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Only disciplined planning, accountability, and open communication will cut through the industry’s rapidly thickening fog. The Disruptors With Liz Farr Go PRO for members-only access to more Liz Farr. View the full article

Only disciplined planning, accountability, and open communication will cut through the industry’s rapidly thickening fog. The Disruptors With Liz Farr Go PRO for members-only access to more Liz Farr. View the full article

Given that the growth of demand for AI is so unpredictable, there can be no doubt investor behaviour is speculativeView the full article

The latest Apple Watch costs $429. A basic Peloton Bike is $1,395, plus a $49.99 monthly subscription. Throw in a WHOOP membership at $149 annually, maybe an Oura Ring for another $349, and suddenly you're looking at thousands of dollars to participate in what's become the standard way many Americans approach their health. For some, that price tag is steep. For others, it's a non-starter. I'm no stranger to the appeal of the latest, greatest wearables and smart health devices. But as all this wellness technology become the norm, what does this mean for people who don't strap a smartwatch onto their wrists? If comprehensive health data—and the insights it provides—becomes a luxury good, the existing digital health divide will only get worse. The digital health divideThe issue starts well before anyone considers buying a fitness tracker. Digital equity in healthcare is already a fundamental access issue. "In many ways, access to healthcare means access to technology," says Amy Gonzales, an associate professor in UC Santa Barbara's Department of Communication. "Especially since [the COVID-19 pandemic], the healthcare industry relies heavily on technology for their services. Text reminders about your appointment, scanning a QR code to check in, needing an e-health account to see your test results, or some providers only being available via telehealth, and so on." The basic infrastructure of modern healthcare—patient portals, appointment scheduling apps, prescription management systems—demands a level of digital literacy and access that not everyone can meet. Seniors may struggle with smartphone interfaces. Low-income families might rely on limited mobile data or shared devices. People with certain disabilities may find standard health apps difficult or impossible to navigate. And the problem compounds: Gonzales notes the populations most likely to face barriers with technology are often the same groups who may need that healthcare the most. Fitness trackers are becoming the norm—for someAgainst this backdrop of baseline digital inequity, fitness trackers and wearables have gotten more and more popular. These aren't essential medical devices in the traditional sense—nobody's life support depends on their Fitbit—but they've become cultural markers of health optimization. More concerning, they're increasingly becoming tools that provide genuinely useful health information that simply isn't available to people without the resources to buy in. Heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, sleep stages, stress levels, and more: We're living in a time of unprecedented insight into what our bodies are doing, if you can afford it. IN some circles, these devices have become simply how health-conscious people approach their wellbeing. Studies have shown that wearables can help detect abnormal heart rhythms, encourage increased physical activity, and provide early warning signs of illness. Some insurance companies offer discounts for users who share their fitness tracking data. Employers incorporate wearables into wellness programs. While this is promising for those who can afford it, others get left behind. "The digital divide is even more problematic with 'bonus devices,' or health 'accoutrements,' like smart wearables," says Gonzales. If at-risk health populations are already at-risk for digital access, it tracks that this access gap is only getting wider. The problem with ubquitous fitness tech The creation of a two-tiered information system is perhaps the most insidious aspect of fitness tech inequality. A person with an Apple Watch receives detailed daily reports about their cardiovascular health, activity levels, and sleep quality. They get alerts when their heart rate becomes irregular, or they can share comprehensive data with their physician that provides context for symptoms and conditions. Someone without these devices? They're left with subjective assessments and whatever gets captured during periodic doctor visits. "If you don't have the same resources to track your blood pressure, blood pressure, or physical activity," says Gonzales, "you are certainly being left behind on useful healthcare." Consider two people with similar cardiovascular risk factors. The one with a wearable device might receive an alert and seek immediate treatment, potentially preventing a stroke. The other person might not notice symptoms until a serious cardiac event occurs. Both deserved that potentially life-saving alert, but only one could afford the device that provided it. As more people in higher-income brackets adopt these technologies and share data with healthcare providers, medical understanding itself may become skewed toward populations who can afford comprehensive self-monitoring. If research studies increasingly incorporate wearable data, but if that data predominantly comes from affluent, educated users, the resulting insights may not apply equally across all demographics. Another perspectiveAccess isn't the only lens through which to view this fitness tech. "There's this implicit assumption that wearables are inherently good," says Gonzales. "What about privacy risks?" After all, if you think you own all your health data, think again. Think of the history of the healthcare industry's relationship with marginalized communities. The Tuskegee syphilis study, forced sterilizations, and ongoing disparities in pain management and maternal mortality have created a pretty understandable skepticism toward giving up data, to say the least. "Given the history of experimentation and exploitation of certain low-income populations, there's a natural distrust in these sub-groups," Gonzales says. "Maybe these demographics intentionally avoid third parties collecting their data." So, the same communities that might benefit most from health monitoring technology may also have the most legitimate reasons to be wary of it. As I've previously covered, data privacy protections remain inconsistent, and the long-term implications of sharing detailed biometric data with corporations are still unclear. For populations that have historically been surveilled, exploited, or discriminated against, choosing not to participate in constant data collection might be a rational decision, rather than simply a matter of access. There's something to be said for health approaches that don't involve third-party corporations accumulating detailed records of your body's functions. Finding solutionsNaturally, budget options for fitness tech do exist, and these options can help some people access these technologies. But even "affordable" options still cost money that many families simply don't have for what remains, technically speaking, optional equipment. When you're choosing between a $50 fitness tracker and groceries, the choice isn't really a choice at all. All of this is to say that the fitness tech inequality problem can't be solved by individual purchasing decisions or corporate discount programs. It's embedded in broader questions about healthcare access, digital equity, and what we consider essential versus optional in maintaining health. Glucose monitors, fertility trackers, or blood pressure cuffs could more easily qualify as medical equipment, where an Oura ring is still a luxury good. Addressing the gap requires reimagining what counts as necessary healthcare technology. Otherwise, we could be approaching a future where your ability to detect health problems early, track chronic conditions, and optimize your fitness depends on whether you can afford a monthly subscription. The bottom lineHealthcare has become digitized, creating new opportunities for monitoring and intervention, but also new mechanisms for inequality. As fitness technology continues advancing, offering more sophisticated monitoring and more actionable insights, that fundamental inequality will only get worse. Because at the intersection of healthcare and technology, "the people who struggle with one are often the same people who need the other," Gonzales says. The Apple Watch on your wrist may feel like a personal choice, a small investment in your personal wellness. But scale that up across millions of people and billions of data points, and individual choices become structural inequalities. Technology that was supposed to democratize health information may instead be creating new hierarchies of who gets to know what about their own bodies. And those who need that knowledge most may be the least likely to access it. View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...View the full article

Generative systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are quietly taking over the early parts of discovery – the “what should I know?” stage that once sent millions of people to your website. Visibility now isn’t just about who ranks. It’s about who gets referenced inside the models that guide those decisions. The metrics we’ve lived by – impressions, sessions, CTR – still matter, but they no longer tell the full story. Mentions, citations, and structured visibility signals are becoming the new levers of trust and the path to revenue. This article pulls together data from Siege Media’s two-year content performance study, Grow and Convert’s conversion findings, Seer Interactive’s AI Overview research, and what we’re seeing firsthand inside generative platforms. Together, they offer a clearer view of where visibility, engagement, and buying intent are actually moving as AI takes over more of the user journey – and has its eye on even more. Content type popularity and engagement trends In a robust study, the folks at Siege Media analyzed two years of performance across various industry blogs, covering more than 7.2 million sessions. It’s an impressive dataset, and kudos to them for sharing it publicly. A disclaimer worth noting: the data focuses on blog content, so these trends may not map directly to other formats such as videos, documentation, or landing pages. With that in mind, here’s a run-through of what they surfaced. TL;DR of the Siege Media study Pricing and cost content saw the strongest growth over the past two years, while top-of-funnel guides and “how-to” posts declined sharply. They suggest that pricing pages gained ground at the expense of TOFU content. I interpret this differently. Pricing content didn’t simply replace TOFU because the relationship isn’t zero-sum. As user patterns evolve, buyers increasingly start with generative research, then move to high-intent queries like pricing or comparisons as they get closer to a decision. That distinction – correlation vs. causation – matters a lot in understanding what’s really changing. The data shows major growth in pricing pages, calculators, and comparison content. Meanwhile, guides and tutorials – the backbone of legacy SEO – took a sharp hit. Keep that drop in mind. We’ll circle back to it later. Interestingly, every major content category saw an increase in engagement. That makes sense. As users complete more of their research inside generative engines, they reach your site later in the journey or for additional details, when they’re already motivated and ready to act. If you’re a data-driven SEO, this might sound like a green light to focus exclusively on bottom-of-funnel content. Why bother with top-of-funnel “traffic” that doesn’t convert? Leave that for the suckers chasing GEO visibility metrics for vanity, right? But of course, this is SEO, so I have to say it … Did you expect me to say, “It depends?” Here’s a question instead: when that high-intent user typed the query that surfaced a case study, pricing page, or comparison page, where did they first learn the brand existed? Dig deeper: AI agents in SEO: What you need to know Don’t forget the TOFU! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’ll have to keep making TOFU content. You might need to make even more of it. Let’s think about legacy SEO. If we look back – waaaaay back – to 2023 and a study from Grow and Convert, we see that while there is far more TOFU traffic… …it converts far worse. Note: They only looked at one client, so take it with a grain of salt. However, the direction still aligns with other studies and our instincts. This pattern also shows up across channels like PPC, which is why TOFU keywords are generally cheaper than BOFU. The conversion rate is higher at the bottom of the funnel. Now we’re seeing this shift carry over to generative engines, except that generative engines cover the TOFU journey almost entirely. Rather than clicking through a series of low-conversion content pieces as they move through the funnel, users stay inside the generative experience through TOFU and often MOFU, then click through or shift to another channel (search or direct) only when it’s time to convert. For example, when I asked ChatGPT to help me plan a trip to the Outer Banks: After a dozen back-and-forths planning a trip and deciding what to eat, I wanted to find out where to stay. That journey took me through many steps and gave me multiple chances to encounter different brands and filtering or refinement options. I eventually landed on my BOFU prompt, “Some specific companies would be great.” From there, I might click the links or search for the company names on Google. What matters about this journey – apart from the fact that my final query would be practically useless as insight in something like Search Console – is that throughout the TOFU and MOFU stages, I was seeing citations and encountering brands I would rely on later. Once I switched into conversion mode, I wanted help making decisions. That’s where I’m likely to click through to a few companies to find a rental. So, when we read statistics like Pew’s finding that AI Overviews reduce CTR by upwards of 50%, and then consider what happens when AI Mode hits the browser, it’s easy to worry about where your traffic goes. Add to that ChatGPT’s 700 million weekly active users (and growing): And according to their research on how users engage with it: We can see a clear TOFU hit and very little BOFU usage. So, on top of the ~50% hit you may be taking from AI Overviews, 700+ million people are going to ChatGPT and other generative platforms for their top-of-funnel needs. I did exactly that above with my trip planning to the OBX. Dig deeper: 5 B2B content types AI search engines love Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. But wait! The good news is that while that vacation rental company or blue widget manufacturer might not see me on their site when I’m figuring out what to do – or what a blue widget even is – I’m still going to take the same number of holidays and buy the same number of products I would have without AI Overviews or ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc. Unless you’re a publisher or make money off impressions, you’ll still have the same amount of money to be made. It just might take fewer website visits to do it. More about TOFU Traffic at the bottom of the funnel is holding steady for now (more on that below), but the top of the funnel is being replaced quickly by generative conversations rather than visits. The question is whether being included in those conversations affects your CTR further down the funnel. The folks at Seer Interactive found that organic clicks rose from 0.6% to 1.08% when a site was cited in AI Overviews. And while the traffic was far lower, ChatGPT had a conversion rate of 16% compared with Google organic’s 1.8%. If we look at the conversion rate for organic traffic at the bottom of the funnel – which we saw above – it was 4.78%. Users who engage with generative engines clearly get further into their decision-making than users who reach BOFU queries through organic search. But why? While I can’t be certain, I agree with Seer’s conclusion that AI-driven users are pre-sold during the TOFU stage. They’ve already encountered your brand and trust the system to interpret their needs. When it’s time to convert, they’re almost ready with their credit card. Why bottom-funnel stability won’t last much longer Above, I noted that “traffic at the bottom of the funnel is holding steady for now.” It’s only fair to warn you that through 2026 and 2027, we’ll likely see this erode. The same number of people will still travel and still buy blue widgets. They just won’t book or buy them themselves. And at best, attribution will be even worse than it is today. I spoke at SMX Advanced last spring about the rise of AI agents. I won’t get into all the gory details here, but the Cliff Notes are this: Agents are AI systems with some autonomy that complete tasks humans otherwise would. They’re rising quickly – it’s the dominant topic for those of us working in AI – and that growth isn’t slowing anytime soon. You need to be ready. A few concepts to familiarize yourself with, if you want to understand what’s coming, are: AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol): A standard that allows agents to securely execute payments on your behalf. Think of it as a digital letter of credit that ensures the agent can only buy the specific “blue widget” you approved within the price limit you set. Before you say, “But I’d never send a machine to do a human’s job,” let me tell you, you will. And if you somehow prove me wrong individually out of spite, your customers will. Gemini Computer Use Model API: A model with reasoning and image understanding that can navigate and engage with user interfaces like websites. While many agentic systems access data via APIs, this model (OpenAI has one too, as do others) lets the agent interact with visual interfaces to access information it normally couldn’t – navigating filters, logins, and more if given the power. MCP (Model Context Protocol): An emerging standard acting as a universal USB port for AI apps. It lets agents safely connect to your internal data (like checking your calendar or reading your emails) to make purchasing decisions with full context and to work interactively with other agents. Hat tip to Ahrefs for building an awesome MCP server. Dig deeper: How Model Context Protocol is shaping the future of AI and search marketing Why do these protocols matter to a content strategist? Because once AP2 and Computer Use hit critical mass, the click – that sacred metric we’ve optimized for two decades – changes function. It stops being a navigation step for a human exploring a website and becomes a transactional step for a machine executing a task. If an agent uses Computer Use to navigate your pricing page and AP2 to pay for the subscription, the human user never sees your bottom-of-the-funnel content. So in that world, who – or rather, what – are you optimizing for? This brings us back to the Siege Media data. Right now, pricing pages and calculators are winning because humans are using AI to research (TOFU and MOFU) and then manually visiting sites to convert (BOFU). But as agents take over execution, that manual visit disappears. The “traffic” to your pricing page may be bots verifying costs, not humans persuaded by your copy. The 2026 strategy This reality pushes value back up the funnel. If the agent handles the purchase, the human decision – the “moment of truth” – happens entirely inside the chat interface or agentic system during the research phase. In this world, you don’t win by having the flashiest pricing page. You win by being the brand the LLM recommends when the user asks, “Who should I trust?” Your strategy for 2026 requires a two-pronged approach: For the agent (the execution): Ensure your BOFU content is technically flawless. Use clean schema, accessible APIs, and clear data structures so that when an agent arrives via MCP or Computer Use to execute a transaction, it encounters no friction. For the human (the selection): Double down on TOFU. Focus on mentions and citations. You need to be the entity referenced in the generative answer so that users – and agents – trust you. As we move toward 2026 and then 2027 (it’ll be here sooner than you think), the “click” will become a commodity more often handled by machines. The mention, however, remains the domain of human trust. And in my opinion, that’s where your next battle for visibility will be fought. Time to start – or hopefully keep – making the TOFU. View the full article

