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If you have children under the age of 13, they will soon be able to have their own WhatsApp account for messaging and calling—but with heavy parent supervision. Users with parent-managed accounts can only message with saved contacts, and while preteens' communication will still be end-to-end encrypted and private from parents, supervising adults will be notified about certain account activity and have the ability to approve or decline requests. According to Meta, this account type is rolling out gradually and globally. How parent-managed accounts work for preteensManaged accounts for WhatsApp users under 13 are limited to calling and texting with saved contacts and groups approved by parents. The built-in parental controls prevent access to many features of a regular WhatsApp account: Meta AI Channels Status Chat Lock App Lock Linked devices Location sharing View once messages Disappearing messages in individual chats Ads Only saved contacts are able to see preteens' profile pictures and when they were last online. Parents have to approve changes to privacy settings as well as message and group invite requests from unknown contacts, which will go to a separate folder locked with a parent PIN. Managed accounts cannot create groups on their own. Parents can also opt into notifications about account activity, such as when a contact is added, blocked, or reported; when a chat or contact is deleted; when a group is created, joined, or exited; and if disappearing messages are enabled in group chats. Notification options are under Settings > Parental controls in your WhatsApp account—select your child's account and tap More options > Manage notifications. How to set up a supervised WhatsApp accountTo get your preteen started on WhatsApp, you'll need to download the latest version of the app on your child's device. After selecting your language, tap More options > Create a parent-managed account. You'll then be prompted to register and verify your child's phone number and birthday to confirm their age and tap Continue. Scan the QR code with your phone and follow the steps to set up a six-digit parent PIN. Then, go back to your child's device, enter your parent PIN, and select Continue to finish their account setup. When users turn 13, they'll gain full access to WhatsApp features like Channels, Status, and Meta AI and be able to manage their own privacy settings. Parents will no longer get account activity notifications, and parental controls will be removed. View the full article

Dollar General’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 earnings report shows some successes—though you wouldn’t know that by the reaction of its stock. Shares of Dollar General Corp (NYSE: DG) fell more than 6% in premarket trading on Thursday following the report’s early-morning release. And yet the discount retailer’s financial results include figures such as a 5.9% increase year-over-year (YOY) in quarter-four, with net sales increasing to $10.9 billion. Its 2025 net sales saw a similar jump of 5.2% YOY to $42.7 billion. Same-store sales also rose 4.3% YOY in the last quarter and 3% YOY for 2025. Notably, Dollar General did predict slower growth for 2026. It expects net sales to increase between 3.7% and 4.2% over the year, while it estimates same store sales to grow 2.2% to 2.7%. Dollar General store closures The 2025 report is free of one ominous announcement that loomed over last year’s results: additional store closures. In its fiscal 2024 fourth-quarter report, Dollar General announced that it would shutter 96 of its namesake stores and 45 PopShelf locations, a retail chain the company owns. The 141 store closures followed 117 other shutterings throughout the year. This time around there are, at least, no additional store closure announcements, and in fact Dollar General ended the year with a net gain in stores. Dollar General shuttered 290 stores across the two brands in 2025 (which the 141 announced would be included in). But it opened 589 locations. As of January 30, 2026, Dollar General had a total count of 20,893 stores, compared to 20,594 at the same time last year. At publication, Dollar General stock was down more than 7% in early Thursday trading. View the full article

Paying attention to personal stress signals can help professionals recharge before fatigue turns into burnout. With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto Center for Accounting Transformation Go PRO for members-only access to more Center for Accounting Transformation. View the full article

Paying attention to personal stress signals can help professionals recharge before fatigue turns into burnout. With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto Center for Accounting Transformation Go PRO for members-only access to more Center for Accounting Transformation. View the full article

A growing share of search interactions now begins inside generative systems. Users open AI tools and ask questions the same way they’d ask a colleague: in full sentences, with context, and often across multiple follow-up prompts. Generative systems synthesize answers from sources they interpret as credible and relevant to the prompt. Visibility increasingly depends on whether a brand’s content aligns with the questions people ask AI systems, not just the keywords they type into search engines. Traditional search results haven’t disappeared. Today’s discovery environment blends ranked results, AI-generated summaries, and conversational assistants. This shift introduces a new research layer: prompt research. It’s quickly becoming a foundational practice for SEO and generative engine optimization (GEO). Here’s how prompt research works, why it matters, and how to incorporate it into content planning. How prompt-based search is reshaping discovery Search queries are becoming more context-rich as generative AI platforms encourage users to ask questions in natural language and refine them through follow-up prompts. Many searches now unfold as a sequence rather than a single query. A user asks an initial question, reviews the generated response, then adds clarifying prompts with new constraints, comparisons, or context. In these environments, search behaves more like a conversation than a lookup. Each prompt builds on the previous response, creating a chain that gradually clarifies intent. Several shifts reinforce this pattern: AI assistants and voice interfaces encourage natural phrasing. Follow-up prompts allow search sessions to evolve conversationally. Multimodal inputs combine text, images, and contextual signals. As a result, the unit of search interaction is shifting. Instead of optimizing for isolated queries, you increasingly need to understand how prompts are phrased, sequenced and refined within AI-driven search sessions. Understanding those prompt patterns is the goal of prompt research. Dig deeper: A smarter way to approach AI prompting 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 is prompt research? Prompt research analyzes the questions people ask generative AI systems and how those prompts shape the answers those systems produce. In practice, it functions as the AI-era extension of keyword research: Traditional keyword research analyzes search queries, ranking opportunities, and competition within the results page. Prompt research focuses on the prompts that lead AI systems to explain topics, compare options, or recommend specific tools, products, or brands. This changes the research process. Instead of mapping keyword variations alone, teams need to: Identify recurring prompt patterns. Cluster related questions around a topic. Anticipate how a user’s inquiry expands through follow-up prompts. For example, someone researching email marketing software might begin with a prompt like: “What are the best email marketing tools for small businesses?” Follow-up prompts extend the conversation: “Which email marketing tools are easiest for beginners?” “How does Mailchimp compare to ConvertKit?” “What features should small businesses look for in email marketing software?” Prompt research identifies these patterns so you can structure content around how users explore topics through AI search. Why prompt research changes SEO and GEO content strategy Prompt research expands the scope of content strategy beyond ranking individual pages to clusters of related questions. For SEO, that means ensuring content covers the full topic landscape rather than a single query. For GEO, it means ensuring content provides the context generative systems need to synthesize answers. Several strategic priorities follow. Topical authority Prompt clusters reveal the full range of questions users ask about a topic. Content that addresses those related questions is more likely to rank in traditional search and surface in AI-generated answers. Clear entity relationships Search engines and generative systems rely on entities to understand context. Clearly referencing relevant companies, products, technologies, and concepts helps them interpret how information fits together. Structured information Well-organized content is easier for systems to work with. Clear headings, concise explanations, and logical sections help search engines index pages and help generative systems extract key points. Conversational formatting Prompt research often shows that users ask questions in natural language. Content that answers those questions directly — through explanations, comparisons, and FAQs — aligns better with search queries and AI prompts. Together, these practices help content perform across the modern search environment. Dig deeper: How generative engines define and rank trustworthy content Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. A practical framework for prompt research Organizations can integrate prompt research into their SEO and GEO workflows through four stages. 1. Prompt discovery Prompt discovery focuses on identifying the questions users ask across generative platforms and AI-assisted search. Useful sources include: AI chat logs and internal user research. Community discussions and forums. Customer support and sales questions. AI-assisted search experiences. The goal is to surface prompts with clear intent — especially questions that require explanations, comparisons, or recommendations. 2. Prompt clustering Once prompts are collected, they can be grouped into intent-based clusters. These clusters reveal how users explore a topic across multiple questions. Common prompt clusters include: Informational prompts “What is customer lifecycle marketing?” “How does lifecycle marketing work?” Comparative prompts “Lifecycle marketing vs traditional email campaigns: what’s the difference?” “Klaviyo vs. HubSpot for lifecycle marketing?” Transactional prompts “What tools support lifecycle marketing automation?” “Which lifecycle marketing platforms are best for ecommerce?” Strategic or multi-step prompts “How should an ecommerce brand build a lifecycle marketing strategy?” “What lifecycle emails should an ecommerce company send after purchase?” Prompt clustering helps identify patterns and prioritize content topics. 3. Prompt mapping Prompt mapping connects prompt clusters to content strategy. This typically involves: Aligning prompts with existing content. Identifying new content opportunities. Flagging gaps in topic coverage. For SEO, this helps expand coverage across related queries. For GEO, it helps ensure content addresses the types of prompts that trigger AI-generated answers. 4. Response optimization The final step focuses on structuring content so search engines and generative systems can interpret it clearly. Effective response optimization often includes: Concise explanations near the top of sections. FAQ sections that mirror real prompts. Supporting data, examples, or expert insights. Reinforcing related concepts across content. Clear, structured answers improve reader usability while increasing the likelihood that content surfaces in search results and AI-generated responses. Dig deeper: How to use AI response patterns to build better content Risks and challenges in the new search environment Prompt research introduces new complexities for teams working across SEO and GEO: Limited algorithm transparency: Generative systems provide little visibility into how sources are selected or weighted in AI-generated answers. This makes it difficult to predict which content will surface in response to specific prompts. Attribution complexity: Tracking traffic from AI assistants and generative search interfaces remains inconsistent. Referral data is often incomplete, which complicates measurement for SEO and GEO performance. Misinformation risks: Generative systems can occasionally surface inaccurate or outdated information, even when credible sources exist. This places greater emphasis on publishing clear, well-supported content that AI systems can reliably interpret. Strategic balance: Content strategies still need to prioritize human readers. Information should remain clear, trustworthy, and genuinely useful — regardless of whether it appears in traditional search results or AI-generated responses. Despite these challenges, the underlying opportunity remains clear: understanding prompt patterns helps you anticipate how AI systems assemble answers. The example below illustrates how that process can shape a content strategy. Case example: Optimizing for prompt clusters Consider a hypothetical SaaS analytics company looking to expand its visibility across AI-generated answers and traditional search. Initial prompt research reveals several clusters around predictive analytics: “What is predictive analytics?” “How does predictive analytics improve marketing ROI?” “What are the best predictive analytics tools for ecommerce?” Rather than targeting these prompts with isolated pages, the company builds a content structure around the broader topic. A foundational guide: Explains predictive analytics, how it works, and why companies use it. Supporting articles: Explore specific applications, such as marketing attribution, customer segmentation, or demand forecasting. Comparison pages: Evaluate leading predictive analytics tools and platforms. Each article includes structured explanations, FAQs that mirror common prompts, and citations from industry research. This structure supports SEO and GEO. The foundational guide captures informational search demand, while supporting and comparison content addresses follow-up prompts users ask as they explore the topic. Over time, the content appears in both traditional search results and AI-generated answers, expanding visibility in the new search environment. Dig deeper: Advanced AI prompt engineering strategies for SEO 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 Putting prompt engineering in your search strategy Brands that begin analyzing prompt patterns today will gain insight into emerging discovery behaviors. A practical starting point involves auditing existing content through a new lens: Which prompts does this content answer clearly? What follow-up questions might users ask? How easily can generative systems interpret and synthesize the information? Search visibility increasingly depends on how well content participates in AI-generated knowledge systems. Prompt research helps ensure that participation happens by design rather than by chance. 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. Amazon’s color e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, is currently available for $206.99 in refurbished condition, which price trackers show is the lowest it has reached so far. A brand-new unit sells for about $279, so the discount is fairly noticeable if you are comfortable buying refurbished. This deal comes through Amazon’s refurbished program, meaning the device has already been inspected and cleared for functionality. Storage is 32GB, which is more than enough space for thousands of ebooks and a good number of audiobooks. Amazon Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition $206.99 at Amazon $251.99 Save $45.00 Get Deal Get Deal $206.99 at Amazon $251.99 Save $45.00 In terms of design, the Colorsoft Signature Edition feels similar to the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. It measures about 7 by 5 by 0.3 inches and weighs 7.7 ounces, so it still has that familiar lightweight Kindle feel. The main difference is the seven-inch Kaleido 3 color display. Black-and-white text renders at 300 pixels per inch, while color content displays at 150ppi. That color layer is what sets this Kindle apart. Comics, graphic novels, magazines, and illustrated books look noticeably better than they do on a standard grayscale Kindle. The colors are closer to newspaper print than a bright tablet screen, but they still make panels and illustrations easier to follow. There’s also a guided comic feature that automatically zooms into individual panels so dialogue and artwork are easier to read without constantly adjusting the page, says Michelle Ehrhardt in her review of the device. Aside from the color screen, the rest of the hardware matches what people expect from Amazon’s higher-end Kindles. The auto-adjusting front light changes brightness based on the room, the IPX8 waterproofing makes it safe for reading around water, and wireless charging is supported alongside USB-C. That said, there are a few trade-offs to keep in mind. The color display can introduce slightly uneven lighting in some situations, and battery life is shorter than on the Paperwhite. Amazon estimates up to eight weeks per charge, compared with roughly 12 weeks on the Paperwhite. It also lacks physical page-turn buttons (as is typical of Kindles), so navigation happens entirely through the touchscreen. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $119.99 (List Price $179.00) Samsung Galaxy S26 512GB + $100 Amazon Gift Card (Black) — $899.99 (List Price $1,099.99) Google Pixel 10a 128GB 6.3" Unlocked Smartphone + $100 Gift Card — $599.00 (List Price $599.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $329.99 (List Price $349.00) Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 42mm, S/M Black Sport Band) — $299.00 (List Price $399.00) Amazon Fire TV Soundbar — $99.99 (List Price $119.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

