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I've used my main Gmail account for about 20 years now, and I'm quite proud of how I've maintained it. My inbox isn't overflowing with unread emails, my storage has never been full, and I've set up hundreds of filters to directly send useless emails right to the trash. I don't use any third-party tools to tame that chaos, and I'm here to share all the hacks I've set up to keep my Gmail inbox under control. Manage email subscriptions to tame your inbox chaosYou should start clearing out your inbox by looking at all of your email newsletter subscriptions. In the past, I've been guilty of subscribing to way too many newsletters and cluttering my inbox. What started out as a great way to read interesting things has ended up as yet another chore that I just cannot keep up with. At some point, you've got to let those unread newsletters go. You can start by manually unsubscribing from the newsletters you're not going to read. Alternatively, you can move these subscriptions to a different email address, so you can keep one inbox just for reading. You can also try using read-later apps to receive and read your newsletters. I'm using Readwise Reader these days, and it's allowed me to read so much more than I did when these emails were ending up in my email inbox. If your problem is that you're subscribed to too many promotional emails that are basically junk, then you can also consider using Gmail's built-in tools to unsubscribe from promotional mailing lists. Use as many filters as you can Credit: Pranay Parab Gmail has powerful filters that can automatically delete unwanted emails. Yes, you can select a bunch of emails and click the Report spam button to get rid of them. This moves those emails to spam, but I've sometimes seen recurring emails from the same sender still finding their way into my inbox, even after doing this. So I've started using Gmail's filters to banish repeat spammers to the trash. You can do this by selecting a bunch of unwanted emails from different senders you don't want to hear from anymore, and then clicking the three-dots button in Gmail's web view. Then, choose Filter messages like these, and Gmail will automatically populate the filter list with all those senders. Select Search, and on the next pop-up, check Delete it, and Also apply filter to matching conversations. Finally, select Create filter. This will automatically move all emails from those senders to trash, and prevent more of their emails from ending up in your inbox. Search filters are your best friendWhen your inbox is already full, or close to it, you should try a few search filters to spot the emails occupying the maximum amount of space in your inbox. The most useful one is the "Size" filter. For instance, in Gmail's search bar, you can type Size:20m, and the results will zero in on emails above 20mb in size. Replace the number with 15, 10, or any other number, and it'll show you emails above that size. You can back up these emails if they have anything useful in them, and if not, you can go ahead and delete them all. Use advanced search to find junk mailI am quite embarrassed to admit that when I was younger, I sent all my friends and family members way too many forwards. My inbox still has forwards from that time, quite a few of which I'd also sent to over 50 people in one go. I may have been responsible for a lot junk mail, but it's never too late to atone for your sins. If you click the three lines icon to the right of the search bar in Gmail, you'll see the service's advanced search options. You can use those options to look for emails from specific date ranges and get rid of ancient clutter that's no longer useful (after you're done cringing, that is). Alternatively, you can just use a search filter to find those emails. Try something like after:2006/1/1 before:2007/1/2 to locate all your emails sent in 2006. Using advanced search tools is easier than filters, because it doesn't require you to remember various search operators. It also makes more of those search tools accessible, which makes it a great way to delete old emails from your inbox. If only I could delete them from other people's inboxes, too. Attack useless emails at the source Credit: Pranay Parab At a certain point, it does get tiring to keep adding filters to your Gmail to keep useless emails away. I strongly recommend looking at the settings menus on various websites to stop the spam at the source. Social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are some of the most popular senders of emails nobody asked for. If you go through their communication preferences pages, you'll be able to stop quite a few of their emails before they ever make it to your inbox. I make it a point to uncheck all emails from every site I sign up for. Once you've done that, these sites might still find a way to send you more emails, but you can click the unsubscribe button (usually present next to unwanted emails in the Social or Promotions tabs) to stop them pretty easily, or just use Gmail's filters to block those emails from ever making it to your eyes. Teach Gmail which of your emails are importantYou can have Gmail help you sort out unwanted emails from your inbox. Next to each email in your inbox, you'll see a small right-arrow icon. When you see an important email, you can click the arrow icon, which will turn yellow. This marks the email as important, and over time, Gmail will keep those emails in your inbox, and send the rest to other folders. Delete emails in Spam and Trash foldersGmail is pretty good at automatically blocking spam, which means that a lot of unwanted emails will end up in your Spam folder. Similarly, if you've been following the steps described above, you'll have a bunch of emails in your Trash folder. This is helpful, but you won't see any real changes to your Gmail storage space until you clear out all those emails. To do this, manually go to these folders, select all the emails you want to get rid of, and delete them all. Don't forget to check if you're deleting any important emails, because emails deleted from these folders cannot be retrieved. Also be sure to check on these folders at least once a month, because Google will automatically delete any messages that have been sitting in them for more than 30 days. Clean up Gmail space quickly Credit: Pranay Parab Gmail offers an easy built-in way to identify what's occupying the most space in your inbox. To get started, visit the storage cleanup page and click Clean up space. It'll show you some suggestions and offer easy ways to clear out the clutter in your Gmail. You just have to follow the on-screen steps to actually go through with it. Turn important emails into tasksMy colleague David Nield's tip about turning emails into tasks has helped me a lot. When you open an email, you can click the Add to Tasks button up top, which adds it to Google Tasks, and turns that email into a to-do item. This helps me keep track of emails that would otherwise get lost. This way, I can easily save the most important emails and delete the rest. So much of cleaning up Gmail clutter revolves around active email management, and this tip just helps me quickly get rid of useless emails on a day-to-day basis. Try using third-party email management servicesNormally, I'm loath to recommend third-party services to manage email chaos. This is because using them means you need to give the companies that make them access to your inbox, which is a privacy and security nightmare. However, I've previously used SaneBox to help a friend get their inbox down from 50,000 unreads to about 10,000 within a day, while also setting up ways to keep their inbox from getting overloaded again too. It's been vetted by Google and Leviathan Security Group, which means I can pretty confidently recommend at least this service. Lifehacker's sister site PCMag also gave Sanebox a glowing review. You can try the service for free using the 14-day trial. During that time, you can use its email deep clean feature to quickly get rid of a bunch of your unwanted emails. View the full article

It's not just you: X is down, and will not load. I discovered the issue myself just after 9:30 a.m. ET. I was scrolling on my feed, when all of a sudden, new posts wouldn't load, and I was greeted by an option to refresh. When I did, the site reloaded, but now without any posts—only the futile option to try reloading again. You can see a steep spike in user reports on Downdetector (which, for full disclosure, is owned by Lifehacker parent company Ziff Davis). At the time of writing, roughly 25,000 users had reported issues with X, I among them. There are a number of potential reasons why X won't load this morning, but it doesn't appear to be a larger issue with a cloud hosting service. Anytime a major website like X goes down, it harkens back to global outages, stemming from issues with cloud hosting services like AWS and Cloudflare. However, a quick check on Downdetector shows me that few other sites and services are having massive outage reports at the moment. That could change, but as of this article, it seems like X's issues are their own. X will no doubt get things back up and running soon. In the meantime, maybe it's best for all of us to get off the site for a change. View the full article

A struggling currency sparked the protests and The President’s new tariffs on Tehran’s trade partners will only increase the pain View the full article

See how Semrush helps you track when, how, and where AI platforms mention your brand and benchmark that visibility against competitors. View the full article

2025 saw several successful public offerings, especially from companies operating in the AI, cryptocurrency, and fintech spaces. What many on Wall Street are anxious to know is whether the IPO market—and its returns—will accelerate in 2026, or if investors will take a more cautious approach to newly public companies as inflationary pressures, the potential for a weakening economy, and a possible AI bubble weigh heavily on people’s minds. The first real test of investor IPO appetite may come later this month, when cryptocurrency custody firm BitGo Holdings, Inc. is expected to go public. Here’s what you need to know about BitGo’s IPO. What is BitGo? BitGo Holdings is a cryptocurrency infrastructure company. One of its main functions is providing cryptocurrency custodial services. Crypto custody companies provide storage and security for digital assets. Such companies are often used by large institutional investors to help manage risk and also meet regulatory guidelines. In contrast, many individual cryptocurrency investors still rely on personalized digital wallets to hold their tokens. BitGo was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. According to the company’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, BitGo had 566 full-time employees as of September 30. Over the past 12 months, ending September 30, the company says it generated total revenue of $11.1 billion. Its platform currently supports more than 1,550 assets with a total value of $104 billion. When is BitGo’s IPO? BitGo hasn’t set a date for its initial public offering yet. In its amended Form S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday, the company merely mentioned its intention to go public. However, the amended filing suggests that the public offering will likely happen soon. IPOscoop.com lists BitGo’s expected IPO date as Thursday, January 22, but BitGo has yet to publicly confirm that date. What is BitGo’s stock ticker? BitGo’s shares will trade under the stock ticker “BTGO.” What market will BitGo’s shares trade on? BitGo shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). What is the IPO share price of BTGO? BitGo hasn’t decided on an exact IPO price yet. However, in the company’s amended SEC filing, the firm said it expects its shares to be priced at between $15 and $17. How many BTGO shares are available in its IPO? In total, 11,821,595 shares of BTGO Class A common stock will be made available in its IPO. Of those shares, BitGo itself is offering 11 million directly. The remaining shares will be offered by the company’s existing shareholders. How much will BitGo raise in its IPO? BitGo will not receive any proceeds from the roughly 821,000 shares its existing shareholders will sell. The company will only benefit from the funds raised from its 11 million share offering. With an expected IPO price of between $15 and $17 per share, BitGo is thus expected to raise between $165 million and $187 million. When you add in the shares being sold by exiting shareholders, BitGo’s IPO could raise as much as $200 million in total. How much is BitGo worth? BitGo’s ultimate valuation depends on how much its shares finally list for—and how they perform on the stock market. However, if BTGO shares do indeed IPO at the high-end range of $17 each, BitGo will have a valuation of around $1.96 billion, according to Reuters. BitGo is hoping to repeat 2025’s crypto IPO successes If BitGo does IPO this month as expected, it will likely be closely watched as it is not just one of the first tech IPOs of the year, but one of the first operating in the hot (and volatile) cryptocurrency space. Its IPO’s success or failure could signal whether investors have a robust appetite for public offerings in 2026, particularly those tied to crypto. In 2025, several companies operating in the cryptocurrency space made successful IPO debuts. These include Circle Internet Group’s (NYSE: CRCL) initial public offering in June and Bullish’s (NYSE: BLSH) IPO in August. View the full article

Thousands of New York City nurses were set to return to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city’s leading hospital systems entered its second day. The walkout, which comes during a severe flu season, involved roughly 15,000 nurses spread out across multiple private hospitals, including NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai hospital. The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. Both nurses and hospital administrators have urged patients not to avoid getting care during the strike. The labor action comes three years after a similar strike forced medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances. As with the 2023 labor action, nurses have pointed to staffing issues as a major flashpoint, accusing the big-budget medical centers of refusing to commit to provisions for manageable, safe workloads. The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they’ve made strides in staffing in recent years, and have cast the union’s demands as prohibitively expensive. On Monday, the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood beside nurses on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian, praising the union’s members for seeking “dignity, respect and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve.” —Associated Press View the full article