Spotify has a knack for mining your listening data into something fun and shareable rather than weird and creepy for its annual “Wrapped” feature. This year, it outdid itself. The 2025 edition of Spotify Wrapped goes beyond just summarizing what you listened to with charts and infographics. This year, Spotify is also assigning each user a “Listening Age,” which is based on the release years of their favorite tracks compared to others in the same age group. The feature quickly went viral, as users recoiled at their seemingly geriatric (or juvenile) musical tastes. At the risk of reading too much into something that’s ultimately good fun, Wrapped’s expanding purview is a reminder of how the things you listen to can speak to who you are as a person, which could end up being valuable data. Your Listening Age is mostly a silly diversion, but it could also be a kind of flex as Spotify expands its targeted advertising ambitions. Heading into 2026, Spotify is under pressure from shareholders to boost ad revenue. While 63% of monthly active users are on Spotify’s free, ad-supported plan, they only made up about 10% of revenues last quarter. Analysts such as Rich Greenfield have criticized Spotify for disappointing ad revenue growth, and the company launched a programmatic ad exchange earlier this year to scale up its ad placements. The shift toward programmatic advertising, in which ads are bought and sold through automated systems, will entail granular targeting of users based on what Spotify knows about them. Spotify has long boasted to advertisers about being able to target ads based on users’ listening behaviors and interests, and says its programmatic ads will let advertisers “reach users based on moods, mindsets and moments.” This doesn’t exactly come across in Spotify’s user-level data. If you download a copy of it, you’ll find an “Inferences” section in which Spotify tries to guess some things about you, based on both your usage of the service and on data from advertisers, but some users have puzzled over how wildly inaccurate this data can be. For instance, it categorized one user as both Democrat and Republican, and another as simultaneously getting engaged and divorced. But this year’s Spotify Wrapped shows that there’s another level of analysis going on, one that might be a little more nuanced than just your likes and interests. As Spotify notes, your Listening Age is based not simply on when your most-played songs came out, but how those tastes compare to other people who are your actual age. It’s reminiscent of Wrapped 2023’s “Sound Town” feature, in which each user was given a city with which their musical tastes lined up. Users are starting to realize that this kind of analysis has value outside of Spotify. In February, a small group of them formed a collective called “Unwrapped” to pool and monetize their data. As reported by Ars Technica, roughly 10,000 users voted to sell aggregate artist preference data to an AI company for cryptocurrency worth about $5 per user. The group also hoped to tap into their data in other ways, for instance to identify emotional patterns in their listening habits. Spotify objected to users selling their own data via its APIs and warned Unwrapped’s developers to knock it off. The site now shows a message saying “This Service is No Longer Available.” Users who want to run their own analyses on Spotify’s data must manually download a copy of it instead. Should Spotify’s power of inference bother you at all? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. People are already pouring their hearts out to generative AI assistants that are likely to switch on their own hyper-targeted advertising businesses in the years ahead. The upshot is that the ads you see could be as much tied to your psychological state as they are to your interests or demographics. Spotify’s ability to target ads based on your mood might soon seem quaint by comparison. But don’t be surprised if future Wrapped features push things just a little further, beyond just how old you seem or what city you vibe with, but how excited, annoyed, anxious, carefree, or spontaneous you’ve been. As long as Spotify can package that psychology in a fun way, it’ll surely go viral again. View the full article

In a world assailed by extreme weather, homeowners and purchasers need to know their property's vulnerability to wildfire or flooding. Ratings like those Zillow took down are a big improvement on often outdated federal flood maps and state wildfire maps. View the full article

Google's John Mueller said at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich today that Google is still working on the next core update. This update should be out soon, but it is unclear if it will happen in the next couple of days or after the holiday season.View the full article

An evidence-driven look at how paywalls can stabilize revenue, strengthen owned audiences, and reduce long-term dependence on volatile platform traffic. The post So You Want To Paywall? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

In the English countryside, a new project has emerged from the landscape—quite literally. Rammed Earth House, a residential estate by London-based Tuckey Design Studio, combines renovated brick buildings with new rammed earth structures, harnessing the clay soil of the very land it sits on. “The material is already under your feet, and it doesn’t come with all the carbon baggage that other [building] materials come with,” says studio founder Jonathan Tuckey. As a building technique, rammed earth—which combines clay soil with aggregate such as gravel into tightly compressed layers—traces back thousands of years. It was widely used in ancient China, but appears globally throughout history, including in the U.S. After the industrial revolution, and the innovations of steel, concrete, glass, and mass-produced bricks, the traditional method fell out of favor. Now, however, an increasing number of architects are looking to the material as a sustainable, place-rooted way to build amid a climate crisis that calls for dramatically reduced carbon emissions. “It has this carbon credit locked into it—that’s a major head start against any other material,” says Tuckey. Because rammed earth doesn’t require high-temperature firing processes like bricks or concrete, and can use material from the building site itself (without need for transportation), its associated carbon emissions tend to be much lower. It can also harness material that might otherwise go to waste. At Rammed Earth House, the client wanted some run-down buildings on site to be demolished—but rather than this rubble being wasted, Tuckey Design Studio used it as the aggregate for the rammed earth, recycling the old buildings into the new. “It’s an entirely circular material,” says Tuckey of rammed earth. “If you ever wanted to demolish it, it would just go back into the ground. If you wanted to repair it, you can just pick up the clay from the ground and bash it in simply—it will be restored immediately.” Architects also praise rammed earth’s high thermal mass—insulative properties that regulate a building’s indoor temperature. For U.S practice Lake Flato Architects, this was particularly helpful for a home in west Texas, Marfa Ranch. In the desert environment, temperatures vary greatly; using rammed earth meant the dwelling “could be comfortable on the hottest days of the year, and also on the coldest,” says practice partner Bob Harris. The material also connected the building to its landscape, using locally sourced earth. “It felt really natural for us to build of that material,” says Harris. The same was true for global practice Snøhetta, which is using rammed earth for the upcoming Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota’s Badlands, integrating large internal walls made from the material. “We were looking to create a building that is of the place,” explains Aaron Dorf, director and architect at Snøhetta. The surrounding landscape is “defined by layers and layers of earth that you see—it’s profoundly beautiful.” The material has a natural, textured and warm-hued appearance that can enhance an interior. “It’s a much more tactile public-facing material,” says Dorf. Tuckey describes it as looking like “some precious travertine stone.” The expertise problem The material does come with challenges, however—and resilience, labor, time, and location are primary issues. “When you decide to use rammed earth, you come quite quickly to a fork in the road as to which route you’re going to go down, and they are fundamentally different materials,” says Tuckey. These two versions, “stabilized” and “unstabilized” rammed earth, demand different features and have variable ecological credentials. Stabilized rammed earth has cement in the mix to make the material more robust and resilient, especially to water. Some sustainability experts have criticized this as having a similar negative ecological impact to concrete, which also uses cement (the carbon emissions from cement come during the heating of limestone to high temperatures). Lake Flato and Snøhetta used stabilized rammed earth for durability, but the architects insist the proportion of cement used is very low. At Marfa Ranch, cement makes up approximately 6% of the material, explains Harris, which can be compared to an average of 10% to 15% in concrete. Unstabilized rammed earth does not include any cement, thus eliminating those associated carbon emissions and becoming a circular material, but it subsequently requires techniques to prevent erosion when exposed to the elements. Tuckey explains that using a base and topper of more waterproof material—in the case of Rammed Earth House, he used bricks—protects the rammed earth walls from water damage. Meanwhile, to protect from rain, he placed slim horizontal lines of trass lime rock that project away from the external surface, allowing rainwater to fall off. “As long as you understand how the material is used, the challenges fall away,” Tuckey says. But it is this in-depth knowledge of building with rammed earth that can be hard to find. “It has become a lost form of construction,” says Tuckey, who collaborated with Martin Rauch, a rammed earth expert from Austria. “Expertise is a challenge,” agrees Lake Flato partner Andrew Herdeg, who oversaw the practice’s Horizon House project in Nevada, which also used rammed earth. There, the architects brought in a consultant from northern California. The process can be a slow one, too—especially for those new to the technique. The earth is compressed down within tightly confined formwork (wooden supporting structures that are removed at the end of the process); ramming it by hand is a “grueling process,” says Herdeg—though it is possible to use pneumatic tampers. “It’s very labour intensive,” agrees Harris. “It takes quite a long time to construct [the] walls.” Because of that labour, he adds, “it can be costly.” The architects estimate that compared to concrete, there is a roughly 12% cost uplift when building with rammed earth. Built for the right climate Perhaps most important is to use rammed earth in the locations and climates that make most sense. “We wouldn’t want to drive earth around the country, just to use it for the sake of it,” says Tuckey, explaining that it’s best if the clay soil needed is found locally. Lake Flato advocates it as “a dry climate response,” says Herdeg; best in a context where there’s low humidity and high diurnal swings. “It really excels in those environments.” Snøhetta’s Dorf echoes the sentiment: “You have to build it in the right location. And I think forcing it into the wrong climate isn’t going to work very well.” Still, the architects seem to believe that when those right conditions align and the challenges are navigated, rammed earth has a positive impact across multiple aspects. “We think of our work as a tool to connect people to place, to context, to the natural environment,” says Herdeg. For him, rammed earth can reflect “a literal mission of building responsibly,” but also a philosophical mission, encouraging others to care about that responsibility. Lake Flato is currently planning an extension to Horizon House, and though contractors advocate poured concrete, Herdeg is keen to continue using rammed earth. “The reality is you can do just a coloured concrete wall and it looks quite similar to rammed earth and costs significantly less,” he says. “But at the end of the day, the carbon footprint of the concrete is significantly higher—and you don’t get that real material texture.” Meanwhile, many are looking to intersect new technologies and engineering with the ancient building method to make it more practical or affordable to use. Tuckey cites one company that produces prefabricated timber frames infilled with rammed earth, and engineers in Australia recently developed modular blocks of rammed earth in cardboard cylinders. Inspired by using the material for Rammed Earth House, Tuckey’s studio is now working on a project of terraced houses using prefabricated rammed earth blocks. The aim is to establish a factory near to the site in Gloucestershire, in southwest England, to make the prefabricated elements, using local construction waste as the aggregate in the rammed earth mixture. “I think it’s about a reawakening,” Tuckey says of the new era of rammed earth architecture, and of moving away from more carbon-intensive building materials. His hope is that “when you look at a pile of brand-new bricks, you look at them not just with dollar signs in your mind, but also carbon signs.” View the full article