A widening war in Iran has halted oil tankers, made targets of refineries and spooked investors worried about the cascading impact of spiking energy prices. In response, the International Energy Agency agreed on Wednesday to release the largest volume of emergency oil reserves in its history, with the Paris-based organization pledging to make 400 million barrels of oil available from its member nations’ stockpiles. The announcement marked a shift in momentum in government response to the war upending the flow of oil, with other global leaders previously indicating reluctance to tap into stockpiles. Here is a look at the energy supplies that countries hold and when they tap them: Many countries have reserves of oil Since war erupted in the Middle East on Feb. 28 with the U.S. and Israel’s joint attacks on Iran, the flow of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz has all but stopped, cutting off a vital passageway where roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil sails through on a typical day. Major producers in the region like Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have also cut production because they are running out of storage space. And Iran, Israel and the U.S. have all struck oil and gas facilities, worsening supply concerns. That has sent prices soaring with dramatic swings almost every day. On Monday, Brent crude oil — the international standard — surged to as high as nearly $120 a barrel, before falling to under $90 after President Donald The President suggested the war could be near an end. But attacks have continued to escalate since, pushing prices back to about $100 a barrel. Countries around the world hold vast quantities of oil that they can use in the event of a crisis. Because oil is a global commodity and flooding the market with a sudden stream of new supply has international implications, countries often talk to one another before tapping reserves. That includes coordinating with the IEA, an organization created in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. It has 32 members — including Germany, Austria and Japan, all of whom confirmed Wednesday that they would be tapping parts of their reserves. The U.S., Mexico, Australia and other major countries are also part of the IEA. IEA members currently hold over 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks, with a further 600 million barrels of industry stocks held under government obligation. The largest-ever previous collective release of emergency stocks by IEA member countries was 182.7 million barrels following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Each of the IEA member countries promises to have a reserve at least equivalent to what they import in a 90-day period. The U.S. exports more than it imports, maintaining its own reserve — known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — despite there being no requirement. But for other countries, tapping their reserves means that they will eventually need to replenish what was removed. “Because of that, countries tend to keep reserves for a last-resort scenario, should the disruption be prolonged,” said Maksim Sonin, an energy executive who works with Stanford University’s Hydrogen Initiative. Timing a release is tricky Opting to use oil reserves is never a simple calculation, particularly when linked to a war with constantly shifting parameters and no clear timeline. When nations tap into strategic reserves in situations like the war in Iran, the oil is sold into the global marketplace, theoretically increasing supply and thus, lowering prices. “The key question on drawing down these reserves remains one of, ‘How long will this conflict last?'” said Tom Seng, an energy finance professor at Texas Christian University. “And, more importantly, ‘How long will the Strait of Hormuz remain blocked?'” Oil reserves have been tapped when the market has faced major disruption in the past, including wars in Iraq, Libya and, most recently, in Ukraine. Kenneth Medlock, senior director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University, said it’s not a matter of whether the current conflict is serious enough to merit intervention, but whether the precise moment has arrived. “The price is up but it could get worse,” Medlock said. “What happens if this drags on for two, three months? Then you run into a situation where you lose your buffer.” Shift in discussions and the impact on prices Before Wednesday, countries were reticent to tap reserves. Over the weekend, The President downplayed the idea of turning to the U.S. reserve, maintaining that supplies were ample and prices would soon fall. But that’s changed. On Wednesday, the president told WKRC Local 12 in Cincinnati his administration would tap into the SPR “a little bit” to bring down prices. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright later confirmed the U.S. would release 172 million barrels as part of the IEA’s effort. Representatives from the Group of Seven major industrialized powers previously held off on using strategic reserves earlier this week, too. But G7 nations also joined the IEA effort. French President Emmanuel Macron praised Wednesday’s decision — and noted the amount pledged by the G7 nations alone comprises 70% of the total, including 14.5 million barrels from France. Talk of tapping into national reserves helped ease energy markets earlier this week. But crude prices actually ticked up after the withdrawal was confirmed Wednesday, with Brent rising 4.8% to settle at $91.98. That is far higher than the roughly $70 it was selling for before the war started less than two weeks ago. Analysts maintain the IEA’s release of 400 million barrels is a short-term bridge, making up for just a few weeks of lost supply. —Matt Sedensky and Wyatte Grantham-Philips, Associated Press View the full article

Housing starts increased 7.2% to an annual pace of 1.49 million homes in January, according to government figures out Thursday. View the full article