LLM visibility is less about control and more about volatility, as studies reveal how easily AI answers can be influenced at scale. The post How Much Can We Influence AI Responses? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Google Maps is the only navigation service I use, and I've learned many of its tricks over the years. The default settings do a good enough job for most people, but it's worth reviewing all of its features to ensure that you're getting exactly what you need. For instance, avoiding tolls may be great where you live, but if you're driving in a different state or country, that same feature could land you in some serious trouble. These tips will help you make the most of Google Maps' many features, and reduce the chances of losing your way while using the app. Double-check route settings before leavingEven if you ignore everything else in this article, don't ignore this. I've observed that, sometimes, Google Maps automatically enables route options I did not select, which can lead to some sticky situations. Whenever I'm on a long road trip to unknown destinations, I like to double-check route settings before I head out. To do this, tap the profile icon in the top-right corner in the Google Maps app, and go to Settings > Navigation > Route options. This has four options: Avoid tolls, Avoid highways, Avoid ferries, and Prefer fuel-efficient routes. I like to disable all of these to ensure that I reach my destination safely and quickly. If you're in an area you know fairly well, you can enable some of these options to find a cheaper route, or one with less traffic. But in unfamiliar territory, I prefer to play it safe. Use offline maps to your advantageI often travel to places with poor or no cellular signal, and Google Maps' offline mode has been a lifesaver in these locations. It lets you download Google Maps data for specific locations, and I've set up the app to automatically download and update this data when new information becomes available. This makes it a lot easier to navigate when the internet disappears. You can easily do this by searching for a destination on Google Maps and swiping left on the controls that appear below its name. Tap More > Download offline map > Download to save it for offline use. To automatically update offline maps, go to your Google maps settings and select Offline. Now hit the gear icon in the top-right corner and select Auto-update offline maps. Select the correct vehicle typeGoogle Maps shows you better search results and improves recommendations for fuel-efficient routes if you choose the correct type of vehicle. Go to your Google Maps settings and navigate to Your vehicles. Select the correct engine type for your vehicle to ensure better recommendations. If you're using an EV, you can also use this page to set the type of charger it uses. This helps Google Maps send you to compatible EV charging stations when you're out and about. Connect your music streaming account to Google Maps Credit: Pranay Parab If you often stream music while driving, you should consider connecting your streaming accounts with Google Maps, which supports both Apple Music and Spotify. Once you've connected the navigation app with either of these services, you'll be able to control music playback and choose playlists from your library, all without leaving the Google Maps app. I don't recommend looking at your phone when you're driving, but you can use this feature to control playback or quickly change songs while your car's stopped. It's a lot faster than switching to a different app to change music. Some of you will prefer to use voice assistants to do this, but on an iPhone in particular, I haven't had much luck with using Siri to change music. That's why I've connected my streaming accounts to Google Maps instead. Get accessibility information on Google MapsGoogle Maps can highlight accessibility information for you. This can be extremely helpful if you're traveling with people who have mobility challenges or are living with disabilities. I never thought much about these options until I started traveling with my senior citizen parents, who can no longer climb lots of stairs or stand for long hours. That's why I went to the Google Maps settings, navigated to App & display, and enabled Emphasize accessibility info. This feature prominently shows if a destination has accessible entrances, seating, reserved parking spots, and if restrooms are available (and accessible), etc. Note that this information isn't always accurate, so if accessibility is your top priority, I still recommend calling ahead to confirm if your destination's accessible features are available and in working order. Similarly, when you're using walking directions to get somewhere, try tapping the options button, which is next to the share icon. This will reveal the Trip options page, where you can select Wheelchair accessible to avoid routes with stairs and choose ones that have elevators instead. Improve directions while walkingI use Google Maps a lot while I'm walking around, and I have a few tips to make it easier to find where you're going. The first is to use Google Maps when you're wearing an Apple Watch or an Android smartwatch, if you have one. Google Maps buzzes your watch when you have a direction coming up, and you can quickly look at the watch to see which way to go. With this, I don't have to keep looking at my phone for directions. This approach worked really well on a recent trip to Singapore in rainy weather, where it wasn't always possible to keep looking at my phone while also holding my water bottle and umbrella. You can also use Live View to get even more detailed walking directions. It uses your phone's camera to identify shops, signs, and other landmarks near you. Then, it gives you directions in a camera view, which is like a live video walkthrough taking you to your destination. This makes it great for navigating indoors, like in airports or malls. Hide your Google Maps profileWhen you review listings on Google Maps, or make other contributions, others may be able to view your profile and all your ratings, reviews, photos, and other contributions. If you don't want this information to be visible, you can make your profile private on Google Maps. To do this, go to Google Maps settings > Location & privacy > Profile and enable Restricted profile. Delete your Google Maps history and timeline dataGoogle Maps also keeps track of all the places you've visited, and not everyone is comfortable storing that data on Google's servers. Now, I should say that this information is legitimately useful sometimes. Once, a friend's car was wrongly sent a speeding ticket from a different state. He was able to use his Google Maps timeline data to prove to law enforcement that he was, in fact, not in that state at the time. Having said that, you'll be able to better preserve your privacy by not storing this information in the first place. To do that, go to Google Maps settings > Location & privacy. Review all the options in the Timeline section to see what fits your preferences. I've switched off Timeline entirely, and I also chose Delete all Timeline data, but your needs may be different, so you may choose to delete a specific range of timeline data or automatically delete it after a certain period of time instead. To delete your search history from Google Maps, scroll down on this page and select Maps history. Use incognito mode in Google Maps Credit: Pranay Parab If deleting your Google Maps data permanently isn't the ideal solution for you, then you may want to try incognito mode instead. This works exactly like it does in web browsers, meaning that it won't save your Google Maps data as long as you're in that mode. You can enable it by tapping the profile icon in Google Maps and selecting Turn on incognito mode. You can check if it's enabled by looking at the profile icon, where your picture will be replaced by the incognito icon. Save your favorite places in listsIf you have trouble remembering all of the trips you want to take, you can quickly save your favorites in Google Maps, and add them to various lists. For instance, if you're planning a trip to Florida and you want to save all of the destinations you've heard about in one spot, you can look for each one individually on Google Maps and hit the Save button on their listings. This lets you save the destination to a new list, where you can keep a tab on all the places you want to go to. You can also share these lists with others, and everyone can add the places they're interested in to your list, too. I used this feature during my London trip last year, where I bookmarked restaurants that served authentic fare from around the world. It allowed me to taste food that I'd never tried before, and helped me better organize my daily plan to fit a couple of museums or other attractions around my meals. View the full article

By now, the headlines almost write themselves: humanoid robots everywhere, AI in everything. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 didn’t disrupt that narrative—it confirmed it. What changed was the subtext. This was the year AI stopped feeling experimental and started feeling infrastructural. Intelligence has shifted from novelty to baseline, forcing harder questions about consequence, control, and agency—not just what technology can do, but how it reshapes systems once opting out is no longer realistic. For years, progress at CES has been measured in speed, scale, and spectacle. In 2026, a different metric quietly surfaced: judgment. The most advanced products weren’t the most aggressive or attention-seeking. They were the most considered, designed with an understanding that when intelligence becomes unavoidable, restraint becomes a competitive advantage. Beneath the obvious trends, the Seymourpowell team saw that a recalibration was underway. Trend 1: The Body Is the New Platform Computing has long lived in front of us, on desks, in hands, behind glass. At CES 2026, the more consequential shift was where technology is now choosing to settle: on the body, and within the social rules that already govern it. This wasn’t about wearables as accessories. It was about gravity—deciding which parts of the body can host intelligence without demanding attention, breaking etiquette, or forcing users into performative behavior. The real innovation wasn’t simply where technology sits, but how interaction becomes quieter, more physical, and often subconscious. Take iPolish, which turned fingernails into a programmable surface. Using digital clip-on nails and a magic wand connected to an app, wearers can shift between hundreds of colors instantly. The move is deceptively simple, but strategically sharp: Nails are already expressive, customizable, and socially accepted. No new behavior is required. Intelligence succeeds here precisely because it inhabits a place culture already allows. Elsewhere, interaction became even less visible. Naqi’s neural earbuds bypassed voice and touch entirely, using micro-facial signals—jaw tension and subtle muscle movements—to control devices without overt action. ModeX treated clothing itself as infrastructure, embedding power and compute into garments that don’t announce themselves as tech. Orphe’s sensor-enabled insoles brought lab-grade biomechanics into everyday movement, while .lumen’s assistive glasses reframed accessibility as scalable augmentation rather than specialist accommodation. Across categories, the pattern was consistent: the next interface war won’t be won by screens. It will be won by technologies that understand where they’re allowed to live, and how quietly they’re expected to behave. The takeaway: As intelligence migrates onto the body, social permission becomes as important as technical capability. The future belongs to products that feel natural not because they disappear, but because they respect the physical and cultural spaces they occupy. Trend 2: Agency Becomes a Design Problem As AI becomes infrastructural, the question is no longer whether systems act autonomously—but how, when, and on whose behalf. CES 2026 revealed a growing recognition that trust isn’t built through capability alone. It’s built through boundaries. The most compelling products weren’t those that automated the most, but those that were explicit about where human judgment still sits. Littlebird embodied this shift in the family context, offering predictive safety intelligence without screens, feeds, or surveillance theater. RestroomGuard Savvy applied the same thinking to public infrastructure, proving AI-driven safety doesn’t require cameras or biometric intrusion to be effective. Sorcerics Lens extended the idea into the home, replacing dashboards and commands with contextual awareness that responds to situations rather than constant instruction. Even the Descent S1 buoy followed this logic, augmenting diver judgment with shared situational awareness instead of replacing it with alerts or automation. These systems didn’t remove humans from the loop. They clarified where the loop should be. The takeaway: As opting out becomes unrealistic, agency becomes a design material. The most trusted systems won’t be the fastest or smartest, but the ones that are clearest about when not to act. Trend 3: Care Moves From Apps to Infrastructure For years, wellness technology has asked individuals to self-optimize: track more, manage better, try harder. CES 2026 suggested a different direction. Care is moving out of dashboards and into systems that actively reduce cognitive, physical, and emotional load—without requiring constant attention or self-surveillance. Diligent Robotics’ Moxi captured this shift clearly. Rather than measuring caregiver performance, the hospital robot removes coordination work altogether—fetching supplies, running errands, and freeing nurses to spend time caring. The value isn’t insight. It’s relief. Elsewhere, neuro-wellness booths reframed focus and recovery as environmental conditions rather than personal failures to manage. By combining physiological sensing with adaptive lighting, sound, and temperature, they treated mental load as something a space can regulate, not something users must willpower their way through. The same logic appeared in everyday rituals. The AI rejuvenation shower treated water itself as a programmable medium, adjusting minerals and compounds in real time to deliver skincare without screens, tracking, or habit formation. Light Straight addressed a quieter hygiene pain point—maintenance between “reset” moments—by cleaning and styling hair without water. It didn’t promise transformation. It simply removed friction. Care also surfaced in less obvious places. Motion sickness—long dismissed as an unfortunate side effect of travel—was reframed as a fundamental barrier to autonomous mobility. If passengers can’t read, work, watch, or rest without nausea, self-driving cars don’t create new freedom, they just extend commute time. Bosch addressed this not through wearables or behavioral coaching, but by redesigning vehicle dynamics at the software level. By controlling motion across all six degrees of freedom, the system reduces sensory conflict before it reaches the body, making it possible for passengers to safely disengage from driving altogether. In this context, motion sickness isn’t a comfort issue. It’s a gatekeeper. Solve it, and autonomous vehicles become environments for work, rest, and interaction. Ignore it, and adoption stalls. Across healthcare, mobility, beauty, and the home, the pattern was consistent: Care is no longer a niche vertical or a personal optimization project. It’s becoming consumer infrastructure, embedded into environments and systems that quietly do the work for us. The takeaway: Care is no longer about empowerment through information. It’s about relief through design. The next generation of care technology won’t ask users to try harder, it will redesign the conditions around them. Trend 4: The Physical World Gets Its Software Update While much of the AI conversation still centers on digital products, CES 2026 made something else unmistakable: The biggest bottlenecks in technology are now physical. Infrastructure, energy, logistics, manufacturing, and housing are where intelligence is being stress-tested, not in prototypes, but at scale. This was the year the “invisible layer” of the tech stack stepped into focus. Caterpillar’s keynote crystallized this shift. By embedding AI, autonomy, and edge intelligence directly into fleets, worksites, and heavy machinery, the company reframed physical infrastructure as something that can sense, learn, and adapt in real time. Not flashy. Mission-critical. The same logic appeared elsewhere. The AI Transformer Home Trailer treated housing as adaptive infrastructure rather than a fixed object, physically reconfiguring space on demand. Alpon X5 made enterprise-grade AI deployable at the edge, without cloud dependence, reframing intelligence as something that lives where work actually happens. Perovskite color-conversion films pushed display progress not through software, but materials science—another reminder that some of the biggest leaps ahead won’t come from code alone. CES 2026 wasn’t just about smarter products. It was about making the physical world programmable. The takeaway: The next phase of AI growth won’t be constrained by models, it will be constrained by matter. The companies that win won’t just scale intelligence. They’ll modernize the physical systems it depends on. Trend 5: Restraint Becomes a Feature Perhaps the most telling shift at CES 2026 wasn’t technological at all. It was tonal. After years of maximalism—more sensors, more screens, more “AI”—a quieter maturity is setting in. The most confident products no longer feel the need to prove intelligence. They demonstrate judgment. Birdfy Hum Bloom used AI not to capture attention, but to slow it down, turning backyard observation into discovery rather than content. Toniebox 2 doubled down on screen-free interaction, resisting dopamine loops in favor of presence and routine. Even Lego’s Smart Play experiments pointed toward intelligence that scaffolds creativity rather than directing it. This wasn’t visible fatigue so much as visible discernment. Companies are beginning to understand that adding intelligence everywhere isn’t innovation. Knowing where not to add it is. The takeaway: In a world where intelligence is cheap and ubiquitous, restraint becomes premium. The most advanced products of the next decade may be the ones that know when to step back. CES 2026 didn’t deliver a single, dominant narrative, and that may be its most honest reflection of where we are. AI is no longer a question mark. It’s a condition. And once intelligence becomes unavoidable, progress is no longer about acceleration. It’s about alignment between systems and people, automation and agency, capability and consequence. The future on display wasn’t louder or faster. It was more deliberate. And that, quietly, may be the most meaningful shift of all. View the full article