A strategic framework for diagnosing organic traffic drops by separating tracking, brand, and SEO issues through smart data segmentation. The post Why Is Organic Traffic Down? Here’s How To Segment The Data appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

After Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO of Allbirds in March 2024, he took three months off—mainly because his wife Liz said she’d divorce him if he jumped into another venture. He had run the sustainable shoe company for 10 years while the couple raised their three young children. “It took a real toll on the family,” Liz says. (“I would say it developed character in our family,” Zwillinger counters.) Before long, he was itching to start a new project, an ambition he shyly expressed to his wife. “It was really hard to want to sign up for something like that all over again,” Liz says. But this time, he cofounded the venture with Liz. It’s also a bold pivot from a sustainable shoe company to an entirely different industry: women’s hormone health supplements. At a time when health and wellness is big business, it might also be a smart pivot. But it’s an undeniably different world, navigating health regulations and making bold investment choices when such bets didn’t go so well at Allbirds. Revenue and share prices dipped drastically starting in 2022, and have hardly recovered. Launching December 9, Biologica is a set of new supplements for women’s health, naturally flavored and powdered to fizz into water. Each single sachet, or separately sealed daily dose to be mixed with eight ounces of water, targets different body functions with ingredients including electrolytes, multivitamins, botanicals, and probiotics. Crucially to the value proposition, there are three products for different life stages: younger reproductive years, perimenopause, and post-menopause. While some share ingredients like Vitamin C and potassium, for different stages you may have dosages of broccoli extract (for detoxification and liver function), pomegranate extract (for skin hydration), or saffron (for mood balance and sleep quality). The idea came from Liz’s own struggles; she would take different supplements daily for various issues, leading to seven separate pills plus extra vitamins, which became “a super onerous supplement routine that didn’t feel like it was sustainable,” she says. That was a common issue the couple found in their initial focus groups. Women could only find a one-size-fits-all pill or gummy that promised to do everything. Or, as in Liz’s case, various targeted supplements, which became unsustainable as the cost of living rose. They also found that women of different ages had different concerns. So they set out to create a company with only one product per customer—but narrowed to their hormonal age. They believe that’s their major selling point. MAHA movement and ‘changing winds’ The health and wellness sector is “absolutely” an attractive space for founders now, says Matthew Oster, head of health, beauty, and hygiene insights at Euromonitor International. He says lines are now blurrier than ever between pharma and food and beverage. A trend toward natural and food-based remedies has been “churning in the background culturally over the last 10 or 15 years,” he says, and increasingly linked with medical distrust—and has now become branded as RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. “So at the same time that these companies are recognizing that consumers want healthier products,” he says, “there’s this whole movement codifying that.” Supplements, whether fortified fibers, proteins, or biotics, are no longer just a “hippie, natural, crunchy thing,” Oster says. “It’s a dead-right-in-the-middle mainstream proposition.” But in the age of TikTokification, “this wellness market is rife with changing winds, on a dime,” Oster says. “Some of these ingredients trends last months as opposed to years.” Longevity is often hard to forecast: CBD was an example of a fleeting fad, but other trends, like protein, are only getting bigger. Women’s health might be a better bet, especially around life stages. “No one really even talked about perimenopause a few years ago from a product formulation perspective,” Oster says. “In a short amount of time, we had a proliferation of products in that space.” There are others on the market, but “not a tremendous amount,” Oster says. Perelel is a supplements company that has seen strong growth since August 2024, where you can “shop by stage,” from “trying to conceive,” through “perimenopause.” Health & Her is a British company with capsule products for different life stages, which launched in the U.S. this summer with CVS. Now, he says, it’s just about seeing which products will stick, and which will fizzle out. The failure rate may be high, but at least it’s a relatively short lead time to get to market versus digital health or pharma products (the Zwillingers have gone from ideation to rollout in a year and a half), and a relatively minimal financial commitment (they raised a $7 million seed round). “This is a low bet from an investment cost,” Oster says, “that if you lose your shirt, you lose your shirt.” Learning lessons from Allbirds’ fall But it’s still a risk to navigate a new industry when Zwillinger’s previous venture took an unexpected plunge after its initial success. In the late 2010s, Allbirds was a phenomenon. Its minimalist running sneakers, made from merino wool and a foam sole of sugar cane, were named the “world’s most comfortable shoes” by Time in 2017. They became almost the official dress code of Silicon Valley, part of the “tech bro starter pack” meme (along with the Patagonia zipper vest, Yeti bottle, and Lime scooter). They were like a cultural snapshot of the era; even Obama was spotted wearing them. But in March 2024, Zwillinger resigned and handed over the CEO reins after repeated cycles of declining revenue. Even by 2022, The Wall Street Journal assessed, the tech bros had moved on. The media’s Allbirds postmortems blamed overly ambitious expansion beyond their core bestsellers, and too rashly opening numerous brick-and-mortar stores. Today, revenue is still declining, and half its stores are closed. Zwillinger, still an active board member, says when COVID-19 hit during the company’s peak—eclipsing $200 million in revenue—he and his cofounder, Tim Brown, responded too dramatically to shifting consumer trends, including pivoting too hard from lifestyle to running and hiking. “We were too immature of a company to parse out what was signal and what was noise,” he says, “and we made some really big bets based on that.” They were forced to discount the product to move the inventory. Allbirds was also known for its eco-friendliness: it’s a certified B Corp, with a core polymer material that’s carbon-negative. Zwillinger says he’s learned you can’t build a business around sustainability alone. “[Consumers] want to make sure that the innovation actually does something that meets their needs,” he says. In a way, navigating health in the new business is similar to navigating sustainability. Once competing with some rivals that were greenwashing, they now face some wellness brands that make unsubstantiated claims. Companies “feel free to say whatever to make a sale,” Zwillinger says. “It’s a little scary starting a business in a space like that.” There’s enough leniency from the FDA for some bold claims, and a lack of budget for the agency to do much even when there’s blatant overstepping. You can’t say a supplement cures or prevents a disease, but you can make a claim about the role of an ingredient, like “calcium builds strong bones.” But some of the gray areas can lead to a “freewheeling, cowboy approach to what they claim,” Zwillinger says. That’s concerning to many medical experts, who have publicly noted their skepticism around supplements, some recommending not to spend money on something that most people can obtain from a healthy diet alone. An independent panel of national experts in 2022 reviewed 84 supplements studies and concluded there was “insufficient evidence” of their efficacy. The Zwillingers say they have tried to do things right via focus groups, clinical research, and a 1,000-woman study; they have a medical advisory board with two ob-gyns and a breast cancer surgeon specialist (as well as a more Eastern-focused herbalist). Oster says it’s good to get everything right with the science. But in this social media era, it might not even be science that drives sales for some consumers. “Vibes and feelings are pretty influential,” he says. DTC as the initial test Still, from a business strategy perspective, the reliance on data has been helpful, allowing them to be less subjective, and not cater to their own tastes, as Zwillinger and Brown did at Allbirds. “In this situation, I have zero lived experience and no subjectivity,” he says. “Looking back, everyone should do that with every business they run—take themselves out of it.” Consumer trends have also changed dramatically, as pandemic patterns faded and social media proliferated. Allbirds, along with fellow unicorns Warby Parker and Casper, was a direct-to-consumer (DTC) pioneer. Though assessments that “DTC is dead” are highly exaggerated, Oster says, companies have to get social media marketing right, as people now just buy directly from those platforms. “TikTok Shop has really taken over from a supplements perspective,” Oster says. Zwillinger knows they will ultimately have to be “predominantly retail-oriented to be successful,” but they have to start with DTC, probably for a year or two (products will be ready to ship to consumers December 9). “I have learned deeply and with some scars,” he says, that you need a robust and popular product before entering wholesale relationships. The DTC launch will be a way to test the product, and iron out issues. Those could be things like flavors, which they’ve formulated without sugar. Or the price, which is $59 a month, for 30 sachets in a tin, to finance some expensive ingredients like saffron. Or, the branding of the product, which they’ve tried to give a premium feel, with elegant-looking tins to be displayed on a counter or desk, not shoved away in the pantry, and to speak to a sophisticated customer base. But of course, all remains to be seen as it rolls out. “We think we’re brilliant, [that] we’ve done everything right,” Zwillinger says. “But when we start selling, we’re going to find out we were idiots about lots of things.” View the full article