Loyalty cards offer significant advantages that can improve customer relationships and drive business growth. They incentivize repeat purchases, leading to higher customer retention rates. By encouraging loyalty, these programs can increase customer lifetime value and average order value. They likewise provide businesses with valuable customer data for personalized marketing, helping to differentiate brands in a competitive market. Comprehending these benefits is essential, especially when considering how loyalty programs can stabilize revenue and promote brand advocacy. What’s next? Key Takeaways Loyalty cards enhance customer retention, making it cheaper to keep existing customers compared to acquiring new ones. Members of loyalty programs typically spend 67% more than non-members, boosting overall revenue. Frequent purchases are encouraged through loyalty programs, increasing sales and customer engagement. Detailed customer data collection allows for personalized marketing strategies, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. Loyalty programs help stabilize sales during off-peak periods by offering targeted rewards and promotions. Enhance Customer Retention Loyalty cards improve customer retention by providing incentives that encourage repeat purchases, which can lead to customers spending considerably more than those who are new to your brand. One major advantage of a loyalty program is its ability to convert one-time buyers into repeat customers, nurturing long-term relationships. This can greatly reduce churn, making retention efforts five times cheaper than acquiring new customers. When customers join loyalty programs, they’re 59% more likely to choose your brand over competitors, emphasizing the advantages of loyalty cards in maintaining clientele. Moreover, these programs incentivize members to make more frequent purchases, often resulting in customers spending 67% more than new ones. Boost Customer Lifetime Value Building on the importance of customer retention, increasing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is another significant advantage of loyalty programs. When you enroll in these programs, you’re likely to spend 67% more than new customers. This highlights the financial benefits of nurturing existing relationships. In addition, loyalty program members tend to redeem rewards, resulting in up to 25% more annual spending compared to non-members, which amplifies their overall value. Increase Purchase Frequency Increasing purchase frequency is a key benefit of loyalty programs that many businesses leverage to boost sales. For instance, programs like McDonald’s McCafé Rewards entice you to return more often by offering free beverages, making you more likely to make repeat purchases. When you enroll in a loyalty program, you’re encouraged to buy regularly to accumulate rewards, which leads to higher transaction frequency. Tiered loyalty systems improve this effect by offering perks for reaching higher levels, motivating you to spend more often. Research indicates that loyalty program members show a purchasing frequency markedly greater than non-members, contributing to overall sales growth. Improve Average Order Value Loyalty programs can greatly boost your average order value, as repeat customers often spend more because of their established trust in your brand. By implementing effective reward redemption strategies, you can encourage customers to purchase additional items to maximize their benefits, leading to increased spending. For instance, programs that reward total spending can directly correlate with higher AOV, making it clear how loyalty initiatives can improve your overall revenue. Increase Purchase Frequency When you participate in a loyalty program, frequent purchases often become a natural outcome of the rewards system designed to benefit you. These programs encourage you to buy more often, especially low-margin products, as you aim to accumulate rewards. As you engage more with the program, you’re likely to increase your spending to reach higher loyalty tiers, revealing better perks. Here are some key points about how loyalty programs drive purchase frequency: Customers spend 67% more than new ones. Loyalty members can increase annual spending by up to 25%. Frequent purchases can lead to improved customer loyalty. Brands see increased return visits from motivated customers. Examples like McDonald’s show how free rewards can boost visits. Reward Redemption Strategies Reward redemption strategies play a crucial role in enhancing the average order value (AOV) of a business. By encouraging customers to spend more to utilize their rewards effectively, these strategies can lead to up to a 25% increase in annual spending. Implementing tiered reward systems motivates customers to increase their purchases to reach higher tiers, further boosting AOV. Furthermore, loyalty programs with point-based redemption systems attract repeat customers, who often spend 67% more than new ones. Differentiate Beyond Price Competition To stand out in a crowded marketplace, you need to build emotional connections with your customers. By offering unique brand value propositions and improved loyalty program benefits, you can encourage repeat purchases that go beyond just price competition. Implementing these strategies not only promotes loyalty but additionally strengthens your brand’s position in the market, ultimately resulting in increased profitability. Emotional Connection Building Loyalty programs play a crucial role in building emotional connections with customers, which greatly influences their purchasing decisions. When you engage with a brand on this level, you often prioritize loyalty over price. Here are some key benefits: Personalized rewards create a customized experience that resonates with you. Exclusive offers nurture a sense of belonging and community. Emotional bonds increase your likelihood of choosing a brand by 59%. Brands that connect emotionally see a 62% increase in your spending. Loyalty reduces the impact of price competition, as you’re less likely to switch for lower prices. These factors illustrate how emotional connection building through loyalty programs can lead to stronger brand relationships and improved customer loyalty. Unique Brand Value Propositions In today’s competitive marketplace, brands must find ways to stand out, especially since 75% of customers are willing to switch for better loyalty offerings. Unique value propositions are essential for differentiation beyond just price. Loyalty programs nurture emotional connections, making it 59% more likely that customers will choose your brand over competitors. By offering exclusive rewards and perks to loyalty members, you create a sense of belonging, which can increase weekly purchases by 43%. Moreover, these programs help build strong brand advocates who are more likely to discuss and recommend your brand, enhancing word-of-mouth marketing. Personalizing experiences within loyalty programs can also boost customer satisfaction, with members being 62% more likely to spend more, emphasizing customized value. Enhanced Loyalty Program Benefits Brands that prioritize loyalty programs can effectively differentiate themselves in a market where price competition is fierce. By enhancing loyalty program benefits, you create a compelling reason for customers to stick with you. Here are some advantages: Nurture emotional connections, making customers feel valued. Transform satisfied customers into brand advocates through referral rewards. Experience 2.5 times faster revenue growth compared to brands without loyalty programs. Encourage members to spend 67% more than new customers. Personalize experiences by tracking customer preferences and behaviors. These strategies not only boost customer retention but also greatly reduce acquisition costs. Foster Brand Advocacy Nurturing brand advocacy is vital for businesses looking to improve their market presence. Loyalty programs play an important role in this process by transforming satisfied customers into enthusiastic promoters. Research shows that 62% of loyalty program members tend to spend more on the brand, which directly contributes to increased sales. Furthermore, when customers reach loyalty thresholds, they’re 43% more likely to make weekly purchases, encouraging a deeper emotional connection to the brand. Word-of-mouth marketing from these loyal advocates can greatly improve market penetration, as they’re more inclined to recommend the brand to peers. In addition, loyalty program members typically engage more on social media, amplifying brand visibility through shared experiences. The emotional bonds formed through loyalty initiatives lead to increased brand affinity, making loyal customers less likely to explore alternatives from competitors. This advocacy not only strengthens your brand but creates a supportive community around it. Collect Valuable Customer Data Loyalty programs not just encourage brand advocacy but serve as a potent tool for collecting valuable customer data. By utilizing loyalty cards, you can gain insights into your customers’ behaviors and preferences, which helps you tailor your marketing strategies effectively. This data collection allows for: Detailed purchase history tracking Comprehension of customer preferences and frequency of purchases Targeted marketing strategies based on spending habits Improved customer satisfaction through personalized rewards Identification of trends and patterns for better inventory management Analyzing this information enables you to refine your customer engagement tactics, leading to more effective product development. As you leverage the rich data generated from these programs, you can drive overall sales growth and create a more personalized shopping experience for your customers. In today’s competitive market, having access to such valuable insights can be a game-changer for your business. Mitigate Seasonal Sales Fluctuations Mitigating seasonal sales fluctuations is essential for maintaining a stable revenue stream throughout the year, especially in industries that experience significant variations in demand. Loyalty programs can play a key role in driving customer engagement during off-peak periods by offering targeted rewards, thereby improving sales when demand typically wanes. For instance, travel businesses that provide double points for loyalty members during low seasons show how effective incentives can be. By communicating exclusive offers, brands can encourage more visits and spending during traditionally quieter times. Strategy Impact on Sales Double points promotions Boosts engagement Exclusive offers Increases customer visits Regular communication Improves customer loyalty Implementing loyalty programs allows companies to maintain steady revenue by encouraging repeat purchases even during slower sales months, smoothing out revenue dips and helping to stabilize overall income. Frequently Asked Questions What Are the Benefits of a Loyalty Card? A loyalty card offers several benefits for you as a customer. It often provides exclusive discounts and rewards, making your purchases more valuable. You may likewise enjoy personalized offers based on your shopping habits, improving your overall experience. Furthermore, loyalty programs can nurture a sense of community, encouraging you to engage more with a brand. What Is the Main Advantage of Reward Cards? The main advantage of reward cards is their ability to improve customer retention. When you use a reward card, you gain access to exclusive benefits that make you more likely to choose that brand over competitors. Furthermore, these cards encourage you to spend more, as members often increase their purchases. This not only boosts overall sales for businesses but likewise nurtures a stronger relationship between you and the brand, leading to increased loyalty over time. What Are the 4 C’s of Customer Loyalty? The 4 C’s of customer loyalty are Convenience, Communication, Community, and Consistency. Convenience guarantees you can easily access products or services, enhancing your shopping experience. Communication involves personalized messages that keep you informed about rewards and offers, increasing engagement. Community nurtures a sense of belonging, making you feel valued and encouraging referrals. Finally, Consistency assures reliable experiences, reinforcing your loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases, which in the end benefits both you and the brand. What Are the Benefits of Loyalty? The benefits of loyalty programs include increased customer spending and brand preference. You’re likely to spend more when you’re part of a loyalty program, as it often leads to weekly purchases. These programs create a sense of exclusivity, encouraging you to engage with the brand more frequently. Furthermore, they provide businesses with valuable insights into customer preferences, allowing targeted marketing efforts that resonate with you, enhancing your overall shopping experience. Conclusion In summary, loyalty cards provide numerous benefits that can greatly impact your business. By enhancing customer retention and increasing purchase frequency, these programs help boost customer lifetime value and average order value. They likewise differentiate your brand from competitors and promote brand advocacy among loyal customers. Furthermore, the valuable data collected can inform personalized marketing strategies, driving engagement and stabilizing revenue. Implementing a loyalty program can be a strategic move to strengthen your customer relationships and improve overall profitability. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "Key Advantages of Loyalty Cards" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

The disappearance of ChatGPT’s query fan-out metadata reveals why AI intelligence tools built on unofficial access are fragile by design. The post The Shortcut Behind Some AI Optimization Tools 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 Hisense U65QF in a massive 100-inch size is currently selling for $1,497.99 on Amazon, down from $1,997, and price trackers show this is the lowest it has reached so far. That price is notable for a screen this large, since 100-inch TVs often cost well over $2,000 even from budget brands. Reviews have also been encouraging. PCMag gave the TV an “outstanding” rating and named it the best budget TV of 2025. The U65QF replaces the earlier U6N, a model many buyers liked because it delivered solid picture quality without a premium price. This newer version builds on that reputation with a brighter panel and a faster refresh rate, which makes it more flexible whether you mainly watch movies, sports, or spend time gaming. Hisense 100" Smart Fire TV $1,497.99 at Amazon $1,997.99 Save $500.00 Get Deal Get Deal $1,497.99 at Amazon $1,997.99 Save $500.00 The U65QF is a mini-LED QLED TV with 4K resolution and reaches roughly 1,024 nits of brightness, which is higher than many TVs in this price range. That extra brightness helps HDR formats like Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG show stronger highlights and more depth in scenes with bright lights or sunlight. Colors look rich but generally stay natural instead of being overly saturated. That said, as with many mini-LED TVs, some blooming can appear around bright objects against dark backgrounds, but that trade-off is common at this price. Gaming performance is also stronger than you might expect for a budget model, with support for a 144Hz refresh rate, variable refresh rate, and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. Plus, the measured input lag sits around 13.1 milliseconds at 4K60 and 4.6 milliseconds at 1080p120 (meaning it’s responsive enough for most console or PC gaming), notes this PCMag review. For connections, you get four HDMI ports, including two that support 4K at 144Hz, along with an eARC port for a soundbar or receiver. One change people may notice immediately is the software. Instead of Google TV, this model runs Amazon’s Fire TV platform. The upside is access to nearly every major streaming service, including Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, Apple TV, and Prime Video, along with Apple AirPlay for streaming from iPhones or Macs. The downside is that while the interface works well, it tends to show a lot of recommendations and ads on the home screen. Alexa voice commands are available, but the TV does not include hands-free microphones, so you have to press the voice button on the remote to speak. None of that affects the picture quality, but it does slightly change the overall experience compared with earlier Hisense models. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $119.99 (List Price $179.00) Samsung Galaxy S26 512GB + $100 Amazon Gift Card (Black) — $899.99 (List Price $1,099.99) Google Pixel 10a 128GB 6.3" Unlocked Smartphone + $100 Gift Card — $599.00 (List Price $599.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $329.99 (List Price $349.00) Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 42mm, S/M Black Sport Band) — $299.00 (List Price $399.00) Amazon Fire TV Soundbar — $99.99 (List Price $119.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

