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When Tiffany Davis has a question about a symptom from the weight-loss injections she’s taking, she doesn’t call her doctor. She pulls out her phone and consults ChatGPT. “I’ll just basically let ChatGPT know my status, how I’m feeling,” said the 42-year-old in Mesquite, Texas. “I use it for anything that I’m experiencing.” Turning to artificial intelligence tools for health advice has become a habit for Davis and many other Americans, according to a West Health–Gallup Center on Healthcare in America poll published Wednesday. The poll, conducted in late 2025 and backed up by at least three other recent surveys with similar findings, found that roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults had used an AI tool for health information or advice in the past 30 days. Dr. Karandeep Singh, chief health AI officer at the University of California San Diego Health, said AI tools, many of which now incorporate web search, are an upgraded version of Google health searches that Americans have been doing for decades. “I almost view it like a better entry portal into web search,” he said. “Instead of someone having to comb through the top, you know, 10, 20, 30 links in a web search, they can now have an executive summary.” Most recent AI health users are looking for quick answers Most Americans using AI tools for health purposes say they want immediate answers. In some cases, it helps them evaluate what kind of medical attention they need. “It’ll let me know if something’s serious or not,” Davis said of ChatGPT, which she typically consults before scheduling medical appointments. The Gallup survey found about 7 in 10 U.S. adults who have used AI for health research in the past 30 days say they wanted quick answers, additional information or were simply curious. Majorities used it for research before seeing a doctor or after an appointment. Rakesia Wilson, 39, in Theodore, Alabama, said she recently used AI to better understand her lab results after an endocrinologist visit. She also regularly uses ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to decide whether she needs to take time off for a doctor’s appointment or can simply monitor an ailment. “I just don’t necessarily have the time if it’s something that I feel is minor,” said Wilson, who said she sometimes works up to 70-hour weeks as an assistant principal. Younger adults and lower-income users have used AI to bridge care gaps On the whole, the findings suggest that the rise of AI tools hasn’t stopped people from seeking professional medical care. About 8 in 10 U.S. adults say they have sought out a doctor or other health care professional for health information in the past year, while about 3 in 10 say that about AI tools and chatbots, according to a KFF poll conducted in late February. Similarly, a Pew Research Center survey conducted in October found that about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say they get health information at least sometimes from AI chatbots, while about 85% said the same about health care providers. But there are indications that some Americans are using AI for health advice because they are struggling to obtain professional medical care, at a time when federal policy and market factors are worsening health costs and creating obstacles to access around the country. A small but significant share of respondents in the Gallup study say they used AI because accessing health care was too expensive or inconvenient. About 4 in 10 wanted help outside of normal business hours, while about 3 in 10 did not want to pay for a doctor’s visit. Roughly 2 in 10 did not have time to make an appointment, had felt ignored or dismissed by a provider in the past or were too embarrassed to talk to a person. The KFF survey found that younger adults and lower-income people were more likely to say they used an AI tool or chatbot for health information because they could not afford the cost of seeing a provider or were having trouble accessing health care. Americans are divided on whether AI medical advice can be trusted Tech experts often warn that AI chatbots don’t think for themselves — and therefore can sometimes spout false information. Those concerns have trickled down even to frequent AI users. About one-third of adults who had recently used AI for health information said they “strongly” or “somewhat” trust the accuracy of health information and advice generated by AI tools, according to the Gallup poll. About the same share, 34%, distrusted it, and another 33% neither trusted it nor distrusted it. Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, an ear, nose and throat doctor and the president of the American Medical Association, said he loves when patients come in and have “more evolved questions than they used to have” because they used AI for research. But he said AI should be considered a tool and not a stand-in for medical care. “It is an assistant but not an expert, and that’s why physicians need to be involved in that care,” he said. There are also concerns about privacy, according to KFF. About three-quarters of U.S. adults said they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the privacy of personal medical or health information that people provide to AI tools or chatbots. Singh, of UC San Diego Health, said most AI tools have settings users can toggle to prevent their data from being used to train future models. But that requires user vigilance — and not being careful can have consequences. Last summer, for example, internet sleuths on Google discovered private ChatGPT conversations that had been indexed on a public website without the users realizing it. Tamara Ruppart, a 47-year-old director in Los Angeles, said she is lucky enough to have doctors in her husband’s family that she contacts instead of turning to AI. With her family history of breast cancer, using a chatbot for health advice feels too risky. “Health care is something that’s pretty serious,” she said. “And if it’s wrong, you could really hurt yourself.” —Ali Swenson and Linley Sanders, Associated Press View the full article

If you use Google Chrome, listen up: You may be running malicious extensions without even knowing it. As reported by The Hacker News, cybersecurity researchers with Socket's Threat Research Team have identified 108 extensions available in Google Chrome that steal login credentials, user IDs, and browsing data. All 108 extensions route that information back to servers controlled by a single operator, despite these extensions being published by five different developers (GameGen, InterAlt, Rodeo Games, SideGames, and Yana Project). These extensions collectively have around 20,000 installations, which isn't a massive pool of targets considering Chrome's 3.62 billion users, but is still a concern given the number of extensions involved in this coordinated scheme. Socket's team identified that there are some key categories these extensions are published under: Telegram sidebar clients, which display a working Telegram chat interface in the browser; slot machine and Keno games, which offer a playable gambling experience; YouTube and TikTok "enhancers;" page utility extensions; and one text translation tool. All extensions appear to offer the services advertised in the Chrome Web Store, all the while running malicious programs under the surface. Users who install the Telegram client may get a functioning chat experience, but underneath, the extension is stealing that user's Telegram Web sessions every 15 seconds, which leaks all messages, contacts, and linked accounts. 54 of the extensions steal your Google account identity when you click the "sign-in" option, which leaks your email, name, and profile picture to the operator. (Notably, the scheme does not grant the operator access to your Google account.) Forty-five of the extensions have a backdoor that can open any URL the operator wants in your browser. Seventy-eight of the extensions can inject HTML code into your browser. Five extensions can remove YouTube and TikTok security measure in order to inject gambling ads and overlays onto the sites. And when you sign up for the text translation tool, it sends your email and full name to the server, as well as anything you translate with the extension. How to protect yourself from these malicious extensionsThe first thing you should do is check to see whether you have any of these extensions running in your browser. Some of the more popular extensions identified here include "Telegram Multi-account," "Black Beard Slot Machine," "Page Locker," and "InterAlt," but you can find a complete list of the extensions, including their Chrome Extension IDs, on Socket's report here. If you used Telegram Multi-account, Socket recommends logging out of all Telegram Web sessions using the Telegram app. You can find the option from Settings > Devices > Terminate all other sessions. If you signed into any of these extensions with your Google account, assume your identity was exposed, and review your third-party app permissions here. Unfortunately, if you used Text Translation with your email, your name and email address were exposed. Going forward, exercise extreme caution before installing new extensions in your browser. While the Chrome Web Store should only contain "safe" extensions, malicious programs find their way onto the marketplace. Always carefully review each listing before installing the extension: If the extension requires sensitive information, lacks many reviews, or the listing is poorly constructed, it's best to avoid it entirely. View the full article