Evaluating SEO tools has never been more complicated. Costs keep rising, and promises for new AI features are everywhere. This combination is hardly convincing when you need leadership to approve a new tool or expand the budget for an existing one. Your boss still expects SEO to show business impact – not how many keywords or prompts you can track, how fast you can optimize content, or what your visibility score is. That is exactly where most tools still fail miserably. The landscape adds even more friction. Features are bundled into confusing packages and add-on models, and the number of solutions has grown sharply in the last 12 months. Teams can spend weeks or even months comparing platforms only to discover they still cannot demonstrate clear ROI or the tools are simply out of budget. If this sounds familiar, keep reading. This article outlines a practical framework for evaluating your SEO tool stack in 2026, focusing on: Must-have features. A faster way to compare multiple tools. How to approach vendor conversations. The new realities of SEO tooling in 2026 Before evaluating vendors, it helps to understand the forces reshaping the SEO tooling landscape – and why many platforms are struggling to keep pace. Leadership wants MQLs, not rankings Both traditional and modern SEO tools still center on keyword and prompt tracking and visibility metrics. These are useful, but they are not enough to justify the rising prices. In 2026, teams need a way to connect searches to traffic and then to MQLs and revenue. Almost no tool provides that link, which makes securing larger budgets nearly impossible. (I say “almost” because I have not tested every platform, so the unicorn may exist somewhere.) AI agents raise expectations With AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity – along with the ability to build custom GPTs, Gems, and Agents – teams can automate a wide range of tasks. That includes everything from simple content rewriting and keyword clustering to more complex competitor analysis and multi-step workflows. Because of this, SEO tools now need to explain why they are better than a well-trained AI agent. Many can’t. This means that during evaluation, you inevitably end up asking a simple question: do you spend the time training your own agent, or do you buy a ready-made one? Small teams need automation that truly saves time If you want real impact, your automation shouldn’t be cosmetic. You can’t rely on generic checklists or basic AI recommendations, yet many tools still provide exactly that – fast checklists with no context. Without context, automation becomes noise. It generates generic insights that are not tailored to your company, product, or market, and those insights will not save time or drive results. Teams need automation that removes repetitive work and delivers better insights while genuinely giving time back. Dig deeper: 11 of the best free tools every SEO should know about A note on technical SEO tools Technical SEO tools remain the most stable part of the SEO stack. The vendor landscape has not shifted dramatically, and most major platforms are innovating at a similar pace. Because of this, they do not require the same level of reevaluation as newer AI-driven categories. That said, budgeting for them may still become challenging. Leadership often assumes AI can solve every problem, but we know that without strong technical performance, SEO, content, and AI efforts can easily fail. I will also make one bold prediction – we should be prepared to expect the unexpected in this category. These platforms can crawl almost any site at scale and extract structured information, which could make them some of the most important and powerful tools in the stack. Many already pull data from GA and GSC, and integrating with CRM or other data platforms may be only a matter of time. I see that as a likely 2026 development. What must-have features actually look like in 2026 To evaluate tools effectively, it helps to focus on the capabilities that drive real impact. These are the ones worth prioritizing in 2026. Advanced data analysis and blended data capabilities Data analysis will play a much bigger role. Tools that let you blend data from GA, GSC, Salesforce, and similar sources will move you closer to the Holy Grail of SEO – understanding whether a prompt or search eventually leads to an MQL or a closed-won deal. This will never be a perfect science, but even a solid guesstimation is more useful than another visibility chart. Integration maturity is becoming a competitive differentiator. Disconnected data remains the biggest barrier between SEO work and business attribution. SERP intelligence for keywords and prompts Traditional SERP intelligence remains essential. You still need: Topic research and insights for top-ranking pages. Competitor analysis. Content gap insights. Technical issues and ways to fix them. You also need AI SERP intelligence, which analyzes: How AI tools answer specific prompts. What sources do they cite. If your brand appears, and if your competitors are also mentioned. In an ideal world, these two groups should appear side by side and provide you with a 360-degree view of your performance. Automation with real-time savings Prioritize tools that: Cluster automatically. Detect anomalies. Provide prioritized recommendations for improvements. Turn data into easy-to-understand insights. These are just some of the examples of practical AI that can really guide you and save you time. Strong multilingual support This applies to SEO experts who work with websites in languages other than English. Many tools are still heavily English-centric. Before choosing a tool, make sure the databases, SERP tracking, and AI insights work across languages, not just English. Transparent pricing and clear feature lists Hidden pricing, confusing bundles, and multiple add-ons make evaluation frustrating. Tools should communicate clearly: Which features they have. All related limitations. Whether a feature is part of the standard plan or an add-on. When something from the standard plan moves to an add-on. Many vendors change these things quietly, which makes calculating the investment you need difficult and hard to justify. Dig deeper: How to choose the best AI visibility tool Plus, some features that might be overhyped AI writing If you can’t input detailed information about your brand, product, and persona, the content you produce will be the same as everyone else’s. Many tools already offer this and can make your content sound as if it were written by one of your writers. So the question is whether you need a specialized tool or if a custom GPT can do the job. Prompt tracking It’s positioned as the new rank tracking, but it is like looking at one pixel of your monitor. It gives you only a tiny clue of the whole picture. AI answers change based on personalization and small differences in prompts, and the variations are endless. Still, this tactic is helpful in: Providing directional signals. Helping you benchmark brand presence. Highlighting recurring themes AI platforms use. Allowing competitive analysis within a controlled sample. Large keyword databases They still matter for directional research, but are not a true competitive differentiator. Most modern tools have enough coverage to guide your strategy. The value now stems from the practical insights derived from the data. How to compare 10 tools without wasting your time Understanding features is only half the equation. The real challenge is knowing how to evaluate specialized tools and all-in-one platforms without losing your sanity or blocking your team for weeks. After going through this process for the tenth time, I’ve found an approach that works for me. Step 1: Start with the pricing page I always begin my evaluation on the pricing page. With one page, you can get a clear sense of: All features. Limitations. Which ones fall under add-ons. The general structure of the pricing tiers. Even if you need a demo to get the exact price, the framework should still be relatively transparent. Step 2: Test using your normal weekly work No checklist will show you more than trying your regular BAU tasks with a couple of tools in parallel. This reveals: How long each task takes. What insights appear or disappear. What feels smoother or more clunky. How difficult the setup is – including whether the learning curve is huge. I work in a small team, and a tool that takes many hours just to set up likely will not make my final list. Not all evaluations can rely on BAU tasks. For example, when we researched tools for prompt and AI visibility tracking, we tested more than ten platforms. This capability did not exist in our stack, and at first, we had no idea what to check. In those cases, you need to define a small set of test scenarios from scratch and compare how each tool performs. Continue refining your scenarios, because each new evaluation will teach you something new. Dig deeper: Want to improve rankings and traffic? Stop blindly following SEO tool recommendations Step 3: Always get a free trial Demos are polished. Reality often is not. If there is no option for a free trial, either walk away or, if the tool is not too expensive, pay for a month. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Step 4: Involve only the people who will actually use the tool Always ask yourself who truly needs to be involved in the evaluation. For example, we are currently assessing a platform used not only by the SEO team but also by two other teams. We asked those teams for a brief summary of their requirements, but until we have a shortlist, there is no reason to involve them further or slow the process. And if your company has a heavy procurement or security review, involving too many people too early will slow everything down even more. At the same time, involve the whole SEO team, because each person will see different strengths and weaknesses and everyone will rely on the tool. Step 5: Evaluate results, not features Many features sound like magic wands. In reality, the magic often works only sometimes, or it works but is very expensive. To understand what you truly need, always ask yourself: Did the tool save time? Did it surface insights that my current stack does not? Could a custom GPT do this instead? Does the price make sense for my team, and can I prove its ROI? These questions turn the decision into a business conversation rather than a feature debate and help you prepare your “sales” pitch for your boss. Step 6: Evaluate support quality, not just product features Support has become one of the most overlooked parts of tool evaluation. Many platforms rely heavily on AI chat and automated replies, which can be extremely frustrating when you are dealing with a time-sensitive issue or have to explain your problem multiple times. Support quality can significantly affect your team’s efficiency, especially in small teams with limited resources. When evaluating tools, check: How easy it is to reach a human. What response times look like. Whether the vendor offers onboarding or ongoing guidance. A great product with weak support can quickly become a bottleneck. Once you have a shortlist, the quality of your vendor conversations will determine how quickly you can move forward. And this may be the hardest part – especially for the introverted SEO leads, myself included. How to navigate vendor conversations I’m practical, and I don’t like wasting anyone’s time. I have plenty of tasks waiting, so fluff conversations aren’t helpful. That’s why I start every vendor call by setting clear goals, limitations, a timeline, and next steps. Over time, I’ve learned that conversations run much more smoothly when I follow a few simple principles. Be prepared for meetings If you are evaluating a tool, come prepared to the demo. Ideally, you should have access to a free trial, tested the platform, and created a list of practical questions. Showing up unprepared is not a good sign, and that applies to both sides. For example, I am always impressed when a vendor joins the conversation having already researched who we are, what we do, and who our competitors are. If you have spoken with the vendor before, directly ask what has changed since your last discussion. Ask for competitor comparisons When comparing a few tools, I always ask each vendor for a direct comparison. These comparisons will be biased, but collecting them from all sides can reveal insights I had not considered and give me ideas for specific things to test. Often, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. Ask how annual contracts influence pricing Annual contracts reduce administrative work and give vendors room to negotiate, which can lead to better pricing. Many tools include this information on their pricing pages, and we have all seen it. Ask about any other nuances that might affect the final price – such as additional user seats or add-ons. Don’t start from scratch with vendors you know Often, the most effective approach is simply to say: “This is our budget. This is what we need. Can you support this?” This works especially well with vendors you have used before because both sides already know each other. What to consider from a business perspective Even if you select a tool, that does not mean you will receive the budget for it. Proving ROI is especially difficult with SEO tools. But there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of getting a yes. Present at least three alternatives in every request This shows you have done your homework, not just picked the first thing you found. Present your leadership with: The criteria you used in your evaluation. Pros and cons of each tool. The business case and why the capability is needed. What happens if you do not buy the tool. Providing this view builds trust in your ability to make decisions. Avoid overselling Tools improve efficiency, but they cannot guarantee outcomes – especially in SEO, GEO, or whatever you call it. Spend time explaining how quickly things are changing and how many factors are outside your control. Managing expectations will strengthen your team’s credibility. But even with thorough evaluation and negotiation, we still face the same issue: the SEO tooling market has not caught up with what companies now expect. Let’s hope the future brings something closer to the clarity we see in Google Ads. Dig deeper: How to master the enterprise SEO procurement process The future of the SEO tool stack The next generation of SEO tools must move beyond vanity metrics. Trained AI agents and custom GPTs can already automate much of the work. In a landscape where companies want to reduce employee and operational costs, you need concrete business numbers to justify high tool prices. The platforms that can connect searches, traffic, and revenue will become the new premium category in SEO technology. For now, most SEO teams will continue to hear “no” when requesting budgets because that connection does not yet exist. And the moment a tool finally solves this attribution problem, it will redefine the entire SEO technology market. View the full article

