quicker decisions when opening a business bank account. Funding Option Pros and Cons Personal Savings Full control, but risk personal assets Loans Immediate cash, but requires repayment Crowdfunding Access to many investors, but may dilute control Understanding these aspects is significant for your financial operations. Choose Your Legal Structure and Register Your Business Choosing the right legal structure for your business is a crucial step that can greatly impact your liability, taxation, and operational flexibility. You can choose from several options, including sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation, each with its pros and cons. Once you’ve made your choice, you’ll need to register your business with the state by filing necessary formation documents, like Articles of Incorporation for corporations or Articles of Organization for LLCs. This establishes your business’s legal existence. Furthermore, obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS for tax purposes, hiring employees, and opening a business bank account. Depending on your activities, you might also need local, state, or federal licenses and permits to guarantee compliance. Finally, check naming requirements and file for a “Doing Business As” (DBA) if you’re using a fictitious name, making sure it’s unique in your state. Build Your Team and Establish a Marketing Strategy After establishing your business’s legal foundation, your next focus should be on building a capable team and creating an effective marketing strategy. Start by identifying the skills necessary for your business and recruiting individuals who share your mission and culture. This lays a strong foundation for collaboration and growth. Ensure you establish clear roles and responsibilities within your team to improve productivity and communication. When developing your marketing strategy, conduct thorough market research to understand your target audience. This helps tailor your messaging effectively. Consider these key elements: Utilize digital marketing tools like social media and email. Engage with your audience to build brand awareness. Drive traffic to your website to increase sales. Monitor the effectiveness of your efforts through analytics. Adjust strategies based on customer feedback for continuous improvement. Frequently Asked Questions What Are Common Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Small Business? When starting a small business, you should avoid several common mistakes. Don’t underestimate the importance of a solid business plan; it guides your direction. Ignoring market research can lead to misjudgments about your target audience. Failing to manage finances properly may result in cash flow issues. Additionally, neglecting to comply with legal requirements can create future problems. Finally, not seeking advice from mentors could limit your growth and opportunities. How Can I Find a Mentor for My Business Journey? To find a mentor for your business expedition, start by networking within your industry. Attend local business events, workshops, and online forums. Reach out through social media platforms like LinkedIn, where you can connect with experienced professionals. Consider joining a small business association or a mentorship program, which often pairs you with seasoned entrepreneurs. Finally, don’t hesitate to ask for introductions from your existing contacts; personal recommendations can lead to valuable connections. What Resources Are Available for Small Business Owners? As a small business owner, you’ve got various resources at your disposal. The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers guidance on funding, regulations, and planning. Online platforms like SCORE provide free mentoring and workshops. Local chambers of commerce can connect you with networking opportunities. Moreover, industry-specific associations often have valuable resources customized to your business needs. Utilizing these resources can help you navigate challenges and grow your business effectively. How Can I Effectively Network in My Industry? To effectively network in your industry, start by attending relevant events and conferences where you can meet peers and potential clients. Utilize social media platforms like LinkedIn to connect and engage with industry professionals. Don’t hesitate to reach out for informational interviews or coffee chats, as these can lead to valuable insights and opportunities. Moreover, consider joining local business associations or online forums to expand your circle and share resources with others. What Are the Tax Implications of Running a Small Business? Running a small business comes with various tax implications. You’ll need to report your income, which can be subject to self-employment tax. Depending on your business structure, you might face different tax rates and regulations. Moreover, you can deduct business expenses, like supplies and travel costs, which can lower your taxable income. It’s critical to keep accurate records and consider consulting a tax professional to navigate the intricacies effectively. Conclusion In summary, forming your small business requires careful planning and execution. By refining your business idea, crafting a detailed business plan, evaluating your finances, choosing a legal structure, and building a competent team, you set a solid foundation for your venture. Furthermore, implementing a targeted marketing strategy will help you reach potential customers effectively. Following these crucial steps guarantees you navigate the intricacies of starting a business and increases your chances of long-term success. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "5 Essential Steps to Form Your Small Business Today" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Starting a small business requires careful planning and execution. First, you’ll need to refine your business idea to meet consumer needs effectively. After that, creating a detailed business plan is essential for outlining your mission, target market, and financial goals. Furthermore, you must assess your finances and explore funding options to secure the necessary capital. The next steps involve selecting a legal structure and registering your business. Interested in learning how to build a team and craft a marketing strategy? Key Takeaways Refine your business idea by addressing consumer needs and conducting market research to validate demand. Write a comprehensive business plan outlining your mission, market analysis, and financial projections. Assess your finances, calculate startup costs, and explore various funding options for your business. Choose an appropriate legal structure, register your business, and obtain necessary licenses and permits. Build a skilled team and establish a marketing strategy to effectively engage your target audience. Refine Your Business Idea Refining your business idea is a crucial first step in launching a successful venture. Start by identifying a clear concept that addresses specific consumer needs or problems, using your personal passion or expertise. Conduct thorough market research to gauge demand, understand your target demographics, and analyze competitors to validate your business concept. This research will help you define your business’s purpose and establish measurable goals that guide your strategy. Next, create an extensive value proposition that articulates how your product or service stands out from the competition and meets customer needs. As you form your small business, consider potential financing options early on. This guarantees you have the resources needed to support startup costs and bring your idea to fruition. Write a Comprehensive Business Plan Writing a thorough business plan is critical for laying the groundwork of your small business, as it serves as a strategic roadmap that outlines your vision and objectives. Your plan should detail your mission, target market, and competitive analysis, helping you understand where you fit in the marketplace. Financial projections, including startup costs and revenue expectations, are fundamental to demonstrate the viability of your business idea. Furthermore, clearly outline your marketing strategies to show how you plan to reach and engage your audience through various channels. Remember, a business plan isn’t a static document; it needs regular updates to reflect changes in the market and your goals. Utilizing a business plan template can simplify this process, ensuring you cover all important components, making it easier to present to potential investors or lenders. This thorough approach will guide you toward achieving success in your venture. Assess Your Finances and Explore Funding Options Once you have your business plan in place, it’s time to assess your finances and explore funding options to turn your vision into reality. Start by calculating your startup costs, which can vary widely depending on your business type. Don’t forget to plan for more funding than you think you’ll need to avoid running out of cash. Conducting a break-even analysis is vital; it helps you understand when your business will become profitable, guiding your financial goals and pricing strategies. Explore various funding options like personal savings, loans, crowdfunding, and investments. Each has different implications for ownership and control. Consider smaller community banks for better support and quicker decisions when opening a business bank account. Funding Option Pros and Cons Personal Savings Full control, but risk personal assets Loans Immediate cash, but requires repayment Crowdfunding Access to many investors, but may dilute control Understanding these aspects is significant for your financial operations. Choose Your Legal Structure and Register Your Business Choosing the right legal structure for your business is a crucial step that can greatly impact your liability, taxation, and operational flexibility. You can choose from several options, including sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation, each with its pros and cons. Once you’ve made your choice, you’ll need to register your business with the state by filing necessary formation documents, like Articles of Incorporation for corporations or Articles of Organization for LLCs. This establishes your business’s legal existence. Furthermore, obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS for tax purposes, hiring employees, and opening a business bank account. Depending on your activities, you might also need local, state, or federal licenses and permits to guarantee compliance. Finally, check naming requirements and file for a “Doing Business As” (DBA) if you’re using a fictitious name, making sure it’s unique in your state. Build Your Team and Establish a Marketing Strategy After establishing your business’s legal foundation, your next focus should be on building a capable team and creating an effective marketing strategy. Start by identifying the skills necessary for your business and recruiting individuals who share your mission and culture. This lays a strong foundation for collaboration and growth. Ensure you establish clear roles and responsibilities within your team to improve productivity and communication. When developing your marketing strategy, conduct thorough market research to understand your target audience. This helps tailor your messaging effectively. Consider these key elements: Utilize digital marketing tools like social media and email. Engage with your audience to build brand awareness. Drive traffic to your website to increase sales. Monitor the effectiveness of your efforts through analytics. Adjust strategies based on customer feedback for continuous improvement. Frequently Asked Questions What Are Common Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Small Business? When starting a small business, you should avoid several common mistakes. Don’t underestimate the importance of a solid business plan; it guides your direction. Ignoring market research can lead to misjudgments about your target audience. Failing to manage finances properly may result in cash flow issues. Additionally, neglecting to comply with legal requirements