Central bankers from around the world said Tuesday they “stand in full solidarity” with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after President Donald The President dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed with the Justice Department investigating and threatening criminal charges. Powell “has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest,” read the statement signed by nine national central bank heads including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey. They added that “the independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability.” The dispute is ostensibly about Powell’s testimony to Congress in June over the cost of a massive renovation of Fed buildings. But in a statement Sunday, Powell, abandoning his previous attempt to ignore The President’s relentless criticism, called the administration’s threat of criminal charges “pretexts” in the president’s campaign to seize control of U.S. interest rate policy from the Fed’s technocrats. The President has repeatedly criticized Powell and the Fed for not moving faster to cut rates. Economists warn that a politicized Fed that caves in to the president’s demands will damage its credibility as an inflation fighter and likely lead investors to demand higher rates before investing in U.S. Treasurys. Other signatories of the statement carried on the ECB’s website were Erik Thedeen, governor of Sweden’s central bank; Christian Kettel Thomsen, chair of Denmark’s central bank; Swiss National Bank Chair Martin Schlegel; Michele Bullock, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia; Tiff Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada; Bank of Korea Governor Chang Yong Rhee; Gabriel Galipolo, governor of the Banco Central do Brasil. Also attaching their names were François Villeroy de Galhau, board chair of the Bank for International Settlements, and Pablo Hernández de Cos, BIS general manager. The BIS is an international organization of central banks based in Basel, Switzerland. One prominent central bank not included in the statement was the Bank of Japan. The statement said that more signatures could be added later. —David McHugh, AP Business Writer View the full article

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday morning that consumer prices rose 0.3% in December, with annual inflation stuck at 2.7%, lending credence to the Federal Reserve's cautious stance toward interest rates heading into 2026. View the full article

I love movies, and especially when I can watch them for free: And while streaming the latest Hollywood blockbusters might come at a price (at least for those wanting to stay on the right side of the law), there's an ever-growing collection of older films that you can get at online without paying a dime. The site WikiFlix (as spotted by the fine folks at Gizmodo) lists movies available to stream that are now in the public domain. The way that copyright works in the U.S. basically means that copyright expires on films after a period of 95 years—so with every year that passes, a batch of new flicks become available to view by anyone, free of charge. If you're looking for something classic for your next movie night, it's well worth a look. There are plenty of categories to choose from. Credit: Lifehacker WikiFlix is straightforward to use, right from the homepage. It tracks films added to sites such as Wikimedia Commons, YouTube, and the Internet Archive, and whenever you click through on a movie, you can also see where it has come from. When you've made your pick, it streams right in your browser window. The home page is split up into categories that you can browse through—including female directions, animations, and biographical films, the last time I checked—and there's also a search button up in the top right corner if you know what you're looking for. Next to the search button is an account button, which enables you to sign up for a MediaWiki account if you want to be able to contribute to the site too. Hover over the main WikiFlix heading at the top of the page and a quick link to Movies by year pops up. This is a useful way of finding the most recent flicks added to WikiFlix, and digging back into the archive—not all of the movies here are in the public domain because their copyright has expired, and you will find more recent titles too. Click through on any thumbnail to get more information about each movie. You can typically get information on the director, cast, and running time, and a plot summary is included too. Some of the entries come with trailers (although you can also search for these separately on sites like YouTube). Each movie comes with a cast list. Credit: Lifehacker Start streaming a movie, and the usual playback controls appear, though the interface does depend to some extent on the site that's hosting the movie. For films hosted on YouTube, for example, you can typically adjust the playback quality and speed. Some movies come with subtitles too. Obviously a site like this is going to skew towards older, classic movies, but there's plenty to explore here: Metropolis, It's a Wonderful Life, All Quiet on the Western Front, Nosferatu, Charlie Chaplin comedy The Gold Rush, and lots more. Free movie repositories aren't quite as rare online as you might think. We've written before about the best free and legal streaming services for movies and TV, featuring ad-supported streaming platforms such as Tubi and PlutoTV. Again, the emphasis is on older films, but there's a huge amount on offer at no charge. View the full article