I recently put together a list of the best small portable gaming handhelds for people who are tired of how big the Nintendo Switch 2 and handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck are. In an era of gaming devices that often feel like laptops with grips and buttons added to them, these retro gaming handhelds (as I call them) can be a great solution for people who miss the days of the PSP and Nintendo DS. But since they come from smaller companies, and run either Linux or Android, actually getting games on these devices is not quite so straightforward. After all, it's not like the people making these handhelds are publishing cartridges for them. While that's true, there are plenty of ways to play games both new and old on these devices, even if they were originally made for other consoles. And despite a reputation to the contrary, if you do them right, they're all legal. Retro gaming handhelds and emulation Credit: Libetro Emulation is a common use for retro gaming handhelds, to the point where some people just call them emulators. It isn’t the only thing you can do with these devices, but it’s definitely a popular way to put games on them, especially the weaker ones. Through emulation, your system can mimic older devices like the Game Boy, Super Nintendo, and PlayStation 1, to play games originally released for those platforms. This works by using your modern device’s more powerful hardware to run software that virtually recreates all the processes of old consoles, making older games think they’re running on the real thing. This is in comparison to games that “run natively,” meaning they’re running on the system they were built for. Emulators developed by fans are well-known, but even large companies like Nintendo use emulation. In fact, the games you play on Nintendo Switch Online are technically all emulated. This can come with downsides. You might run into minor inaccuracies in sound or graphics, but typically, the more powerful your device’s chip and the weaker the system you’re emulating, the less common these will be. You could also experience input lag, although I’ve never once been able to actually feel it across most of the devices I’ve used to emulate. (I say this as someone who has beaten all three of the original Ninja Gaiden games using emulation.) And there are upsides to emulation, too. Games can be upscaled to push out higher resolutions than ever intended natively, which can make for homebrew HD remasters if played on a nice enough screen. And most emulation programs support save states, which let you save your progress anywhere, anytime, separate from a specific game’s built-in save system. Save states can be a lifesaver for especially difficult games, or while playing on the go. The biggest hurdle, then, is setup. Some devices come with emulators built in, although you'll probably want to configure them to your specifications, and if you're on a Linux-based handheld, possibly run them alongside a custom, third-party firmware (more on that later). Specifics will vary from device to device, so for help, I suggest YouTuber Russ Crandall's guides on emulation. Crandall runs the channel Retro Game Corps, and has been a big help in my own emulation journey. He's also exhaustively catalogued the steps you'll need to go through for various handhelds. Truth be told, though, you'll probably be using similar programs across your handhelds. RetroArch is popular for emulating older systems, while newer ones require specific apps like Dolphin (for GameCube and Wii) or PPSSPP (for PSP). After you've set these up once, doing it for other handhelds is kind of like riding a bike. The biggest difficulty you’ll probably encounter will be providing ROM files for your emulators, which leads me to the elephant in the room. How legal is emulation?Emulation is convenient, and a great way to experience games that haven’t been re-released for modern consoles. But it also has a bit of a reputation for being shady. For comment, I reached out to YouTube Bob Wulff of Wulff Den, another mainstay in guides and reviews for retro gaming handhelds. Ultimately, Wulff thinks this reputation is undeserved. “I don’t like this stigma that Emulation [equals] Piracy,” he told me. “There are plenty of ways to acquire your ROMs legally.” And therein lies the rub. When people think that emulation is illegal, they’re usually conflating emulator programs with pirated game files, or ROMs. The process of writing original software to mimic a console’s function is actually perfectly legal, to the point where Apple now allows emulators on the App Store, but distributing copyrighted software to run on those emulators is where you get into legal issues. That’s why handheld companies like Anbernic have a bit of a bad reputation for including ROMs with their devices, as I highlight in my list of the best retro gaming handhelds. But theoretically, if you legally own a game, U.S. law allows you to make your own backup of it, which you could then play on an emulator without issue. Unless you’re downloading your games off pirate sites or buying SD cards with pirated ROMs pre-loaded onto them, playing games using an emulator shouldn't be any different in the eyes of the law than playing games on original hardware. As for how you can actually get your own legal backups of games you own, there are a number of devices that will read your cartridges and back up their ROM files for you, as well as PC programs that will do the same thing for disc-based games. Also note that you can emulate on phones and PCs, too, although there is a certain magic in emulating using a small handheld with controls built-in. You can also play Android and PC games Credit: PCMag But as much as some fans like to call retro gaming handhelds “emulators” and leave it at that, these devices can do more than mimic old consoles. The hardware for these devices is usually versatile enough to support playing modern games natively, streaming games from the cloud, or in some cases, even playing games originally meant for PC. You can play new games on these handhelds, too. Let's start with Android and cloud gaming, as they're among the simplest ways to get games on these devices. Android gamesThis is the obvious one. If your retro gaming handheld runs Android, then it stands to reason that it can run Android apps. This means that in addition to emulation, you can play phone games like Genshin Impact or Call of Duty Mobile. Your device's built-in controller will work with the game like any standard phone controller, and you’ll be able to play just as well as anyone on a phone could. Android-based gaming handhelds also come with touchscreens, so you shouldn’t run into problems if your game needs one. The only catch is that some devices with a square-ish aspect ratio might use a lot of letterboxing to actually show anything other than retro games on-screen, which could make for a tiny image (they'll be great for old, 4:3 games, though). Otherwise, know that the Play Store is your oyster. Cloud gamingIf your retro gaming handheld has Android installed on it, then you can also use it to stream games from the cloud. That means you could connect it to either your own home console, your PC, or a subscription service to play games that your device isn’t able to run on its own, or that you don’t want to install to it. The only issues you’ll face will be potential input lag and video compression, plus the need for a constant internet connection. But given that Sony sells a whole handheld built entirely around Remote Play, it’s great to have it as an option on these devices, while knowing that they can also play games on their own power, too. It’s an especially great choice for turn-based games, or other titles that don’t require twitchy, fast-paced inputs. How to play PC games on Linux and Android handhelds Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt This is a more recent innovation, but there are currently two ways to play PC games on your retro gaming handheld without relying on the cloud. One runs them natively, and one uses technology similar to the Steam Deck’s. PortmasterThe first method is for retro gaming handhelds that run Linux. These are usually the cheaper devices, the type you’ll get from companies like Anbernic or Miyoo. The version of Linux on these isn’t the same as on handhelds like the Steam Deck, so don’t expect to just be able to log into your Steam account with these and go off to the races. But thanks to the fan-made program Portmaster, you can still play some of your Steam games on these handhelds. Portmaster connects you with fan-made ports of PC games built to run natively on your retro gaming handheld. Some of these are freeware, and some will need you to plug in files from your own Steam installs to avoid violating copyright. But both types of games can be up-and-running in just a few steps, and like with emulation, Crandall has a guide to help get you started on your particular device. The big caveat here is that, to get Portmaster, you'll probably need to install a third-party firmware, also fan-made, to your device, rather than using what comes with it out of the box. I use muOS, but if you want something with a different style, there are other options, depending on your device. Since there's so much variation, I haven't personally tested all options, but Crandall again has you covered. You’ll also mostly be stuck with retro and lightweight games using this method, but there's an upside to that, too. I’ve already used it to help get through the indie darlings in my Steam back catalog, like Undertale. GameHub, GameHub Lite, and GameNativeThe second method is for devices that run Android. Much like the Steam Deck uses real-time compatibility layers to convert Windows games to run on its version of Linux, there are now Android apps that can help you run your Steam games on either your phone or your retro gaming handheld. The three popular ones are called GameHub, GameHub Lite, and GameNative. These programs add extra configuration and user friendliness on top of an existing app called WinLator, a compatibility layer that allows Windows programs to run on Android. You can log right into your Steam account using these apps, then download your games and play them on your Android handheld, complete with cloud saves. You’ll still be limited in what you can play, based on what’s had the most compatibility work put into it, but it’s great for lightweight games, older AAA games, and if your handheld is powerful enough (think the AYN Odin 3), even more recent AAA games from the PS4 era. “These Windows containers are really exciting,” Crandall told me when I reached out for comment. “I don’t think they are anywhere close to replacing a PC, but it’s exciting to get a lightweight PC game running nicely on a smaller handheld.” The problems with playing Steam games on AndroidThat said, there are a few concerns with using these apps. While Gamenative is open source, and GameHub Lite is an independent fork of GameHub that tries to fix its issues, GameHub will likely be the easiest app for most people to use, as it has the simplest interface and the most compatibility updates for various games. Unfortunately, it comes with a number of privacy concerns. Gamehub is made by controller company GameSir, which has made reputable products in the past, but it does want you to log into a GameSir account to use it, and some users might be uncomfortable linking their Steam data to that. It also includes, in Crandall’s words, “some fairly intrusive telemetry permissions.” However, both Crandall and Wulff are ultimately positive enough on GameHub. “It’s frankly no more nosy than any of the various social media apps we already have on our phones,” Crandall told me, also saying that if you’re uncomfortable logging in with a GameSir account, you can use “a Steam login token via QR code,” which should be more secure. Wulff, meanwhile, said “I don’t personally think there are any potential security issues with GameHub,” citing GameSir’s reputation and saying “I also just don’t think our Steam data is worth a damn.” The future of PC games on AndroidI see where both creators are coming from, but I have been a bit more cautious on this front. Still, it’s an enticing option if you’re willing to try it out, and it actually points to things to come. Recently, Valve announced its Steam Frame VR headset, which runs on the same type of framework that Android phones do. With that, retro gaming handheld enthusiasts are hopeful Valve will soon release an official way to play Steam games on these devices (and phones). That's something the company recently hinted at in an interview with The Verge, saying it has been quietly bankrolling much of the development on the compatibility layers that apps like WinLator and its derivatives use. On that note, if you’re brave, you could also just play your PC games on these devices using WinLator itself, or other alternatives like Pluvia. However, these have been too complex for me to fiddle with, and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone but the most hardcore tinkerers. I think I’m with Crandall in saying that “I’d much rather have a proper Steam-derived solution.” Fingers-crossed. 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Michael Burry, the money manager made famous in The Big Short, believes a re-listing of the US housing-finance giants is "nearly upon us." View the full article

If you’re searching for a new snack that’s heavy on flavor but manages to skip the unhealthy additives, you’re in luck. There’s a new one called Ragerz from Good Eat’n, NBA star Chris Paul’s snack brand, in partnership with the WNBA’s Paige Bueckers. And it sounds like a slam dunk. For starters, the snack—which is a bit like a healthier take on Takis—is focused on delivering a fierce flavor without the junk. It comes in Chili Lime and Sweet Chili Crunch flavors that, Bueckers tells Fast Company, do not miss the mark (hoop?). The snack “isn’t asking people to give up flavor to feel better about what they’re eating,” she says, adding that with Ragerz, “you can have both.” Chris Paul agrees, and says that now is the right time for better snacking options. “Families want snacks that taste amazing but don’t come with all the artificial colors and additives,” he tells Fast Company. “You’re seeing that shift in retail data: U.S. snacking is a $46 billion industry, most of it controlled by one big company that’s now experiencing decline.” According to Paul, Good Eat’n snacks have only organic ingredients and no artificial flavors, or dyes like Red 40. “People want bold flavors, but they also want to feel good about what’s in the bag,” Paul says. “Ragerz hits that sweet spot: big flavor, organic corn, no artificial colors, and ingredient integrity.” The taste certainly sounds epic. However, the brand is shooting for more than a new crunchy and delicious snack. Good Eat’n’s mission, fighting childhood hunger, is what seems to matter most to the brand. Good Eat’n says it is donating a portion of all Ragerz sales to charity, as well as partnering with the Paige Bueckers Foundation, which works to create opportunities and promote justice in sports and elsewhere, to donate Ragerz and other Good Eat’n snacks to Feed the Children. “[Being] able to support Feed the Children and their resources centers inside of schools in the Dallas School District means a lot,” Bueckers explains. “I’m trying to find ways to engage and support the Dallas community, which has shown me so much love in my first season there.” For the Dallas Wings point guard, the partnership is a big responsibility, and it’s one she takes seriously, calling it an opportunity to learn “how to be a leader from Chris.” Bueckers says that, in addition to Paul’s success on the court, he has been able to “break barriers and do amazing things off the court,” adding that “for him to want to invest in me and in women’s sport makes it a special moment.” The partnership marks the first time that a WNBA star has taken an equity stake in a food brand founded by an NBA player, which isn’t lost on Bueckers, who says that “being the first at something means there will be a second and a third.” According to the company, Good Eat’n snacks are available nationwide at Walmart, and Ragerz are now available for pre-order at GoodEatn.com. The snack will be available at H-E-B stores across Texas, as well as via DoorDash in Texas and Gopuff nationwide. View the full article