For years, companies have assumed the internet was built for people. Websites were designed to attract human attention, explain, persuade, reassure, and eventually convert. Search engine optimization, user experience, digital merchandising, and checkout design all rested on the same basic premise: the user was a person sitting in front of a screen. That premise is beginning to crack. Not because people are disappearing, but because they are starting to delegate. More and more often, the first system reading your site, comparing your offer, interpreting your policies, or even initiating a purchase will not be a human being. It will be a software agent acting on someone’s behalf. That is the direction implied by Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, by Google’s Agent2Agent protocol, its guide to agent protocols and its Universal Commerce Protocol, by OpenAI’s Operator and Agents SDK, and by the growing work from companies such as Visa, Mastercard, and Cloudflare to make agentic commerce trustworthy and operational at scale. This is not just a story about better chatbots or prettier interfaces. It is a story about the web acquiring a second interface: one for humans, and another for machines. From pages to actions The old web revolved around pages. You published information, people found it, and then clicked through a sequence you controlled. The emerging web revolves more and more around actions. Agents do not care very much about your homepage, your visual hierarchy, or the emotional arc of your funnel. They care about whether they can understand your catalog, verify your policies, access reliable data, and complete a task without unnecessary friction. That is why the most consequential developments in AI are increasingly not just models, but protocols. Anthropic describes MCP as “a universal, open standard for connecting AI systems with data sources,” meant to replace fragmented integrations with a single protocol. Google’s A2A describes a world in which agents advertise capabilities through an “Agent Card,” discover one another, and collaborate on tasks. Google’s own commerce work goes one step further: UCP is explicitly designed to integrate checkout logic directly with Google AI Mode and Gemini, with “native checkout” framed as the default path for unlocking “full agentic potential.” In other words, the stack is moving from content to execution. The next SEO is not SEO For two decades, companies learned that visibility depended on being legible to search engines. What is now emerging is more demanding. It is no longer enough to be indexable. You have to become usable. That is why ideas such as llms.txt matter. As I argued in a recent piece, websites were built for humans, while language models are better served by a concise, “fat-free” entry point that reduces ambiguity and strips away the noise of menus, scripts, repeated elements, and layout. The llms.txt proposal is simple: place a markdown file at /llms.txt that acts as a curated map for language models, exposing what matters, what is canonical, and where the useful resources live. The official proposal frames it as a way to “provide information to help LLMs use a website at inference time,” precisely because context windows are limited and converting complex HTML into useful plain text is often difficult and imprecise. That does not make llms.txt some magical ranking hack. It is not. It is closer to digital housekeeping for a world in which more and more discovery, summarization, and recommendation are mediated by AI systems. The point is not to game a ranking algorithm. The point is to reduce machine confusion. That distinction matters. The same logic applies to newer, more experimental ideas such as identity.txt. The site describes it as “a portable identity file that tells AI tools who you are, how you think, and on what terms,” adding that “llms.txt tells AI about websites. identity.txt tells AI about people.” Whether identity.txt itself becomes broadly adopted is almost secondary. What matters is the direction of travel: the web is beginning to produce machine-readable self-descriptions on purpose, rather than leaving models and agents to infer everything from noisy HTML, metadata fragments, and guesswork. And this is unlikely to stop with those two examples. Google’s agent protocol guide explains that each A2A agent can publish an Agent Card describing its name, capabilities, and endpoint. The point is obvious: systems are starting to announce themselves to other systems in standardized ways. Once that logic takes hold, it is easy to imagine a broader ecosystem of machine-readable files for policies, permissions, provenance, fulfillment, pricing logic, returns, and authenticated identity. Brands will still matter. But brands will no longer be enough Many companies still treat AI as something layered on top of the web: a chatbot in customer service, some generated copy in marketing, an assistant in the app. That view is too shallow. What is actually happening is that a machine-facing layer is being added underneath the visible web and, in some contexts, in front of it. When a user asks an agent to find the best black blazer under a certain price, with quick delivery, decent return conditions, and a fit similar to previous purchases, the interaction does not begin with a homepage visit. It begins with machine interpretation. That changes the basis of competition. Strong brands will still matter because trust still matters. But trust will increasingly need to be expressed in forms machines can process: structured attributes, current inventory, transparent return rules, delivery promises, verified merchant identity, and payment systems that can distinguish a legitimate agent from a malicious bot. Visa says its aim is to “ensure only approved AI agents transact,” while Mastercard argues that protocols are essential to scaling agentic commerce because they support clear user intent, secure credentials, and verifiable agent identity. Cloudflare, working with the payment ecosystem, has made the same point more bluntly: merchants will need ways to grant access to legitimate AI agents while stopping fraudulent traffic at the front door. What this means for companies: the case of Inditex A global leader such as Inditex makes this shift easier to understand because it sits right at the intersection of brand, logistics, e-commerce, and scale. Inditex started relatively late in e-commerce compared with digital natives, but it eventually built one of the most effective integrated retail systems in the market. In its FY2025 results, the company reported sales of €39.9 billion, online sales of €10.7 billion, and explicitly highlighted that the integration of store and online operations enables a “seamless global omnichannel experience.” That gives Inditex a major advantage in an agent-mediated environment. Zara and the rest of the group already possess many of the things agents are likely to value: strong brand recognition, rapid inventory rotation, integrated logistics, broad geographic coverage, and operational coordination between physical and digital channels. But there is also a risk. Fashion has historically depended on presentation, aspiration, curation, and friction that was often commercially useful. Agents compress all of that. They reduce merchandising to a decision layer in which price, availability, size confidence, delivery date, returns, and trusted identity can become more visible than the atmosphere of the site itself. In that world, the question is no longer “Is your site compelling?” It becomes: “Can an agent use you efficiently?” For Inditex, the strategic response is not cosmetic. It is structural. So what should Inditex do? First, it should start treating its websites not only as destinations for humans, but as structured surfaces for agents. That means richer machine-readable catalogs, more explicit size and fit signals, clearer inventory and delivery metadata, cleaner policy exposure, and more robust authentication layers. Second, it should seriously experiment with machine-oriented descriptive files. A well-designed llms.txt at group and brand level would make sense, especially for clarifying what is canonical, how content is organized, how fast product information changes, and which resources are official. It would not be an SEO trick. It would be an agent usability layer. Third, it should prepare for protocol-driven commerce rather than assuming that all transactions will continue to begin inside its own interface. If Google is building UCP to support commerce inside AI-native environments, and if payment networks and infrastructure companies are building trust layers for agentic commerce, then large retailers should assume that agent-facing checkout, verification, and discovery will become strategically important. Inditex could be unusually well positioned for that transition. But the companies that win in the next phase of commerce will not necessarily be the ones with the prettiest interfaces. They will be the ones that make themselves easiest for agents to understand, trust, and use. The web is starting to expose its machine layer There is an understandable temptation to dismiss things like llms.txt, identity.txt, Agent Cards, or machine-readable policy layers as marginal technical curiosities. That would be a mistake. They are early signposts. No, llms.txt is not yet some universally adopted standard. And no, adding it will not magically transform a company overnight. But that misses the point. Small files and lightweight conventions matter because they reveal where infrastructure is going. The web spent decades perfecting interfaces for human eyes. Now it is beginning, awkwardly but unmistakably, to expose interfaces for software agents. That is the deeper shift. The original web connected documents. The platform web connected users and services. The next one will increasingly connect agents, tools, merchants, payment systems, and authenticated identities. And when that happens, the strategic question changes. It is no longer just, “How do I get people to visit my website?” It becomes, “How do I make my company understandable, trustworthy, and actionable to the systems that increasingly stand between me and my customers?” That is not a design tweak. It is a new layer of digital strategy. View the full article

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Including action steps and key metrics. By Jackie Meyer Go PRO for members-only access to more Jackie Meyer. View the full article

A family member gets the credit he’s due. By Ed Mendlowitz Call Me Before You Do Anything: The Art of Accounting Go PRO for members-only access to more Edward Mendlowitz. View the full article

A family member gets the credit he’s due. By Ed Mendlowitz Call Me Before You Do Anything: The Art of Accounting Go PRO for members-only access to more Edward Mendlowitz. View the full article

How to maximize three activities. By August Aquila MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention Go PRO for members-only access to more August J. Aquila. View the full article

Google is giving advertisers more control when appealing disapproved ads in bulk — a small but meaningful update that could save time and reduce accidental resubmissions. Driving the news. Google has added a new option in its bulk ad review workflow that lets advertisers select ads from specific campaigns when requesting a policy re-review. Previously, advertisers appealing disapproved ads in bulk often had to resubmit all eligible ads across an account — including older campaigns that hadn’t been updated. That created extra work and could clutter the review process with ads that weren’t actually fixed. What’s new. Advertisers can now click a new “Select eligible campaigns” option on the Google Ads policy violations page when filing a bulk appeal. That means they can: send only recently fixed ads for review, avoid including outdated campaigns, and streamline the appeal process. Why we care. Bulk appeals are often used after widespread disapprovals or policy issues. Being able to narrow submissions by campaign should make the process faster, more precise, and easier to manage at scale. For agencies and large accounts, the update could also reduce the risk of confusion when handling multiple policy fixes at once. The bottom line. This isn’t a flashy product launch, but it’s the kind of workflow improvement advertisers have been asking for — giving teams more control and less friction when fixing disapproved ads. First spotted. This update was first spotted by Hana Kobzová of PPC News Feed. View the full article