Roadmaps speak in quarters and outcomes. Sprint boards speak in points and tickets. The gap between them is where promises die. Checkout redesign was Q2’s top priority in the roadmap. It’s not in the next three sprints. The mobile app initiative shows “In Progress” on the stakeholder deck but hasn’t been broken into epics. Enterprise features are Q4’s focus, but nobody on the engineering team seems to know about them. This disconnect isn’t a communication failure. It’s a structural problem: roadmaps and sprints operate on fundamentally different timescales with different information quality. Context switching between these altitudes costs hours. It takes 23 minutes to refocus after each interruption, and PMs who constantly toggle between strategic planning and sprint details lose significant productivity. Why the gap exists When you commit to a roadmap, you’re working with assumptions. You assume capacity will be available. You assume dependencies will resolve. You assume scope won’t explode. These assumptions are reasonable for planning purposes, but they’re not facts. Sprint planning operates with much better information. The team knows their actual velocity, not projected velocity. They know who’s on vacation. They know which dependencies are actually resolved versus “should be resolved by then.” When sprint planning reveals the roadmap assumptions were wrong, the roadmap doesn’t automatically update. It just becomes inaccurate. The granularity mismatch compounds the problem. “Checkout redesign” is a roadmap item. It’s meaningful for stakeholder conversations but useless for sprint planning. Before it can enter a sprint, someone has to decompose it: payment form updates, address validation, error handling, mobile optimization, accessibility compliance. That decomposition often reveals the original estimate was fantasy. Connecting roadmap items to sprint work Traceability means following a thread from strategic commitment down to sprint task, and from sprint progress back up to roadmap status. The standard hierarchy: Roadmap Item → Epic → Story → Task A roadmap item is a strategic promise. An epic is a body of work contributing to that promise. A story is sprint-sized work within the epic. Tasks are technical subtasks if your team uses them. This hierarchy only creates traceability if the links actually exist and stay current. That’s where things break. Here are your options: Option one: Single tool for everything. If your roadmap and sprint work live in the same system (Jira can do both), connections are automatic. The tradeoff is that Jira’s roadmap capabilities might not satisfy stakeholder communication needs. Option two: Linked tools with manual sync. Your roadmap lives in Productboard, Asana, or Notion. You link items to Jira epics manually, perhaps using a Jira to Notion integration or similar connector. When epic status changes, you update the roadmap manually. This works until it doesn’t, usually around the third time you forget to update status before a stakeholder meeting. Option three: Connected tools with automatic sync. Changes flow between systems without manual intervention. The roadmap item and its linked epic stay synchronized. Two-way sync between PM tools and development tools keeps both systems current, eliminating the PM-as-sync-layer problem. Aligning the planning cadences Quarterly roadmap planning and sprint planning happen on different rhythms. Alignment requires explicit connection points. Before quarterly Planning Get rough engineering estimates before finalizing roadmap commitments. Not story points (you don’t have stories yet). T-shirt sizes that indicate weeks versus months. This prevents committing to roadmaps that engineering can’t deliver. Leave slack. A fully-committed roadmap has no room for emergencies, scope changes, or estimation errors. Fifteen to twenty percent uncommitted capacity isn’t sandbagging. It’s realism. Flag dependencies explicitly. Roadmap items that depend on other teams, external vendors, or unresolved technical decisions carry extra risk. Stakeholders should see that risk. During sprint Planning Priority should translate cleanly. If a roadmap item is Q2’s top priority, its epics and stories should be at the top of the backlog. If they’re not, you have an alignment problem to investigate. Sprint planning often reveals scope problems. The roadmap said six weeks; the breakdown says twelve. That’s useful information, but only if it flows back to roadmap expectations. When it doesn’t, you get stakeholder surprise later. Mid-quarter reality checks Roadmaps decay. The assumptions that drove quarterly planning erode as reality asserts itself. Mid-quarter reviews catch drift before it becomes a crisis. For each roadmap item: Are epics on track? Has scope changed? Are estimates holding? Update the roadmap to reflect current reality, not original optimism. Stakeholders prefer bad news early to bad news late. If something is slipping, they need to know mid-quarter, not during quarterly review when it’s too late to adjust. When scope explodes mid-sprint An engineer discovers the “simple” integration requires refactoring a legacy system. The three-point story is now thirteen points. The epic that was one sprint is now three. This happens on every project. The question is what to do about it. Options: Cut scope to fit timeline. Extend timeline with full scope. Add resources to attempt both. The PM decides which serves the roadmap objective best. But decide quickly. Waiting until sprint end just delays the inevitable. The roadmap should reflect updated reality. Keeping the roadmap optimistic while the sprint board tells the truth destroys trust in both. When priorities shift mid-quarter Executive request. Key customer escalation. Competitive pressure. The priority order from quarterly planning no longer holds. Mid-quarter shifts are disruptive. Sometimes they’re necessary. Make them explicit rather than implicit. When a new item becomes urgent, name what it displaces. “Adding X means Y moves to Q3.” This forces real decision-making rather than quiet overcommitment. Update both roadmap and backlog. If the shift is real, it should be visible everywhere. Cross-team initiatives Large roadmap items often require work from multiple engineering teams. The hierarchy model struggles here. Create a shared epic that all teams reference. Each team has their own stories within it, but the epic shows aggregate progress. One view for whether the initiative is on track, regardless of which team is contributing. Assign ownership for the initiative, not just for team contributions. Someone is responsible for the whole thing succeeding, which means someone is responsible for cross-team coordination. Weekly sync for cross-team work. Not status theater, but focused on dependencies and blockers that affect multiple teams. Decomposing roadmap items into sprints The translation from roadmap item to sprint work is where alignment most often breaks. A roadmap item like “Enterprise Authentication” sounds concrete but hides enormous complexity. Start with outcomes, not features. What does success look like for this roadmap item? “Enterprise customers can use SSO to log in” is clearer than “Build SSO.” Outcomes help you know when you’re done and what scope actually matters. Break down iteratively. First pass: identify major components (SSO integration, user provisioning, admin controls). Second pass: break components into sprint-sized stories. Third pass: validate estimates with engineering. Each pass adds detail and accuracy. Accept that early estimates are wrong. A roadmap item estimated at four weeks might become six weeks after decomposition, or two weeks once engineering finds an existing library that handles half the work. Don’t treat the original estimate as a commitment. Treat it as a starting point that gets refined. Involve engineering early. PMs who decompose roadmap items without engineering input create fantasy backlogs. Engineers who see the breakdown after it’s finalized feel like order-takers. Collaborative decomposition produces better estimates and better buy-in. Document assumptions. When you estimate that a roadmap item will take one quarter, you’re making assumptions: the team will have four sprints, velocity will hold steady, dependencies will resolve, scope won’t change. Write these assumptions down. When reality diverges, you can point to which assumption broke. Communicating roadmap changes to stakeholders Roadmaps change. Stakeholders need to know. The question is how to communicate changes without destroying confidence in the planning process. Distinguish types of changes. Timeline shift is different from scope change, which is different from cancellation. Each type needs different framing. “This is taking longer” has different implications than “We’re building something different” or “We’re not building this anymore.” Explain the why. “Mobile app delayed to Q4” is incomplete. “Mobile app delayed to Q4 because iOS dependency took longer than expected and we prioritized the enterprise customer escalation” gives stakeholders context. They can evaluate whether the tradeoff was reasonable. Pair bad news with good news when honest. If something slipped, did something else accelerate? Did you learn something that prevents a bigger problem later? Context helps, but don’t manufacture silver linings that don’t exist. Propose a path forward. Stakeholders don’t just want to know what changed. They want to know what happens next. Updated timeline, adjusted scope, new plan to catch up. Changes without forward motion feel like drift. Communicate proactively, not defensively. The worst way to handle a roadmap change is getting caught. Someone asks about a feature you quietly deprioritized, and you have to explain on the spot. Proactive communication, even for uncomfortable changes, maintains trust. Batch updates appropriately. Not every sprint deviation needs stakeholder communication. Reserve the formal updates for meaningful changes: quarter-level timeline shifts, scope changes that affect customer expectations, deprioritization of previously committed items. Too frequent updates create noise; too infrequent updates create surprises. When the roadmap and sprint board contradict each other Sometimes you’ll notice the roadmap says one thing and the sprint board says another. The checkout redesign is Q2’s top priority, but it’s not in the next sprint. The mobile app shows “In Progress” on the roadmap, but no epics exist in Jira. Diagnose the gap. Is this a communication problem (engineering doesn’t know the priority order) or a capacity problem (they know but can’t act on it)? Is it a decomposition problem (roadmap item hasn’t been broken into sprints) or an alignment problem (engineering disagrees with priority)? Close the gap explicitly. Misalignment that lingers becomes normalized. Either update the roadmap to reflect reality or update the backlog to reflect the roadmap. Don’t let contradictory stories persist. Investigate recurring gaps. If the same pattern emerges quarter after quarter (roadmap commits to things that never make it to sprints), the problem is systemic. Maybe roadmap planning doesn’t involve engineering. Maybe priorities change faster than sprint cadence can absorb. Maybe the roadmap is aspirational rather than realistic. Fix the system, not just the symptom. Tools that bridge the gap The goal is making the connection between roadmap and sprint automatic rather than manual. What good integration provides: Bidirectional status flow (epic completion updates roadmap progress) Priority inheritance (roadmap priority translates to backlog priority) Timeline alignment (target dates stay synchronized across systems) Selective sync (not everything needs to flow; you control what does) What integration doesn’t solve: Process ambiguity about how roadmap items decompose into work Lack of engineering input into roadmap capacity planning Stakeholder expectations disconnected from engineering reality Tools help when the underlying process is sound. They don’t fix broken process. Making alignment stick Alignment isn’t a one-time exercise. It requires ongoing attention. Here’s where you should focus that attention as you work. Weekly: Check that top roadmap priorities match top backlog priorities. Investigate misalignment. When sprints begin and end: Review roadmap item progress. Update stakeholder-facing status if reality has changed. Monthly: Mid-quarter review with stakeholders. Adjust roadmap based on what you’ve learned. Quarterly: Full reset. Retrospective on alignment quality. Process improvements for next quarter. Stay aligned When alignment works, the roadmap stops being a fiction you maintain for stakeholders and starts being a shared view of what’s actually happening. Engineering sees their sprint work connected to strategic context. Stakeholders see progress they can trust. The PM stops being a translator between two systems that should have been speaking the same language. For teams where roadmaps and sprint boards are speaking different languages, connecting them directly turns translation into synchronization. Aligning roadmaps and sprints? Meet with Unito product experts to see how the right integration can transform the way you work. View the full article

Prediction markets are all the rage right now. Weekly trading volume on prediction platforms just surpassed $2 billion, and apps like Polymarket are being treated as the “next big thing” in consumer finance and entertainment. These platforms are designed to gamify uncertainty by exploiting the same cognitive biases as gambling and day-trading, quietly pushing users toward overspending, emotional volatility, and compulsive checking. It’s easy to see why people are drawn to them. Prediction markets feel smarter than reckless betting, more dynamic than typical investing, and more objective than punditry. For example, users are able to watch the odds move in real time, making it feel like they’re seeing the truth of a situation, whether it’s a political outcome or whether the CEO of Coinbase will drop the word “AI” on their next earnings call. Young users are particularly vulnerable, with a 2025 TransUnion study finding that 34% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials are actively participating in betting. Meanwhile, monthly debt payments for millennials and Gen Z have surged 20% and 27% respectively, drastically outpacing inflation (6%) and wage growth (8%), so these small, repeated losses can quickly snowball into real financial strain. Gambling, Cloaked as Investing This isn’t a new playbook. First, it started with sports betting, then 0DTE (zero days to expiration) options, and now there are prediction markets. If you were to open any major prediction platform today, the parallels to casinos will become drastically obvious. Both interfaces are fast, have charts that flicker, and use prompts that urge rapid entry and exits. Users are being wired to double down after facing a loss, overrate their intuition, and assume moving prices reflect real information. These are classical behavioral traps that are just being applied in a new environment—and because it has the faux appearance of investing, all the risks feel “legitimate.” For instance, a user may place small bets on multiple elections simultaneously, checking and adjusting their choices every few minutes. However, even if each bet is only $1 to $5, the constant engagement can cause stress, disrupt focus at work, and eat away at savings, all without the user truly realizing what’s happening. Small Bets, Big Consequences One of the most misleading narratives around prediction markets is the idea that the bets are small and, subsequently, inconsequential. The danger isn’t the size, it’s the frequency, repetition, and compulsive checking. Your brain is constantly chasing endless hooks as the market continues to move every few minutes. Users are experiencing a psychological cycle in which they overestimate their ability to predict outcomes, fall into the “just one more trade” cycle, and experience emotional swings that are spilling into their daily lives—affecting their focus at work, sleep patterns, and interactions with family and friends. Prediction markets are playing on the idea that users are “making informed predictions” rather than calling it what it is—gambling. The rationalization of this behavior is part of what makes it so enticing to users. They’re convincing themselves that they’re learning about markets, politics, and economic signals, when in reality, they’re being tricked into a loop. And most of the time, they’re not noticing the true cost until it hits their wallets or their well-being. The Overlooked Cost The fun side of prediction markets is often what is highlighted in the media—they’re showcasing the clever traders, the unexpected outcomes, and the viral probability swings. What’s not highlighted? The stories that actually matter the most, like the real households absorbing small but continuous financial losses, the compulsive checking that mirrors day-trading addiction, and the lack of guardrails in a gray zone between wagering, entertainment, and finance. On their own, these losses may seem insignificant. But as a whole, they add up. When you combine mass adoption, financial stakes, and algorithmic nudges, the risk profile changes dramatically. What initially looked like a fun forecasting tool is now an invisible drain on both your wallet and your well-being. We’re setting ourselves up for a generation where financial prudence goes out the window, an influx of personal bankruptcies is inevitable, and the mental health crisis gets even worse than it is today. How to Participate Without Losing Yourself Prediction markets aren’t going anywhere, nor should they. They can be interesting and even useful, but users need to approach them differently. You should think of them like speculative trading or gambling at a casino. Things like betting only what you can afford to lose, avoiding impulse reactions, tracking the gains, losses, and time spent, all help prevent compulsive cycles and preserve mental health. These practices are especially important for Gen Z and millennials, who are driving the growth of this sector and are on track to spend more per capita on prediction markets than any other generations. At the end of the day, these platforms aren’t just forecasting future outcomes, they’re also forecasting, and influencing your behavior. Recognize the signs and take control before both your wallet and well-being become the most predictable outcomes of all. View the full article