If you’re considering purchasing an LLC, it’s important to understand the steps involved in the process. Start by identifying a business that fits your goals, then move into negotiations to set the terms. You’ll need to conduct due diligence to guarantee the company’s financial stability and compliance. Once you agree on terms, finalizing the purchase agreement with legal assistance is vital. Next, you should notify relevant parties about the ownership change. What comes next in this process? Key Takeaways Identify potential businesses for sale by networking, researching local listings, and exploring online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa. Negotiate terms by initiating conversations, gathering financial statements, and outlining key transaction details in a term sheet. Conduct thorough due diligence by reviewing financial records, legal obligations, and compliance with regulations to assess business health. Finalize the purchase agreement with legal assistance, ensuring all essential components are included and necessary signatures are obtained. Notify stakeholders of the ownership change, update relevant documents, and consider forming a new LLC for liability protection. Find a Business to Buy When you’re ready to find a business to buy, where do you start? Begin by exploring local chambers of commerce, trade groups, and industry publications. These resources often list businesses for sale that aren’t widely advertised. Networking is additionally essential; connect with existing business owners, especially those nearing retirement, to uncover informal sale opportunities and gain market insights. Online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa can help you compare various options. Conduct thorough market research to identify industries of interest and evaluate the long-term viability of potential businesses through their financial performance. Finally, prepare a list of specific criteria, including location, size, and industry, to streamline your search as you look to purchase your LLC effectively. Begin Negotiations Once you’ve identified a business that aligns with your goals, it’s time to begin negotiations. Start by confirming the identity of the authorized negotiator for the LLC, ensuring all discussions are valid. Gather crucial documents like financial statements and operating agreements to demonstrate your seriousness. Initiate conversations to learn about the business’s operations and challenges. Provide a financial statement to showcase your purchasing capability. Aim to establish rapport with the seller for open communication. Understanding what the owner of an LLC is called, you can better navigate these discussions. Engaging with LLC formation companies can likewise provide support during this process, ensuring you’re well-prepared to negotiate effectively. Create a Term Sheet Creating a term sheet is a crucial step in formalizing the negotiation process for purchasing an LLC, as it outlines the key terms and conditions of the proposed transaction. This document should detail the purchase price, payment terms, and which assets or liabilities are included in the sale. It serves as a preliminary agreement that helps clarify intentions before drafting a formal purchase agreement. Important details to include in your term sheet are the identities of the buyer and seller, the duration of the due diligence period, and any financing contingencies. Although it’s typically non-binding, it lays the groundwork for the binding agreement to follow. Consider seeking legal advice to cover all necessary elements. You can find the best website to create LegalZoom documents online for guidance. Conduct Due Diligence Before finalizing your purchase of an LLC, it’s essential to conduct due diligence. Start by examining financial records to gauge the business’s fiscal health and scrutinize its operating agreement for ownership and management details. Furthermore, check for any outstanding debts and guarantee the LLC complies with all relevant laws to avoid potential legal issues down the line. Financial Record Examination Examining financial records is a critical step in the due diligence process when purchasing an LLC. You’ll want to conduct a thorough financial record examination to assess the company’s health and identify any red flags. This includes reviewing accounting books, tax returns, and bank statements. Investigate outstanding debts and financial obligations through business credit reports. Analyze revenue streams, profit margins, and cash flow statements to guarantee stable income. Review existing contracts and loans to understand what liabilities you might inherit. If you’re unsure about the process or how much it costs to create an LLC, consider hiring a CPA or financial advisor for expert insights and evaluation. Their guidance can be invaluable in steering through potential risks. Legal Compliance Review Following a thorough examination of financial records, it’s time to focus on the legal aspects of the LLC. Start by checking for any outstanding legal obligations, such as lawsuits or liens, which could impact the LLC post-purchase. Review public records to uncover these issues. Next, guarantee the LLC complies with local, state, and federal regulations by examining its licenses and permits. Comprehending the domestic LLC meaning is essential, as it affects operational standards. Don’t forget to evaluate the operating agreement and articles of organization; these documents govern ownership transfer and could include conditions impacting the sale. It’s wise to contemplate hiring a lawyer or CPA for legal and financial document review, especially if you’re dealing with LegalZoom filing companies. Operational Audit Insights When you conduct an operational audit during the due diligence process, it’s crucial to guarantee the business complies with all relevant laws and regulations, as any outstanding legal issues could adversely affect your ownership. This audit helps in evaluating the efficiency of business operations and identifying risks that may impact profitability. Consider reviewing: Key operational documents like employee contracts and vendor agreements. The company’s processes, inventory management, and customer service practices. Potential hidden inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. Understanding these aspects can influence how much it costs to become an LLC and guide you in choosing the best LLC formation service. An operational audit is fundamental for ensuring stability post-acquisition and making informed decisions. Finalize Your Purchase Agreement When you’re ready to finalize your purchase agreement, make sure it includes all crucial components to protect your interests. You’ll need to gather the necessary signatures and documentation to validate the agreement, ensuring compliance with relevant regulations. Consulting with legal professionals can help you tailor the agreement to your specific purchase structure, whether it’s a membership-interest agreement or an asset purchase agreement. Essential Agreement Components To finalize your purchase agreement effectively, it’s crucial to include several key components that clearly outline the terms of the sale. Start by identifying both the buyer and seller, specifying the purchase price and closing date. You should also clarify what’s included in the sale, such as: Assets, liabilities, and any existing contracts Contingencies to protect both parties Extra documents like non-compete clauses Including these elements helps avoid misunderstandings later on. Moreover, consider having an attorney draft or review the purchase agreement to guarantee compliance with laws. This step can save you time and money in the long run, especially if you’re utilizing the best LLC filing service or evaluating the cost to establish LLC. Signatures and Documentation Requirements Finalizing your purchase agreement requires careful attention to signatures and documentation, as these elements solidify the transaction and confirm that all parties are legally bound to the terms outlined. The purchase agreement must include vital details like the identities of the buyer and seller, the purchase price, and the closing date. Both parties need to sign this agreement, making it a binding contract. You may additionally require additional documents, such as non-compete agreements and lease assignments, to protect interests. After the purchase is complete, update all filings with state authorities, the IRS, and financial institutions. Using a closing checklist can help guarantee all documents and accounts are properly transferred, making your domestic LLC purchase the cheapest way to form an LLC. Notify Relevant Parties Notifying relevant parties about the ownership change of an LLC is vital for maintaining transparency and guaranteeing smooth changes. First, you should notify all current members to comply with the operating agreement. Next, inform employees about the shift to keep morale high and clarify management changes. Update vendors and suppliers to guarantee continued business relationships. Reassure customers, if appropriate, about service continuity and any new developments. Don’t forget to file necessary paperwork with state authorities to reflect the new ownership structure officially, which can sometimes be the cheapest way to file an LLC. Transition Ownership Shifting ownership of an LLC requires careful planning and compliance with legal requirements to guarantee a smooth process. Start by reviewing the existing operating agreement to understand rules about ownership transfer. You’ll need approval from all current members to minimize disputes. It’s crucial to conduct a professional valuation of the business to determine a fair price for the ownership stake being transferred. To protect liability, consider forming a new LLC and transferring assets. After that, file the necessary paperwork with your state and update all LLC documents to reflect the new ownership structure. If you’re unsure about the process, seeking the best LLC service can help, but remember, it may likewise raise questions about how much it costs to incorporate an LLC. Frequently Asked Questions How Do You Buy an Existing LLC? To buy an existing LLC, first, search for listings on platforms like BizBuySell. Once you find a potential business, negotiate with its representative, and request crucial documents like financial statements. Conduct thorough due diligence to assess financial health and liabilities. Next, draft a term sheet that includes the purchase price and payment terms. Finally, complete the transaction by signing necessary documents and updating filings with state authorities and the IRS. What Happens if My LLC Makes No Money? If your LLC makes no money, you’ll still face ongoing costs like annual fees and taxes, which you might’ve to cover personally. Even without income, specific state and federal filing requirements still apply. Lack of profits can hurt your creditworthiness, making loans difficult to secure. If losses continue, consider restructuring, dissolving, or selling your LLC to prevent further financial strain and potential legal issues related to unpaid debts. How Do You Pay Yourself When You Own an LLC? When you own an LLC, you can pay yourself through owner draws, withdrawing funds from the business’s profits. If your LLC is taxed as an S Corporation, you must pay yourself a reasonable salary via payroll, subject to payroll taxes, in addition to taking draws. It’s essential to keep accurate records of these payments for your tax returns. Always refer to your operating agreement to stay compliant and avoid disputes among members. Should I Set up an LLC Before Buying a Business? Yes, you should set up an LLC before buying a business. This structure protects your personal assets from business liabilities, facilitating a smoother shift of operations and assets. An LLC further improves your credibility with vendors and customers, which can be beneficial in negotiations. Moreover, it streamlines tax processes through pass-through taxation. Consulting legal and financial professionals is essential to guarantee you comply with all regulatory requirements during this process. Conclusion In conclusion, purchasing an LLC involves several key steps: finding the right business, negotiating terms, creating a term sheet, conducting due diligence, finalizing the purchase agreement, notifying relevant parties, and shifting ownership. By following this structured approach, you can guarantee a smooth acquisition process. Remember to seek legal guidance throughout to protect your interests and confirm compliance with all regulations. Taking these steps will help you navigate the intricacies of acquiring an LLC effectively. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Are the Steps to Purchase My LLC?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