The March 15 tax deadline is a significant date for S corporations and partnerships, marking when their annual tax returns are due. Missing this deadline can lead to substantial penalties, such as $245 per month for each shareholder or partner. Timely compliance is vital not just to avoid fines but likewise to guarantee accurate financial reporting and effective tax planning. Comprehending the implications of this deadline is important for maintaining operational efficiency—let’s explore why this matters further. Key Takeaways The March 15 tax deadline is critical for S corporations and partnerships to file their annual tax returns. Filing is done using Form 1120-S for S corporations and Form 1065 for partnerships. Late returns incur penalties of $245 per month for each shareholder or partner, up to 12 months. Timely filing ensures accurate financial reporting and avoids complications in personal tax filings. Extensions can be requested by March 15, but any taxes owed are still due. Understanding the March 15 Tax Deadline Comprehending the March 15 tax deadline is critical for S corporations and partnerships, as it’s the date by which they must file their annual tax returns using Form 1120-S and Form 1065. This March 15th tax deadline guarantees timely compliance with IRS regulations. If the deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, you’ll need to file by the next business day. Filing on time is fundamental to avoid penalties, which can accumulate at $245 per month for each shareholder or partner if the return is late. Although you can request a six-month extension using IRS Form 7004, keep in mind that any taxes owed must still be paid by the original deadline to avoid interest and penalties. Missing the March 15 tax deadline can likewise delay tax refunds and complicate personal tax filings for owners of pass-through entities, making it crucial to stay informed and prepared. Who Is Affected by the Deadline? The March 15 tax deadline primarily impacts partnerships and S corporations, requiring these entities to file their tax returns using Form 1120-S and Form 1065 by this specific date. This deadline is vital for these businesses, as they must submit their returns earlier than C corporations and individual taxpayers, whose deadlines are on April 15. Here’s who’s affected by the deadline: Partnerships and S corporations must meet the March 15 deadline to avoid penalties. Fiscal year businesses need to adhere to this date for calendar year ends. Those wishing to request an extension must submit their requests by March 15 as well. Understanding these points helps guarantee your business stays compliant and avoids unnecessary penalties. Keep in mind that missing this deadline can lead to monthly penalties for each partner or shareholder, making timely filing critical for operational efficiency. Consequences of Missing the Deadline When you miss the March 15 tax deadline, the repercussions can be significant, affecting both your business and personal finances. You could face penalties of $245 per month for each shareholder or partner in your S corporation, which can accumulate for up to 12 months. Late filings may likewise delay potential refunds, as the IRS won’t process returns until received. This could lead to additional interest on owed taxes. In addition, if your S corporation fails to file on time, it risks losing its tax-exempt status, resulting in double taxation. Not to mention, any missed estimated tax payments can incur penalties that increase your tax liability. The late filing of Form 1120-S complicates personal tax filings too, especially when waiting on Schedule K-1 information. Consequence Details Penalties $245/month for each shareholder, max 12 months Delayed Refunds IRS won’t process until filed Loss of Tax-Exempt Status Double taxation on income Complicated Personal Filings Delays in Schedule K-1 information Importance of Timely Filing for Businesses Filing your business taxes on time is crucial, not just to avoid penalties but likewise to guarantee accurate financial reporting. For S corporations and partnerships, the March 15 deadline is particularly critical. Missing this date can lead to significant penalties and complications in your tax planning. Consider the following key points: You could incur penalties of $245 per month for each shareholder or partner, which can add up quickly. Timely filing guarantees your business income is accurately reflected on your personal tax returns, aiding in effective tax planning. If you file for an extension by March 15, you gain an additional six months to file, but you still need to pay any taxes owed by the original deadline to avoid interest and penalties. Steps to Ensure Compliance and Avoid Penalties Ensuring compliance with tax regulations and avoiding penalties requires a proactive approach. To help you stay on track, here are some vital steps: Action Description Deadline Maintain Accurate Records Keep detailed financial statements and receipts. Ongoing Prepare Documentation Gather necessary forms like 1120-S or 1065 in advance. Before March 15 File for an Extension Use Form 7004 if needed for an additional six months. By March 15 Consult a Tax Professional Regularly check in for guidance and updates. Ongoing Missing the March 15 deadline can lead to penalties of $245 per month per shareholder or partner, so timely compliance is vital. Remember, regardless of whether you file for an extension, your tax liabilities still need to be paid by the original due date to prevent interest and penalties. Frequently Asked Questions What Taxes Are Due on March 15TH? On March 15, S corporations and partnerships need to file their tax returns, particularly Form 1120-S for S Corps and Form 1065 for partnerships. If you miss this deadline, you could face penalties of $245 per month for each partner or shareholder. Although you can request a six-month extension using IRS Form 7004, keep in mind that any owed taxes must still be paid by March 15 to avoid additional interest and penalties. Why Is March 15 a Tax Day? March 15 is a tax day since it marks the deadline for S corporations and partnerships to submit their annual income tax returns. You need to file IRS Form 1120-S for S corps and Form 1065 for partnerships by this date. Meeting this deadline guarantees that your income and losses are accurately reported, allowing you to include them in your personal returns due April 15. Missing it can lead to penalties based on your business structure. How Serious Is the Tax Deadline? The tax deadline’s serious, especially for S corporations and partnerships. If you miss it, penalties can add up quickly, costing you $245 per month per shareholder or partner for up to a year. Delayed refunds and additional interest can likewise occur if taxes are owed. What Is the Significance of the April 15TH Tax Deadline? The April 15th tax deadline is vital for individuals and businesses alike. You need to file your federal income tax returns by this date to comply with IRS regulations. Missing it can lead to penalties and interest on unpaid taxes, increasing your financial burden. Furthermore, this deadline coincides with the due date for first quarter estimated tax payments, making timely filing necessary for managing your tax obligations effectively and avoiding complications. Conclusion In summary, the March 15 tax deadline is vital for S corporations and partnerships, as it guarantees timely filing of Forms 1120-S and 1065. Missing this deadline can lead to significant penalties and complications with personal tax filings. By adhering to this deadline, businesses maintain operational efficiency and support effective tax planning. To avoid potential issues, it’s important to stay organized and proactive in preparing necessary documents well in advance of the due date. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "What Is the March 15 Tax Deadline and Why Is It Important?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When considering top retail franchise opportunities, it’s vital to recognize the key factors that contribute to their success. Strong brand recognition, effective support systems, and adaptability are critical. As consumer preferences shift toward e-commerce and sustainability, franchises that embrace these trends stand out. Comprehending these elements can help you identify promising investments. Next, you’ll want to explore specific franchise options that align with these characteristics and your business goals. Key Takeaways Brands with strong recognition and customer loyalty, like fast-food chains and coffee shops, consistently rank among top retail franchise opportunities. Franchises focusing on e-commerce integration and omnichannel experiences are increasingly attractive due to rising online shopping trends. Green and sustainable franchises appeal to eco-conscious consumers, enhancing brand loyalty and market penetration. High owner satisfaction rates are linked to franchises with comprehensive training and ongoing support systems. Evaluating initial investment, ongoing fees, and potential ROI is essential for selecting the right retail franchise opportunity. Overview of Top Retail Franchises When exploring the terrain of retail franchise opportunities, you’ll find a wide range of options that cater to different consumer preferences and market demands. Top retail franchises typically include both large chain stores and small boutiques, showcasing diverse products that meet various consumer needs. Strong brand recognition and customer loyalty are essential for a successful retail store franchise, helping to drive sales and sustain profitability. During many retail shop franchises focus on brick-and-mortar locations, there’s an increasing trend in the direction of automated retail options, such as vending machines and online sales platforms. The competitive environment of the retail industry pushes franchises to innovate and adapt, with rankings influenced by owner satisfaction, brand reputation, and financial performance, guiding potential franchisees in their decision-making. Benefits of Investing in Retail Franchises Investing in retail franchises offers you a unique opportunity to tap into strong market demand, benefiting from consumer preferences that consistently favor established brands. With recognized names, you gain immediate trust from customers, which can lead to increased loyalty and sales. Furthermore, the all-encompassing support systems provided by franchisors equip you with the necessary tools and training to navigate the operational environment effectively. Strong Market Demand The retail sector presents a compelling opportunity for those looking to invest in a franchise, thanks to its strong market demand. Here are a few reasons why retail franchises are thriving: Increased Consumer Spending: With rising disposable incomes, consumers are more willing to spend on various retail products. Diverse Offerings: Retail store franchise opportunities span multiple categories, including food, fashion, and home goods, appealing to a wide audience. Higher Profit Margins: Retail franchises often enjoy better profit margins compared to other sectors, making them an attractive investment. This robust environment, fueled by the growth of e-commerce and ongoing homeownership trends, boosts the growth potential for retail franchises, ensuring they’re a smart choice for aspiring franchisees. Established Brand Recognition Established brand recognition plays a crucial role in the success of retail franchises, as it markedly improves customer trust and loyalty. When you invest in an established franchise, you benefit from a strong brand that already has a loyal customer base. This can lead to higher sales performance compared to newer brands. Moreover, well-known franchises often have effective marketing strategies, which reduce customer acquisition costs and increase foot traffic to your location. With a proven business model, the risk of failure diminishes, enhancing the likelihood of a positive return on investment. In addition, having a recognized brand can ease access to financing, as lenders typically view established franchises as less risky investments. Comprehensive Support Systems When you consider the benefits of retail franchises, extensive support systems stand out as a significant advantage. These systems guarantee you’re equipped for success from day one. Here are three key components: Comprehensive Training: You’ll receive thorough training programs that cover crucial skills and knowledge for operating your franchise effectively. Ongoing Operational Support: Continuous assistance helps you navigate challenges and optimize your business operations, contributing to your long-term success. Marketing Assistance: Benefit from established brand recognition and promotional strategies that attract customers and drive sales. Additionally, a strong community of franchisees offers networking opportunities, whereas financial guidance helps you manage investments effectively. Together, these elements create a robust support system that improves your franchise experience. Key Characteristics of Successful Retail Franchises Successful retail franchises share several key characteristics that set them apart in a competitive market. First, strong brand recognition improves consumer trust and loyalty, making these franchises more appealing to potential franchisees. Moreover, thorough training and ongoing support systems are imperative, allowing franchisees to operate effectively during the maintenance of high service standards. High owner satisfaction rates often correlate with proven business models and strong operational support, which greatly boost overall franchise performance. Adaptability to market trends and consumer preferences is also important, as it enables franchises to innovate and meet changing demands. Finally, strong community engagement initiatives cultivate local connections, improving brand image and positively impacting customer loyalty and sales growth. These elements are fundamental for long-term success in retail franchising. Top 10 Retail Franchise Opportunities Exploring the top 10 retail franchise opportunities reveals a diverse range of sectors, including fashion, food, and home services, which cater to various consumer needs. Here are three significant options: Discount Card Shops: These franchises require a low cash investment, starting around $9,500, making them accessible for many entrepreneurs. Food Franchises: With high consumer demand, food-related franchises often thrive, offering numerous options from quick service to casual dining. Western Apparel Stores: Though these may demand a higher investment, often exceeding $368,000, they benefit from established brand loyalty and recognition. These franchises not only provide growth potential but also emphasize community engagement, enhancing customer relationships and brand image in today’s competitive market. Investment Considerations for Retail Franchises Investing in a retail franchise involves careful financial planning and analysis to guarantee a sound decision. Initial investment requirements can vary widely; for instance, CardSmart may need only $9,500, whereas Boot N Shoot requires at least $368,863. It’s vital to factor in ongoing fees and royalties, as these can greatly affect your overall profitability. Evaluating potential return on investment (ROI) is important; examining financial projections and historical data from the franchisor can provide insights into the business model’s viability. Understand the cost structure, including initial investments and the franchise system’s financial health. Furthermore, consider market demand for specific retail categories, as economic factors and consumer behavior can heavily influence your investment’s profitability. Franchisee Support and Training Programs A robust support and training program is crucial for franchisees aiming to succeed in their business ventures. Thorough training equips you with the knowledge and tools to operate effectively. Ongoing support tackles operational challenges, ensuring you have access to resources as your business grows. Here are three key aspects of effective franchisee support and training programs: Initial Training: You receive extensive onboarding to understand the franchise model, operations, and customer service. Marketing Assistance: Support includes strategic marketing initiatives that improve your visibility and attract customers. Community Network: Connecting with fellow franchisees encourages shared experiences, allowing you to exchange best practices and receive peer support. These elements contribute to higher satisfaction and profitability, emphasizing their significance for long-term success. Market Trends Influencing Retail Franchising As retail franchising evolves, several market trends are shaping how you approach your business. E-commerce integration strategies are vital, with online sales projected to exceed 25% by 2025, so adapting to this shift is necessary. Furthermore, consumer behavior is leaning in the direction of sustainability and personalized shopping experiences, pushing you to rethink your product offerings and operational practices. E-commerce Integration Strategies E-commerce integration strategies are becoming increasingly important for retail franchises, especially as consumer behaviors shift in the direction of online shopping. To stay competitive, you should consider the following approaches: Multi-channel Approach: Brands that effectively combine physical stores with e-commerce platforms see an average revenue increase of 30%. Click-and-Collect Options: Nearly 70% of consumers prefer seamless online shopping experiences with in-store pickup, making this strategy crucial. Technology Utilization: Integrate mobile apps and personalized marketing to improve customer experiences and drive repeat business. As e-commerce capabilities become critical for franchise growth, focusing on digital sales channels will position you for success in the evolving retail environment. This is especially important as 60% of new franchises will prioritize online engagement by 2025. Sustainable Retail Practices Retail franchises are increasingly recognizing the importance of sustainable practices in response to changing consumer preferences. As demand for eco-friendly products rises, many franchises are integrating sustainability into their business models. This includes reducing waste, utilizing renewable resources, and promoting ethical sourcing. Franchises adopting these practices often improve their brand image, as 66% of global consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable options. Furthermore, eco-friendly franchises are experiencing higher market penetration and success rates compared to traditional models. Consumer Behavior Shifts How have consumer preferences evolved in recent years? You’ve likely noticed significant shifts influencing retail franchises. Comprehending these changes can help you adapt your business strategy. Here are three key trends: Omnichannel Experiences: Consumers now expect a seamless integration of online and in-store shopping, prompting franchises to improve their digital platforms. Sustainability: You’ll find that today’s customers increasingly prefer eco-friendly products and practices, driving franchises to align with these values. Personalization: There’s a growing demand for customized shopping experiences, encouraging franchises to use data analytics and customer feedback to refine their offerings. Additionally, the convenience factor is fundamental, leading to innovative retail formats that cater to busy lifestyles. Staying aware of these trends is vital for future success. Community Engagement in Retail Franchises Although many businesses focus solely on profit, community engagement in retail franchises can greatly improve both brand loyalty and public perception. By participating in local charity events and sponsoring sports teams, you can cultivate strong connections with your community. Implementing social responsibility programs that emphasize sustainability and ethical practices likewise resonates with eco-conscious consumers. When you actively engage in local events, you’ll likely see increased foot traffic, leading to boosted sales and improved customer loyalty. Furthermore, creating customer loyalty programs rewards local patrons, encouraging repeat business and a sense of belonging. Overall, effective community engagement strategies help you differentiate your franchise in a competitive market, strengthening relationships with customers and improving the overall shopping experience. How Can IFPG Help You? Finding the right franchise opportunity can be a complex expedition, but the International Franchise Professionals Group (IFPG) simplifies the process for aspiring franchisees. They provide personalized franchise matching services customized to your interests, financial needs, and location. Here’s how IFPG can help you: Diverse Options: Access a wide range of franchise opportunities across various industries, including retail. Discovery Process: Benefit from an in-depth Discovery Process that offers insights into different franchise models and their growth potential. Expert Guidance: Utilize the free Expert Franchise Buyers Guide, which equips you with crucial resources to navigate the franchise environment effectively. With IFPG, you’ll find the support and resources needed to make informed franchise decisions. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Most Profitable Franchise to Own? The most profitable franchise to own varies based on factors like market demand and brand strength. Fast food franchises, such as Dunkin’ and 7-Eleven, often lead because of their established customer bases and high sales performance. You should consider investment costs, which can range from $30,000 to $500,000, and profit margins that may exceed 20%. Furthermore, strong franchisee support improves your chances of achieving significant returns on your investment. What Is the Most Profitable Retail Business? The most profitable retail businesses often focus on sectors like health and wellness, where demand for organic products and fitness services is growing. E-commerce is booming, with sales expected to exceed $6 trillion by 2024. Quick-service restaurants typically report high profit margins, sometimes over $1 million in annual sales per location. Furthermore, niche markets, such as eco-friendly products, attract dedicated consumers willing to pay a premium, enhancing profitability for those retailers. What Is the 7 Day Rule for Franchise? The 7 Day Rule requires franchisors to provide you with a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) at least seven days before you sign any agreement or pay fees. This rule guarantees you have enough time to review essential information about the franchise, including its financial performance and obligations. Enforced by the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., the rule helps protect you from potential misrepresentation and nurtures a transparent franchising process. What Franchise Can I Buy for $10,000? If you’re looking to invest in a franchise for $10,000 or less, you have some solid options. CardSmart offers a franchise with a minimum cash requirement of just $9,500, focusing on discount cards and gifts. Vending machine franchises likewise require low initial investments, often under $10,000. Moreover, consider niche markets, which can allow for creativity during keeping costs manageable. Research thoroughly to find the right fit for your interests and budget. Conclusion To summarize, investing in top retail franchises offers numerous advantages, including strong brand recognition and thorough support systems. By grasping the key characteristics that contribute to their success, you can make informed decisions about potential investments. Consider market trends and community engagement as crucial factors when exploring these opportunities. With proper research and guidance, you can find a retail franchise that aligns with your goals and capitalizes on the evolving consumer environment. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Top Retail Franchise Opportunities" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Suneil Setiya of Quadrature Capital, a Labour donor, was behind the UK’s most expensive house purchaseView the full article