A loyalty platform is a technological solution that helps businesses manage customer loyalty programs effectively. By tracking customer interactions and program success in real-time, it connects with multiple sales channels like POS and e-commerce. This system not merely promotes customer retention but additionally provides insights into buying behaviors, which can refine your marketing strategies. Comprehending how a loyalty platform functions and its core features can reveal its potential impact on your business growth. Key Takeaways A loyalty platform is a system designed to manage customer loyalty programs, enhancing repeat purchases and customer relationships. It tracks customer engagement and program performance in real-time, providing valuable insights into customer behavior. Businesses benefit from increased customer retention, as loyal customers typically spend 67% more than new ones. Loyalty platforms can improve average order value, with participants often spending up to 25% more annually. They offer personalized marketing strategies through customer segmentation and analytics, driving targeted engagement and higher sales. What Is a Loyalty Platform? A loyalty platform is fundamentally a technological system that helps businesses manage customer loyalty programs, so they can encourage repeat purchases and strengthen relationships with their customers. These loyalty platforms track customer engagement and program performance in real-time, integrating seamlessly with point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and mobile systems. Core features of a loyalty management platform include points and rewards management, customer segmentation for targeted marketing, and analytics for performance tracking and insights. Different types of loyalty platforms cater to various customer engagement strategies, such as point-based, tiered, cashback, coalition, and gamified designs. By utilizing a loyalty platform, you can improve customer retention, increase average order value, and gather valuable customer data. This eventually boosts your business revenue and improves customer lifetime value, making it an essential tool for any company looking to nurture loyalty and drive sales in today’s competitive market. How Does a Loyalty Platform Work? Grasping how a loyalty platform works is vital for maximizing its benefits. Fundamentally, it operates as a unified system that manages the entire lifecycle of customer loyalty. By integrating with various systems, like POS and e-commerce, it tracks customer interactions in real time. Customers can enroll in loyalty programs through multiple channels—whether in-store, online, or via mobile apps—creating profiles that help personalize their experiences. As customers make purchases, they earn points or rewards, which the platform tracks and manages to provide real-time incentives. The platform likewise collects analytics and feedback, giving businesses insights into customer behavior and preferences. This data allows for targeted marketing strategies and personalized communications, enhancing customer engagement and retention. Overall, comprehending these mechanisms enables you to leverage a loyalty platform effectively, driving customer satisfaction and business growth. Core Features of a Loyalty Platform When exploring the core features of a loyalty platform, it’s essential to understand how these functionalities work together to improve customer engagement and drive repeat business. First, points and rewards management allows you to track customer actions and reward them, enhancing their loyalty. Customer segmentation features enable you to implement targeted marketing strategies based on behaviors and preferences, resulting in more personalized interactions. Omnichannel integration guarantees a seamless experience across various platforms, such as POS, e-commerce, and mobile systems, allowing real-time tracking and engagement. Personalization tools help tailor rewards and communications, boosting customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Finally, thorough analytics and reporting capabilities provide insights into your program’s performance and customer behavior, empowering you to make informed decisions for continuous improvement. Types of Loyalty Platforms Loyalty platforms come in various types, each designed to meet different customer needs and business goals. Comprehending these types can help you choose the right one for your business: Point-Based Systems: Brands like Sephora and Starbucks reward customers with redeemable points for purchases, encouraging repeat transactions. Tiered Loyalty Platforms: These programs offer increasing rewards based on spending levels, such as Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers, motivating customers to spend more. Cashback Loyalty Platforms: By providing a percentage of purchases back as cash, these platforms appeal to budget-conscious consumers, nurturing loyalty through tangible savings. Coalition Loyalty Platforms: Customers can earn and redeem points across multiple brands, like Air Miles, enhancing cross-promotional opportunities and broadening your customer reach. Benefits of Using a Loyalty Platform for Businesses Utilizing a loyalty platform can greatly improve your business’s ability to retain customers and drive revenue. By turning one-time buyers into repeat customers, these platforms can considerably boost your bottom line, as studies show loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones. Furthermore, implementing a loyalty program can reduce churn, making it five times cheaper to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones, thereby saving costs. Loyalty platforms likewise improve customer lifetime value (CLV) by increasing average order value (AOV), with participants spending up to 25% more annually when they redeem rewards. Businesses using these platforms experience revenue growth at 2.5 times the rate of those without, driven by increased spending and engagement. In addition, they provide valuable insights into customer preferences, allowing you to tailor marketing strategies and improve overall satisfaction, nurturing long-term brand loyalty. Best Practices for Implementing a Loyalty Platform When implementing a loyalty platform, it’s crucial to clearly define your program objectives based on your business goals and customer insights. Choosing the right type of loyalty program—whether points-based, tiered, or value-based—can greatly impact customer engagement and satisfaction. Moreover, promoting your program across various channels, such as email and social media, will help increase visibility and attract more members. Define Program Objectives Clearly Defining your program objectives clearly is crucial for the success of a loyalty platform. Here are some best practices to help you set effective objectives: Align with Business Goals: Confirm your objectives, like increasing repeat purchases or enhancing engagement, align with your overall business goals. Establish Measurable Metrics: Use metrics such as enrollment and redemption rates to track progress and identify areas for improvement. Understand Your Audience: Analyze customer data and feedback to set relevant loyalty goals that resonate with your target audience. Incorporate Tiered Rewards: Create tiered rewards or exclusive perks to encourage participation and higher spending, supporting your defined objectives. Choose Suitable Program Type Once you’ve established clear objectives for your loyalty platform, the next step is to choose a suitable program type that aligns with those goals. Consider these common program types: Program Type Description Points-Based Rewards customers for purchases, improving repeat business. Tiered Offers escalating rewards based on spending, cultivating loyalty. Value-Based Connects your brand to a cause, appealing to socially conscious consumers. Hybrid Combines elements from various types, catering to diverse needs. Subscription-Based Charges a fee for exclusive rewards, ensuring consistent engagement. Selecting the right type will help improve customer engagement and retention. Evaluate these options carefully to find the most effective fit for your business objectives and customer preferences. Promote Across All Channels Promoting your loyalty program across all channels is essential for maximizing its reach and effectiveness. To guarantee customers are aware and engaged, consider these best practices: On-Site Promotions: Use banners and pop-ups to communicate loyalty program benefits during key shopping moments. Email Marketing: Announce your loyalty program launch with detailed information on enrollment and rewards, driving initial sign-ups. Social Media Campaigns: Highlight exclusive offers and rewards, encouraging followers to share and participate, broadening your program’s reach. Order Confirmations: Include loyalty program benefits in order confirmation and shipping notifications, making it easy for customers to enroll and engage further. Integrating these strategies across your website, mobile app, and in-store signage will guarantee consistent messaging and maximize engagement opportunities. Frequently Asked Questions How Do Loyalty Programs Benefit Businesses? Loyalty programs benefit businesses by increasing customer retention, leading to higher spending. Loyal customers typically spend 67% more than new ones, enhancing revenue. They likewise reduce customer acquisition costs, as retaining existing customers is cheaper than attracting new ones. In addition, these programs improve customer lifetime value, with repeat customers often spending more when redeeming rewards. A well-structured loyalty program can drive referrals, turning satisfied customers into advocates and boosting organic growth. What Is a Loyalty Platform? A loyalty platform is a technology that helps you manage customer loyalty programs effectively. It tracks customer engagement, rewards points, and program performance, integrating with systems like POS and e-commerce. Key features include points management, customer segmentation for targeted marketing, and analytics for insights. Different types of loyalty platforms, such as point-based or tiered systems, cater to various engagement strategies, enhancing customer retention and driving revenue growth for your business. What Is Brand Loyalty and How Can It Help a Business? Brand loyalty is the commitment customers have to repurchase or continue using your brand, which can lead to repeat business and strong relationships. It’s significant since around 75% of customers may switch to competitors for better loyalty programs. Loyal customers typically spend 67% more than new ones, boosting your revenue. Furthermore, strong loyalty can drive organic growth through word-of-mouth referrals, helping your business thrive in a competitive marketplace. How Effective Are Loyalty Platforms? Loyalty platforms are highly effective in boosting customer retention and driving sales. Studies show that customers enrolled in these programs spend considerably more than new customers, demonstrating their financial benefits. Furthermore, businesses with loyalty programs experience faster revenue growth compared to those without. Conclusion In summary, implementing a loyalty platform can greatly improve your business by promoting customer retention and increasing sales. By grasping how these platforms work and leveraging their core features, you can analyze customer behavior and preferences effectively. Choosing the right type of loyalty platform and adhering to best practices will guarantee you maximize benefits. In the end, a well-executed loyalty program can drive revenue growth and strengthen your customer relationships, making it a valuable investment for your business. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a Loyalty Platform and How Can It Benefit Your Business?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