If you’re considering purchasing an LLC, it’s important to understand the steps involved in the process. Start by identifying a business that fits your goals, then move into negotiations to set the terms. You’ll need to conduct due diligence to guarantee the company’s financial stability and compliance. Once you agree on terms, finalizing the purchase agreement with legal assistance is vital. Next, you should notify relevant parties about the ownership change. What comes next in this process? Key Takeaways Identify potential businesses for sale by networking, researching local listings, and exploring online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa. Negotiate terms by initiating conversations, gathering financial statements, and outlining key transaction details in a term sheet. Conduct thorough due diligence by reviewing financial records, legal obligations, and compliance with regulations to assess business health. Finalize the purchase agreement with legal assistance, ensuring all essential components are included and necessary signatures are obtained. Notify stakeholders of the ownership change, update relevant documents, and consider forming a new LLC for liability protection. Find a Business to Buy When you’re ready to find a business to buy, where do you start? Begin by exploring local chambers of commerce, trade groups, and industry publications. These resources often list businesses for sale that aren’t widely advertised. Networking is additionally essential; connect with existing business owners, especially those nearing retirement, to uncover informal sale opportunities and gain market insights. Online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa can help you compare various options. Conduct thorough market research to identify industries of interest and evaluate the long-term viability of potential businesses through their financial performance. Finally, prepare a list of specific criteria, including location, size, and industry, to streamline your search as you look to purchase your LLC effectively. Begin Negotiations Once you’ve identified a business that aligns with your goals, it’s time to begin negotiations. Start by confirming the identity of the authorized negotiator for the LLC, ensuring all discussions are valid. Gather crucial documents like financial statements and operating agreements to demonstrate your seriousness. Initiate conversations to learn about the business’s operations and challenges. Provide a financial statement to showcase your purchasing capability. Aim to establish rapport with the seller for open communication. Understanding what the owner of an LLC is called, you can better navigate these discussions. Engaging with LLC formation companies can likewise provide support during this process, ensuring you’re well-prepared to negotiate effectively. Create a Term Sheet Creating a term sheet is a crucial step in formalizing the negotiation process for purchasing an LLC, as it outlines the key terms and conditions of the proposed transaction. This document should detail the purchase price, payment terms, and which assets or liabilities are included in the sale. It serves as a preliminary agreement that helps clarify intentions before drafting a formal purchase agreement. Important details to include in your term sheet are the identities of the buyer and seller, the duration of the due diligence period, and any financing contingencies. Although it’s typically non-binding, it lays the groundwork for the binding agreement to follow. Consider seeking legal advice to cover all necessary elements. You can find the best website to create LegalZoom documents online for guidance. Conduct Due Diligence Before finalizing your purchase of an LLC, it’s essential to conduct due diligence. Start by examining financial records to gauge the business’s fiscal health and scrutinize its operating agreement for ownership and management details. Furthermore, check for any outstanding debts and guarantee the LLC complies with all relevant laws to avoid potential legal issues down the line. Financial Record Examination Examining financial records is a critical step in the due diligence process when purchasing an LLC. You’ll want to conduct a thorough financial record examination to assess the company’s health and identify any red flags. This includes reviewing accounting books, tax returns, and bank statements. Investigate outstanding debts and financial obligations through business credit reports. Analyze revenue streams, profit margins, and cash flow statements to guarantee stable income. Review existing contracts and loans to understand what liabilities you might inherit. If you’re unsure about the process or how much it costs to create an LLC, consider hiring a CPA or financial advisor for expert insights and evaluation. Their guidance can be invaluable in steering through potential risks. Legal Compliance Review Following a thorough examination of financial records, it’s time to focus on the legal aspects of the LLC. Start by checking for any outstanding legal obligations, such as lawsuits or liens, which could impact the LLC post-purchase. Review public records to uncover these issues. Next, guarantee the LLC complies with local, state, and federal regulations by examining its licenses and permits. Comprehending the domestic LLC meaning is essential, as it affects operational standards. Don’t forget to evaluate the operating agreement and articles of organization; these documents govern ownership transfer and could include conditions impacting the sale. It’s wise to contemplate hiring a lawyer or CPA for legal and financial document review, especially if you’re dealing with LegalZoom filing companies. Operational Audit Insights When you conduct an operational audit during the due diligence process, it’s crucial to guarantee the business complies with all relevant laws and regulations, as any outstanding legal issues could adversely affect your ownership. This audit helps in evaluating the efficiency of business operations and identifying risks that may impact profitability. Consider reviewing: Key operational documents like employee contracts and vendor agreements. The company’s processes, inventory management, and customer service practices. Potential hidden inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. Understanding these aspects can influence how much it costs to become an LLC and guide you in choosing the best LLC formation service. An operational audit is fundamental for ensuring stability post-acquisition and making informed decisions. Finalize Your Purchase Agreement When you’re ready to finalize your purchase agreement, make sure it includes all crucial components to protect your interests. You’ll need to gather the necessary signatures and documentation to validate the agreement, ensuring compliance with relevant regulations. Consulting with legal professionals can help you tailor the agreement to your specific purchase structure, whether it’s a membership-interest agreement or an asset purchase agreement. Essential Agreement Components To finalize your purchase agreement effectively, it’s crucial to include several key components that clearly outline the terms of the sale. Start by identifying both the buyer and seller, specifying the purchase price and closing date. You should also clarify what’s included in the sale, such as: Assets, liabilities, and any existing contracts Contingencies to protect both parties Extra documents like non-compete clauses Including these elements helps avoid misunderstandings later on. Moreover, consider having an attorney draft or review the purchase agreement to guarantee compliance with laws. This step can save you time and money in the long run, especially if you’re utilizing the best LLC filing service or evaluating the cost to establish LLC. Signatures and Documentation Requirements Finalizing your purchase agreement requires careful attention to signatures and documentation, as these elements solidify the transaction and confirm that all parties are legally bound to the terms outlined. The purchase agreement must include vital details like the identities of the buyer and seller, the purchase price, and the closing date. Both parties need to sign this agreement, making it a binding contract. You may additionally require additional documents, such as non-compete agreements and lease assignments, to protect interests. After the purchase is complete, update all filings with state authorities, the IRS, and financial institutions. Using a closing checklist can help guarantee all documents and accounts are properly transferred, making your domestic LLC purchase the cheapest way to form an LLC. Notify Relevant Parties Notifying relevant parties about the ownership change of an LLC is vital for maintaining transparency and guaranteeing smooth changes. First, you should notify all current members to comply with the operating agreement. Next, inform employees about the shift to keep morale high and clarify management changes. Update vendors and suppliers to guarantee continued business relationships. Reassure customers, if appropriate, about service continuity and any new developments. Don’t forget to file necessary paperwork with state authorities to reflect the new ownership structure officially, which can sometimes be the cheapest way to file an LLC. Transition Ownership Shifting ownership of an LLC requires careful planning and compliance with legal requirements to guarantee a smooth process. Start by reviewing the existing operating agreement to understand rules about ownership transfer. You’ll need approval from all current members to minimize disputes. It’s crucial to conduct a professional valuation of the business to determine a fair price for the ownership stake being transferred. To protect liability, consider forming a new LLC and transferring assets. After that, file the necessary paperwork with your state and update all LLC documents to reflect the new ownership structure. If you’re unsure about the process, seeking the best LLC service can help, but remember, it may likewise raise questions about how much it costs to incorporate an LLC. Frequently Asked Questions How Do You Buy an Existing LLC? To buy an existing LLC, first, search for listings on platforms like BizBuySell. Once you find a potential business, negotiate with its representative, and request crucial documents like financial statements. Conduct thorough due diligence to assess financial health and liabilities. Next, draft a term sheet that includes the purchase price and payment terms. Finally, complete the transaction by signing necessary documents and updating filings with state authorities and the IRS. What Happens if My LLC Makes No Money? If your LLC makes no money, you’ll still face ongoing costs like annual fees and taxes, which you might’ve to cover personally. Even without income, specific state and federal filing requirements still apply. Lack of profits can hurt your creditworthiness, making loans difficult to secure. If losses continue, consider restructuring, dissolving, or selling your LLC to prevent further financial strain and potential legal issues related to unpaid debts. How Do You Pay Yourself When You Own an LLC? When you own an LLC, you can pay yourself through owner draws, withdrawing funds from the business’s profits. If your LLC is taxed as an S Corporation, you must pay yourself a reasonable salary via payroll, subject to payroll taxes, in addition to taking draws. It’s essential to keep accurate records of these payments for your tax returns. Always refer to your operating agreement to stay compliant and avoid disputes among members. Should I Set up an LLC Before Buying a Business? Yes, you should set up an LLC before buying a business. This structure protects your personal assets from business liabilities, facilitating a smoother shift of operations and assets. An LLC further improves your credibility with vendors and customers, which can be beneficial in negotiations. Moreover, it streamlines tax processes through pass-through taxation. Consulting legal and financial professionals is essential to guarantee you comply with all regulatory requirements during this process. Conclusion In conclusion, purchasing an LLC involves several key steps: finding the right business, negotiating terms, creating a term sheet, conducting due diligence, finalizing the purchase agreement, notifying relevant parties, and shifting ownership. By following this structured approach, you can guarantee a smooth acquisition process. Remember to seek legal guidance throughout to protect your interests and confirm compliance with all regulations. Taking these steps will help you navigate the intricacies of acquiring an LLC effectively. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Are the Steps to Purchase My LLC?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

In this Ask an SEO, Adam Riemer examines why digital PR delivers a stronger business case than link-driven tactics built for ranking manipulation. The post Ask An SEO: Digital PR Or Traditional Link Building, Which Is Better? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Many of us with professions that center on writing once toiled in a book shop to make ends meet, including me. When I worked at Barnes & Noble in college, I was dumbfounded by how many books there were on productivity and self-betterment. Surely, they couldn't all contain nuggets of wisdom. Certainly, they must be money-grabs aiming to profit off people's self-doubt. In many cases, that's true; but, I learned, some of them do have serious value to share. The catch is that if you spend all your time reading about some author's productivity, you won't have much time for enhancing your own. Smartly choosing which to read is a major first step toward productivity and better time management, but I went ahead and did a little of the legwork for you. Here are the best tidbits on productivity and the books they come from. The best productivity tips from booksGetting Things Done (GTD)GTD is a method that comes from David Allen's infamous 2001 book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, which was updated in 2015. GTD has been popular for a long time and is all about organizing your to-do lists, priorities, and schedule in a way that keeps it all manageable. You use five pillars—capture everything in a notebook, app, or planner; clarify what you need to do by breaking it all down into actionable steps; organize the steps by category and priority; reflect on the to-do list; and get to work—to streamline your planning, thinking, and action. It's stuck around this long because it's effective, but that means it's now also recognizable. This is a solid entry-level productivity plan that has been written about a lot, has plenty of adherents, and makes sense in the real world. The action methodThe action method comes from Scott Belsky's 2010 book, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality. Like GTD, it aims to organize your ideas and priorities, giving you a path to more action than deliberation. You write down your to-dos, then organize them into action steps (the specific tasks you need to get done and the ones with actions behind them), references (extra info you need to accomplish those tasks), and back-burners (more nebulous goals that don't need to be accomplished right now). Use a planner or spreadsheet to create the three columns, bearing in mind that references and back-burners are typically things that supplement the action steps, so you should always be checking those while you tackle the action steps. And never forget that, if left unattended, a back-burner can escalate into an actionable item quickly, so take this one on if you need guidance but are serious about sticking with it. Zen to DoneAt the heart of Zen to Done is the idea that your sense of wellbeing is integral to your overall productivity. It comes from Leo Babauta, who has written books like Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly and The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential... in Business and in Life. Reading his work, you start to see the value of changing your habits and building new ones incrementally and peacefully. Because you're changing your habits over time and in a chill way, you can focus on the actual work you need to get done. ZTD contains 10 habits total, but Babauta says you can focus on the first four to get started: "Collect" by always taking notes about what you need to do and ideas you have, "process" by making quick decisions on tasks that are in front of you at the moment, "plan" by setting goals every Monday, and "do" by selecting a task and focusing on it and only it. Deep workI talk about deep work a lot because it's an important concept that impacts a lot of other productivity techniques. Deep work is the ability to focus completely on a demanding task without allowing any distraction get in your way, according to Cal Newport's Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. His work focuses on drawing the distinction between deep work and shallow work, or the kind of work that you can still get done while distracted, then building time into your schedule to take care of the deeper tasks. Mastering the art of slipping into a flow state and getting into deep work is foundational to basically any other productivity approach, so this full book might be worth the read. Eat the frogThis approach to productivity calls for you to tackle your biggest, most demanding task first during the course of your day, so everything after that feels easier by comparison. The evocative phrase, "eat the frog," comes from a quote that's usually attributed to Mark Twain, but it was Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog book series that made it catch on. Per Tracy, your "frog" is whatever task "you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it." In workbooks and quick-tip books, he helps you figure out your frogs, then come up with strategies to get the motivation to tackle them. Committing to eating the frog is a big part of other productivity approaches and scheduling techniques, like the 1-3-5 list and the pickle jar theory, so the more familiar you are with the idea, the better off you'll be. Power HourPower Hour is a productivity technique that aims to empower you to reclaim part of your daily time and devote it to something intentional, whether that's a passion project or a major task that needs completing. It comes from Adrienne Herbert's book, Power Hour: How to Focus on Your Goals and Create a Life You Love, and is complementary to Newport's deep work concept. Herbert suggests you find an hour in each day that you can use for a completely focused, intentional project. During that hour you'll use deep work, but Herbert's strategy focuses more on finding and defining that critical hour in your schedule more than training yourself to sink into the zone and avoid distractions. The 168-hour methodYou may not think that having 24 hours in a day is enough, but what about 168 hours in a week? Laura Vanderkam wrote 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think to encourage people to stop thinking about your time in terms of days and start thinking about how much you can accomplish in a week. Spend a week tracking your time using time-tracking software or a spreadsheet, keeping your entries as detailed as possible. At the end of the week, look at your data and figure out when you wasted time, spent too long on something, or could have been doing something else. Using Vanderkam's method, you can make more time for the things you want to do by getting a solid grasp of how you allot your existing time over seven days. Flow theoryYou've probably heard of flow theory, the brainchild of psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who came up with it in 1970 and then wrote a number of books on it. According to him, a flow state is similar to when someone is floating along, being carried by water. The person is working so efficiently that they're just gliding ahead with no problems and the state is practically propelling them. (It's quite similar to deep work, mentioned above, so this would be a good one to read along with Newport's book.) There are eight characteristics of being in flow, ranging from complete concentration on the task to finding intrinsic rewards in the work and feeling confident in possessing the necessary skills to complete it, and these offer almost a step-by-step guide for getting into deep work, the method mentioned above. The best book combo for busy folksHaving a hard time narrowing down which books to grab? I'd suggest one of Csíkszentmihályi's books on flow theory, Newport's book on deep work, and Herbert's book on power hours, as these all describe similar practices, but offer complementary, supplemental advice that all adds up to help you pick a specific time of day to get work done easily and efficiently. It's important to remember that motivation can—and does—come from a variety of sources, including break time, having a purpose, and actually getting things done. The combination of these three authors' approaches makes plenty of space for all of that, which will leave you actually wanting to get to work. View the full article