can create future problems. Finally, not seeking advice from mentors could limit your growth and opportunities. How Can I Find a Mentor for My Business Journey? To find a mentor for your business expedition, start by networking within your industry. Attend local business events, workshops, and online forums. Reach out through social media platforms like LinkedIn, where you can connect with experienced professionals. Consider joining a small business association or a mentorship program, which often pairs you with seasoned entrepreneurs. Finally, don’t hesitate to ask for introductions from your existing contacts; personal recommendations can lead to valuable connections. What Resources Are Available for Small Business Owners? As a small business owner, you’ve got various resources at your disposal. The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers guidance on funding, regulations, and planning. Online platforms like SCORE provide free mentoring and workshops. Local chambers of commerce can connect you with networking opportunities. Moreover, industry-specific associations often have valuable resources customized to your business needs. Utilizing these resources can help you navigate challenges and grow your business effectively. How Can I Effectively Network in My Industry? To effectively network in your industry, start by attending relevant events and conferences where you can meet peers and potential clients. Utilize social media platforms like LinkedIn to connect and engage with industry professionals. Don’t hesitate to reach out for informational interviews or coffee chats, as these can lead to valuable insights and opportunities. Moreover, consider joining local business associations or online forums to expand your circle and share resources with others. What Are the Tax Implications of Running a Small Business? Running a small business comes with various tax implications. You’ll need to report your income, which can be subject to self-employment tax. Depending on your business structure, you might face different tax rates and regulations. Moreover, you can deduct business expenses, like supplies and travel costs, which can lower your taxable income. It’s critical to keep accurate records and consider consulting a tax professional to navigate the intricacies effectively. Conclusion In summary, forming your small business requires careful planning and execution. By refining your business idea, crafting a detailed business plan, evaluating your finances, choosing a legal structure, and building a competent team, you set a solid foundation for your venture. Furthermore, implementing a targeted marketing strategy will help you reach potential customers effectively. Following these crucial steps guarantees you navigate the intricacies of starting a business and increases your chances of long-term success. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "5 Essential Steps to Form Your Small Business Today" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Google sent out emails the other day to some advertisers that may be impacted by changes coming to enhanced conversions for web or enhanced conversions for leads. Google said they will be simplifying this by consolidating enhanced conversions for web and enhanced conversions for leads into a single, unified setting.View the full article

At its factory in Illinois, Rivian will soon use more than 100 retired EV batteries in an on-site power system that will help it save money on electric bills. The electric automaker is one of the first customers of Redwood Materials’s new energy storage business, which takes old or discarded EV batteries—in this case, from Rivian’s own vehicles—and deploys them in a second life on the grid. By making it possible to charge when there’s excess energy available and the cost of electricity is low, the project “can generate significant cost savings that directly contributes to a reduction in the cost of our vehicles,” says Andrew Peterman, who runs Rivian’s advanced energy program. It also means that the manufacturer can use more renewable energy, since excess solar and wind power is available at certain times of day. It’s part of Rivian’s larger approach to energy. “There’s always been this shared vision of transportation and what we’re doing on the automotive side and linking that to grid transformation, enabling affordable, reliable, and cleaner electricity for everyone,” Peterman says. At the factory, the company also has behind-the-meter solar panels and a 2.8-megawatt-hour wind turbine that together provide enough power to charge each new vehicle with 100% clean energy before it leaves the factory. Now the solar and wind power will be connected to the batteries, along with the grid itself. “We’ll charge the batteries when it’s cheapest and the grid has a surplus,” Peterman says. “Then when the grid gets constrained—say, in the middle of the summer when it’s 5 p.m. and the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, and you see a tremendous amount of strain on the grid—that’s when we would discharge these batteries to our plant, relieving the grid of that strain.” Redwood, the battery recycling company built by Tesla cofounder JB Straubel, designed technology to manage networks of used batteries seamlessly, and will operate the new system at Rivian’s factory. (Redwood’s first system, at its own campus in Nevada, uses EV batteries to store energy from a field of solar panels and run an adjacent data center built by Crusoe, a project that is now set to expand.) At the Rivian factory, the new energy storage system will use batteries that were previously used in Rivian trucks and SUVs, including test vehicles. When a used EV battery is partially depleted and no longer has enough power for driving, it can still have a long life storing electricity. More than 100 batteries will be laid out in a field near Rivian’s wind turbine, providing around 10 megawatt-hours of electricity storage. It’s not designed to back up the whole factory, but it’s enough to make a meaningful difference in Rivian’s electricity bills. Rivian declined to comment on the cost of the new system or the payback period, though it noted that it’s an affordable solution. The solution makes sense for other factories, says Peterman, and could also be used to support applications like public EV charging. Instead of straining the grid, he says, chargers “can now serve as a resource for the grid, coupled with these large energy storage solutions.” View the full article