On Wednesday, April 15, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced in a letter to employees that the company would lay off about 1,000 people, including 16% of its full-time employees. “We believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel said in the letter. That message could have been pulled from a number of tech CEOs recent bold statements that AI will replace employees. Spiegel joins the ranks of CEOs like Block’s Jack Dorsey who have been unabashed in citing AI in their decisions to lay off their staff. In his February letter to shareholders, Dorsey stated: “Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.” He then claimed that most companies are “late” to this realization and will soon follow suit. Block laid off about 4,000 employees. Similarly, Spiegel wrote, “We have already witnessed small squads leveraging AI tools to drive meaningful progress across several important initiatives, including Snapchat+, enhanced ad platform performance, and efficiency improvements in our Snap Lite infrastructure.” He claims the changes Snap is implementing will reduce the company’s annualized cost base by over $500 through the end of 2026. Even as Spiegel cited AI for Snap’s layoffs today, the move follows the company’s trend of laying off workers every two years or so. It laid off about 10% of its staff in 2024, and 20% in 2022. Separately, Spiegel also recently posted on Instagram, about attending Coachella over the past weekend with his wife, Miranda Kerr. What’s happening to workers at Snap? Snap has told employees in the United States to work from home today. All impacted U.S.-based employees should have received an email within an hour of the letter. They will receive four months of severance, health coverage, and equity vesting. Individuals outside the U.S. will get more information from HR and leadership — likely with better protections, as Snap has to “follow local processes and seek to provide comparable support aligned with local norms.” Snap is also closing 300 open roles. In response to the news, Snaps shares rose over 6% on Wednesday. View the full article

