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Search has moved far beyond blue links and basic ranking signals. People now discover information on Google, TikTok, Pinterest, Amazon, YouTube, and an expanding layer of generative AI platforms that synthesize answers from trusted sources. As SERPs shift toward rich results and AI summaries, users often get what they need without needing to click at all. In this environment, brand authority isn’t just tied to your domain. It spans platforms, formats, and the systems that learn from your content. Modern off-page SEO must support both search engines and the AI models that evaluate and surface your expertise. This off-page optimization guide breaks down what works now – the tactics, measurement frameworks, and best practices that matter in 2026. What is off-page SEO today? Off-page SEO covers every action you take outside your website to improve its search rankings and overall visibility. Off-page strategies for acquiring inbound links, citations, and brand mentions boost your authority and, in turn, maximize your ability to rank well organically. Early algorithms relied almost exclusively on inbound links (commonly referred to as backlinks) to determine the authority of a given domain. But today, Google evaluates websites based on a range of more sophisticated factors, including experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Optimizing E-E-A-T involves: Creating content with real subject-matter experts. Being transparent about your information, sources, and company details. Earning citations and mentions from authoritative sites that are relevant to your industry and offerings. Backlinks vs. inbound links In this article, I’ll use the term “inbound link” instead of “backlink,” which has a negative connotation due to its association with manipulative tactics. “Inbound links” is a more modern, strategic term that highlights quality and intent. This shift reframes off-page SEO around earning genuine connections from authoritative, relevant sources that provide real value to users. It also reinforces that link building is part of a broader, content-driven strategy – rather than a manipulative shortcut. How important is off-page in your overall SEO strategy? Off-page SEO is essential for building your site’s credibility and trust. Think of every link or mention as a brand endorsement. Just like word-of-mouth recommendations, these digital endorsements shape your online reputation. The more high-quality, relevant endorsements you earn, the more search engines view your site as trustworthy and relevant. Off-page and the rise of answer optimization In an AI-driven search world, off-page SEO matters more than ever. AI systems don’t just index content—they interpret it, summarize it, and generate answers from the sources they trust most. Because of this shift, off-page signals like brand mentions, links, citations, reviews, and social sentiment now shape more than Google rankings. They influence how AI models learn your brand’s authority and credibility. Structured data, a consistent brand identity, and authoritative third-party mentions help AI connect your content to relevant topics and entities. Building your reputation across platforms isn’t just good for visibility. It’s essential for helping AI recognize your expertise and feature it in the answers users see first. How is off-page different from on-page or technical SEO? On-page SEO ensures your content is optimized for search engines, and technical SEO strengthens your site’s backend for usability, speed, crawling, and indexing. Off-page SEO, meanwhile, shows search engines that others view your content as valuable and trustworthy. All three are essential to a balanced SEO strategy, but off-page SEO is the backbone of your site’s authority and trust in the eyes of search engines. Off-page SEO drives the authority you need to earn visibility in search results. Key components of off-page SEO Off-page SEO has always centered on building credibility beyond your website. Now that same credibility shapes how AI systems learn and represent information. Search engines and AI assistants rely on external signals to decide which brands and voices to trust. Here are the key off-page components to strengthen your presence in today’s landscape. Link building Link building remains one of the most important parts of off-page SEO. Inbound links still play a major role in how search engines judge your site’s authority—as long as they’re relevant, which Google has confirmed. As AI shapes ranking and discovery, the context around your links matters even more. Search engines and AI systems look past link quantity or raw authority and evaluate the semantic and topical relevance between linked entities. Quality beats quantity. A few links from reputable, relevant sites carry far more weight than dozens of low-quality ones. Consistent off-page work is essential for growing visibility and building a reputation that improves your visibility. Social signals Social signals (e.g., shares, likes, comments) may not directly impact rankings, but they boost visibility and increase your chances of earning inbound links. A strong social media presence is essential for brand exposure and complements your off-page SEO efforts. Content on social media – your profiles, engagement, user-generated content (UGC), reviews, and mentions – acts as powerful social proof. Social engagement also trains AI recommendation models. Consistent brand mentions and engagement patterns on platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, and TikTok help AI systems associate your brand with expertise and popularity, indirectly shaping visibility in generative search results. This content is especially persuasive because it comes from real users, showing others that people already value your product or service. Active social media marketing boosts awareness and strengthens your site’s authority. Brand mentions Even without a hyperlink, brand mentions signal relevance and authority to search engines. Google, Microsoft Bing, and other search engines treat these mentions as “implied links.” When your brand appears consistently on credible sites – even without a direct link – those mentions show search engines that you’re established in your industry. That visibility can increase your search visibility. Brand mentions also help strengthen contextual relevance and entity recognition. When a brand or website is frequently