Oil major will cut investment over next five years from $30bn to $20bnView the full article

It’s likely you’ve heard of the Pareto principle (maybe even while reading my tips on how to be more productive at work or study more effectively). But do you really know what the Pareto principle is? To be honest, I only just started to get a grip on it fairly recently, because it's a lot easier to read about than put into practice. Also known as the 80/20 rule or the law of the vital few, it can be little confusing at first, but understanding and implementing it can truly transformative, helping you to better manage your time and get more done with less effort. Who doesn't want that? What is the Pareto principle?Basically, the Pareto principle states that 80% of your outcomes result from just 20% of your effort. The principle was coined by consultant Joseph M. Juran in the 1940s and he named it after a sociologist and economist named Vilfredo Pareto, who was famous for pointing out that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the total amount of people. You’ll hear it described a number of ways: 80% of results come from 20% of the work, or 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. No matter the wording, it all means the same thing; just focus on that 80/20 split. An often-cited example of how this works for everyday people is learning the piano or guitar. You study individual notes, keys, time signatures, tempos, chords, rhythms, styles and so much else, including music theory. But when it’s time to jam, you’re probably falling back on a handful of the most common chords—and it sounds fine. In that way, a huge chunk of your actual playing is dependent on just a few small things you've mastered (although you do need that knowledge of keys and styles to make it come together). For another example, consider how a few truly excellent players tend to be responsible for the majority of points scored by your favorite sports team during a given game. Now think of how much you do in a day: You go to your job, work any side gigs you might have, do household chores, and devote time to hobbies, child-rearing, studying for classes, going to the gym, and seeing friends. You do a lot, but you only get paid for a small fraction of that work, which is why you might prioritize your job over some of the other things on the list—even side hustles, which typically generate less money. That's where the 80/20 rule comes in: It helps you prioritize your to-do list. How to use the Pareto principle to maximize your resultsYou can identify ways the general principle manifests in your work. For instance, if you work for a retail company, you might notice a major chunk of profits comes from a small but dedicated group of consistent buyers. It would make sense, then, to focus a majority of your work on appealing to them, or to bringing others into that group—maybe by strategic, data-based advertising. If the majority of would-be consumers ignore your email marketing, don't keep doing what you're doing. Instead, zero in on how you can add more people to that core group, or just go all-in on the core group itself. The real trick to using this principle is figuring out how it applies to your own day-to-day tasks. When you make your daily to-do list, use a prioritization technique, like the 1-3-5 list, Kanban, or Eisenhower Matrix. Right off the bat, this helps you figure out which of your necessary tasks for the day are important and which can be pushed off or delegated. Spend about two weeks working on your to-do lists every day as normal, but at the end of the day, write down what the direct results of each activity were. So, if you spent half an hour responding to emails and netted 10 new clients from that, write it down. If you dedicated an hour to compiling the data for a big meeting that got your project greenlit, mark it down. Over time, the basic functions that yield the biggest results will become apparent and you can start making those activities—the 20%-of-your-effort activities—a bigger priority, so you waste less time on the tasks that don’t produce as many results. Working backward and considering the effects, then identifying their causes, will help you prioritize and get more done, but it can also help you with non-work tasks. In a more abstract sense, a relatively small amount of effort is required to grab a coffee with a friend or help your kid with homework, but the 80% yield might be reenforcing and maintaining a friendship or helping your child feel safe and accomplished, which have longer-lasting impacts than the 30 minutes those tasks take. When you free up your working time through prioritization and an understanding of the Pareto principle, you have more opportunities to spread it around in other areas of your life and keep reaping the benefits. View the full article

In 2026 and well beyond, a core part of the performance marketer’s charter is learning to leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency. Anyone who isn’t actively evaluating new AI tools to improve or streamline their PPC work is doing their brand or clients a disservice. The challenge is that keeping up with these tools has become almost a full-time job, which is why my agency has made AI a priority in our structured knowledge-sharing. As a team, we’ve honed in on favorites across creative, campaign management, and AI search measurement. This article breaks down key options in each category, with brief reviews and a callout of my current pick. One overarching recommendation before we dive in: be cautious about signing long-term contracts for AI tools or platforms. At the pace things are moving, the tool that catches your eye in December could be an afterthought by April. AI creative tools for paid social campaigns There’s no shortage of tools that can generate creative assets, and each comes with benefits as well as the risks of producing AI slop. Regardless of the tool you choose, it must be thoroughly vetted and supported by a strong human-in-the-loop process to ensure quality, accuracy, and brand alignment. Here’s a quick breakdown of the tools we’ve tested: AdCreative.ai: Auto-generates images, video creatives, ad copy, and headlines in multiple sizes, with data-backed scoring for outputs. Creatify: Particularly strong on video ads with multi-format support. WASK: Combines AI creative generation with campaign optimization and competitor analysis. Revid AI: Well-suited for story formats. ChatGPT: Free and widely familiar, giving marketers an edge in effective prompting. Our current tool of choice is AdCreative.ai. It’s easy to use and especially helpful for quickly brainstorming creative angles and variations to test. Like its competitors, it offers meaningful advantages, including: Speed and scale that allow you to generate dozens or hundreds of variants in minutes to keep creative fresh and reduce ad fatigue. Less reliance on external designers or editors for routine or templated outputs. Rapid creative experimentation across images, copy, and layouts to find winning combinations faster. Data-driven insights, such as creative scores or performance predictions, when available. The usual caveats apply across all creative tools: Build guardrails to avoid off-brand outputs by maintaining a strong voice guide, providing exemplar content, enforcing style rules and banned words, and ensuring human review at every step. Watch for accuracy issues or hallucinations and include verification in your process, especially for technical claims, data, or legal copy. Dig deeper: How to get smarter with AI in PPC AI campaign management and workflow tools for performance campaigns There are plenty of workflow automation tools on the market, including long-standing options, like Zapier, Workato, and Microsoft Power Automate. Our preferred choice, though, is n8n. Its agentic workflows and built-in connections across ad platforms, CRMs, and reporting tools have been invaluable in automating redundant tasks. Here are my agency’s primary use cases for n8n: Lead management: Automatically enrich new leads from HubSpot or Salesforce with n8n’s Clearbit automation, then route them to the right rep or nurture sequence. UTM cleanup: When a form fill or ad conversion comes in, automatically normalize UTM parameters before pushing them to your CRM. Some systems, like HubSpot, store values in fields such as “first URL seen” that aren’t parsed into UTM fields, so UTMs remain associated with the user but aren’t stored properly and require reconciliation. Data reporting: Pull metrics from APIs, structure the data, and use AI to summarize insights. Reports can then be shared via Slack and email, or dropped into collaborative tools like Google Docs. As with any tool, n8n comes with caveats to keep in mind: It requires some technical ability because it’s low-code, not no-code. You often need to understand APIs, JSON, and authentication, such as OAuth or API keys. Even basic automations may involve light logic or expressions. Integrations with less mainstream tools can require scripting. You need a deliberate setup to maintain security. There’s no built-in role-based access control in all configurations unless you use n8n Cloud Enterprise. Misconfigured webhooks can expose data if not handled properly. Its ad platform integrations aren’t as broad as those of some competitors. For example, it doesn’t include LinkedIn Ads, Reddit Ads, or TikTok Ads. These can be added via direct API calls, but that takes more manual work. Dig deeper: Top AI tools and tactics you should be using in PPC Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. AI search visibility measurement tools Most SEOs already have preferred platforms for measurement and insights – Semrush, Moz, SE Ranking, and others. While many now offer reports on brand visibility in AI search results from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and similar tools, these features are add-ons to products built for traditional SEO. To track how our brands show up in AI search results, we use Profound. While other purpose-built tools exist, we’ve found that it offers differentiated persona-level and competitor-level analysis and ties its reporting to strategic levers like content and PR or sentiment, making it clear how to act on the data. These platforms can provide near real-time insights such as: Performance benchmarks that show AI visibility against competitors to highlight strengths and weaknesses. Content and messaging intel, including the language AI uses to describe brands and their solutions, which can inform thought leadership and messaging refinement. Signals that show whether your efforts are improving the consistency and favorability of brand mentions in AI answers. Trends illustrating how generative AI is reshaping search results and user behavior. Insights beyond linear keyword rankings that reveal the narratives AI models generate about your company, competitors, and industry. Gaps and opportunities to address to influence how your brand appears in AI answers. No matter which tool you choose, the key is to adopt one quickly. The more data you gather on rapidly evolving AI search trends, the more agile you can be in adjusting your strategy to capture the growing share of users turning to AI tools during their purchase journey. Dig deeper: Scaling PPC with AI automation: Scripts, data, and custom tools What remains true as the AI toolset keeps shifting I like to think most of my content for this publication ages well, but I’m not expecting this one to follow suit. Anyone reading it a few months after it runs will likely see it as more of a time capsule than a set of current recommendations – and that’s fine. What does feel evergreen is the need to: Monitor the AI landscape. Aggressively test new tools and features. Build or maintain a strong knowledge-sharing function across your team. We’re well past head-in-the-sand territory with AI in performance marketing, yet there’s still room for differentiation among teams that move quickly, test strategically, and pivot together as needed. Dig deeper: AI agents in PPC: What to know and build today View the full article

Compare coordinator vs manager on duties, authority, pay, tools, and career path—plus when to hire each and how to move from coordinator to PM. The post Project Coordinator vs Manager: Roles, Pay & Path Differences appeared first on project-management.com. View the full article