A loyalty platform is a technological solution that helps businesses manage customer loyalty programs effectively. By tracking customer interactions and program success in real-time, it connects with multiple sales channels like POS and e-commerce. This system not merely promotes customer retention but additionally provides insights into buying behaviors, which can refine your marketing strategies. Comprehending how a loyalty platform functions and its core features can reveal its potential impact on your business growth. Key Takeaways A loyalty platform is a system designed to manage customer loyalty programs, enhancing repeat purchases and customer relationships. It tracks customer engagement and program performance in real-time, providing valuable insights into customer behavior. Businesses benefit from increased customer retention, as loyal customers typically spend 67% more than new ones. Loyalty platforms can improve average order value, with participants often spending up to 25% more annually. They offer personalized marketing strategies through customer segmentation and analytics, driving targeted engagement and higher sales. What Is a Loyalty Platform? A loyalty platform is fundamentally a technological system that helps businesses manage customer loyalty programs, so they can encourage repeat purchases and strengthen relationships with their customers. These loyalty platforms track customer engagement and program performance in real-time, integrating seamlessly with point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and mobile systems. Core features of a loyalty management platform include points and rewards management, customer segmentation for targeted marketing, and analytics for performance tracking and insights. Different types of loyalty platforms cater to various customer engagement strategies, such as point-based, tiered, cashback, coalition, and gamified designs. By utilizing a loyalty platform, you can improve customer retention, increase average order value, and gather valuable customer data. This eventually boosts your business revenue and improves customer lifetime value, making it an essential tool for any company looking to nurture loyalty and drive sales in today’s competitive market. How Does a Loyalty Platform Work? Grasping how a loyalty platform works is vital for maximizing its benefits. Fundamentally, it operates as a unified system that manages the entire lifecycle of customer loyalty. By integrating with various systems, like POS and e-commerce, it tracks customer interactions in real time. Customers can enroll in loyalty programs through multiple channels—whether in-store, online, or via mobile apps—creating profiles that help personalize their experiences. As customers make purchases, they earn points or rewards, which the platform tracks and manages to provide real-time incentives. The platform likewise collects analytics and feedback, giving businesses insights into customer behavior and preferences. This data allows for targeted marketing strategies and personalized communications, enhancing customer engagement and retention. Overall, comprehending these mechanisms enables you to leverage a loyalty platform effectively, driving customer satisfaction and business growth. Core Features of a Loyalty Platform When exploring the core features of a loyalty platform, it’s essential to understand how these functionalities work together to improve customer engagement and drive repeat business. First, points and rewards management allows you to track customer actions and reward them, enhancing their loyalty. Customer segmentation features enable you to implement targeted marketing strategies based on behaviors and preferences, resulting in more personalized interactions. Omnichannel integration guarantees a seamless experience across various platforms, such as POS, e-commerce, and mobile systems, allowing real-time tracking and engagement. Personalization tools help tailor rewards and communications, boosting customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Finally, thorough analytics and reporting capabilities provide insights into your program’s performance and customer behavior, empowering you to make informed decisions for continuous improvement. Types of Loyalty Platforms Loyalty platforms come in various types, each designed to meet different customer needs and business goals. Comprehending these types can help you choose the right one for your business: Point-Based Systems: Brands like Sephora and Starbucks reward customers with redeemable points for purchases, encouraging repeat transactions. Tiered Loyalty Platforms: These programs offer increasing rewards based on spending levels, such as Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers, motivating customers to spend more. Cashback Loyalty Platforms: By providing a percentage of purchases back as cash, these platforms appeal to budget-conscious consumers, nurturing loyalty through tangible savings. Coalition Loyalty Platforms: Customers can earn and redeem points across multiple brands, like Air Miles, enhancing cross-promotional opportunities and broadening your customer reach. Benefits of Using a Loyalty Platform for Businesses Utilizing a loyalty platform can greatly improve your business’s ability to retain customers and drive revenue. By turning one-time buyers into repeat customers, these platforms can considerably boost your bottom line, as studies show loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones. Furthermore, implementing a loyalty program can reduce churn, making it five times cheaper to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones, thereby saving costs. Loyalty platforms likewise improve customer lifetime value (CLV) by increasing average order value (AOV), with participants spending up to 25% more annually when they redeem rewards. Businesses using these platforms experience revenue growth at 2.5 times the rate of those without, driven by increased spending and engagement. In addition, they provide valuable insights into customer preferences, allowing you to tailor marketing strategies and improve overall satisfaction, nurturing long-term brand loyalty. Best Practices for Implementing a Loyalty Platform When implementing a loyalty platform, it’s crucial to clearly define your program objectives based on your business goals and customer insights. Choosing the right type of loyalty program—whether points-based, tiered, or value-based—can greatly impact customer engagement and satisfaction. Moreover, promoting your program across various channels, such as email and social media, will help increase visibility and attract more members. Define Program Objectives Clearly Defining your program objectives clearly is crucial for the success of a loyalty platform. Here are some best practices to help you set effective objectives: Align with Business Goals: Confirm your objectives, like increasing repeat purchases or enhancing engagement, align with your overall business goals. Establish Measurable Metrics: Use metrics such as enrollment and redemption rates to track progress and identify areas for improvement. Understand Your Audience: Analyze customer data and feedback to set relevant loyalty goals that resonate with your target audience. Incorporate Tiered Rewards: Create tiered rewards or exclusive perks to encourage participation and higher spending, supporting your defined objectives. Choose Suitable Program Type Once you’ve established clear objectives for your loyalty platform, the next step is to choose a suitable program type that aligns with those goals. Consider these common program types: Program Type Description Points-Based Rewards customers for purchases, improving repeat business. Tiered Offers escalating rewards based on spending, cultivating loyalty. Value-Based Connects your brand to a cause, appealing to socially conscious consumers. Hybrid Combines elements from various types, catering to diverse needs. Subscription-Based Charges a fee for exclusive rewards, ensuring consistent engagement. Selecting the right type will help improve customer engagement and retention. Evaluate these options carefully to find the most effective fit for your business objectives and customer preferences. Promote Across All Channels Promoting your loyalty program across all channels is essential for maximizing its reach and effectiveness. To guarantee customers are aware and engaged, consider these best practices: On-Site Promotions: Use banners and pop-ups to communicate loyalty program benefits during key shopping moments. Email Marketing: Announce your loyalty program launch with detailed information on enrollment and rewards, driving initial sign-ups. Social Media Campaigns: Highlight exclusive offers and rewards, encouraging followers to share and participate, broadening your program’s reach. Order Confirmations: Include loyalty program benefits in order confirmation and shipping notifications, making it easy for customers to enroll and engage further. Integrating these strategies across your website, mobile app, and in-store signage will guarantee consistent messaging and maximize engagement opportunities. Frequently Asked Questions How Do Loyalty Programs Benefit Businesses? Loyalty programs benefit businesses by increasing customer retention, leading to higher spending. Loyal customers typically spend 67% more than new ones, enhancing revenue. They likewise reduce customer acquisition costs, as retaining existing customers is cheaper than attracting new ones. In addition, these programs improve customer lifetime value, with repeat customers often spending more when redeeming rewards. A well-structured loyalty program can drive referrals, turning satisfied customers into advocates and boosting organic growth. What Is a Loyalty Platform? A loyalty platform is a technology that helps you manage customer loyalty programs effectively. It tracks customer engagement, rewards points, and program performance, integrating with systems like POS and e-commerce. Key features include points management, customer segmentation for targeted marketing, and analytics for insights. Different types of loyalty platforms, such as point-based or tiered systems, cater to various engagement strategies, enhancing customer retention and driving revenue growth for your business. What Is Brand Loyalty and How Can It Help a Business? Brand loyalty is the commitment customers have to repurchase or continue using your brand, which can lead to repeat business and strong relationships. It’s significant since around 75% of customers may switch to competitors for better loyalty programs. Loyal customers typically spend 67% more than new ones, boosting your revenue. Furthermore, strong loyalty can drive organic growth through word-of-mouth referrals, helping your business thrive in a competitive marketplace. How Effective Are Loyalty Platforms? Loyalty platforms are highly effective in boosting customer retention and driving sales. Studies show that customers enrolled in these programs spend considerably more than new customers, demonstrating their financial benefits. Furthermore, businesses with loyalty programs experience faster revenue growth compared to those without. Conclusion In summary, implementing a loyalty platform can greatly improve your business by promoting customer retention and increasing sales. By grasping how these platforms work and leveraging their core features, you can analyze customer behavior and preferences effectively. Choosing the right type of loyalty platform and adhering to best practices will guarantee you maximize benefits. In the end, a well-executed loyalty program can drive revenue growth and strengthen your customer relationships, making it a valuable investment for your business. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a Loyalty Platform and How Can It Benefit Your Business?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Figure meets expectations but experts warn of distorted data due to recent government shutdownView the full article

Inflation likely remained elevated last month as the cost of electricity, groceries, and clothing may have jumped and continued to pressure consumers’ wallets. The Labor Department is expected to report that consumer prices rose 2.6% in December compared with a year earlier, according to economists’ estimates compiled by data provider FactSet. The yearly rate would be down from 2.7% in November. Monthly prices, however, are expected to rise 0.3% in December, faster than is consistent with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation goal. The figures are harder to predict this month, however, because the six-week government shutdown last fall suspended the collection of price data used to compile the inflation rate. Some economists expect the December figures will show a bigger jump in inflation as the data collection process gets back to normal. Core prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, are also expected to rise 0.3% in December from the previous month, and 2.7% from a year earlier. The yearly core figure would be an increase from 2.6% in November. In November, annual inflation fell from 3% in September to 2.7%, in part because of quirks in November’s data. (The government never calculated a yearly figure for October). Most prices were collected in the second half of November, after the government reopened, when holiday discounts kicked in, which may have biased November inflation lower. And since rental prices weren’t fully collected in October, the agency that prepares the inflation reports used placeholder estimates that may have biased prices lower, economists said. Inflation has come down significantly from the four-decade peak of 9.1% that it reached in June 2022, but it has been stubbornly close to 3% since late 2023. The cost of necessities such as groceries is about 25% higher than it was before the pandemic, and other necessities such as rent and clothing have also gotten more expensive, fueling dissatisfaction with the economy that both President Donald The President and former President Joe Biden have sought to address, though with limited success. The Federal Reserve has struggled to balance its goal of fighting inflation by keeping borrowing costs high, while also supporting hiring by cutting interest rates when unemployment worsens. As long as inflation remains above its target of 2%, the Fed will likely be reluctant to cut rates much more. The Fed reduced its key rate by a quarter-point in December, but Chair Jerome Powell, at a press conference explaining its decision, said the Fed would probably hold off on further cuts to see how the economy evolves. The 19 members of the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee have been sharply divided for months over whether to cut its rate further, or keep it at its curent level of about 3.6% to combat inflation. The President, meanwhile, has harshly criticized the Fed for not cutting its key short-term rate more sharply, a move he has said would reduce mortgage rates and the government’s borrowing costs for its huge debt pile. Yet the Fed doesn’t directly control mortgage rates, which are set by financial markets. In a move that cast a shadow over the ability of the Fed to fight inflation in the future, the Department of Justice served the central bank last Friday with subpoenas related to Powell’s congressional testimony in June about a $2.5 billion renovation of two Fed office buildings. The President administration officials have suggested that Powell either lied about changes to the building or altered plans in ways that are inconsistent with those approved by planning commissions. In a blunt response, Powell said Sunday those claims were “pretexts” for an effort by the White House to assert more control over the Fed. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell said. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.” —Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. A comfortable, good-looking pair of headphones with bass-forward sound and deep Apple integration doesn’t usually dip below the $100 mark, but this one just did. The Beats Studio Pro headphones in factory-reconditioned condition are down to $94.99 on Woot. Beats Studio Pro headphones $94.99 at Woot $349.99 Save $255.00 Get Deal Get Deal $94.99 at Woot $349.99 Save $255.00 For comparison, the same model listed as “refurbished: excellent” costs $135 on Amazon, while a brand-new pair is currently $199.99 (marked down from $349.99). This deal runs for two days or until it sells out, and Prime members get free standard shipping (while everyone else pays a $6 shipping fee). Note that shipping isn’t available to Alaska, Hawaii, PO boxes, or APO addresses. The Beats Studio Pro are a premium-feeling set of noise-canceling headphones that lean heavily into comfort and polish. The build feels sturdy, the padding is generous, and they’re easy to wear for long stretches without pressure fatigue. Sound quality sticks to the familiar Beats formula: pronounced bass with crisp, slightly elevated highs. It’s not the most neutral tuning—listeners who prefer a flatter, studio-style sound may find it colored—but it works well for pop, hip-hop, and electronic playlists. Plugging in via USB-C unlocks hi-res audio and three preset EQ modes, which noticeably improve clarity. The downside is that those EQ presets aren’t available over Bluetooth, and there’s no manual EQ option at all. Codec support is another limitation. Wireless audio tops out at SBC and AAC, meaning Android users miss out on higher-quality options like AptX or LDAC. As for its ANC, it is competent but unremarkable. It does a decent job with low-frequency noise but struggles more in crowded or high-pitched environments, and you can hear a faint hiss when ANC is enabled, notes this PCMag review. Battery life, however, holds up well: Expect around 24 hours with ANC on, or up to 40 hours without it. The Studio Pro won’t dethrone Sony or Bose if noise cancellation or deep audio customization is your top priority. But for casual listeners who value comfort, long battery life, and smooth Apple device integration, this price makes the trade-offs much easier to accept. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $149.00 (List Price $179.00) Apple Watch Series 11 [GPS 46mm] Smartwatch with Jet Black Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band - M/L. Sleep Score, Fitness Tracker, Health Monitoring, Always-On Display, Water Resistant — $407.47 (List Price $429.00) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus — (List Price $24.99 With Code "FTV4K25") Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 — $279.99 (List Price $349.99) Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 10.9" 64GB Wi-Fi Tablet (Graphite) — $149.99 (List Price $219.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