The aptly named Binge is a new app for iPhones, iPads, and Macs that has set its sights on Letterboxd. Like that popular movie-centric social media platform, Binge gives you a way to track what you've watched and what you want to watch. But whereas Letterboxd sticks mostly to movies, Binge covers both movies and TV shows, and adds "jump scare warnings," an innovative feature Letterboxd can't match (though in testing it out, I experienced mixed results). Keeping tabs on my viewing is something I very much need help with, and while I've had a Letterboxd account for a while, I don't log into it or update my viewing history very often. Because it offers one spot to track both movies and TV, I decided to give Binge a try—and despite the aforementioned issues with its standout feature, I mostly liked what I found. Use Binge to track both movies and TV showsYou don't need to sign up for an account to use Binge, but if you do, you can sync your activity in the app across multiple Apple devices. As far as the interface goes, you've got three tabs for checking out new and trending content—Discover, Movies, and Shows. The final tab is the Library, where your viewing is logged. The tracking is really simple: You can mark movies or TV shows as watched or that you'd like to watch in the future; for shows, you can also log how many episodes you've got through. This is all then sifted into a timeline on your Library page. (One non-Letterboxd feature I enjoy is the I do like the option to pick a selection at random from your want-to-watch list—a good bet for those times when you just can't decide what to wathc.) Binge offers a clean and simple layout. Credit: Lifehacker Overall, Binge is simpler than Letterboxd, which crams in so many options—marking something as watched, rating it, adding it to lists, and sharing it with others—into the same pop-up window; while that app offers more to do, it also feels cluttered. Binge provides just the basics, which is a plus for a low-effort media tracker like me. The same goes for the built-in search: It's much more comprehensive on Letterboxd, where you can really dig down into search categories like genre, year of release, and cast and crew members. Binge offers a more straightforward keyword search for matching titles or people associated with a title. Still, Binge is impressive in terms of how much information it presents for each movie or TV show. As well as cast and crew lists, you've got trailers, ratings from across the web, awards and nominations, information on which streaming app you need to watch something, and a parents guide that flags up anything that's frightening, violent, or otherwise adult in nature. You get plenty of information about each title. Credit: Lifehacker The Library tab is well done, sorting everything in an easy to follow way, though you can create collections for movies and shows if you want to organize them more deliberately. I like the idea of the Your Next Watch section, which recommends titles based on what you've already seen, and it turned up some interesting picks for me. You can customize a lot of the interface inside Binge, so if there are features you're not really interested in—like reviews of a movie or lists of how many awards it's picked up—you can disable them with a tap. It's also possible to tone down some of the effects, like parallax and shimmer, that are applied by default. THe jump scare tracker is a great idea, but it didn't quite work for meI'm not much of a fan of horror or violence—I really don't like being scared or grossed out—which can make watching movies tricky. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular flicks come with these elements included, and so I find myself wanting to watch them while also worrying about being traumatized. Binge provides a solution for this in the form of jump scare warnings: Many title pages offer a timeline showing when the jumps are coming, and details of what happens (so beware spoilers). There's a timer you can start when you begin watching that will ostensibly deliver a jump scare alert to your phone as a "Live Activity" before the scary scene hits. However, while the timeline screen was straightforward enough, I couldn't get the Live Activity notifications to pop up consistently—the app seemed to lose track of what it was tracking and when, and there's no way to manually adjust the time elapsed once you've already started a movie or TV show. Still, the jump scare timeline on its own is useful. The scares are sorted into minor and major categories, and if you don't mind getting advance warnings about a plot point or two, then they're handy to have if you want to know when to cover your eyes. A jump scare timeline. Credit: Lifehacker Unfortunately, jump scare charts aren't available for every movie. In browsing, I found that films like The Invisible Man (2020) and Prometheus (2012) offer them, but they're missing on older fare such as Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Single White Female (1992). I'm not sure where Binge is getting its data from (possibly WhenJumpScare), but it's not guaranteed for every film. The other downside: Jump scares are a paid extra in Binge. You'll need to sign up for a monthly ($1.99), yearly ($17.99), or lifetime ($49.99) package to get them. The subscription also unlocks several other features, like episode ratings graphs, the ability to set custom movie posters (also a paid feature on Letterboxd), and reminders for upcoming movies and shows. The app includes recommendations too. Credit: Lifehacker The app also scores highly for its data import and export tools. You can load in existing information from your accounts on Trakt, Letterboxd, and iMDb, and export everything you've logged in a JSON file to use elsewhere. You can also sync activity with Trakt, though that's another premium feature. Binge is a worthy Letterboxd alternativeWhile hardened film nerds are still going to prefer Letterboxd—not least for the baked-in community and sharing features—Binge is a worthy alternative for the rest of us. You can get up and running in just a few minutes, everything is neatly laid out and easy to parse, and there are numerous cool touches spread throughout. It might finally get me to more faithfully track my media consumption. View the full article

The war in the Middle East is adding to a slew of challenges already facing the construction industry in recent years, including elevated mortgage rates, labor constraints and higher prices for materials. View the full article

Freshworks is stepping up its game in the IT asset management arena with its latest enhancements to the Freshservice platform. On April 2, 2026, the company unveiled new capabilities that could significantly benefit small businesses struggling with disjointed IT operations. The updates include continuous infrastructure discovery and dependency mapping—features that promise to streamline operations and bolster the reliability of IT services. As many small businesses invest heavily in automation and AI technologies, fragmentation in their IT infrastructure data remains a pressing issue. Significant gaps in visibility can lead to inefficiencies, increased costs, and heightened risks. “Automation alone won’t solve the complexity for IT in today’s environment; without reliable visibility into infrastructure, risk will continue,” said Srini Raghavan, Chief Product Officer at Freshworks. This newly enhanced IT asset management system aims to bridge these gaps by providing a unified, AI-driven service operations platform. One of the key benefits of the newly integrated continuous discovery is its ability to replace static inventory management with dynamic, real-time monitoring. This allows small business IT teams to maintain an accurate record of their IT assets across various environments—cloud, hybrid, and on-premises. As a result, organizations can enhance data quality, a crucial factor for leveraging AI effectively. The system also offers rapid incident response via live dependency mapping. Small business owners can visualize how specific IT resources support core business functions, facilitating faster problem resolution. By identifying related systems during outages, teams can take immediate action—reducing downtime and improving service reliability. Predictive impact analysis is another crucial feature. It allows businesses to foresee which services may be affected by planned updates, enabling IT teams to manage changes judiciously without disrupting operations. Additionally, organizations can leverage enhanced security capabilities through configuration drift detection, ensuring that unauthorized changes and potential compliance gaps don’t pose risks to their operations. The financial aspect isn’t overlooked either. By employing intelligent software asset management tools to track licenses and user activity, businesses can recover unused licenses, decrease waste, and optimize software spending. This financial savvy helps small businesses stretch their IT budgets further, an essential factor for any cost-conscious owner. While the advantages are manifold, implementing a new system isn’t without its challenges. Transitioning to a new IT asset management solution may require time and potentially disrupt established workflows. Small business owners need to assess their current capabilities and whether their teams are equipped to handle this enhanced functionality. For those with limited tech expertise, the learning curve could present a barrier. However, Freshworks aims to make this transition smoother. Their system minimizes implementation complexities, allowing IT leaders to focus more on strategy rather than wrestling with technology. “Data discovery and live dependency mapping contribute to data that helps IT leaders resolve issues faster and make better decisions,” noted Snow Tempest, Research Manager at IDC. Real-world applications of these enhanced capabilities are already being realized by organizations like New Balance. The sportswear company emphasizes the importance of having a unified source of truth for its inventory assets to achieve better change control. Markus Gaulke, Platform Manager at New Balance, remarked, “We wanted to have a single source of truth for all of our inventory assets to be inventoried and also have the transparency and the visibility of everything that’s existing in our network.” For small business owners navigating the complexities of modern IT environments, Freshservice’s redefined IT Asset Management may well serve as a stepping stone toward more efficient operations and robust service delivery. These features can empower small teams, allowing them to gain operational insights that were previously unattainable. With the integration of continuous discovery and dependency mapping into its platform, Freshworks is positioning itself as a valuable ally for small businesses aiming to harness the full potential of their IT investments. To learn more about Freshservice and its new capabilities, visit the original release at Freshworks. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Freshworks Transforms IT Asset Management with AI-Driven Insights" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Chicago Federal Reserve president Austan Goolsbee says public may ‘misinterpret’ price rises as persistentView the full article