A decade into the age of nationalism, the idea of quitting the club is still remarkably tabooView the full article

A bug has triggered scores of emails from Google saying it is collecting impressions on sites long since verified in Search Console. Do not be alarmed, it is a bug.View the full article

Microsoft Advertising will be transitioning from its SOAP to REST API and with that, on January 31, 2027, the SOAP API will be fully retired on January 31, 2027.View the full article

White House and Kremlin make positive comments about Magyar despite previously endorsing OrbánView the full article

Attribution gaps, platform silos, privacy changes: Conflicting data is only getting worse. Here's how to lead with clarity when the numbers don't match. The post Why Your Search Data Doesn’t Agree (And What To Do About It) appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

At $50+ CPCs, Reddit beats every vendor organically 67.3% of the time across 8,566 keywords. The study from Ross Simmonds and his team focused on B2B SaaS, but the underlying dynamics don’t stop there. The higher the advertising competition on a term, the more likely a Reddit thread sits above every brand in organic results. If you’re in legal, financial services, premium home services, or insurance, those CPCs aren’t unusual territory. This study is worth your attention. The SEO community has been talking about this for a while, and the conversation has largely stayed in SEO territory: Reddit is eating organic search, so build your glossaries and invest in content strategy. These are great suggestions, but I’m not an SEO, so I can’t speak to them. What I keep thinking about isn’t mentioned in the study: What does this actually do to the signal layer your PPC campaigns depend on? The problem starts before anyone clicks your ad When a buyer searches a high-intent term and lands on a Reddit thread instead of your page, two things happen. The buyer gets peer opinions, real comparisons, and experiences from people who’ve already been where they are. Google records a behavioral signal: someone searched this query, engaged with this result, and didn’t need to go further. That signal feeds back into Google’s understanding of what satisfies that query, and over time, it shapes how the algorithm models relevance on that term. Your page didn’t just lose a click. It contributed to a pattern of signal degradation on a term you’re actively paying to compete on, originating entirely outside your account, with no report that surfaces it. This is what makes it an automation drift problem. The algorithm is updating its model based on the behavioral data it can see, while your account operates in the dark about where that data is coming from. 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 The problem continues after someone clicks The buyer who spent three days on Reddit before clicking your ad arrives as a different person than someone who searched and converted in the same session. They’ve compared options, read real experiences, and already filtered out most of the noise. Smart Bidding has no idea any of that happened. It sees a $50 click and waits to see if a conversion fires within your attribution window. If you’re running a short window and the buyer spent several of those days in a research phase before coming back, you’re looking at 100% of the cost and none of the conversions still sitting in that detour. The system interprets this as underperformance and starts pulling back on the exact terms producing your most qualified buyers, not because anything went wrong inside the account, but because the signal it was given told it to. The automation is doing exactly what it was built to do. The signal just doesn’t reflect the full picture of what’s happening. What UCaaS gets right that others don’t Simmonds’ study covers four verticals. In three of them, Reddit beats every vendor simultaneously on more than half of shared keywords. In the unified communication and contact center as a service (UCaaS) category, the vendors win. RingCentral, Nextiva, and Dialpad consistently outrank Reddit on the same terms where every other vertical loses. It’s not because of domain authority or budget. It’s that they built informational content at scale years ago — glossaries, category explainers, how-to-choose guides — and never stopped. Google had something real to point to on those terms beyond an ad, and the behavioral signals on those queries reflect that. That’s a content investment conversation, and a worthwhile one. But the principle connects directly to the bidding side: the algorithm makes better decisions when the signals around a term are cleaner, and cleaner signals don’t happen by accident. Dig deeper: A smarter Reddit strategy for organic and AI search visibility Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Where the fix lives On the bidding side, offline conversion tracking is the mechanism that closes the gap. When you import downstream outcomes back into the algorithm — which leads qualified, which closed, and what they were actually worth — you give Smart Bidding the context it needs to understand that a longer, more research-heavy path at a higher CPC can still be the right outcome. Google’s own data shows a median 10% lift in conversions for advertisers using first-party data alongside click IDs for offline measurement. Without it, the system keeps optimizing toward the fastest path to a conversion, which is rarely the path your most informed buyers take. On the organic side, getting more intentional about where your business shows up in the conversations your buyers are already having is worth considering. That might mean investing in content that actually answers the questions Reddit threads are currently answering for you, or thinking about whether your business has a presence in the communities where your buyers are doing their research. The UCaaS vendors didn’t beat Reddit by outspending everyone. They beat it by showing up consistently in the right places with the right content, long before anyone was ready to click an ad. The terms where you’re spending the most are the same terms where Reddit is most likely sitting between your ad and your buyer, quietly shaping the signals your automation depends on. That’s what automation drift looks like when it starts entirely outside the account. Dig deeper: Stop chasing Reddit and Wikipedia: What actually drives AI recommendations View the full article