If there’s one takeaway as we look toward SEO in 2026, it’s that visibility is no longer just about ranking pages, but about being understood by increasingly selective AI-driven systems. In 2025, SEO proved it was not disappearing, but evolving, as search engines leaned more heavily on structure, authority, and trust to interpret content beyond the click. In this article, we share SEO predictions for 2026 from Yoast SEO experts, Alex Moss and Carolyn Shelby, highlighting the shifts that will shape how brands earn visibility across search and AI-powered discovery experiences. Key takeaways In 2026, SEO focuses on visibility defined by clarity, authority, and trust rather than just page rankings Structured data becomes essential for eligibility in AI-driven search and shopping experiences Editorial quality must meet machine readability standards, as AI evaluates content based on structure and clarity Rankings remain important as indicators of authority, but visibility now also includes citations and brand sentiment Brands should align their SEO strategies with social presence and aim for consistency across all platforms to enhance visibility Table of contents A brief recap of SEO in 2025: what actually changed? 2026 SEO predictions by Yoast experts Prediction 1: Structured data shifts from ranking enhancer to retrieval qualifier Prediction 2: Agentic commerce becomes a visibility battleground, not a checkout feature Prediction 3: Editorial quality becomes a machine readability requirement Prediction 4: Rankings still matter, but as training signals, not endpoints Prediction 5: Brand sentiment becomes a core visibility signal Prediction 6: Multimodal optimization becomes baseline, not optional Prediction 7: Social platforms become secondary search indexes Prediction 8: Email reasserts itself as the most controllable growth channel Prediction 9: Authority outweighs freshness for most non-news queries Prediction 10: SEO teams evolve into visibility and narrative stewards What SEO is no longer about in 2026 (misconceptions to discard) Looking ahead: what will shape SEO in 2026 A brief recap of SEO in 2025: what actually changed? 2025 marked a clear shift in how SEO works. Visibility stopped being defined purely by pages and rankings and began to be shaped by how well search engines and AI systems could interpret content, brands, and intent across multiple surfaces. AI-generated summaries, richer SERP features, and alternative discovery experiences made it harder to rely solely on traditional metrics, while signals such as authority, trust, and structure played a larger role in determining what was surfaced and reused. As we outlined in our SEO in 2025 wrap-up, the brands that performed best were those with strong foundations: clear content, credible signals, and structured information that search systems could confidently understand. That shift set the direction for what was to come next. By the end of 2025, it was clear that SEO had entered a new phase, one shaped by interpretation rather than isolated optimizations. The SEO predictions for 2026 from Yoast experts build directly on this evolution. 2026 SEO predictions by Yoast experts The SEO predictions for 2026 shared here come from our very own Principal SEOs at Yoast, Alex Moss and Carolyn Shelby. Built on the lessons SEO revealed in 2025, these predictions focus less on reacting to individual updates and more on how search and AI systems are evolving at a foundational level, and what that means for sustainable visibility going forward. TL;DR SEO in 2026 is about understanding how signals such as structure, authority, clarity, and trust are now interpreted across search engines, AI-powered experiences, and discovery platforms. Each prediction below explains what is changing, why it matters, and how brands can practically adapt in the coming year. Prediction 1: Structured data shifts from ranking enhancer to retrieval qualifier In 2026, structured data will no longer be a competitive advantage; it will become a baseline requirement. Search engines and AI systems increasingly rely on structured data as a layer of eligibility to determine whether content, products, and entities can be confidently retrieved, compared, or surfaced in AI-powered experiences. For ecommerce brands, this shift is especially significant. Product information such as pricing, availability, shipping details, and merchant data is now critical for visibility in AI-driven shopping agents and comparison interfaces. At the enterprise level, the move toward canonical identifiers reflects a growing need to avoid misattribution and data decay across systems that reuse information at scale. What this means in practice: Brands without clean, comprehensive entity and product data will not rank lower. They will simply not appear in AI-driven shopping and comparison flows at all. Also read: Optimizing ecommerce product variations for SEO and conversions How to act on this: Treat structured data as part of your SEO foundation, not an enhancement. Tools like Yoast SEO help standardize the implementation of structured data. The plugin’s structured data features make it easier to generate rich, meaningful schema markup, helping search engines better understand your site and take control of how your content is described. A smarter analysis in Yoast SEO PremiumYoast SEO Premium has a smart content analysis that helps you take your content to the next level! Get Yoast SEO Premium »Only $118.80 / year (ex VAT) Prediction 2: Agentic commerce becomes a visibility battleground, not a checkout feature Agentic commerce marks a shift in how users discover and choose brands. Instead of browsing, comparing, and transacting manually, users increasingly rely on AI-driven agents to recommend, reorder, or select products and services on their behalf. In this environment, visibility is established before a checkout ever happens, often without a traditional search query. This shift is becoming more concrete as search and commerce platforms move toward standardised ways for agents to understand and transact with merchants. Recent developments around agentic commerce protocols and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) highlight how AI systems are being designed to access product, pricing, availability, and merchant information more directly. As a result, platforms such as Shopify, Stripe, and WooCommerce are no longer just infrastructure. They increasingly act as distribution layers, where agent compatibility influences which brands are surfaced, recommended, or selected. What this means in practice: In 2026, SEO teams will be accountable for agent readiness in much the same way they were once accountable for mobile-first readiness. If agents cannot consistently interpret your brand, product data, or availability, they are more likely to default to competitors that they can understand with greater confidence. How to act on this: Focus on making your brand legible to automated decision systems. Ensure product information, pricing, availability, and supporting metadata are clear, structured, and consistent across your site and feeds. This is not about optimising for a single platform or protocol, but about reducing ambiguity so AI agents can accurately interpret and act on your information across emerging agent-driven discovery and commerce experiences. Prediction 3: Editorial quality becomes a machine readability requirement In 2026, editorial quality is no longer judged only by human readers. AI systems increasingly evaluate content based on how efficiently it can be parsed, summarized, cited, and reused. Verbosity, fluff, and circular explanations do not fail editorially. They fail functionally. Content that is concise, clearly structured, and well-attributed has higher chances of performing well. Headings, lists, definitions, and tables directly influence how information is chunked and reused across AI-generated summaries and search experiences. Must read: Why is summarizing essential for modern content? What this means in practice: “Helpful content” is being held to higher editorial standards. Content that cannot be summarized cleanly without losing meaning becomes less useful to AI systems, even if it remains readable to human audiences. How to act on this: Make editorial quality measurable and machine actionable. Utilize tools that assist you in aligning content with modern discoverability requirements. Yoast SEO Premium’s AI features, AI Generate, AI Optimize, and AI Summarize, help you assess and improve how content is structured and optimized, supporting both search engines and AI systems in understanding your intent. Prediction 4: Rankings still matter, but as training signals, not endpoints Despite ongoing speculation, rankings do not disappear in 2026. Instead, their role changes. AI agents and search systems continue to rely on top-ranked, trusted pages to understand authority, relevance, and consensus within a topic. While rankings are no longer the final KPI, abandoning them entirely creates blind spots in understanding why certain brands are included or ignored in AI-driven experiences. What this means in practice: Teams that stop tracking rankings altogether risk losing insight into how authority is established and reinforced across search and AI systems. How to act on this: Continue to use rankings as diagnostic signals, but don’t treat them as the sole indicator of success in 2026. Alongside traditional performance metrics for SEO in 2026, look at how often your brand is mentioned, cited, or summarized in AI-generated answers and recommendations. Tools like Yoast AI Brand Insights, available as part of Yoast SEO AI+, help surface these broader visibility signals by showing how your brand appears across AI platforms, including sentiment, citation patterns, and competitive context. See how visible your brand is in AI searchTrack mentions, sentiment, and AI visibility. With AI Brand Insights and Yoast SEO AI+, you can start monitoring and improving your performance. Prediction 5: Brand sentiment becomes a core visibility signal Brand sentiment increasingly influences how search engines and AI systems assess credibility and trust. Mentions, whether linked or unlinked, contribute to a broader understanding of how a brand is perceived across the web. AI systems synthesize signals from reviews, forums, social platforms, media coverage, and knowledge bases to form a composite view of legitimacy and expertise. What makes this shift more impactful is amplification. Inconsistent messaging or negative sentiment is not smoothed out over time. Instead, it becomes more apparent when systems attempt to summarize, compare, or recommend brands across search and AI-driven experiences. What this means in practice: SEO, brand, PR, and social teams increasingly influence the same visibility signals. When these efforts are misaligned, credibility weakens. When they reinforce one another, trust becomes easier for systems to establish and maintain. How to act on this: Focus on consistency across owned, earned, and shared channels. Pay attention not only to where your brand ranks, but also to how it is discussed, described, and contextualized across various platforms. As discovery expands beyond traditional search results, reputation and narrative coherence become essential inputs into how brands are surfaced and understood. Prediction 6: Multimodal optimization becomes baseline, not optional Search behavior is no longer text-first. Images, video, audio, and transcripts now function as retrievable knowledge objects that feed both traditional search and AI-powered experiences. In particular, video platforms continue to influence how expertise and authority are understood at scale. Platforms like YouTube function not only as discovery engines, but also as training corpora for AI systems learning how to interpret topics, brands, and creators. What this means in practice: Brands with strong written content but weak visual or video assets may appear incomplete or “thin” to AI systems, even if their articles are well-optimized. How to act on this: Treat multimodal content as part of your SEO foundation. Support written content with relevant visuals, video, and transcripts. Clear structure and readability remain essential, and tools like Yoast SEO help ensure your core content remains accessible and well-organized as it is reused across formats. Prediction 7: Social platforms become secondary search indexes Discovery will increasingly happen outside traditional search engines. Platforms such as TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, and niche communities now act as secondary search indexes where users validate expertise and intent. AI systems reference these platforms to verify whether a brand’s claims, expertise, and messaging are substantiated in public discourse. What this means in practice: Presence alone is not enough. Inconsistent or unclear messaging across platforms weakens trust signals, while focused, repeatable narratives reinforce authority. How to act on this: Align your SEO strategy with social and community visibility to enhance your online presence. Ensure that your expertise, terminology, and positioning remain consistent across all discussions about your brand. Must read: When AI gets your brand wrong: Real examples and how to fix it Prediction 8: Email reasserts itself as the most controllable growth channel As discovery fragments and platforms increasingly gate access to audiences, email regains importance as a high-signal, low-distortion channel. Unlike search or social platforms, email offers direct access to users without algorithmic mediation. In 2026, email plays a supporting role in reinforcing authority, engagement, and intent signals, especially as AI systems evaluate how audiences interact with trusted sources over time. What this means in practice: Brands that underinvest in email become overly dependent on platforms they do not control, which increases volatility and reduces long-term resilience. How to act on this: Focus on relevance over volume. Segment audiences, align content with intent, and use email to reinforce expertise and trust, not just drive clicks. Prediction 9: Authority outweighs freshness for most non-news queries For non-news content, AI systems increasingly prioritize credible, historically consistent sources over frequent updates or constant publishing. Freshness still matters, but only when it meaningfully improves accuracy or relevance. Long-standing domains with coherent narratives and well-maintained content benefit, provided their foundations remain clean and trustworthy. What this means in practice: Scaled/programmatic content strategies lose effectiveness. Publishing frequently without maintaining quality or consistency introduces noise rather than value. How to act on this: Invest in maintaining and improving existing content. Update thoughtfully, reinforce expertise, and ensure that your most important pages remain accurate, structured, and authoritative. Prediction 10: SEO teams evolve into visibility and narrative stewards In 2026, SEO will extend far beyond search engines. SEO teams are increasingly influencing how brands are perceived by both humans and machines across search, AI-generated answers, and discovery platforms. Success is measured not only by traffic alone, but also by inclusion, citation, and trust. SEO becomes a strategic function that shapes how a brand is represented and understood. What this means in practice: SEO teams that focus solely on production or technical fixes risk losing influence as visibility becomes a cross-channel concern. How to act on this: Shift focus toward clarity, consistency, and long-term trust. The most effective teams help define how a brand is understood, not just how it ranks. What SEO is no longer about in 2026 (misconceptions to discard) As SEO evolves in 2026, many long-standing assumptions no longer reflect how search engines and AI-driven systems actually determine visibility. The table below contrasts common SEO myths with the realities shaped by recent changes and expert insights from Yoast. Diminishing relevanceWhat actually matters in 2026SEO is mainly about ranking pagesRankings still matter, but they serve as signals for authority and relevance, rather than the final measure of visibility Structured data is optional or a ranking boostStructured data is now a baseline requirement for eligibility in AI-driven search, shopping, and comparison experiencesPublishing more content leads to better performanceAuthority, clarity, and maintenance of fewer strong assets outperform high-volume publishingEditorial quality is subjectiveContent quality is increasingly evaluated by machines based on structure, clarity, and reusabilityBrand reputation is a PR concern, not an SEO oneBrand sentiment directly influences how AI systems interpret, trust, and recommend brandsSearch is still primarily text-basedImages, video, audio, and transcripts are now core retrievable knowledge objectsSEO can be measured only through trafficVisibility spans AI answers, social platforms, agents, and citations, requiring broader performance signals Looking ahead: what will shape SEO in 2026 The focus is no longer on isolated tactics or short-term wins, but on building visibility systems that search engines and AI platforms can reliably understand, trust, and reuse. Clarity and interpretability matter more than clever optimization. Content, products, and brand narratives need to be easy for machines to interpret without ambiguity. Structured data has become foundational, not optional, determining whether brands are eligible to appear in AI-powered shopping, comparison, and answer-driven experiences. Authority is built over time, not manufactured at scale. Search and AI systems increasingly favor sources with consistent, well-maintained narratives over those chasing volume. Visibility also extends beyond the SERP, spanning AI-generated answers, citations, recommendations, and cross-platform mentions, making it essential to look beyond traffic as the sole measure of success. Finally, SEO in 2026 demands alignment. Brand, content, product, and platform signals all contribute to how systems interpret trust and relevance. The post SEO in 2026: Key predictions from Yoast experts appeared first on Yoast. View the full article