In the early days of the web and my career, web architecture was simple: we built “filing cabinet” websites designed around a single, grand entryway. Visitors arrived at your homepage, a.k.a. the “front door,” and navigated through the site to find what they needed. Then SEO came along and changed everything. Suddenly, every page became a possible entrance point, and people could be dropped in directly at the page most relevant to their current need. But today, in this AI environment, it seems that things are changing again. As users now use AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, and likely mass-adoption tools embedded in our mobile devices, search engines, and browsers to handle the research stage, they’re now more likely to once again land on your homepage. Your homepage is once again becoming the most important page for SEO, and we must revisit the time-proven lessons of information architecture to ensure it can capture and convert this traffic. How SEO inverted web design In the early 2000s, as search engines improved and became the primary source of website traffic, those of us working in the field had to learn and adapt quickly. We had to take what we knew about information architecture and layer over SEO thinking, which meant the standard, linear route through a site from the homepage to a destination changed. We now had users landing much closer to where we wanted them — typically on inner pages or blog posts — and then routing them back toward the relevant product or service we wanted to promote. Homepages were still important, but they became less of a “must be everything to everybody” battleground and could focus more on brand and more general keywords. The money terms were often mapped to more relevant, easily rankable, high-converting long-tail blogs and product pages. In short, we stopped worrying so much about the homepage, and our attention spread across the spidery maze of deeper pages and reverse-conversion paths. But the pendulum is swinging back. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with The great AI reversal The informational long-tail traffic that sustained those deep-link landing pages is being swallowed by AI Overviews and LLMs like Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. AI tools now handle the heavy lifting — research, comparison, and summarization are easier than ever. When users finally visit your site, they aren’t looking for more answers — they’re looking for you. This shift is driving a resurgence in branded search, funneling users back to your homepage. The problem is, while these users may be warmed up by their research, we now know a lot less about them when they arrive. If your information architecture isn’t ready to greet users on your homepage and funnel them where they need to be, you’ll alienate and lose these warm users and send them swiftly into the arms of your competitors. Fortunately, there are lessons from the past that can guide us forward. The problem: The erosion of the deep link In traditional SEO thinking, nearly every page could be a landing page. Your informational content is an upper-funnel landing page that can direct people to your product or service pages. Your product or service pages are mid-funnel landing pages that can drive leads and sales. Your case studies and testimonials are lower-funnel credibility content that can push people to make the final decision. That approach is losing ground. Industry consensus is clear. Traditional informational click-through rates (CTR) are facing a significant decline as AI provides immediate answers in search results. When a user asks, “What are the benefits of a headless CMS?” they get a 300-word summary from an AI. They no longer need to click your “Headless CMS – Pros & Cons” blog post. However, once the AI has convinced them that your brand is a leader in headless CMS, they don’t search for the topic again. They search for your brand name. They arrive at your homepage — warmed up and ready, highly motivated, but we know very little about them. We lose the segmentation and context that a deeper page landing provides. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. The psychology of AI: the path of least resistance Humans are a lazy bunch, somewhat by design. If something makes our lives easier, we seek it out, and our behavior changes. This helped us as hunter-gatherers, but now, with our cars, smartphones, food delivery, and many other modern conveniences, maybe not so much. Search engines are one of the things that made our lives easier, at least for a while, and changed our behavior as things got easier. Then, of course, we marketers got involved, competition ramped up, and the web became littered with ads, pop-ups, remarketing, and other tactics. Frankly, seeking things online often became a bit of a drag, making much marketing as much a game of attrition as it was science, skill, or art. But AI is now making our lives easy again. No scrolling past ads, trying to decode SERPs, avoid pop-ups, identify marketing content, and filter out noise — just clean, simple answers. The change has brought some chaos, but it’s also a much-needed reset for the web. People now enjoy a frictionless, conversational research phase, with the heavy lifting done by AI tools. Questions are answered, advice is given, options are summarized and compared. They can then move on via a branded search, which typically brings them to this homepage entry point. As Steve Krug famously argued in “Don’t Make Me Think” — a well-recommended book that has stood the test of time — users on the web behave like foragers. They look for the scent of information and take the path of least resistance. If they land on your homepage and can’t find their specific path, such as “pricing for enterprise” or “developer docs,” within seconds, they’ll disengage and bounce. Things are different. Users may invest a little more time now after they’ve sunk effort into the research phase, but you can’t expect to take users from the low-friction environment of AI to a site where they have to work too hard to figure things out. Your homepage and overall information architecture can’t fail. You must let people know they’re in the right place, that they can trust you, then segment, signpost, and steer them to their intended destination. Solution: The filing cabinet site To handle this influx of branded, front-door traffic, we must return to the fundamentals of information architecture. Drawing from the definitive guide, “Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond” (the Polar Bear Book — another great read), we must treat our site structure like a filing cabinet. Logical grouping: Related content must be grouped into clear, intuitive categories. If your “Service A” and “Service B” are buried under a vague “What We Do” menu, you’re creating friction. Keep it clear, and don’t confuse people with your fancy branding. Structural context: SEO may drive fewer people to your deeper pages, but AI tools still conduct queries to identify information and pull content from your site via RAG. You still need the right content structured in the right way to ensure you’re covering all the angles across SEO, AI, and PPC traffic. The 3-click rule: Modern UX research, championed by the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g), emphasizes that users should be able to reach any content within three clicks. In the AI age, this is a non-negotiable performance metric, and you should be measuring these paths in your analytics. Remember, while users may come directly to your homepage, AI agents still conduct these deeper searches and consume your information, so traditional SEO is still important. Implementation: The ALCHEMY framework This is all great to know, but you also need a framework to help you put this process on rails and build a website that’s structured for humans coming via the front door, search engines indexing and categorizing, and AI crawlers hitting those deeper pages. The ALCHEMY website planning guide addresses this exact issue. It breaks the process down into seven strategic steps designed to bridge the gap between business strategy and technical execution: Audience research: Identifying personas, segments, and jobs. Learning: Deep-dive competitor and performance audits to see what’s working. Clarify aim: Setting SMART goals so the site has a purpose beyond looking pretty. Hierarchy: Building the visual sitemap and navigation. Essential features: Defining the technical must-haves before code is written. Mapping: Planning the content and goals for every single page. Yield: Generating the final, battle-hardened, marketing-savvy brief for developers. The process purposely starts with the audience — who are the audience segments that matter? And how does this inform the structure and navigation for the site? The process then walks you through mapping out your site to work for users, search engines, and AI. By following this approach, you ensure that your homepage and category pages aren’t just based on the opinion of the highest-paid person in the room, but on the documented needs of your AI-driven audience. 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 From AI recommendation to homepage conversion Your website’s information architecture now serves two masters — human users and AI agents. A clean, hierarchical structure with clear taxonomies helps both navigate and interpret your site with confidence. If an AI reads your site and sees a perfectly organized filing cabinet, it’s far more likely to recommend your brand as a structured, authoritative source. Your site needs to consider two directions of user journey: Front door: Users arriving without context, finding what they’re looking for. Back door(s): Users, search engines, and AI coming in directly to deeper content. For a website to be successful in 2026 and beyond, you have to account for both. Build strong information architecture and SEO for front-door users and back-door search engines and AI visits. Don’t let your homepage be a dead end — turn it into a map. View the full article