associated with specific topics or keywords, search engines take notice. These associations help them understand your topical authority and how your brand fits across different contexts. This clarity boosts your visibility in search results, especially for personalized or knowledge-driven queries. Entity recognition and AI trust signals AI is also changing how search engines evaluate brand mentions and authority. Search systems use these associations to gauge topical expertise and credibility within a niche. The goal is earning association – not just links. When your brand consistently shows up alongside authoritative sources and within trusted conversations, you strengthen your position in the broader knowledge ecosystem that fuels both traditional and AI-driven search. Dig deeper: In GEO, brand mentions do what links alone can’t Content marketing We all know the value of high-quality, informative content that resonates. But effective content marketing for SEO reaches far beyond your website. Again, it’s about prioritizing quality over quantity. Focus on what actually serves your audience – it doesn’t always mean creating more content. While it might seem logical that publishing more articles leads to better results, in SEO and content marketing, quality is what truly drives success. High-quality content resonates deeply with your audience, builds trust, and produces sustainable, long-term results. Publishing content such as blog posts, guest blogs, infographics, or videos on third-party platforms can improve your inbound link profile and drive traffic to your site. AI-driven discovery also surfaces original perspectives and human insight. Prioritize authenticity, depth, and data that AI can’t replicate. This is what gets cited, summarized, and shared by AI-powered systems. Dig deeper: SEO in the age of AI: Becoming the trusted answer Reviews Online reviews and testimonials can significantly impact your off-page SEO efforts. Positive reviews on platforms like Google Business Profile, Yelp, or niche sites influence both local SEO and overall off-page SEO. Positive reviews boost your brand’s credibility, improve local SEO reach, and often appear directly in search results. And reviews don’t just influence consumers. They influence AI. Sentiment across platforms is used by models to gauge brand trustworthiness, shaping both AI responses and search visibility. Google encourages review solicitation as long as it’s honest, unbiased, and without incentives. You can ask happy customers to leave reviews on your Google Business Profile (GBP) to improve your local search visibility. Brands should respond to all reviews promptly. This helps thank customers for positive feedback and address complaints from those with negative experiences, even if they only leave star ratings. How a brand handles negative reviews can be more important than the number of positive ones. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Off-page SEO techniques Rather than focusing on generating links, what drives off-page SEO success is a campaign-based approach to building reputation. Transform sporadic link building into a strategic effort to build authority, reputation, and visibility by treating it like any other marketing campaign. Just like a marketing campaign, your off-page SEO efforts require planning, execution, and measurement to drive real, sustainable results. This ensures each initiative is purposeful, measurable, and aligned with your broader marketing goals. Here are the essential steps for any marketing campaign that you can apply directly to your off-page SEO efforts: Set specific goals and objectives to measure the success of your efforts and refine strategies as needed. Conduct thorough research to identify your target audience’s needs, preferences, and behaviors. Discover where they spend time online, which platforms influence their decisions, and what type of content resonates with them. Develop messaging and content that resonates and compels action. Your off-page efforts should focus on creating value through insightful, engaging, and shareable content. Craft your messaging to highlight your brand’s unique voice and align it with the needs and pain points of your audience. Track and measure performance. Track referral traffic, changes in domain authority, and the performance of links over time. With that campaign-based approach in mind, here are five different off-page techniques proven to build a site’s authority and organic reach. Thought leadership Thought leadership through content marketing is a powerful way to build authority in your industry while earning valuable links. Off-page content marketing has outgrown simple guest posts. It now requires a strategic approach to creating and sharing content on third-party platforms to strengthen your E-E-A-T signals. Instead of writing solely to acquire links, focus on positioning yourself or your company as a trusted, indispensable resource. The goal is to build recognition and trust that drive organic traffic and long-term engagement. To truly stand out as a thought leader, your strategy must go beyond the basics and focus on these impactful tactics: Create valuable content that answers your audience’s most pressing questions. Leverage search trends and organic data to shape your content marketing strategy. Analyze competitors and the search landscape to identify content gaps. Approach every piece of content with a focus on building E-E-A-T. Publishing content on third-party websites, such as guest blogging, helps extend your reach beyond your own platforms and enhances brand authority. When your content appears on credible, high-traffic websites, it signals to search engines that your brand is trusted and relevant within your industry. But how do we go about prospecting and identifying these third-party websites? Be strategic and use these steps to identify the best websites for guest blogging or content distribution: Assess relevance and ensure the website caters to your target audience or industry. Evaluate audience engagement and readership with past published content. Analyze the inbound link profiles of your competitors to identify potential sites that could be valuable for your own content distribution. Choose websites that maintain high content standards and prioritize original, well-researched pieces. AI-enhanced link building and outreach AI can streamline how you pitch thought leadership content and scale link building. Machine