When the NFL Draft comes to Pittsburgh next week, civic leaders will be using the spotlight to celebrate football’s Steelers—and the city’s growing reputation as a technology and artificial intelligence hub. The events include an AI pitch competition where judges including area native Mark Cuban will award startups from a 1.75 million prize pool—with preference given to companies with a presence in Pennsylvania. There’s a growing number of startups that fit that bill. As the name suggests, VC firm Valley Capital Partners is based in Silicon Valley. But for the past few years, firm general partner Mitchell Kokko has been living across the country in Pittsburgh. The firm considered expanding to a number of cities but was drawn by factors like the area’s universities, relatively affordable housing, a strong business environment, and its location in the Eastern time zone. In Pittsburgh, he says a growing startup scene is taking advantage of strong talent networks, a close-knit business community including nationally known firms, and the area’s low cost of living. “Pittsburgh really offers differentiated networks to founders who are looking to sell to enterprise companies,” says Kokko. “Because it’s a smaller hub than a San Francisco or New York City, the major companies all do business with one another.” And local business leaders are willing to give startups a chance and directly work with their founders, which Kokko says can be critical to the enterprise businesses his firm invests in. “They get faster feedback cycles, and in early-stage startups that can mean the difference between life and death,” he says. Mayor Corey O’Connor, who took office in January, ran on a platform that included support for businesses large and small, through an economic development program he said would help revitalize business districts across Pittsburgh and also keep affordable housing available even as the city grew. Startups are increasingly setting up shop in the city, though some long-time residents have expressed concern about gentrification with rents on the rise, even while still low by national averages. One such startup is Factify, a Valley Capital Partners-backed firm that in January announced a $73 million seed round supporting its efforts to build a next-generation document format that it sees as a potential successor to the PDF. The Tel Aviv-based company deliberately chose Pittsburgh as its first U.S. “base of operations,” says founder and CEO Matan Gavish. That was in part based on its desire to work with a tight-knit community of businesses in regulated industries that would adopt the software and collaborate with one another using Factify’s document standard. The city’s closely linked business community made it a natural choice, he says. “That led us to Pittsburgh from first principles,” says Gavish. In general, Pittsburgh has long had a presence in AI, robotics, biotech, and other areas of technology thanks in part to institutions like Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. But though it’s been home to buzzy tech businesses from Duolingo to Gecko Robotics, startup founders, college grads, and other young Pittsburghers looking for work have often historically made the trek to the Bay Area or other industry hubs. Nearly half of all Pittsburgh-area college grads leave town after graduation, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last year. “The joke is that almost every [Steelers] NFL game is a Steelers home game,” says Kokko. “Because there’s so many people that moved all over the country.” In recent times, though, that’s been changing, with startups setting up shop and remaining in the western Pennsylvania city, says Mayor Corey O’Connor. “Now, more and more are starting to stick around, and from those companies you’re seeing spinoffs that create more of a hub in Pittsburgh,” says O’Connor. That sort of a feedback loop can be important to building an entrepreneurial scene, alongside factors like a skilled workforce, a ready stream of business ideas, and funding, says Olav Sorenson, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who has studied the geography of entrepreneurship. “Oftentimes, some initial startups and startup success are important, almost like an autocatalytic process just to get things started,” he says. Bust and boom The city itself is also looking to help jumpstart the process. O’Connor, who took office in January, has emphasized offering support to businesses looking to start or grow in Pittsburgh, including making it easier to get necessary permits and providing workforce training to get residents ready for today’s jobs. He also fields between 10 and 20 calls per week with businesses, promoting the city’s amenities, including the arts and culture scene and the easy access to the area’s rivers and trails. Of course, those calls also promote the idea that support for business development is available at the highest levels of local government, and O’Connor emphasizes a belief that business growth will help the city’s long-term residents as much as newcomers. “It’s opportunities for the residents in Pittsburgh that may have never thought they’d see a boom like this before,” he says. It’s also a city that can offer businesses physical room to grow, he says, including dormant manufacturing centers dating back