A personalized product experience tailors interactions to fit your unique preferences and behaviors. This approach is essential in a market where consumers increasingly expect relevance and recognition. By utilizing past purchase data, businesses can offer targeted recommendations, enhancing satisfaction and nurturing loyalty. Nonetheless, achieving effective personalization comes with challenges that need to be addressed. Comprehending these dynamics can greatly impact customer retention and revenue growth. So, what strategies can businesses employ to overcome these obstacles? Key Takeaways A personalized product experience tailors interactions and offerings to individual customer preferences, enhancing satisfaction and engagement in the digital marketplace. Personalized experiences increase customer loyalty, as 78% of consumers are more likely to repurchase from brands that provide customized content. Streamlined interactions save time by remembering customer preferences and reducing the need for repetitive input during transactions. Technology, including AI and machine learning, plays a crucial role in analyzing data for effective personalization and real-time adaptation of offerings. Companies that excel in personalization can generate up to 40% more revenue, highlighting its importance for business growth and success. Defining Personalized Product Experience Personalized product experience revolves around customizing interactions and offerings to fit individual customer preferences and behaviors. This concept is essential in today’s market, where 72% of consumers expect businesses to recognize them personally. App personalization plays a significant role in this process, allowing Apple to create personalized applications that cater to unique needs. By analyzing past behaviors and preferences, Amazon can offer customized recommendations and personalized communications, enhancing customer satisfaction and engagement. Implementing a personalized product experience can lead to substantial benefits, including a 10-15% revenue lift and a 78% increase in repurchase likelihood. Additionally, brands excelling in personalization can generate up to 40% more revenue than average performers, highlighting the financial advantages of this approach. In the end, defining personalized product experience is about meeting modern customer expectations and cultivating loyalty through meaningful, customized interactions. Key Benefits for Customers When you engage with a customized product experience, you’ll notice significant benefits that improve your shopping expedition. This approach cultivates a deeper comprehension and empathy from businesses, making you feel recognized for your unique preferences. Furthermore, by streamlining interactions and introducing personalized product recommendations, personalization not merely saves you time but also opens up opportunities to discover items that align with your interests. Enhanced Understanding and Empathy Comprehension and empathy play crucial roles in improving the customer experience, as they allow businesses to cater to individual preferences and needs effectively. When you engage with brands that practice app personalisation, you benefit in several ways: You feel valued as brands remember your payment and delivery preferences. Personalized experiences help you discover new products that align with your interests. Improved comprehension leads to increased customer loyalty, as 78% of consumers are more likely to repurchase from brands offering customized content. Businesses that excel in personalization can achieve up to 40% more revenue, indicating the significance of knowing and addressing customer needs. These factors contribute to a more satisfying and engaging shopping experience for you. Time-Saving Personal Interactions In today’s fast-paced world, time-saving interactions are essential for improving the customer experience. Personalized product experiences remember your preferences, such as payment details and delivery options, allowing for quicker transactions. About 70% of customers value personalized interactions, where employees recognize their history, leading to more efficient service. Personalization additionally streamlines finding relevant products, letting you discover new items based on past engagement without extensive searching. Moreover, these experiences grant you increased ownership and control over your interactions, enabling you to tailor preferences easily. By reducing the need to repeat information, businesses improve efficiency and satisfaction, which positively impacts your loyalty. Increased Product Discovery Opportunities Personalized product experiences greatly improve your ability to discover new items that align with your tastes and preferences. By customizing recommendations based on your individual preferences and past purchases, you’ll find relevant products more easily. Here are some key benefits you can expect: You’ll receive suggestions that match your interests, reducing the time spent searching. Personalized experiences increase your likelihood of discovering items you may have otherwise overlooked. You’re more likely to repurchase from brands that offer customized content, enhancing customer loyalty. Engaging with personalized offerings gives you a sense of ownership and control over your shopping experience. This customized approach not just enriches your shopping experience but also drives companies to achieve financial growth through better product discovery. Strategies for Personalizing Product Experience To effectively improve customer experiences, businesses must adopt strategies that tailor product offerings based on individual preferences and behaviors. Utilizing machine learning and AI technologies allows you to analyze customer data, enhancing the accuracy of your personalized recommendations. Start by creating a customer experience map to pinpoint key touchpoints where personalization can greatly raise the user experience, driving satisfaction and loyalty. Implement tools like recommendation engines and predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs, which can boost engagement and conversion rates. It’s also vital to continuously test and refine your personalization strategies. This ongoing process guarantees you adapt to evolving customer expectations, maintaining relevance in a competitive market. Common Challenges in Personalization When you personalize your marketing efforts, you might run into some common challenges that can affect your brand’s effectiveness. Over-personalization can make customers feel uneasy, whereas data privacy issues complicate how you gather and use information. Striking the right balance is vital to guarantee you engage your audience without crossing privacy boundaries. Over-Personalization Risks Over-personalization presents several challenges that can undermine the effectiveness of marketing strategies. When brands go too far, it can lead to disengagement and discomfort among users. Here are some common risks you should be aware of: Creepy User Experience: Customers may feel their privacy is invaded, causing them to disengage. Content Fatigue: Constant exposure to hyper-personalized content can diminish overall engagement with your brand. Narrow Focus: Overly personalized content may alienate users from discovering new offerings, limiting their experience. Technical Limitations: Tracking every user’s preferences can lead to operational challenges, forcing brands to manage broader segments rather than individual needs. Understanding these risks is essential for balancing personalization with user comfort and engagement. Data Privacy Issues Balancing personalization with consumer trust is increasingly challenging in today’s data-driven environment. Data privacy concerns arise as companies collect extensive customer information, which can lead to breaches and misuse. A significant 76% of consumers feel frustrated when they perceive irresponsible data usage, emphasizing the need for transparent practices. Compliance with regulations like GDPR is vital, as violations can lead to hefty fines and harm your brand’s reputation. In addition, over-personalization may create a “creepy” experience, causing disengagement if users feel their privacy is compromised. Effective strategies must strike a balance between customized content and consumer trust, ensuring customers feel respected in their data interactions. Challenge Description Data Breaches Risks of unauthorized access to personal information. Consumer Frustration Negative feelings from perceived irresponsible use. Regulatory Compliance Legal obligations under laws like GDPR. Over-Personalization Excessive targeting can feel intrusive to users. Trust Building Fundamental for encouraging customer loyalty and engagement. Successful Examples of Personalized Experiences Personalized experiences have become essential in today’s digital marketplace, as businesses endeavor to connect with consumers on a deeper level. Notable examples illustrate how effective personalization improves user satisfaction and drives revenue: Netflix: Customized recommendations based on your viewing history boost engagement, leading to higher retention rates among subscribers. Amazon: Personalized product suggestions, informed by your past purchases and browsing behavior, account for a significant portion of its revenue. Spotify: Curated playlists like “Discover Weekly” leverage algorithms to align with your musical preferences, nurturing increased loyalty to the platform. Retailers: Implementing personalized shopping experiences, such as targeted promotions and customized emails, results in a revenue uplift of 10-15%. These examples underscore the importance of delivering relevant and individualized product experiences, especially when 76% of consumers express frustration when personalization is lacking. The Role of Technology in Personalization As businesses endeavor to improve customer experiences, technology plays a pivotal role in shaping how personalization is implemented. AI and machine learning allow companies to analyze vast amounts of customer data, enabling them to create customized product experiences that resonate with individual preferences. Recommendation engines, fueled by predictive analytics, suggest products based on past purchases and browsing history, improving user engagement. Real-time data processing guarantees businesses can adapt their offerings instantly, providing timely suggestions that elevate the customer experience. Additionally, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) centralize information from various sources, enabling companies to understand customer needs thoroughly. This integrated approach facilitates more effective personalization strategies. In the end, personalized experiences driven by technology lead to increased customer loyalty and retention rates. Studies indicate that companies excelling in personalization can generate up to 40% more revenue compared to their competitors, highlighting the significant impact of technology in creating meaningful customer interactions. Future Trends in Personalized Product Experiences With advancements in AI and machine learning, brands are set to transform how they deliver personalized product experiences. As consumer expectations rise, businesses must adapt to stay competitive. Here are four future trends that will shape personalized experiences: Anticipatory Personalization: Brands will utilize AI to predict customer needs and preferences, ensuring customized offerings are readily available. Real-Time Data Integration: Companies will employ real-time analytics to create dynamic experiences that evolve based on customer interactions across various platforms. Predictive Analytics: By utilizing predictive models, businesses can improve personalization strategies, potentially increasing revenue by up to 15%. Immersive Technologies: Emerging tools like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will enable customers to engage with products in unique ways, enriching their shopping experience. These trends highlight the importance of evolving personalization strategies to meet modern consumer demands effectively. Frequently Asked Questions What Is a Personalized Experience? A personalized experience customizes interactions to your specific preferences and behaviors, creating a more engaging and satisfying environment. It involves recognizing your unique needs and interests, which greatly influences your perception of a brand. With 72% of consumers expecting personalized recognition, businesses must prioritize these customized communications to avoid customer frustration. Effective personalization not only improves customer loyalty but can additionally result in a considerable revenue increase, making it crucial in today’s competitive market. What Does It Mean When Etsy Asks for Personalization? When Etsy asks for personalization, it means they’re looking to tailor the shopping experience to your specific preferences. This can involve choosing colors, sizes, or adding custom messages to products. By providing these options, Etsy aims to improve your sense of ownership and connection to the items you’re considering. Personalization helps Etsy recognize your interests, eventually leading to a more engaging shopping experience that can increase your satisfaction and likelihood of returning. Why Is It Important to Personalize a Customer’s Experience? Personalizing a customer’s experience is essential for several reasons. It meets consumer expectations, as many individuals want brands to recognize their preferences and interests. When you tailor interactions, you not only improve satisfaction but additionally cultivate loyalty; customers are more likely to repurchase from brands that provide personalized content. Moreover, effective personalization can lead to increased revenue and improved customer retention, finally contributing to long-term business success and stronger relationships. What Are the 4 D’s of Personalization? The 4 D’s of personalization are Data, Design, Delivery, and Dynamic. Data involves collecting and analyzing customer information to understand preferences. Design focuses on creating user experiences customized to individual needs. Delivery is about presenting personalized content and offers at the right time, which can boost revenue considerably. Finally, Dynamic personalization uses AI to adapt experiences in real-time, ensuring your engagement remains relevant and responsive as customer behaviors evolve. Conclusion In conclusion, a customized product experience is crucial for meeting individual customer needs and preferences. By leveraging past behaviors and data, businesses can improve satisfaction and engagement, leading to stronger brand loyalty. Though challenges exist, effective strategies and technology can help overcome these hurdles. As consumer demand for personalized interactions continues to grow, companies that prioritize bespoke experiences are likely to see improved retention, increased revenue, and a competitive edge in the market. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "What Is a Personalized Product Experience and Why It Matters?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Consultancy says it has found ‘no evidence’ that confidential client information was compromisedView the full article

Shares in Bumble Inc. (Nasdaq: BMBL), maker of the Bumble dating app, are surging this morning after the company announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results. The stock price bounce will be a relief to investors in dating companies, an industry that has suffered severely in recent years due to so-called swipe fatigue among users. Here’s what you need to know about Bumble’s earnings and why its stock is surging this morning. Bumble beats on Q4 revenue Today, Bumble reported its Q4 2025 results. And on the surface, those results weren’t great. As a matter of fact, just purely based on a year-over-year comparison, many of the company’s most important metrics were down across the board, including: Total Revenue: $224.2 million, down 14.3% from the same quarter a year earlier. Bumble App Revenue: $181.0 million, down 14.8% Badoo App and Other Revenue: $43.2 million, down 12.4% Total Paying Users: 3.3 million, down 20.5% Net loss: $611.1 million (versus a Net profit of $9.3 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Still, despite these poor year-over-year results, BMBL shares are popping this morning—and there are two main reasons why. Bumble beats revenue expectations, and embraces AI The most immediate reason for Bumble’s premarket stock bump is the company’s total revenue of $224.2 million for the quarter. Yes, that sum is down more than 14% from the $261.6 million in revenue during the same quarter a year earlier, but critically, it still beat analysts’ relatively low expectations. As Reuters points out, analysts had expected Bumble to bring in $221.3 million in total revenue for the quarter. Bumble ended up beating this figure by nearly $3 million. And while that $3 million sum is relatively small, it signals to investors that things weren’t as bad in the quarter as many analysts expected. But investors are also likely feeling optimistic about another Bumble announcement today. On the company’s earnings call, founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd revealed that Bumble is revamping the app while also adding new AI tools to help users find more relevant matches. Wolfe Herd said that “Bumble 2.0” will deliver a new experience designed to help address dating app users’ dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction is usually referred to as “swipe fatigue,” and it has turned many younger people off dating apps in recent years. Those users have grown tired of the endless swipes that turn individuals into commodities and often lead to few real-world meetups. “Bumble 2.0 introduces a chapter-based structure designed to help members tell their stories more authentically and understand one another more deeply,” Wolfe Herd said on the call, according to a PitchBook transcript. “This will enable them to see matches with stronger compatibility signals, build confidence in the experience, and get to meaningful in real life dates more quickly.” Additionally, Wolfe Herd said the company is embracing artificial intelligence, announcing a new AI chatbot that is in development, called “Bee.” The chatbot is designed to interact with Bumble users to find out about their likes, interests, and dating objectives, and then use that information to better match them with other users who share the same interests and goals. Bee, Wolfe Herd told analysts, “is designed to become a personal dating assistant and matchmaker, learning members’ values, relationship goals, communication style, lifestyle, and dating intentions through private conversations, then using those insights to identify mutual compatibility to find better dates with a higher degree of confidence and relevance.” Bumble 2.0 and Bee are expected to roll out sometime in 2026. Some users in the key Gen Z age demographic have expressed skepticism about whether AI features will ultimately improve the dating app experience, as Fast Company reported last year. Still, as artificial intelligence is all the rage in the tech industry, investors are likely pleased to know that Bumble isn’t sitting on the sidelines in the AI era. Bumble stock has had a horrible recent run After Bumble’s Q4 results were announced, the price of the company’s shares surged. As of this writing in premarket trading, BMBL shares are up over 23% to $3.51. Yesterday, the company’s shares closed at $2.84. However, despite the massive stock price jump today, BMBL shares have had a horrible run in recent years. As of yesterday, the closing price of BMBL shares has fallen more than 41% over the past 12 months. And over the past five years, the company’s stock price has collapsed by more than 95%. In March 2021, BMBL shares had traded over $74 apiece. But Bumble isn’t the only dating app to see its stock price crash. Over the past year, Match Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: MTCH), owner of Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and more, has seen its shares decline about 2.4%. But over the past five years, the company’s shares have declined a staggering 80%. Likewise, shares of dating app maker Hello Group Inc. (Nasdaq: MOMO) have declined by more than 63% over the past five years. The only major dating app to be up over that five-year timeframe is Grindr Inc. (NYSE: GRND), whose shares have risen more than 19% over the period. The declines of these major dating app makers coincide with increasing dissatisfaction among dating app users, who frequently argue that the apps have become too expensive and that matches are fewer and farther between. While investors may be rewarding Bumble today, the company will need to address this user disillusionment if it is to successfully turn around its business. View the full article