learning tools can: Spot high-value link opportunities. Assess contextual relevance. Reveal competitor link patterns to surface new prospects. Natural language models can also personalize outreach at scale, creating tailored messages without the need for manual one-by-one writing. Here’s exactly how AI tools can support the heavy lifting. Analyze competitor link patterns and surface new opportunities Use tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to pull competitor inbound link reports. Export and upload those lists into AI assistants like ChatGPT or Gemini for large-scale analysis. AI can spot patterns you may miss – recurring topics, common themes, and the types of content earning the strongest links. You can also prompt the AI to categorize prospects by relevance, difficulty, or likelihood of securing a link. Draft outreach messages that feel personal and relevant Use AI to create pitch emails and intro snippets tailored to each recipient. Include details such as the target’s name, site niche, recent content, and the value you are offering their audience. AI can accelerate drafting, but human refinement is essential to make messages sound authentic rather than mass-produced. While AI can accelerate research and writing, it doesn’t replace the core tenet of meaningful link building: real people building real relationships. The best results come from using AI to enhance strategy and execution, while keeping people, trust, and collaboration at the center of every partnership. Optimizing for generative AI citations Off-page SEO now extends beyond third-party sites and traditional search engines. With AI Overviews and generative tools delivering direct answers, SEOs face a new off-page frontier: earning citations in AI-generated responses. These citations aren’t classic links, but they still act as authority signals for users. When Google or an AI assistant selects your content as source material, it’s a powerful endorsement that can drive discovery, reinforce expertise, and strengthen your overall organic visibility. To earn these placements, optimize content in ways that align with how AI models evaluate clarity, context, and authoritativeness. Structure your content for extraction by using question-driven headings and concise summaries. Think of this as “answer-ready content” that directly addresses user questions with clear and digestible blocks. Strengthen topical authority and demonstrate comprehensive knowledge. Build topic clusters around depth, expand related content breadth, and ensure each asset connects within a larger strategic plan. Leverage “content atomization” to break down comprehensive guides into atomic, citeable facts and data points. AI is more likely to cite a single, well-sourced statistic than an entire, dense page of text. Optimize dedicated FAQ sections with clear formatting that provides clean, authoritative definitions and explanations. Use schema markup to reinforce context and make it easier for AI models to understand your content. FAQ, HowTo, Article, and Product schema can support extraction and increase eligibility for citations. Social media marketing Social platforms are essential for content distribution, brand mentions, and building authority across channels. Your social profiles act as extra gateways for discovery, exposure, engagement, and trust – and they can even expand your shelf space in the SERPs. Sharing content on social platforms boosts visibility and encourages the interactions that fuel your off-page efforts. Social signals aren’t direct ranking factors, but they influence your online reputation, and search engines pay attention to both links and implied links. Consider which social platforms make the most sense for your business. Establish a presence where your audience is active to build a presence where they are spending their time. Share your content strategically across platforms, like LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and even TikTok. Actively participate in relevant social media groups and discussions. Being present and providing value can lead to natural brand mentions and further exposure. Influencer outreach Partnering with influencers can amplify your content’s reach and enhance your brand’s credibility. Influencers have established audiences that trust their recommendations, making them a powerful tool for off-page SEO. These types of endorsements act as trust signals for both users and search engines, contributing to a stronger off-page SEO profile. Collaborations can take the form of sponsored content, product reviews, or co-created content that engages both your audience and theirs. To ensure your influencer marketing strategy supports off-page SEO efforts, consider the following: Vet your influencers to ensure that their online audience is relevant to your brand, their content quality meets your standards, and their audience size and historical engagement rates meet your goals. Collaborate with influencers on the type of content that makes the most sense for them. Whether it’s blog posts, videos, sponsored content, or contests/giveaways – it needs to provide value to both audiences. Encourage links beyond social media. These collaborations typically result in social shares, but don’t be afraid to request links from blogs or websites beyond social platforms as part of the agreement. Forum participation The SEO value of forums today is undeniable. Since the November 2023 core update, Google has demonstrated a clear shift in preference toward user-generated content sites. Engaging in forums and online communities such as Reddit or niche-specific platforms allows you to share insights, answer questions, and build a reputation as an expert in your field. When done genuinely, it can also help drive traffic and build natural links. While Reddit specifically doesn’t allow link farming and has rules against strictly using the platform for SEO, there is no denying Reddit can be a valuable SEO asset if done responsibly. If you want to use forums as a meaningful part of your off-page SEO strategy, keep these points in mind: Identify the forums most relevant to your business. Reddit covers almost everything, but niche forums exist for every topic – from tech troubleshooting to plumbing to mechanical pencils. Participate consistently. Show up as a knowledgeable voice who contributes to the discussion. When you do share something promotional, it will carry more weight and feel appropriate. Don’t