to its time as a steel and factory hub. It also delivers relatively affordable housing for employees, with local officials pointing to home and rental prices substantially lower than the national average, let alone high-priced hubs like New York and San Francisco. “The problem with a place like the Bay Area is that it’s become so phenomenally expensive,” says Sorenson. “The same startup could probably get going in a place like Pittsburgh for maybe a third or a quarter the amount of money.” After all, while Pittsburgh’s population has been on the rise in recent years, its Census-estimated 2024 population of just under 308,000 is still far below its official peak of 676,806, last seen around 1950. And the city was last year named the country’s lowest-price large U.S. housing market by realtor.com and frequently makes other lists of affordable American locales. “I think Pittsburgh has a unique advantage that’s driven by some of the structural shifts that happened during the collapse of the steel industry,” says Kokko. “And so, what you have is one of the cities in the United States that at one time was the third-largest business hub in the United States, and so you have infrastructure that can support much larger populations.” “Equitable Development” As the city’s mayor, and the son of a long-time Pittsburgh politician who was himself elected mayor in 2005, O’Connor naturally emphasizes residents’ longstanding pride in the city despite the decline in size. “When you’re a visitor and you go into a neighborhood, or you run into a Pittsburgher, they’re going to tell you what’s so great about Pittsburgh,” he says. Still, the rapid growth of the tech sector has gone hand-in-hand with rising costs and gentrification in many cities, and some local advocacy groups have expressed concern about affordable housing in Pittsburgh in recent years, especially for working class residents. Thousands of low-income families, especially Black families, have been displaced from the city in recent years, according to civic organization Pittsburgh United, which has called for “equitable development” in Pittsburgh. “Our vision of a growing Pittsburgh is a responsibly growing Pittsburgh—a Pittsburgh that includes the folks that have been here forever and for a very long time,” says communications director Kyla Rollins. “And that people that built the city have equitable opportunities to grow alongside this vision of the new Pittsburgh.” It’s a message that’s not outwardly at odds with City Hall, where O’Connor emphasizes work by the city to promote affordable housing. That includes a Housing Opportunity Fund to assist renters and homeowners, and the possibility of working with community groups to turn vacant city-owned lots into new housing. “Big emphasis for us [is] to make sure that if you’re living in your neighborhood now, you’re going to live there 20 years from now,” he says. View the full article

My first job was an unusual one, but I learned so many lessons from it that I carried with me throughout my career. I was in my last year at Cambridge and was planning to leave the next year for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard when a British publisher approached me. He had seen me at a televised Cambridge Union debate speaking on the changing role of women and he wrote to me asking me if I would write a book on the subject. I replied, “Thank you, but I can’t write.” He replied: “Can you have lunch?” So I took the train to London and ended up getting both lunch and a book contract with a modest advance. That was my first lesson: take risks. People starting out, especially women, often think they’re not ready. But we’re usually more ready than we think. You don’t have to know everything before taking a leap — you can learn on the job. So when an unexpected opportunity arises, trust yourself. It was a lesson that has served me well not only as a writer, but also in launching a company (The Huffington Post), which I’d never done before, and then in leaving a successful media company to launch another company (Thrive Global) in a completely new field, healthcare. My first book turned out to be an international bestseller, published around the world, then everybody wanted me to write another book on a similar topic. And that was my second lesson. I wanted to explore new territory. I didn’t want to be stuck writing about the same topic again and again. So I wrote a book about political leadership and learned the lesson of pivoting. Careers are rarely linear and that’s a good thing. We can often plod along in the comfort and security of what we know. That can even be a very successful strategy, if we’re defining success in the narrow terms of a career. But leaving our comfort zone and pivoting to something new forces us to learn new things, challenge ourselves, question our old assumptions and ways of working. In other words, it forces us to grow and evolve, which is a broader metric of success. My third lesson came from the fact that my second book was rejected by 36 publishers. By then, I’d run out of money. And at that point, I might have said, “You know what, 36 publishers think this is not worth publishing. Maybe I’ve picked the wrong career.” As I was walking down St. James’s Street in London, where I was living at the time, depressed and wondering what I should do, I saw a Barclays bank. Armed with little more than Greek chutzpah, I asked to see the bank manager and asked for a loan. And for some reason, he gave it to me, even though I had zero assets! That made it possible for me to continue submitting my manuscript until finally I got a yes! So that lesson was one of perseverance and resilience. My mother always said that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a stepping stone to success. Sometimes, as in my case, there are lots of stepping stones. And perseverance and resilience are what carries us across them. And some Greek chutzpah doesn’t hurt either. My First Job is a recurring series in which prominent business leaders share what their first job was and what they learned from it. View the full article