A reader writes: I work for a medium-sized, family-owned business. We all work from home. Some of us live in the same metro area but we’re not friends. We have an office culture of sensitivity and compassion when someone is going through a difficult time. For the last few months, every staff meeting somehow functions as an open mike for stories about horrific things that have befallen us, going back to the 1970s. I can’t give examples without needing a wall of trigger warnings. All are totally unrelated to the work we are there to discuss. We often end up with two or three people needing breaks to gather themselves, or being unable to pay attention when we do get to work things. I’ve tried interjecting, gently and then firmly, to redirect to a work topic but to no avail. Generally, it begins when we’re all coming into the meeting platform. Those who arrive early/on time will chat among themselves while waiting for the start. One person, when asked how they are, will express a minor problem before segueing into a more general complaint about the state of their life, which then is taken up by others on the team as a sort of prompt. For example, Regina has a persistent cold. She talks about her snot, her cough, what the doctor said, what she thinks about what the doctor said, how expensive he was, someone will agree with her, then a third person has a similar story, and Bob’s your uncle, we’re off. It’s not on the agenda officially. Lately, however, this is becoming formalized. Recently, another colleague had a “wellness prompt” for the meeting and started telling us about a time she was nearly very badly harmed, but made a good friend. We sat there for a 90-minute trauma dump. The next week, lo! “Wellness check” is in the agenda. Nobody likes to cut off the talking because it’s rude and insensitive. I’ve done it once or twice recently, and as a result, I’m getting some frost from my direct reports. Team morale has flatlined now that every gathering is the Misery Olympics, but our bosses are not reining this in. One of them participates. Frankly, I dislike the new office culture of constant overshare, and I despair of my bosses keeping our meetings productive. Do I say something, and if so, what? Or do I acknowledge I am not a good fit for the organization anymore, and try to find another job? Good lord. You said these meetings have agendas, so what is happening to the rest of the items that are supposed to be discussed? There’s a very high chance that you’re not the only one who’s frustrated by this! In addition to being a terrible use of time, these topics are probably making a lot of people uncomfortable (and maybe worse, depending on the topic and people’s own histories with related trauma). Can you talk to whoever is in charge of running these meetings, point out they’ve been veering into topics some people are likely to find highly painful, and you’re not getting to the business that you’re there to discuss? And if that person isn’t receptive, can you go above their head to someone else who might be? If that doesn’t work, I’m curious what would happen if you started joining early in order to very deliberately direct the conversation in a non-misery direction — talk about some exciting news on your team or in your life, or a (non-tragic!) movie you just saw, or some exciting news in the lives of your cats, or really anything that is far away from a trauma dump or an extensive exploration of snot. If it’s needed to keep things on a lighter track, go ahead and monopolize the chit-chat more than you normally might feel polite about doing and then when enough people have joined that the meeting is ready to start, ideally you’d segue into work topics — “now that everyone is here, I’d love to share what my team has done on X” or “I’m hoping today to get people’s thoughts about Y” or similar. You could also try messaging whoever runs the meetings ahead of time and asking for time on the agenda to talk about Non-Traumatic Work Topic X. Try all of this before you decide you need to change jobs! And even if this doesn’t work, I’m not convinced you need to change jobs over it, unless it’s really affecting your quality of life (it might be!) or it’s symptomatic of larger issues in how the organization is run (which it also might be). The post our meetings always start with a discussion of bad things that have happened to my coworkers appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

One advantage of writing about airlines and business for a long time is perspective. I’ve been covering United Airlines since before the pandemic, which means I’ve been able to watch how CEO Scott Kirby responds when things get difficult. Back then, I was struck by how Kirby often sounded different from some of his competitors — most notably Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian. I’m not going to say one was wrong and one was right, but they were different: Kirby’s approach was straightforward: Describe the situation as it is, even if that meant sounding more cautious than others. Bastian, by contrast, more often emphasized recovery and optimism. If you’ve followed United for a while, this will sound familiar. During Covid-19, Kirby framed the situation in blunt terms, even reaching for a Churchill quote to describe the uncertainty. A year later, he talked about demand returning, but only after laying out the reasons it might not. He has also been willing to move ahead of competitors, including on vaccines. Now there’s another test: war in Iran, sharply higher fuel prices, and a real cost shock for the industry. Kirby addressed it all in a message to employees that was also released publicly. Here’s part of what he told employees will and won’t happen: “Many of you will remember in United’s past that storm clouds like this caused United to furlough employees, defer aircraft orders, downgrade to regional jets, go through cost-cutting exercises, delay investments in the future, etc. We are not going to do that.” Those last seven words jumped out at me because he’s addressing a specific fear. Employees know the pattern. When costs spike and uncertainty rises, airlines cut. Jobs, routes, plans — everything gets smaller. They’ve seen it before. Kirby names that pattern directly, and then overrides it. Now, that promise only works if it’s credible. So he backs it up. United has more cash than it did before Covid-19, stronger margins than most competitors, and a better credit rating than it has had in decades. That gives it room to absorb higher fuel costs without changing direction. He also puts numbers on the problem. Fuel prices have more than doubled in three weeks. If they stay there, the added cost would exceed what United has made in its best year. This is a tough environment, and employees need reassurance — if they can believe it. Look, you’re probably not running an airline, but I’ll bet you’re running a business, or at least you aspire to. That’s why we study lessons like this. In a crisis, leaders often focus on what actions they’ll take. However, sometimes the more important move is to identify the outcome people are expecting — and state clearly that you are not going to allow it. Do that. If your employees believe you and you follow through, you pass the test. —Bill Murphy Jr. This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

The US has a shortage of at least 10 million single-family homes, according to a new report from White House economists — a higher figure than some previous estimates from the government and the private sector. View the full article

But, although ChatGPT crawls dozens of pages to answer a single query, according to our research, it only ends up citing ~50% of them. Why does one page get the credit while another, which the AI clearly retrieved, gets nothing?…Read more ›View the full article

Adobe is rolling out the public beta for its Firefly AI Assistant later this month, turning complex creative workflows into a simple chat interface across applications like Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, or Lightroom. You type what you want, and the AI connects the dots behind the scenes to make it happen. Since it’s a multi-modal interface, it can tune with precision via context-aware control panels when needed beyond the text-based prompt. It’s a first step in what creative apps may become in the future, removing the complexity of user interfaces while keeping powerful control. If the final product works like the demo, the new Firefly AI Assistant will change the fundamental way people interact with design software, giving the keys of the walled professional creative castle to anyone willing to pay the money, write in plain English, and move sliders that appear contextually to finely tune aspects of their creations whenever it is needed. Instead of forcing newcomers to memorize a labyrinth of menus, nested palettes, and pop-up windows, the assistant lets them achieve complex results just by asking. At the same time, the new assistant is the first stepping stone into a new type of automation for professionals. It gives veterans a fast track to bypass the tedious grunt work they already know how to do. “We have the full spectrum covered from people coming new to our franchise and they don’t know the full power of Photoshop and they want to achieve some amazing edits they can also tap into it and just talk to the assistant,” Adobe vice president of AI and innovation Alexandru Costin told me in an interview. “On the other side of the spectrum, the creative professionals that fully understand our tools can actually take those assets and continue editing them in our tools.” This tool evolved from Project Moonlight, which Adobe teased at last year’s MAX conference and tested in a private beta. The core idea came directly from working professionals who were looking for a modern upgrade to Photoshop Actions, a decades-old feature that allows users to record and replay mouse clicks. Actions only works for fixed, repeatable chores, like adjusting a thousand images’ hue and saturation using fixed values. But users wanted a smarter type of automation agent that could adapt to what the agent sees in each image, video, or illustration. Adobe decided to create something that goes beyond basic editing, changing things on media according to the context and content of the image or the video itself, even creating new images, mockups and final candidates for art. The new, smart ‘Photoshop Actions’ “At Adobe MAX actually I was meeting a large group of professionals to ask them about agentic,” Costin tells me, using the industry term for an AI that actively executes multi-step tasks across different software on your behalf. “They said ‘look I would love you guys to give me a button like Photoshop actions where I can record in an agent what I’m doing and then have the agent be able to replay that for me so I can basically decide… that this automation is doing the things my way.'” While the new Firefly AI Assistant still has two limitations that will not make it a direct Actions replacement—more on this later—it certainly has the potential to become a huge time saver for any professional willing to work with a crew of AI bots. To make that kind of automation happen, Adobe built what it calls Creative Skills. The AI learns how a specific creator likes to work over time, picking up on their favorite tools and visual style, and can apply that knowledge to handle your files. “You can actually describe your particular taste or approach as a creative professional and then be able to ‘replay’ that using the Firefly AI system, so you save time and you can automate some portion of your work so you have more time for creativity,” Costin says. The current beta provides a standard set of default skills to start, though making those skills fully editable and shareable is coming in a subsequent version (one of the limitations that set it apart from Photoshop Actions, which are fully shareable). Instead of relying on rigid templates, the system acts like an autonomous digital art director. It actively evaluates the raw materials on your canvas to figure out the right context before making a move, rather than just executing blind commands based on file metadata. The software doesn’t just hijack your cursor either; it checks in with you constantly to clarify what you actually want to achieve, ensuring you remain the driver of the final artwork. This integration goes beyond Adobe’s own engines, extending the platform to leading third-party AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude. It also hooks into review platforms like Frame.io. If a client leaves notes on a project, the agent can digest that feedback and execute the revisions on its own, selecting whatever software handles the job best. The path for multi-model, adaptive interfaces The assistant also introduces Precision Flow, replacing the tedious chore of painting pixel-perfect masks with semantic editing. Instead of dealing with raw pixels, the AI recognizes the actual physical objects inside the frame—knowing a coffee cup is a cup and the beans next to it are beans. “Precision flow gives you the opportunity to use generative AI to edit an asset not on the pixel level but on the semantic side,” Costin says. “Like in this case it knows that this is a photo of some coffee with coffee beans so it creates these dynamic semantic sliders that enable you then to change your image semantically without having to re-prompt.” This semantic ability automatically generates new control panels for granular control. In the case of the coffee cup with the coffee beans splashing over the liquid coffee, users will see a panel with sliders like “Coffee beans” and “Splash” that users can move to precisely increase or decrease the amount of beans or coffee splash. This is the right step for future apps. Natural language is great for a starting point, but language is interpretable by nature, leading to imprecision and misunderstandings. There is no imprecision in a slider that can increase the amount of coffee beans in the image, interactively, in real time. Because the assistant is hooked directly into the guts of the Creative Cloud, standard tools like hue and saturation get passed directly into the host application. The result isn’t a dead image file; it generates a native PSD document, Adobe’s standard file format that stacks individual edits on separate, adjustable layers. “This is actually a Photoshop control where once you do these edits behind the scenes we can actually create the PSD and that PSD is loaded in Photoshop,” Costin says. “Using an actual Photoshop feature you will have that full adjustment layer applied in Photoshop.” However, the current beta still hits a hard wall when it comes to those advanced semantic edits. While any regular control panel—like HUE & Saturation—will generate an editable layer in Photoshop, when you use Precision Flow to modify objects in the assistant, those specific changes do not yet cross over into Photoshop as live, manipulable sliders. “We haven’t yet integrated precision flow into Photoshop. You can imagine this is coming to Photoshop too, but I don’t think we’re announcing it yet,” Costin says. “Right now if you do these edits the image that will be passed to Photoshop will be a raster image.” That means the semantic tweaks arrive as a flattened, uneditable layer of pixels. For absolute beginners, this technical hurdle won’t matter much as long as the final image looks good. For the high-end professionals that Adobe is trying to court, I suspect it will be more like a temporary inconvenience. It would be really nice to have it, but I can work without it. It’s clear that the Firefly AI Assistant may be a massive leap forward in making software work for the user rather than the other way around, where you direct an AI to do what you want, with the AI learning your work style, and only surfacing precise controls when needed. View the full article