link drop. Quick replies with self-promotional links are usually removed, and repeated behavior can lead to penalties or bans. Focus on providing value with helpful, thoughtful responses. Dig deeper: The reign of forums: How AI made conversation king Podcasting and webinars Guest appearances on podcasts and webinars allow you to reach new audiences while promoting your expertise. Unlike guest posts or articles, podcasts and webinars facilitate more dynamic and in-depth discussions, fostering direct connections with listeners and viewers. When done strategically, they can significantly enhance your brand’s perceived authority and contribute to E-E-A-T signals. These are the key considerations for incorporating podcasts and webinars into your off-page SEO strategy: Focus on relevant, high-authority podcasts and webinars. Identify what your target audience is listening to and/or watching. Determine who is already considered a thought leader in the space and what value you can bring to their platform. Look for podcasts or webinars with a solid following and strong niche relevance. Request links from podcast show notes, transcriptions, or webinar descriptions to support your inbound link profile. Offer a valuable “leave behind,” such as a free resource, guide, or tool for listeners or viewers. Include a clear call to action, such as a download form, to encourage engagement and site visits. The role of content in off-page SEO Creating quality content is the cornerstone of off-page SEO success. However, it’s not just about churning out blog posts. It’s about producing valuable, engaging, and shareable content that positions your brand as a leader in your niche – a “necessary source.” Original, shareable content Original content includes unique insights, how-to guides, and creative formats that grab attention. This type of content encourages organic shares and natural links because it provides something new and valuable to the audience. Think of content that addresses pain points, offers fresh solutions, or presents information in a way that hasn’t been seen before. This will help build a reputation that goes beyond just having the “right” keywords on your site. It establishes your brand as a trusted source of fresh perspectives and valuable information. In off-page SEO, this kind of content fuels outreach efforts. It makes it easier to earn links and mentions from authoritative sources, ultimately driving more visibility and higher rankings in search engine results. Infographics and visual content Visual content, like infographics, charts, and graphs, is highly shareable and engaging, increasing the chances of mentions on social media and third-party sites. These visual assets can make data and complex information easier to digest. The key to success with visual content, like written content, is quality. Create unique, visually appealing, and informative infographics that offer real value to your audience. Your design should be professional, and the information you present must be accurate, well-researched, and useful. Beyond infographics, visual tools like calculators, quizzes, and interactive reports can engage users more deeply and are more likely to be shared and referenced by other sites. To encourage sharing, provide an embed code directly on the infographic or visual asset page. This makes it simple for other websites to post your visual content on their sites while automatically linking back to yours. By making it easy to share your content, you increase the likelihood of earning inbound links. First-party research Creating and publishing first-party research is one of the most powerful ways to build authority. Original research, such as surveys, case studies, or industry reports, positions your brand as a source of unique information. When your content provides new insights, data or perspectives, it naturally attracts links from other websites, social shares, and discussions across various platforms. One of the biggest benefits of original research is that no AI tool can replicate insights derived from proprietary research. Publishing original research enhances your reputation as a thought leader, fostering trust and authority with your audience. These types of detailed reports backed by data are highly valuable to your audience and other industry websites, often leading to organic shares and mentions. Video marketing With the popularity of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels, video content has become increasingly important, and search engines prioritize it in the SERPs. Google and other search engines increasingly feature video content in results, making it a critical part of any SEO strategy. These platforms also function as search engines in their own right, offering additional opportunities for brand visibility. That makes video marketing an essential tool for engagement and a valuable asset for improving off-page SEO performance. Video content also extends your reach. It can be shared across social media, embedded in blogs, and linked in emails, increasing overall brand exposure. Key considerations include: Optimizing videos for keywords by using descriptive titles, tags, and metadata, which ensures they’re easily discoverable. Hosting videos on platforms like YouTube or Vimeo and embedding them on your website enhances link opportunities. Transcribing videos and adding subtitles to improve accessibility and provide more indexable content for search engines. Public relations The goal of off-page SEO is to obtain relevant mentions and links from credible websites to grow organic traffic. Similarly, the aim of public relations (PR) is to gain media coverage through compelling stories that resonate with audiences. This creates a mutually beneficial relationship, allowing you to share engaging stories while also building links. In this way, PR helps you earn editorially given links. Reputation building via PR helps build links, but it also helps in telling your brand story and becoming recognized as a credible and authoritative voice in your industry. An integrated approach to PR and SEO is an ideal way to reach audiences and make authentic connections. Proactive reputation management and fact-checking Given AI’s reliance on third-party sources to validate facts and understand entities – and its propensity for “hallucinating” – outdated or inaccurate information can easily surface in AI-generated answers. Off-page SEO now includes actively shaping