We’ve all been there. You look at your calendar on a Tuesday morning and see a solid block of technicolor squares stretching from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. By noon, you’re staring at a gallery view of faces, nodding reflexively while your brain slowly turns into digital sawdust. View the full article

Discover why Semrush is evolving its brand — and what the new era of brand visibility means for how marketers compete, get found, and win. View the full article

Imagine your ideal customer going to ChatGPT and asking, “Is [BRAND] worth it?” They’re not getting a vetted list of links in response. They’re getting a synthesized answer, most likely summarizing who you are, what you’re known for, and whether you’re credible. They’ll get a confident answer to the nebulous question of assigning worth. You don’t control that summary. But it will shape their decision before they convert, possibly before they ever visit your site. This is the new reality of search. SEO has traditionally been a discovery channel: higher rankings led to more traffic, which led to more conversions. But AI-powered search experiences, from AI Overviews to ChatGPT, Gemini, and beyond, are changing the game. Narrative is now the goal. Brands have to actively monitor and shape how they’re described, evaluated, and synthesized in AI-powered search experiences. SEO has officially entered its defensive era. Protecting brand narrative in the new search landscape is quickly becoming table stakes. What is defensive SEO? You’re probably asking: Isn’t this just reputation management? Or isn’t this what good SEO has always done? Not exactly. Traditional SEO has focused on visibility: earning rankings, driving traffic, and increasing conversions. Defensive SEO focuses on something slightly different: how your brand is perceived once it’s visible. Today, perception matters as much as placement. Defensive SEO is the practice of shaping that narrative. It means paying close attention to how AI tools describe your brand and where evaluation-based queries influence buying decisions. In practice, defensive SEO is: Monitoring how AI responses synthesize your brand. Protecting against negative, incomplete, or outdated information. Addressing evaluation-driven queries before third parties define them for you. Managing the sentiment signals that influence how algorithms interpret your reputation. Just as importantly, defensive SEO is not: Crisis PR deployed after something goes wrong. An attempt to suppress legitimate criticism. Spin or manipulation. It’s not about hiding weaknesses. It’s about reducing ambiguity. When your positioning is unclear, AI fills in the gaps with whatever signals are readily available: reviews, old content, aggregator summaries, and competitor comparisons. Defensive SEO ensures the strongest and most accurate version of your brand gets reinforced. At its core, defensive SEO is structured, proactive brand narrative management across the modern search landscape. Dig deeper: Why SEO is your best defense against declining organic traffic 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 Why is this shift happening now Several forces are converging to make defensive SEO necessary today. 1. AI summaries compress complex stories Traditional search results allowed users to explore multiple perspectives. Someone researching a brand could read reviews, scan articles, and evaluate different viewpoints before forming an opinion. AI-generated answers compress that process. Nuanced positioning, evolving messaging, and subtle differentiation can all be condensed into just a few sentences. Those sentences become a prospect’s first impression of your brand — a simplified version of your reputation. 2. Evaluation queries are becoming the default Search behavior is shifting toward evaluation-driven questions. Users are increasingly searching for things like “Is [BRAND] worth it?” or “[BRAND] reviews and complaints.” These are high-intent, high-impact queries. They signal real conversion consideration. If brands avoid these topics, outside sources step in to answer them. Review sites, forums, and aggregator pages become the dominant narrative. Ignoring these evaluation queries doesn’t prevent them from shaping perception. It simply removes your voice from the conversation. 3. AI systems reinforce existing narratives Generative engines don’t invent brand reputations. They amplify patterns that already exist. They rely heavily on reviews and ratings, authoritative third-party mentions, and frequently cited claims or descriptions. Over time, this creates a feedback loop. The most commonly cited narrative gains weight and visibility, while alternative or evolving positioning becomes less prominent. Dig deeper: Is SEO a brand channel or a performance channel? Now it’s both Defensive SEO in practice Defensive SEO isn’t a single tactic. Like all SEO efforts, it’s an ongoing process focused on understanding and shaping how search engines interpret your brand. Conduct AI visibility audits The first step in your defensive SEO tactical plan should be an AI visibility audit. Auditing AI-generated responses for brand consistency helps ensure that LLMs accurately and positively reflect your brand. Start by querying AI tools the way real users would. Identify a standard set of questions that someone may realistically ask about your brand. “What does [BRAND] do?” “What services does [BRAND] offer?” “Is [BRAND] good?” “How does [BRAND] compare to other [INDUSTRY] competitors?” “Pros and cons of [BRAND].” “What is [BRAND]’s mission or values?” “What are the reviews or feedback about [BRAND]’s customer experience?” “Best alternatives to [BRAND].” The goal is to test how the AI agents describe your company across different themes, such as brand overview, services, culture, reputation, and positioning. Use the same question set across multiple AI tools and LLMs — ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude. Don’t forget to ask for citations, especially if the response is unexpected. Now that you have all of this data, it’s time to analyze the responses for consistency, accuracy, and opportunity. Look for patterns. Which adjectives appear repeatedly? What themes dominate the explanation? Is everything accurate? Is anything important missing entirely? This audit should be done regularly. These patterns reveal how your brand narrative exists within AI-driven search, and how it evolves. Dig deeper: 200+ AI audits reveal why some industries struggle in AI search Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Improve the source material The next step in your defensive SEO tactical plan: update the source material these LLMs are drawing from. While you may not be able to log into ChatGPT and “fix” an answer, you can influence how your brand is portrayed. Own the evaluation content Many brands avoid creating content that acknowledges trade-offs or criticisms. In the past, that instinct may have made sense. But today, avoidance can often backfire. AI systems tend to trust content that provides balanced explanations and transparent comparisons. Ultimately, this type of comparison content is an age-old SEO tactic. If you’re not creating content that addresses it, chances are your competition is. Clear answers to common concerns signal credibility to your audience and search engines alike. Instead of ignoring evaluation queries, we should be addressing them head on. The goal isn’t to eliminate criticism, it’s to ensure the context around it is accurate and fair. Strengthen third-party authority signals We know that generative AI relies heavily on independent sources such as indexed content in traditional search engines, media mentions, reviews, and forum commentary. These third-party sources are influencing how your brand is described just as much, if not more than, owned content. This means defensive SEO can’t exist in isolation. It requires alignment across multiple disciplines, including PR, social media, and customer experience. SEO can influence visibility, but SEO alone can’t fix narrative gaps. Leverage PR in coordination with off-page SEO to earn media coverage and mentions from authoritative third-party sources. Consider Reddit to engage with your audience and share content. Monitor and update social profiles, review aggregators, directory listings, and partner sites. Update and clarify legacy content Many brands evolve faster than their content does. Pricing models change, product offerings expand, and messaging shifts to reflect new positioning. Yet older pages with outdated information often remain. AI systems pull from everything available and fill ambiguity with whatever is most prominent. That’s why outdated content can shape a brand’s AI output long after it’s relevant. Regularly reviewing and updating legacy content on your website ensures the signals being used by generative AI reflect the brand you are today. Use structured data and schema markup to clarify information. Ensure your About pages, service pages, and leadership bios are up to date and comprehensive. Publish well-optimized blog posts and press releases that reinforce your positioning. If the web is your brand’s resume, make sure it reflects your strongest work, not an outdated version of who you used to be. Dig deeper: How to use AI response patterns to build better content Measuring success with defensive SEO Traditional SEO metrics like rankings and sessions still matter, but they’re no longer sufficient on their own. Defensive SEO introduces a new set of signals to monitor: Sentiment alignment across search results. Consistency in AI-generated content about your brand. Visibility across evaluation-based queries. Recurring descriptors associated with your brand. Taken together, these indicators help reveal something traditional SEO dashboards rarely capture: how your brand is being interpreted across the search landscape. Organic share of voice measures how often your brand appears, but in AI-powered search, presence alone no longer tells the whole story. What matters just as much is how your brand is described once it shows up. This is where the broader idea of “description share of voice” becomes useful. Instead of measuring pure visibility, description share of voice looks at the language and framing associated with your brand relative to competitors. For example, imagine two companies appearing equally often across AI-generated summaries and search results. One is consistently described as “innovative,” “trusted,” or “customer-focused.” The other is described as “affordable,” “basic,” or “consistent.” Both brands may technically have the same share of voice. However, the narrative attached to that visibility is completely different. Description share of voice captures that distinction. It reflects the themes and positioning that AI is repeatedly associating with your brand relative to others in the category. And over time, patterns will emerge. Certain descriptors get reinforced, while others may disappear from the conversation entirely. Tracking these patterns and adjectives provides a clearer understanding of how your brand is being framed and characterized when it does appear. Defensive SEO is strategic Despite the name, defensive SEO isn’t about reacting to threats. It’s about strengthening clarity and trust. When brands actively manage their narrative across the modern search landscape, they reduce misinformation, support informed decision-making, and create a more consistent brand experience. Ultimately, defensive SEO ensures that when someone asks AI about your brand, the answer reflects who you actually are. This shift isn’t just an evolution for SEO. It’s an organizational one. Shaping how a brand is understood in AI-driven search queries forces collaboration between teams that too often operate in silos. PR influences the narratives circulating in the media. Customer experience teams hold the signals that shape reviews and sentiment. Social media can surface emerging perceptions long before they appear in search results. All of those signals increasingly feed the systems that summarize and interpret brands for users. 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 future of SEO is narrative ownership Most SEOs agree that search has evolved beyond just a discovery channel. It’s now a reputation and perception engine, and often the first filter through which customers understand your brand. In this multimodal, multichannel world shaped by AI, visibility alone isn’t enough. Ranking without narrative alignment is fragile. Ranking without context leaves interpretation to systems you don’t control. The brands that succeed will rank well, shape how they’re understood, and make sure the right story is told. View the full article