Igas, Charles, Corey, and Ryan are four characters in a popular TikTok skit series where, over Zoom, they discuss how to “proactively realign” their “cross-functional synergy” and ensure “tighter execution” in the face of looming threats like a “shrinking opportunity aperture”—otherwise known as February coming to a close. The spoofs, posted by startup recruitment firm Verso Jobs, are intentionally drenched in nonsense. All the characters are played by one employee, Seamus Harvey, wearing various face filters and cramming in as much corporate jargon as possible. They resonate because they feel real—particularly for Gen Zers and mid-career millennials complaining online about their “corporate icks.” You might not know the term, but you likely recognize the feeling of cringing when a colleague “circles back” on an email, tags you on Slack to appear busy, or a manager subtly switches up their personality when someone senior joins the meeting. What looks like eye-rolling at buzzwords and inauthentic behaviors actually signals a growing impatience with performative workplace culture at a time when job security feels more fragile than ever: The cost of living continues to skyrocket, one steady job is no longer enough for a mortgage, and millennials are navigating a premature career crisis. And a growing number of workers are no longer willing to play along. When work doesn’t feel human Alex Lovell, a political psychologist and vice president of the O.C. Tanner Institute, the research division of O.C. Tanner, the software company that specializes in employee recognition and workplace culture, says a corporate ick emerges when “work stops feeling human and it starts feeling performative.” “The eye roll at jargon or personality shifting is really almost a reaction to low trust,” Lovell tells Fast Company. “People can tell when everyone is impression-managing instead of just being honest about how things are going.” Corporate icks in response to big egos and office lingo have probably always existed, he adds, but what has changed is the amount of patience people have left. Carla Bevins, an associate teaching professor of business management communication at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, says corporate speak erodes trust because the language and intent do not line up. “If a listener has to translate what you said, the communication has already failed,” she tells Fast Company. “When communication feels like performance, people disengage.” Justin, who doesn’t use his full name on social media for privacy concerns, makes content on social media under the handle Professor Corporate while also working a 9-to-5. He tells Fast Company that people still understand how to play office politics, but they just don’t care enough to perform them anymore. The job market is turbulent, AI is disrupting industries across the board, and layoffs sweep through companies regardless of performance. Many workers are living in this “culture of insecurity,” wondering whether they can afford rent, a mortgage, or children. In that environment, performing enthusiasm for jargon-filled meetings feels especially difficult. “You’re just not safe no matter how good you are,” Justin says. “I’ve noticed people have stopped caring a little bit on how formal they may need to be.” Authenticity was championed—then taken away Justin personally experiences icks when colleagues are clearly angling for advancement but lack the subtlety to mask it. Another trigger is people “not working their wage.” “If you’re a junior person or a mid-level manager, but you’re acting like a director or VP trying to tell people what to do, or being overly enthusiastic about things that nobody cares about, that’s an ick,” he says. “You’re putting on this facade that is so easy to see through.” Authenticity may be one of the few distinctly human signals people crave in the workplace as automation takes over, and employees are increasingly sensitive to when it feels absent. The COVID-19 pandemic and the work-from-home era became something of a “pajama revolution,” Lovell says, where people showed up without makeup or office attire and discovered it had little impact on their careers. This had measurable effects. Employee recognition software and services company O.C. Tanner’s 2026 Global Culture Report found that when employees feel their leaders and coworkers are accountable and transparent, they are five times more likely to trust their organization. Engagement and satisfaction with direct leaders’ communication also increase fivefold. But as return to office mandates have taken hold, it’s as if all that honesty and authenticity is no longer a priority, which feels like a backwards step. When the ick is a breaking point For some, the corporate disconnect is enough for them to leave their career ladders entirely. Sam Loeffler worked at five companies throughout her 20s in brand management roles. A top performer earning around $180,000 a year by age 30, she appeared to be thriving. But the higher she climbed, the more corporate life felt stressful and increasingly “fake.” She quit without another job lined up and took eight months off. Then she began building a different kind of life. Now, she’s a coach and content creator under the handle Sam Beyond Corporate, helping other people explore anti-corporate paths, and she works shifts at an organic olive oil farm in the middle of California. “We were asking each other, do you feel like you wear a mask at work? Are you the same person here as you are at home?” she tells Fast Company of a recent conversation with her colleagues. “And we were all like, 100%, yes, I am fully myself. And I could never do that in corporate no matter what.” While not every jaded, tired worker has the financial cushion to walk away to try something new, Loeffler’s story is one that is increasingly apparent on social media, with creators sharing their decisions to leave their roles with no immediate career plans, or referring to themselves as “corporate dropouts.” Leaving corporate life isn’t realistic for everyone. Many are stuck “hugging” their roles before something better comes along, the icks simmering internally. But there’s a growing sense, Loeffler says, that people want more than that. “I wanted to have more of a purpose led impact on the world,” she says. “I’m not just here to be a corporate slave.” The rise of the corporate ick may signal a turning point where tolerance for pretense is thinning, and younger employees especially don’t feel able to ignore the gap between what the corporate world says and what is actually reality. And they’re reacting—whether that means spending a nest egg on starting a new life, or simply uploading snarky vids to social media. “Younger workers in particular are like, don’t tell me things are good here when they’re not,” Lovell says. “If my workplace culture isn’t great, I am not going to pretend that it is.” View the full article

Addy Osmani, a director of engineering at Google Cloud AI, published new guidance on Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO), a model for making content usable by AI agents. He positioned this AEO (not to be confused with Answer Engine Optimization) as parallel to SEO, built for systems that fetch, parse, and act on content autonomously. What he’s seeing. AI agents collapse multi-step browsing into a single request. They don’t scroll, click, or engage with UI — they extract what they need instantly. That makes most traditional engagement metrics irrelevant. The token problem. Osmani highlighted token limits as a core constraint shaping content performance. Large pages can exceed an agent’s context window, causing: Truncated information. Skipped pages. Hallucinated outputs. His takeaway: token count is now a primary optimization metric. Content needs to change. Osmani recommended restructuring content for how agents read: Put answers early (ideally within the first ~500 tokens). Keep pages compact and focused. Avoid long preambles and buried insights. (Agents have “limited patience” for this, he noted.) Markdown over HTML. He also recommended serving clean Markdown alongside traditional pages. Markdown reduces noise from navigation, scripts, and layout, making content easier and cheaper for agents to parse. This includes making .md versions directly accessible and discoverable. Discovery and structure. Osmani pointed to emerging patterns for helping agents find and use content: llms.txt as a structured index of documentation. skill.md files to define capabilities. AGENTS.md as a machine-readable entry point for codebases. These act as shortcuts for agents deciding what to read and use. Why we care. This adds a new optimization layer alongside SEO. If agents can’t efficiently parse your content — due to token limits, structure, or format — they may skip, truncate, or misinterpret it. That directly affects whether your content is used, cited, or acted on in AI-powered experiences. Between the lines. To be clear, the type of AEO Osmani discussed in his article is unrelated to Google Search or organic search ranking. Of note, Google’s John Mueller recommended against markdown pages and Google doesn’t use the llms.txt file. Osmani’s article highlights how AI systems interact with the web and what “optimized” content may look like in that environment. AEO shifts the goal from driving visits to enabling successful outcomes inside AI workflows. The article. Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO) Dig deeper: Meet llms.txt, a proposed standard for AI website content crawling llms.txt isn’t robots.txt: It’s a treasure map for AI No, llms.txt is not the ‘new meta keywords’ Why LLM-only pages aren’t the answer to AI search Google’s John Mueller on SEO vs. GEO: Focus on audience behavior View the full article