the factual landscape surrounding your brand. It’s a continuous layer of optimization aimed at protecting brand integrity and ensuring AI systems tell the right story. This includes: Establish a process for actively monitoring high-authority, relevant industry sites, top publishers, and product review platforms for inaccurate facts or outdated information related to the brand. Prioritize corrections on the most influential domains. Track how AI tools reference your brand. Routinely test branded queries, product questions, and competitive comparisons, and analyze the responses in AI Overviews and major AI assistants. Identify where inaccurate or incomplete information originates, then work backward to the source. Align local listings and third-party profiles. Inconsistencies in local NAP data or service details can trickle into AI answers. More on local citations below. Dig deeper: The AI-driven reputation repair toolkit Local SEO and off-page factors Local SEO focuses on optimizing your website for organic visibility in local search results and maps. If you have a physical location, local SEO is table stakes. The strategy is two-fold: On-page local relevance. Off-page local relevance as determined by local listings, reviews, and proximity. Google Business Profile optimization GBP is a tool that helps businesses and organizations manage their visibility in Google Search and Google Maps. By keeping your profile complete and up to date, you boost your chances of appearing in local search results and attracting more targeted traffic. Several factors go into optimizing a GBP listing so you can clearly communicate your organization’s relevance to Google. If your business qualifies, start by creating or claiming your profile. You’ll then go through a verification process, where Google confirms that your business is legitimate and has a physical address. From there, it is recommended to fill out as much information as possible, but the following pieces of information are integral for visibility and engagement: Your organization’s logo. Your organization’s category. Your organization’s website. A correct address. A correct phone number. Business hours. A description of the organization that is tailored to the overall purpose. Images that are representative of the company. Additional features that are beneficial to take advantage of include: Publishing photos to your business listing is a great way to improve the appearance of a local panel. Consider hiring a professional photographer to take high-resolution photos of your business. Google also offers a Q&A feature on the GBP panel that enables users to post questions about the brand. Other users or the business itself can respond. Answering any question directly is important to ensure accurate information is being shared. Google reviews are among the most critical ranking factors in the local search algorithm. We’ll cover review best practices in more detail, but make sure to monitor Google reviews and respond to both positive and negative reviews. Showcase products or services on your knowledge graph or Google Maps listing. This is another great opportunity to link to your website, where customers can learn more. Google posts let you publish brief updates to your GBP, much like a social post. You can share updates, special offers or events. To get the most out of this feature, make sure to publish regularly. Local citations and directories Beyond your Google Business Profile, it’s important to secure listings on other major and niche-specific local directories. Consider platforms like Bing Places for Business, Yelp for Business, Facebook, and Apple Maps, among many others. The right mix depends on what best serves your business and audience. Most business listing sites follow a similar format and process to that detailed for Google Business Profile: Claim or create your business listing. Fill out all of the relevant information. The more, the better. Verify your listing and that you are the owner. Across these directories, having your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) consistent is vital for local SEO. Consistent NAP information signals to search engines that your business is legitimate, helping improve your visibility in local searches. Measuring off-page SEO success Evaluating off-page SEO is important for assessing your website’s authority, monitoring links, and analyzing how outside factors influence search engine rankings. After all, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. But where exactly do you start with off-page SEO? Key metrics to track Measuring the success of your off-page SEO efforts involves tracking various metrics, such as: Inbound link quantity and quality. Beyond the sheer number of links, several factors must be considered when evaluating the health of your overall inbound link profile, including relevance, naturalness, freshness, anchor text, and diversity. Your site’s domain authority/domain rating. Ideally, this increases steadily over time. Referral traffic from external sources. Use Google Analytics to monitor not only where your referral traffic is coming from, but also how it interacts with your site and whether it converts. Social media engagement, including likes, shares, and comments on social content. Additionally, monitor traffic from social platforms to assess effectiveness. Brand mentions and online sentiment may be more difficult to monitor, but using tools like Google Alerts in conjunction with social listening can help identify brand mentions across the web, even if they don’t include a link. AI visibility metrics: Tracking brand mentions in generative results The definition of “visibility” is also expanding. Beyond traffic and links, tracking AI citations, voice search mentions, and contextual brand references in generative summaries is quickly becoming a new standard SEO metric. When measuring AI visibility, consider: How often does your brand appear in AI-generated answers (AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity)? What sentiment and context surround those mentions? Are AI systems accurately summarizing or citing your brand’s expertise? Dig deeper: How to track visibility across AI platforms Tools for monitoring off-page SEO Several tools can help you monitor and optimize your off-page SEO strategy. Below is a detailed look at some of the best tools for measuring off-page SEO. Semrush Semrush is a versatile all-in-one SEO tool with strong