Since its founding in 2010, GoFundMe has become the go-to platform for helping others in need, with more than $50 million raised every week and more than 8,000 fundraising campaigns launched every day. But using the platform to raise money from friends, family, and generous acquaintances or strangers often doesn’t come naturally, especially when people are already dealing with a traumatic situation like a house fire, medical problem, or other emergency. “In order for help to occur, people have to do something quite difficult, which is asking for help,” says GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan. “That’s something that almost no one likes doing, so it’s a hard threshold to cross.” To make the process a bit easier, GoFundMe has rolled out an AI-powered “smart fundraising coach” that can assist people raising money for themselves or others from the moment they begin to plan a campaign. The coach can chat with users to gather information about their situations, show some AI-generated sympathy, and help draft an initial fundraising message and set an appropriate goal based on GoFundMe’s wealth of data. While much of what GoFundMe’s AI offers is similar to smart features that have sprouted up across marketing and sales software, it is also specifically designed to help users through what can be an unfamiliar, stressful, and even embarrassing process. “We spend a lot of our time thinking about and working on products that make it easier for people to believe that they can ask for help and be successful,” Cadogan says. The coach also provides a set of suggestions for campaign titles, which Cadogan says most users end up adopting. They typically perform better than user-generated headlines, he says. It can also help fundraisers select appropriate and effective photos to use for their campaigns, again based on GoFundMe data. The automated assistance helps people make practical decisions about a sensitive subject at a difficult time and, perhaps equally important, relieves some of the stress around raising funds. “Between 65 and 75 percent of the folks we’ve surveyed say that the smart fundraising coach helps them feel more confident, less stressed, and critically, less alone,” Cadogan says. Once users launch a fundraising campaign, the coach can continue to assist them through AI-generated daily action plans and notifications via the app, text, and email. That assistance includes guiding users to share their campaign with people likely to give, since GoFundMe’s research shows fundraisers who send one-on-one messages to likely donors are more successful. Successful campaigns often raise a few donations from fundraisers’ inner circles, gaining momentum before reaching out to looser connections, Cadogan says. Users can now also import their phone contacts into GoFundMe and see in a dedicated tab which contacts have donated or shared their fundraiser, making it easier to customize appeals to specific people. “A common strategy that does work very well is to start by texting one-on-one to the people you know best, build that momentum, and then share on your social media platforms,” he says. The coach can also advise people when and how to thank donors, set up automatic thank-you replies, and follow up with potential contributors. It also offers advice on when to post updates and when and how best to share a fundraiser on social media. The AI can even draft platform-appropriate posts for various social media sites, including generating video material suitable for TikTok and other content for more photo- or text-oriented social networks. It is often easier for users to tweak AI-drafted content than to start from scratch with a blank page, and the auto-generated material can help with formats like video that not all fundraisers find intuitive, Cadogan says. Based on early testing, GoFundMe anticipates that the new AI features will help users raise an additional $125 million this year. Cadogan says the company will likely continue to iterate as it gathers more data about what’s helpful to users managing successful fundraisers. “The awesome thing about a product like this is we’re going to learn so much about so many different dimensions,” he says. “Expect it to evolve quickly.” View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Inventors are like musicians: The ones we can name are rich and famous, but the majority will never be known. While many new products can feel more like gimmicks than actually useful (TikToker Khaby Lame famously made a career out of making fun of silly "innovations"), I can't help but root for a certain kind of inventor: The ones brave enough to have a small idea that has no chance of earning millions, but might improve lives in a small way. At The Inspired Home Show, I spoke with several inventors aiming to do just that. What is The Inspired Home Show?The Inspired Home Show, held in Chicago from March 10-12, is North America's largest home and housewares event. The event is open to buyers from major retailers—think the kind of housewares and big-box stores where you might buy kitchenware, appliances, or cleaning tools—and to brands from around the world, who showcase their latest products and innovations. The show is held annually, and I attended this year as a new homeowner to see what's coming to stores this year, and to learn more about the over 2,000 brands offering housewares, tools, and home tech. What is the Inventors Corner?The Inspired Home Show is divided into four showroom floors: "Clean + Contain," "Dine + Decor," "Wired + Well," and "International Sourcing." But a special area is set aside for the "Inventors Corner," where a few dozen startups have narrow booths to display their niche houseware innovations that they hope catch on. Credit: Jordan Calhoun/Lifehacker There's a pitchroom-style energy to the Inventors Corner. Separate from the established household brands like KitchenAid or Hamilton Beach, the Inventors Corner is two rows of warm and outgoing entrepreneurs—the underdogs and dreamers of the convention—standing in front of uniform, bespoke booths, all eager to share their innovation and convince buyers that it deserves to be the next big thing. Realistically, few of them will be successful, but I saw at least five innovations that were just cool, creative, or helpful enough that I can't help but root for them. The ErgoCup is a Global Innovation Awards finalistThe ErgoCup is the kind of product where I tend to roll my eyes, wondering if anyone needs it. But when I met Gerald, the guy who handcrafts every ErgoCup one by one, I was holding a coffee, and he asked me to hold an ErgoCup instead. When I did, I had to admit that holding an ErgoCup felt good—a whole lot better than the mugs I have at home. The ErgoCup is designed for people with hand mobility and gripping issues, but it's also just a well-designed mug that feels easier to hold by basically eliminating the need for grip. It won't be the type of product you find in stores soon—they're handmade and not mass produced—but it's the kind of unique craft item that feels special and makes people ask where you bought it. The ErgoCup is a finalist for the 2026 Global Innovation Awards for product design excellence. Credit: Jordan Calhoun/Lifehacker The Geo ground-meat cooking tool is spatula-meets-potato-masherThe Geo is specifically made for ground beef (or ground meat, in general), allowing users to easily and evenly break up ground meat. It's like a combination of a spatula, masher, and slotted spool, and it's the type of tool you wouldn't know you needed until you tried it. The Geo is another award finalist for its unique and useful design, and if you cook ground beef often enough, it's worth considering giving it a try. It only costs $16. Liddy is the first interlocking, stackable pot lid systemWhen I found Liddy, my first thought was that it surely existed long before now. My second thought was that I want to get one to replace the mess of pot and pan lids cluttering several of my cabinets and drawers. Liddy is marketed as the world's first interlocking, stackable pot lid system, which can replace up to six mismatched pot lids (universal pan lids exist, but aren't interlocking and stackable). It comes in two sizes, and its design allows it to fit on any standard pot or pan, and then it stows away neatly onto a space-saving base station for storage. They're dishwasher-safe, they end the confusion of which-lid-goes-with-this-pot, and they cost only $50 to eliminate the clutter of pot and pan lids. Alpha QuickFind is a customizable organization system Alpha QuickFind is an organization solution for junk drawers: It's a standalone drawer system meant to be a place to store miscellaneous items (think pens, batteries, office supplies, card decks, cables, loose change, and small tools), turning chaos into order. It's basically the adult equivalent of having a fancy pencil organizer at school instead of a standard pencil case, and it'll free your junk drawer to be used for something else. Granted, for $300, you might choose to keep your junk drawer. My Snapboard is the first snackboard designed to keep charcuterie coldMy Snapboard is a freezable snackboard that keeps food cold while it's on display. It's smart in its simplicity: You simply pre-freeze the board before, say, a summer picnic, and its patented design will help retain the temperature keep your food cold despite the summer heat. If you've ever taken charcuterie to a park or hosted an outdoor outing, you likely learned how quickly spreads melt, vegetables wilt, and cheese turns spongy. My Snapboard is meant to be an easy fix for that. It costs $50 for the black-and-white version, or $60 for the fancier woodgrain. View the full article

Consider a new model for travel marketing where content adapts to traveler context instead of relying on static destination pages. The post How AI Automation Turns Static Travel Pages Into Living Content & Experiences appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Your home has a style, but that style was decided for you long before you went into a store. Those decisions were made by buyers who attend shows like The Inspired Home Show, where popular brands from around the world showcase their latest housewares to retailers, who then stock those products in the stores we shop. As a new homeowner myself, I wanted to see what's coming to stores, so I planned to attend The Inspired Home Show in Chicago from March 10-12. Suffice it to say, there's a lot to see. What is The Inspired Home Show?The Inspired Home Show is organized by the International Housewares Association, a nonprofit trade organization committed to "maximizing the success of the home and housewares industry." They host the show annually in March, with over 2,000 brands in attendance to showcase their products, network with buyers and tastemakers, and share the latest housewares trends and innovations. The trade show is broken into four categories: "Clean + Contain," "Dine + Decor," "Wired + Well," and International Sourcing. How attending a housewares expo changed the way I'll shopWhen I bought my first home in November, I began to realize how much discoverability played a role in what I put into my home. Much like how the tables at my local bookstore or the first page of search results that determine what I read, the stock at retailers like Walmart, Home Depot, or Target often shapes the possibilities for my kitchen's function, the organization in my linen closet, and the appliances on my counter long before the thought crosses my mind. Admittedly, I don't often care about those things—I rarely find the shelves of big-box stores lacking in options, let alone online shopping as a whole—but I chose to approach the expo with the imagination of a fantasy draft night. Stores are making picks, but what if I don't like their choices? Being more aware of brands and their products allows me to make my own. Being aware of brands, products, and sales is generally part of my job, but as a tech-focused brand, my attention leans far more toward Apple, Google, and Microsoft than toward Dreo, Carote, and Vacane. The prevalence of online shopping for tech makes my options for the best tablets, fitness trackers, and digital notebooks feel meaningful. But since becoming a homeowner, I've come to realize the prevalence of housewares and home tech is just as broad, only its options are much less known. The more I learned to view housewares, tools, and home tech as a spectrum of countless brands, the more I want to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. The housewares market is full of cheap, low-quality crap, and for most of my life, I furnished my apartments with kitchenware, appliances, and cleaning tools as inexpensively as possible. Much of that was due to financial constraints, which I understand only too well. I rolled my eyes when I was told that "there's nothing more expensive than cheap shoes" when cheap shoes were all I could afford. But my habit of buying cheap housewares persisted for two reasons: a resistance to consumer manipulation (I still remember the first infomercial product I bought as a teen that turned out to be junk), and the belief that housewares brands were all the same. The first of those reasons remains. I religiously use ad blockers online, snooze algorithmic suggestions on social media, and block brands on Instagram. To date, I have nearly 10,000 accounts blocked on Instagram alone, where I manually block every account that tries to sell me a product I don't need. Credit: Jordan Calhoun But the belief that all housewares brands are the same has fallen apart, and walking the showroom floor at a convention dedicated to the industry's evolution reminds me just how much thought goes into an industry I once easily ignored. Check out the 2026 Global Innovation Awards winnersOf course, not everyone can attend trade shows, especially ones closed to the public. And while your own brand opinions may come from personal trial and error, word of mouth, YouTubers, or online forums, I hope to include more home-related expos and conventions in the mix. Only when we know what's available can we make more informed choices of our own, directly from the companies we trust, rather than limiting ourselves to store shelves. To that end, take a look at the winners of the International Housewares Association’s 2026 Global Innovation Awards. You can also check out my experience at the Inventors Corner, where 32 smaller brands share their niche houseware innovations that they hope catch on. Finally, you can stay tuned for the coolest brands I saw at The Home Innovation Show by subscribing to our Home & Garden newsletter, Smarter Home & Living. View the full article