Learn why automation without strategic interpretation creates an insight gap, and how marketing leaders can close it. The post Search Marketing’s Insight Gap: When Automation Replaces Understanding appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

If you’re a Slack user, you’re probably familiar with Slackbot as a good-natured—if annoying—assistant that delivers notifications, reminders, and keyword-based automatic responses within the workplace chat app. But for organizations with paid Slack plans that have AI features enabled, Slackbot is receiving a bit of a brain transplant. The company has rebuilt the humble bot as an AI agent that can help bring you up to speed on workplace discussions and priorities, pull in data from other software your organization has integrated with Slack, help draft reports and Slack canvas documents, and even help schedule meetings with your colleagues. It’s part of a push by Salesforce-owned Slack to move from being simply a tool for chatting with colleagues to a hub for coordinating with both humans and bots. Slack already supports more than 2,600 third-party apps, and the new Slackbot is expected to increasingly integrate with specialized AI agents and software tools. “The way that we think about Slack today is as the conversational interface, if you will, for what we call the agentic enterprise, where humans and agents are all working fluidly and seamlessly together to get work done,” says Rob Seaman, Slack’s chief product officer and interim CEO. Already, Slack has offered AI tools to help craft canvases, the app’s freeform collaborative document format, and search through data in connected software like Google Drive, Box, Microsoft Teams and, of course, Salesforce. And now, users will be able to send plain language requests to Slackbot, similar to the kinds of inquiries handled by general purpose AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. Slack isn’t the only company giving its chat-powered tools a dose of AI smarts. Amazon has developed a generative AI version of Alexa, Apple has announced plans for a supercharged Siri, and AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic regularly update their bots with upgraded language models. And office suits from companies like Microsoft and Google have also integrated chat-powered AI tools. But a powerful advantage of using Slackbot, says Seaman, is that it can harness retrieval-augmented generation—the technique of giving AI contextual information to help it answer specific questions—to act as a personal agent based on information already stored in Slack or linked apps. “We think that that deep organizational context is really what makes us immensely powerful,” Seaman says. Another advantage is simply that the bot is accessible through Slack, meaning users won’t have to toggle between apps as they chat with coworkers and with the bot. Still, talking to the bot will be a bit different from querying a colleague: Slackbot is designed for users to interact with it one-on-one through a dedicated app panel rather than inside Slack channels or multi-person conversations, though users can collaboratively edit bot-generated materials like canvases. Already, the tool has found widespread use at Slack and Salesforce, along with around 50 other organizations who’ve been given early access. Seaman says Slack product managers have used the new Slackbot to synthesize information from Slack channels gathering feedback on product features and ultimately turn that information into drafts of documents like sprint planning materials or meeting agendas. The bot can also create documents in the style of an individual user, though Seaman says it’s sometimes helpful to prompt it to use, say, a more formal tone than what the bot can model after informal Slack discussions. Like Slack’s other AI tools, Slackbot only has access to what a particular user already has permission to access in Slack and connected apps, which means companies shouldn’t have to rethink privacy settings when the bot comes online. The software will begin with access to a limited set of external tools, including some calendar integrations, though more are likely to be added soon, including support for scheduling calendar events. It also doesn’t have the ability to search the web, though Seaman says that’s also in the works for the near future. And for organizations with old school Slackbot customizations, whether those are weekly reminders to clean out the office fridge or keyword-triggered reminders of the guest Wi-Fi password, those will remain available, Seaman says, though they’ll be sequestered from the new Slackbot in Slack’s interface. “We’re going to move those notifications over into Activity and out of Slackbot, and then that way, Slackbot becomes this dedicated, personal agent,” Seaman says. At Salesforce, the majority of employees are already regularly using the new Slackbot, says Ruth Hickin, VP of workplace innovation. Salespeople can save hours every week using the tool to quickly pull data for calls, rather than manually rooting around in documents, and other employees have been able to work with Slackbot to generate project retrospectives and future plans, she says. Salesforce staffers are regularly coming up with new use cases for the bot and, naturally, sharing them on Slack. “We have 80% of employees using it, and they are coming up with use cases and sharing them internally,” she says. “And really with any new genAI tool, we do not know all of the impacts, so we can’t possibly know all of the great use cases.“ Salesforce workers have even started using the bot to help draft their annual employee self-evaluations, since it has ready access to information about what they’ve accomplished over the past year, says Ryan Gavin, chief marketing officer for Slack. View the full article

The convergence of brand work and entertainment is set to be making significant leaps and bounds this year as a result in a flurry of activity in 2025. Large brands of consequence have made serious investment in in-house entertainment studios over the past few years—LVMH, AB InBev, Nike, and Dick’s Sporting Goods, among them. Now, sports retail and gaming giant Fanatics is partnering with OBB Media to launch Fanatics Studios. The new division will be led by Michael D. Ratner, founder and CEO of OBB Media, and will operate as another pillar of Fanatics’ overall business, alongside retail, collectibles, and gaming. The goal is to independently create, finance, produce, and distribute content at the intersection of sports and culture. This isn’t Fanatics’ first foray into content. Back in 2023, the company launched Fanatics Live, a QVC-style digital content platform for its sports collectibles business featuring trading card breaks (like unboxing), and limited product drops. OBB Media and Fanatics originally began business together as part of a 10-year deal to produce Fanatics Fest, the company’s annual sports fan event and conference in New York City. “This new content business is a great connective tissue that can sit across (Fanatics’) larger platform and really pull fans closer than ever into their favorite players, leagues, teams and events,” Ratner tells Fast Company. “This venture is going to uncover so many new opportunities to create deeper connections across sports and culture and share stories that have yet to be told.” At launch, the new entity has a slate spanning films and documentaries, unscripted and scripted originals, live event specials, and digital series. It’s now the official content partner for all WWE digital shows, as well as leading content production for the LA28 Olympic Games. A deal with ESPN covers a one-hour special on Fanatics Fest, as well as producing the 2026 ESPYs awards show. Its deal with Major League Baseball is for an official global partnership to produce original content, like a 2026 World Baseball Classic docuseries, produced alongside Box To Box Films. And with NFL legend Tom Brady, Fanatics Studios is producing the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, first-of-its-kind round robin tournament featuring three teams of current and retired football players and athletes, including Brady coming out of retirement to make his flag football debut, broadcast live on Fox in March from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There’s also a doc series called One More Drive, following Brady’s preparation for that flag football tournament, and potentially competing for a roster spot on Team USA’s inaugural Olympic flag football team at LA28. Ratner says Fanatics Studios revenue will come from ancillary businesses from the IP, premiums from distributors, and production company fees. “We will also leverage the entire vertically-integrated Fanatics ecosystem, to expand these IP franchises across ancillary businesses — merchandising, collectibles, and beyond,” he says. “All of these projects are both revenue generating on their own, and fuel growth across each of our core businesses.” Ratner will be the CEO of Fanatics Studios while still leading OBB Media’s separate businesses. Prior projects from OBB Sports that predate the venture and will remain separate include Cold as Balls with Kevin Hart, Speed Goes Pro with IShowSpeed, and a recently announced Kevin Durant docuseries for Netflix. View the full article

It is now official, Google confirmed it has entered "into a multi-year collaboration" with Apple to power Apple Intelligence features and Siri with Google's Gemini models and cloud technology.View the full article

Microsoft Advertising has expanded the number of search themes it allows to 50 search themes for Performance Max campaigns. This should be live now but Microsoft will announce it sometime this week.View the full article