off-page capabilities, including link analysis, competitor research, and brand-mention tracking. It provides a detailed analysis of a website’s link profile, including referring domains, IPs, and the types of links. It also tracks brand mentions across the web, helping you to identify unlinked mentions. Semrush’s database is constantly updated, making it a go-to for accurate link data. Best for: Competitor analysis, backlink gap analysis, and ongoing monitoring of backlinks and brand mentions. Pricing: Starts at $139.95 per month. Ahrefs Ahrefs is a comprehensive tool for analyzing off-page SEO and inbound link analysis. Known for having one of the largest backlink databases, it provides robust features for tracking referring domains, broken links, and competitor links. This tool shows not only how many domains link to you but also the specific websites and pages, when each link was found, the anchor text, domain authority, traffic, and more. It also offers historical data so you can track how your link profile has changed over time. Best for: Comprehensive backlink analysis, identifying link building opportunities, and tracking the off-page SEO health of a site. Pricing: Starts at $129 per month. Majestic Majestic SEO specializes in link intelligence and is widely recognized for its focus on link data. It offers unique metrics, such as Trust Flow and Citation Flow, to evaluate the quality and quantity of links. One of Majestic’s unique features is the categorization of links by industry or topic, which makes it easier to understand the relevance of your link profile to specific niches. Best for: Deep backlink analysis, particularly for assessing the trustworthiness and influence of referring domains. Pricing: $49.99 per month. Moz Pro Moz Pro is known for its easy-to-use interface and authority metrics. Moz’s tools are especially useful for tracking link building efforts and assessing the overall authority of a website. The Link Explorer tool offers an in-depth analysis of a website’s backlink profile, including new and lost links, anchor texts, and more. Of note, Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) are proprietary metrics from Moz that measure the strength of a website or page, based largely on the quality of backlinks. Best for: Monitoring domain authority, tracking toxic backlinks and identifying competitor link building strategies. Pricing: Starts at $49 per month. Google Search Console Although not as comprehensive as third-party tools, Google Search Console is a free tool that provides important insights into how Google views your website, including links and search performance. The important thing to remember about Search Console is that this is Google telling you exactly what they see and what they are considering when evaluating your site. I like to think of this as a peek behind the curtain. Google Search Console isn’t as comprehensive as other tools, but it is vital. Best for: The Link report shows which sites link to you, which specific pages are being linked to, and how often. This is the only tool that notifies you if your site has been penalized for unnatural backlinks or other SEO violations. Pricing: Free. Off-page SEO best practices for 2026 Focus on user experience signals In a search landscape where user expectations keep rising, search engines reward websites that deliver exceptional experiences. SEO and user experience are now tightly connected. This connection shows up not only in on-page SEO but also in off-page efforts. Your thought leadership articles, social posts, podcasts, webinars, videos, and infographics all need to spark engagement if you want to strengthen off-page performance. Even though off-page SEO happens beyond your website, its impact flows back into how users perceive and interact with your brand. A strong off-page presence boosts user experience signals, which leads to better rankings and greater overall success. Leveraging AI and machine learning AI and machine learning have transformed the way search engines deliver results and how we work. Today’s off-page SEO is about striking the right balance – embracing new technology without losing sight of the person on the other end. AI-powered tools now give us deeper insights that strengthen link building and outreach strategies. By using data and personalization, these tools can dramatically increase your chances of earning valuable links. Here’s how they can help: Identify new link building opportunities: AI can scan competitors’ inbound link profiles to find sites that link to them but not to you, giving you a targeted outreach list. Drive data-informed outreach: This makes your campaigns more effective and efficient, raising your odds of securing strong links. Optimize outreach strategies: AI personalizes your communication by analyzing behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns, helping you craft messages that resonate with each recipient. Go beyond links: Build a brand that earns trust everywhere Off-page SEO is much more than link building. It’s about strengthening authority, trust, and visibility everywhere your audience – and AI systems – might encounter your brand. Modern off-page work can’t stand on its own. It has to connect with your on-page, technical, content, and social efforts in an ongoing, campaign-driven strategy that reinforces E-E-A-T. AI has added a new layer between users and websites. Winning brands must build authority signals across every channel – human, algorithmic, and generative. Links, social proof, reviews, mentions, and reputation markers now influence far more than rankings. They shape the data and trust signals AI models use to generate answers. In this new landscape, the brands AI trusts enough to cite will define organic visibility. By taking a holistic, multi-platform approach, you position your brand to rank in traditional SERPs and to be referenced and surfaced in AI-generated results. That’s where the next era of competitive advantage begins. View the full article

Over the years, we have written that service areas are not used as a local ranking factor by Google Search. Well, the API leak document also implies this to be true. View the full article

Cloud Foundations Out, AI-Powered Growth In. By CPA Trendlines Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Cloud Foundations Out, AI-Powered Growth In. By CPA Trendlines Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Google is testing a new AI-powered configuration tool, as it calls it, to help you build instant reports based on your natural language questions. So basically Ads and Analytics Advisor but for Search Console, plus this just builds reports and doesn't do actions - yet.View the full article