“At the light, take a sharp left onto Washington Street.” “So the second value prop—” “Turn right onto Third Avenue, then at the next stop sign…” Charles Armstrong, the product manager on Google Maps, is trying to explain how the platform’s turn-by-turn directions are getting their biggest update since the service launched in 2009. Maps is an almost unfathomably impactful platform that reaches around 2 billion people worldwide; it dominates navigation apps by commanding as much as 70% of the global market share. But as Armstrong attempts to walk me through the rich redesign, he keeps getting interrupted by his own demo. And I have to admit…anyone who has ever attempted to converse in the car while navigating would find the moment more than a little vindicating. Schadenfreude aside, I have to admit, the updates, launching on March 12, look promising. In an exclusive discussion with the Google Maps development team, here’s a look at the most significant UX updates. Google Maps is in 3D now Maps’ single most significant update is to the 2D navigation we’ve grown so accustomed to over the last 17 years. Now, the camera has been tilted down to reveal a real-time 3D map—complete with buildings, crosswalks, and off-ramps. What may sound like a glitzy gimmick is all about lowering cognitive load by de-escalating the oft-stressful experience of being told where you need to turn next but not actually following where that is in real life. “Hopefully [3D] means that it’s more relatable,” says Paolo Malabuyo, director of UX on Google Maps. “So it’s much easier for you to know, ‘Oh, I’m here and I know where I need to go in a couple blocks.’ ‘Oh, there’s a stop sign. ‘So as I’m coming up to that maneuver, I’m much calmer than I normally would be.” Practically speaking, it’s easy to see Malabuyo’s point. Overpasses, for instance, are tricky to scrutinize on a 2D map. But in the redesign, natural shape and shadow demonstrates that they are different than a flat intersection. Buildings don’t block sight lines as you turn around a bend thanks to dynamic x-ray views that kick in automatically as you drive. Instead of photorealism, Google opted for a more abstracted, wireframe look to reduce noise and focus your brain on what matters most. Notably, much of the 3D map is generated with Gemini AI, which the company used to translate their own satellite street scans graphics. Elements like off-ramps don’t just come in one or two widths; the map is built to closely mirror the proportions of real-life roads. At the same time, AI adds some elements, like parking garages or landmarks, dynamically based upon choices like your final destination. A more cinematic camera, more logical turns Google Maps’ old camera floated over your car, mirroring your turns at 1:1 speed. On paper, this should work perfectly: the map shows exactly what you’re doing. In practice, the team says it’s the sort of design decision that made drivers feel more stressed. The new Maps changes the perspective so that the “camera” zooms in and out, with real cinematic heft, depending on your speed and road position. This doesn’t mean all that much for straightaways on the highway. It’s during those turns in particular that Google Maps will actually send the camera ahead of your car by just a little bit, giving you a preview of the street and landmarks to come. “We refer to this internally as giving the driver the ability to see around corners,” says Malabuyo. Coupled with dynamic x-ray vision, which turns any building blocking your view transparent, it looks like Google Maps will make congested downtown streets far more forgiving to navigate. That camera is accompanied by what the team calls “more colloquial” voice guidance, also powered by Gemini AI. This entire redesign is focused on triaging 14 particularly error-prone moments for drivers that cause them to miss turns. Sharper audio instructions are meant to help during many such scenarios—like when you’re on the highway with two back-to-back exits, and you don’t know which is the right one. “There have been solid improvements to reduce the amount of rote, repetitive, and sort of awkwardly timed streams or language, so that [it] speaks more like a human,” says Armstrong. “If the highway has two different highway names connected with a forward slash, we’re not going to just keep repeating that.” This more conversational interface is a two-way street, because Gemini AI will also field your questions through a new “ask Maps” button within Google Maps. Google says it allows you to ask plain language questions, like “My phone is dying—where can I charge it without having to wait in a long line for coffee?” While I didn’t see it demoed, the system will answer your question verbally, then generate a custom map to show you the way. More time for your eyes on the road Google sits on decades of driver data, which it says informed many of these decisions. It further validated the work by running eye-tracking driver simulations in a lab, and even challenging its own staff to drive what it calls a “platinum route.” Based in Seattle, this route would probably be better named “hell route,” as it features all 14 of the most challenging situations to navigate. The team would drive the route, film it, and drive it again with new UX prototypes in attempts to validate which decisions actually assisted drivers the most. While Google is reluctant to share any data demonstrating how much time or frustration its maps redesign should save drivers, they insist that the UX updates will make a measurable improvement to driving. Via simulations and test drives, the team is closely tracking a state called “total eyes on road,” which follows how long we’re looking at a navigational display versus looking through our windshield. Even though the new Google Maps has a far richer interface that ultimately conveys more data, it’s simultaneously easier to grok. Google says its own testing confirms that drivers using the new Google Maps should look at their screens less than they did with the old version. That’s important, because while the entire auto industry seems to be admitting the danger of touchscreens, it’s hard to imagine reversing to a world before turn-by-turn directions. Google needs to be optimizing its UX to keep lowering cognitive load and encourage driver awareness. View the full article

Hiroshi Fujiwara is perhaps the most dramatically lit person I’ve ever interviewed on Zoom. Joining me at his preferred time (midnight) from Tokyo, the man known as the godfather of streetwear—who launched his own label at 26, was among the first hip-hop DJs in Japan, wrote a regular column for Popeye, and now runs his own consultancy, Fragment—has met with me to discuss his latest collaborations with Nike. But when I dig in, asking about the hidden details lurking in his shoes? He admits, “I don’t really want to talk about it,” without an ounce of rudeness. “Sometimes, if you see a movie and you don’t really get the ending, you have to guess what [the creators] think. I like that kind of situation.” In a world of overt and overstated sneaker collabs, Fujiwara prefers to operate with a soft touch. The semiotics of streetwear like much of fashion are born from winks and nods—an “if you know you know” mentality. His three new pieces for Nike celebrate that. At the same time, Fujiwara insists he isn’t only trying to build enigmas that “people can investigate it forever.” When he visits Nike, he still designs the shoes he’d like to wear. “I always like black shoes!” His three new shoes start with his take on Nike’s new Air Liquid Max (April 1, $225)—an organic expansion of its Air Max technology, where the air bubbles almost seem to melt or morph underfoot like the toes of a tree frog. He didn’t touch the materiality or the silhouette. And you’ll need to squint to notice the light white text like “Fragment Concept Testing” on the side. But he turned the swoosh chrome, and filled the three printed layers of pigment on top of the shoe with various flavors of black. I imagine that in person it almost shimmers like snakeskin (which wouldn’t be the first or even second time Fujiwara used animal textures on a sneaker). “I always like black shoes!” Fujiwara says. “I like colorful shoes also, but I wanted to have the black one for myself. Especially that shoe. I always like those air bag shoes. Many [designers] want to do the Jordan 1, Air Force One, or Dunk. No one really want to touch the newest things. I always do that.” For the Mind 001 (March 18, $95)—Nike’s brain-calming slide shoe, which uses little nubs in the bottom to activate a sense of mindfulness—Fujiwara also wanted to go with black. But for the nubs, he chose blue. Black and “military blue” are the trademark colors of Fragment. “Small details are really, really important. I see some comments, people say, ‘Oh, it’s only changing color’; ‘It’s only little things,’” Fujiwara says. “But the little things are really important, especially for the shoe. Like even 1 millimeter really makes it different.” Indeed, the Mind 001 reads completely differently in black—ready to outfit an ensemble of broody technical garments beloved by corners of the fashion scene—in a way that the Mind 001’s original infrared and orange colorway did not. Yet black and blue seem like the worst colors to use to stand out: an almost stubborn choice on Fujiwara’s part to squint through their universality to see his fingerprint. Is there more to them? When I asked about his exact approach to blue at Fragment, he did share more on its origins. “The first Air Jordan I had in the ’80s—the original Air Jordan 1—that was black and blue,” Fujiwara says. “And I always like black and blue.” The shoe left such an imprint on his mind that he adopted Nike’s colorways for himself, which he occasionally, circuitously, reapplies to the brand. An excuse to look closer Fujiwara’s collaborations with Nike trace back to the ’90s—at one point, he even teamed up with Nike design god Tinker Hatfield and CEO Mark Parker on a special line called HTM (Hiroshi, Tinker, Mark). He’s always seen his role as translating Nike’s performance approach to a more fashion-forward audience. Fujiwara himself flagged his use of “croc leather” on an Air Force 1 as being the sort of polarizing choice even Nike’s designers didn’t get at the time (about 20 years later, it seems like a downright common treatment to realize a luxe sneaker). “When I started working for Nike with a collaboration in the late ’90s, there were many rules. You couldn’t touch a swoosh. And at first, it was difficult. But then I got used to it, and I kind of started enjoying it,” Fujiwara says. “Nike already had their own creative design, so I don’t want to mess around too much. . . . I talk to the designers, I like to respect what they do.” That mentality carries across Fujiwara’s collaborations and projects. He keeps his design simple. He keeps his staff simple. He keeps his business simple. Fragment is a creative team of three, which ensures he doesn’t have the overhead and payroll of managing his own brand. But I’ll admit that I appreciate it when Fujiwara takes a firmer touch with Nike’s silhouettes, as he demonstrated with his Nike Mind 002 (March 18, $140). He requested a new upper made of Flyknit, while breaking free of black and blue by introducing a second color scheme in “particle gray.” A closer look reveals more nuance. The top of the shoe is fuzzy—almost reading like fleece. All of that softness is caged by a one-pull performance lace system, managed with Fragment’s own tooling that can lock down the shoe like a bolo tie. While the silhouette itself stays the same, Fujiwara introduced a new sock liner that raises the heel of the shoe, giving it more forward momentum than what we see in the Mind 002 (a silhouette that I’ve thought looks stuck in place, given that its outsole and upper peak in the center like a triangle). Sneaker critics have been gushing about Fujiwara’s approach to the Mind 002, and his most overt statement is what fans appear to want. But ultimately, Fujiwara asks that you keep looking closer. “When I was really young, the information I had was just pictures in magazines. Like, pictures of my favorite people. I’d want to see, what do they have in the closet? Or what do they have on posters? Those kinds of small details,” he says. “But many people [don’t get there now] because they have so much information already.” View the full article

We’ve tested Google AI Max over the past nine months, analyzing 23 individual tests across 16 already mature advertisers operating within a range of verticals. This article reveals what we did to maximize success with this campaign type. Your experiments and observations may vary. If so, we’d welcome the debate. This is intended to be just one voice among many in the conversation around AI Max. All the analyses we discuss are replicable within your own accounts, so you can ratify or dispute the findings based on your own data. The ground rules for AI Max Before launching an AI Max test, consider several factors. Two are particularly significant: Your campaigns should bid on a conversion action that’s meaningful for your business. Aim to get your conversion hygiene in as good a place as possible through tools like Enhanced Conversions and Google Tag Gateway. Value-based bidding is also ideal, although it’s not essential. Any automated targeting functionality can work. Your campaigns shouldn’t be budget-constrained. This advice is true in many situations, but it’s particularly relevant with AI Max. What’s the point of opening up your targeting if your budget prevents you from entering those auctions anyway? If your campaign is limited by budget, then either increase your daily budget headroom or set more conservative bid strategy targets. With those prerequisites satisfied, we can now cover some of the juicier findings we’ve uncovered from our AI Max tests. 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 Learning 1: Go all in with AI Max AI Max performs best when you enable all three core features simultaneously: Search term matching. Text customization. URL optimization. Overall, we saw a 40% higher uplift in test success rates for campaigns that used all three features compared to those that opted in only to the baseline search term matching functionality. Text customization drives stronger performance Google has been pushing the text customization concept in various guises for a few years. However, earlier versions, like auto-applied recommendations, have had limited uptake. So, we were keen to finally assess the impact this would have. Using the Added by segment in the assets report, you can compare how text customization performs compared to standard advertiser-provided assets. We found that AI-edited assets delivered an improved return on ad spend (ROAS) and helped extract more value per impression. Put simply, clients were better off when text customization was activated than when it wasn’t. This trend was consistent across both headline and description assets, even though we found that text customization modified headlines far more often than descriptions. Text customization skews the auction in your favor Strong performance is the ultimate objective for AI Max campaigns. But from a search geek’s perspective, the arguably more tantalizing result is that text customization demonstrably improved Quality Score. We assessed historical Quality Scores for clients who activated text customization before and after the test launch. This analysis is valid because the Google Ads interface reports Quality Score only when the search query syntax exactly matches the keyword. This methodology provides a like-for-like comparison across a group of queries that were targeted both before and after switching on AI Max. We saw a topline improvement in weighted Quality Score, from 6.8 to 7.3. This upward trend repeated across the three components of the Quality Score, with ad relevance showing the most notable uplift. *Quality Score components evaluated as below average = 1, average = 2, above average = 3 Logically, this shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the premise of text customization is that Google shows the best possible ad to each individual user. Nonetheless, it’s satisfying to see this story unfold in our analysis. At the same time, this finding is noteworthy because advertisers have generally been reluctant to use the full AI Max suite. Across all our test cases, only 50% used text customization, and even fewer (44%) enabled URL optimization. Some brands will need to adhere to compliance guidelines that outright prohibit the use of these features. But our results suggest that if you have any wiggle room at all, you’d be well served by running a test with all three features. Google is constantly rolling out additional guardrail features to clarify what is and isn’t off-limits from a brand messaging perspective. Marketers in more risk-averse organizations would be well-advised to keep a close eye on these releases. Dig deeper: Google expands AI Max text guidelines globally Learning 2: Take an account-wide approach with AI Max This next suggestion might seem counterintuitive, but hear me out. If you’re testing out AI Max for the first time, you might be better off enabling the feature across your entire account right from the start, rather than following a step-by-step approach. There are a few reasons for this. Not all AI Max traffic is net-new With AI Max enabled, you can target more queries and users than before. And of those queries, many will genuinely be net-new to your account. However, it’s also common for queries that another campaign in your account once reached to get pulled into your AI Max campaign. When we assessed performance at the campaign level, we saw an average +7% increase in conversion value, directly generated by queries the campaign had never targeted before. When we zoomed out to an account-level view, however, only 46% of those queries were actually new to the account. The remaining 54% had previously been captured elsewhere in the account. That still isn’t a bad result. An approximately 3% incremental uplift in conversion value, especially for accounts that were already running with a high broad match adoption, is great. But this finding does have two key implications: If you care about your search term hygiene, enabling AI Max in only a subset of your campaigns could disrupt your search term-to-campaign funnel. Because brand inclusion lists are now exclusively available for AI Max-enabled campaigns, enabling AI Max account-wide can help you maintain a cleaner search term-to-campaign funneling system. Single campaign adoption muddies the water when assessing the success of your test. You care about net-new conversions, not reorganizing existing traffic within your account. When testing AI Max, make sure you assess the full account-wide impact. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. How not to evaluate AI Max Don’t rely on a cost per acquisition (CPA) by match type analysis to assess AI Max’s efficacy. This approach reveals attribution data within your campaign. But what you really want to know is whether AI Max has improved your overall ability to generate returns at an incremental investment that you’re comfortable with. There are examples of advertisers trialing AI Max and achieving account-wide efficiency improvements. But you should identify those cases by reflecting on macro, account-wide performance — not by looking at your match type CPAs. Why you should monitor campaign types Consider how AI Max interacts with your other campaign types and targeting methods. Let’s call out one particularly glaring example: Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). In our own analysis, every successful AI Max test occurred in an account with low-to-no adoption of DSA campaigns. This is understandable. Almost every single capability of DSA campaigns is now available in AI Max. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that having both campaign types running in parallel doesn’t improve performance. It’s plausible that we may not be that far away from Google announcing another round of campaign streamlining initiatives, similar to those for Smart Shopping and Discovery campaigns in previous years. But until then, it’s on marketers to put some thought into the role you intend each campaign type to play within your overall account plan. Dig deeper: AI Max in action: What early case studies and a new analysis script reveal Learning 3: Think beyond AI Max If you’re already comfortable with AI Max and you’re ready to push onto the next step, there’s a wealth of new testing opportunities to think about. Search Bidding Exploration (SBE) was and still is the first major user-facing change to Google’s bidding technology in the last five years. Yet there’s been remarkably little industry chatter so far about this feature. SBE feels like a natural partner for AI Max, given that both tools are designed to reach incremental and previously inaccessible customers. AI Max also gives you the chance to evolve your thinking around account structure. In an AI Max world, the optimal balance between segmentation and consolidation may lie elsewhere than before. We’re already starting to see some green shoots of successful hyper-consolidation approaches. But it’s still too early to decisively comment one way or another. Dig deeper: AI Max increases revenue 13% but drives higher CPA: Study 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 Putting AI Max to the test in your own account It’s an intriguing time to be working in paid search, and AI Max has already sparked significant debate and experimentation within the industry. If you’re a later adopter or if you’re looking to improve on a previously unsuccessful foray into AI Max, then consider the following: Implement key ground rules: Ensure that you have objective-oriented bid strategies in place, powered by strong conversion hygiene. Remove campaign budget constraints once and for all. Adopt an all-in approach: Text customization and URL expansion may not be as popular as search term matching. But we’ve observed that using the full package can actually improve the likelihood of success — by up to 40% in our experiments. Prioritize an account-wide impact: Consider the interplays between AI Max, your regular keyword campaigns, and DSA. It might be that an AI Max everywhere approach is preferable. When judging results, look beyond campaign-level tests where possible, and block out the CPA-by-match-type brigade. Get creative: Think about the more innovative ways you can integrate AI Max with other facets of your account. View the full article

Let me introduce you to your good friend, sweat. Ignore the gross feel and the potential for B.O. for the moment, and think about what it does for you: When your body gets too hot, threatening to raise your core temperature over what’s healthy, little glands in your skin squeeze drops of moisture onto its surface. As soon as a breeze hits those droplets, they evaporate, taking some of your body heat away with them. This is true even during exercise. It's not the exercise that makes you sweat; exercise just raises your body heat, and it's the heat that makes you sweat. That's why you sweat without exercising on a hot day, and why you can sometimes exercise without sweating in a cold environment. In other words, sweat means a lot less than you might think. Sweating doesn't mean you're getting a good workout, doesn't mean you're losing weight, and it doesn't tell you much about your fitness level. Let me explain. You can get a great workout even if you don’t sweat very muchAt the same ambient temperature, a harder workout might result in more body heat, so we’ve built up an association between sweating and working hard. It’s deceptive, though. If you go for an hour-long run in the heat, you’ll sweat buckets. Run an hour on a treadmill at room temperature, and you may not sweat quite as much, but you’ll still be dripping. Go and run an hour in the winter, though, and you’ll barely be damp. That’s because your body doesn’t have to worry about cooling itself down. Besides the ambient temperature, there's another factor here: Not all workouts raise your body temperature equally. A heavy strength training workout, with plenty of rest time, may not raise your body temperature enough to make you sweat very much. That doesn't make it a less-intense workout than, say, an easy jog. So don't read too much into the amount you sweat. Why do some people sweat more than others?One of the biggest differences between people who sweat a lot and those who sweat less is body size. And by "size" I literally mean that—it doesn’t matter whether you’re fat, muscular, tall, or some combination thereof. The more of you there is, the harder your skin has to work to cool you down, and thus the more you sweat. And then there's the relationship between surface area and volume. The more skin you have relative to your body size, the more efficiently sweat can cool you. That means smaller people, including children, have a higher surface-area-to-volume ratio, so they can cool down with less sweat. If you lose a substantial amount of weight, you may end up sweating (slightly) less for these reasons. You have less body mass, and your surface-to-volume ratio improves a bit. On the flip side, the fitter you are, the more you might sweat, as research suggests runners’ bodies turn on the sweat glands sooner than sedentary people, and that they sweat more during the same workout. So sweating more doesn't mean you're out of shape; it can mean you're actually fitter and better adapted to the heat than people who sweat less. Finally, if you feel like you’re the biggest sweater in your friend group, look at whether you’re actually doing appropriate comparisons. If you’re dripping when you run in the noonday sun and you see your friend post a selfie from the air-conditioned gym, you shouldn’t expect the two of you to sweat the same amount. What’s the connection between sweat and weight loss?Sweating a lot during a workout does not mean you’re losing fat, so let’s bust that myth right there. Sweating a lot can make you lose water weight, though, which is only temporary. Our bodies contain a certain amount of water in our blood and in the various cells and compartments we’re made of. We can lose a little bit of it, become slightly dehydrated, and barely notice. Or we can drink a ton of water and become very hydrated, and have to pee a lot to get back to a normal level. In extreme cases, we can get so dehydrated it threatens our health, but that’s rare with normal activities. When you sweat, and that sweat evaporates or gets rubbed off (you mop your brow with a towel, let’s say), that’s water leaving your body. You can actually weigh yourself before and after a workout and notice a change in weight if you sweat enough. Every pound of weight you lose is two cups (16 ounces) of water that has left your body. So technically you “lost weight,” but it wasn’t fat. You’re just due to drink two cups of water, and then you’ll be hydrated and happy again. View the full article