If you look at some of the profiles/sites in your Google Search Console performance reports, you may notice a significant increase in the average position being reported. This happened when Google removed the num=100 parameter and is likely due to scrapers not messing up your data.View the full article

The UK shadow justice secretary on embracing populism, his political ambitions — and whether there will be an alliance with ReformView the full article

Greetings, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Even by tech-industry standards, the air of serene confidence OpenAI CEO Sam Altman projects in public appearances is overwhelming. Still, that doesn’t mean he never sweats behind the scenes. Indeed, we learned this week that Altman is downright concerned about the future of his company’s flagship product, ChatGPT. On December 1, The Information’s Stephanie Palazzolo and Erin Woo reported that Altman had initiated a “code red” effort within OpenAI to make its chatbot more personalized and customizable. The move involves diverting resources from other efforts, such as developing AI agents and monetizing the company’s platform through advertising. Drawing on an Altman memo distributed to OpenAI staffers, Palazzolo and Woo’s story says he called now “a critical time for ChatGPT.” Their piece doesn’t spell out the reasons for his alarm in much detail. But it ties his redeployment of resources to Google’s recent surge as a provider of AI platforms and products, which Altman called out as at least a short-term issue for OpenAI in an earlier memo. Since he wrote that one, Google released Gemini 3 Pro. The new version of its LLM has achieved breakthrough high scores in multiple AI benchmarks, along with excellent reviews. No wonder Altman is feeling pressured. ChatGPT’s historic success leaves OpenAI with more to lose than any other AI chatbot company. In October, Altman said it had reached 800 million active weekly users, a figure few tech products have ever reached. I don’t know of any truly reliable comparative stats on usage of the major AI chatbots. But every chart I’ve seen tells a similar story, with ChatGPT sailing along by itself in the stratosphere and everyone else huddled in its shadow. Why is that? Well, with ChatGPT OpenAI created the modern AI chatbot category, giving itself a head start that still matters three years later. People who use these products have different tastes and priorities, but ChatGPT has evolved rapidly. It remains one of the strongest options, even though GPT-5 turned out to be ludicrously overhyped. Despite furious competition from startups and tech giants alike—including worthy contenders such as Anthropic’s Claude—nobody has come up with anything manifestly superior enough to knock it off its pedestal. But it might be a mistake to assume that ChatGPT has an everlasting lock on its market, akin to the one Google secured in conventional search engines early in this century. Altman clearly doesn’t think so. And over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come to think the market might be more fluid than I realized. That’s because I’ve found myself spending far less time with ChatGPT (as well as Claude, my other chatbot of habit). Instead, I’ve taken almost all of my AI needs to Google’s new version of Gemini. Now, when I wrote about Gemini 3 Pro for Plugged In shortly after its release, I did tend to accentuate the negative. That was based on experiencing some pretty severe hallucinations on its part, some of which it oddly tried to blame on others. Having used the new Gemini a lot more since then, I’ve given it more opportunities to impress me—and it has. I’ve used it for everything from discovering lesser-known bossa nova music to vibe coding to figuring out how to manually install apps on my network server. In those instances when I tried the same task with ChatGPT, I’ve consistently liked Gemini’s responses better. But the lesson I’ve drawn isn’t just that Google’s AI has improved by several orders of magnitude since the days when Bard, its proto-Gemini, was a slightly embarrassing also-ran. It’s also dawned on me that absolutely nothing is keeping me from leaving ChatGPT for Gemini. It’s been one of the most frictionless transitions between platforms I’ve ever experienced. For instance, no learning curve was involved: The two chatbots have damn near the same user interface. Nor did I have anything stored in ChatGPT that provided a powerful incentive to stay there, the way my Gmail archive (and rules I’ve set up to organize my inbox) induces me to keep using Gmail. Even ChatGPT’s memory feature—which tries to mine your chat history to improve its responses—hasn’t figured out enough about me to make the app stickier. It still feels more like an eager-to-please stranger than an old friend. As does Gemini and every other AI bot. As a person who uses AI, the realization that I’m not boxed into ChatGPT has been . . . kind of thrilling, actually. For OpenAI, however, it’s a problem. I currently pay OpenAI $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus and Google $26 a month for a Workspace Business Plus account. But along with enterprise-grade Gemini, Google’s $26-per-month plan gets me a full complement of productivity tools, 5TB of cloud storage, and more. At some point, ChatGPT Plus might look expendable—especially if I continue to prefer Gemini. Now multiply my decision process by the 220 million paying users OpenAI has said it expects to have by 2030. Without them, the business model behind its mind-bendingly expensive plan to build out its data center capacity would crumble. If users of ChatGPT’s free plan defect to Gemini in significant numbers, it would also complicate the company’s intention of becoming an ad platform. Altman understands all this. That’s why he set off the code-red alarm to quickly bolster ChatGPT’s user experience. It explains why he’s particularly focused on personalization and customization, two features that would help the chatbot feel less like an easily replaceable commodity. According to The Information’s report, Altman’s memo also said that OpenAI is about to release a new reasoning model that beats Gemini 3 in its internal tests. Personally, I hope that the company’s gambit to quickly make ChatGPT much better pays off. If it does, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and other AI purveyors will feel even more heat to make similar great leaps forward. May the best chatbot win. And even if they start to feel like they truly understand our needs and desires, may it remain as simple to flit between them as it is now. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on fastcompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged Inon Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company The Browser Company’s Tara Feener is advancing search for the AI era The recent Atlassian acquisition’s head of engineering on how it aims to build the ultimate AI browser for knowledge workers. Read More → The choice to be interviewed by a human or AI could hurt some job candidates A new University of Chicago analysis finds that a candidate’s choice of an AI or human interviewer unintentionally signals their strengths and weaknesses. Read More → Jeff Bezos calls his AI company ‘Project Prometheus.’ So does this California lawyer Tensions over names and trademarks aren’t new in Silicon Valley. Read More → 92% of millennials use dating apps while at work Recent survey data also shows that 74% of Gen Z do the same. Read More → The President’s anti-EV rules aren’t stopping California’s electric truck boom—yet More than 15% of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold in California in 2023 were zero-emission. Can that trend continue despite the uncertainty the The President administration brings? Read More → The Fast Company AI 20 for 2025 These 20 technologists, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and creative thinkers are pushing artificial intelligence in unexpected directions. → View the full article

Google Merchant Center is now beta testing regional member pricing, where you can offer different member prices based on the shopper's regions. This will essentially override the member price in the regional inventory feed.View the full article

Google Ads may be testing placing an ad extension button at the top right of the sponsored result on the desktop interface. This button, in this example, shows the text "Learn more."View the full article

Deal will transform US tech company into the dominant player in HollywoodView the full article

Control AI visibility and server strain with a log-validated index of bots, complete with user-agent strings, official IP ranges, crawl rates, and allowlist/block best practices. The post Complete Crawler List For AI User-Agents [Dec 2025] appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Penalty under the bloc’s Digital Services Act risks escalating tensions with US governmentView the full article

This week’s SEO Pulse examines new data what drives AI citations, plus ChatGPT launches shopping research. Your quick catch-up on what practitioners need to know. The post SEO Pulse: Google Updates Console, Maps & AI Mode Flow appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Countless nonprofits are doing meaningful work every day, and at Buffer, we want to play a small part in helping them share their stories and amplify their impact online. To do that, we offer nonprofits a 50% discount, something we've done since the early days of Buffer. While our pricing is already designed to be accessible for everyone, the additional nonprofit discount helps make content creation even more attainable for these organizations focused on the public good. I'm one of the Buffer teammates who review requests from organizations applying for our nonprofit discount. And, I gotta tell ya, these organizations are incredible! Every time I connect with them, I leave in awe of the incredible impact these organizations are having on their communities. If you’re curious to learn if your nonprofit is eligible for this discount, head on over to buffer.com/nonprofits. We share what documents you’ll need to send our way. And once you submit the form, you’ll hear back from me, my teammate Nate, or one of our incredible Customer Advocates! Expanding our nonprofit discount to include librariesRecently, we received a few nonprofit requests from libraries. Unfortunately, they didn't have the documentation we required in order to receive the nonprofit discount. While I always feel for the organizations that don't meet our criteria, something about libraries being ineligible felt distinctly non-Buffery. Libraries are deeply aligned with Buffer’s values. After becoming profitable and growing again, we reviewed our non-profit discount. After a quick gut check with our VP of Finance and Operations, Jenny, we agreed that expanding our nonprofit discount to include libraries felt like a natural next step. We want our customers to feel welcomed and special. This discount can hopefully enable more libraries to use Buffer, which might mean they can reach more folks in their communities about events, books, or other updates, so they can continue to operate. 💡Before I get into more, if you are a library looking to be added to our nonprofit discount, you can apply here.There are a few reasons this decision was such an easy yes. Let's get into them. Libraries and books play an integral part in the lives of all Buffer teammatesWe're a fully remote company at Buffer, and several teammates choose to work from their local libraries as part of their remote routines. Additionally, our Founder and CEO, Joel Gascoigne, read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie early in Buffer’s journey. The book had a huge impact on Joel’s life and what Buffer would become. We have based several of Buffer’s values directly on the principles outlined in this book. And as a remote team, one of the ways our remote team connects is by swapping recent reads in our #culture-books Slack channel. Libraries embody a core Buffer value: Improve ConsistentlyOne of our six company values is to Improve Consistently. Learning is part of how we operate as a team, and it’s also at the heart of what libraries make possible for their communities. They offer access to information, inspiration, and opportunities to grow — all core to why we see them as natural partners. Books are woven into our cultureOne of Buffer’s long-standing benefits is our unlimited free books program. Books enrich our team, our work, and our curiosity — and libraries make that enrichment possible for everyone. While teammates can be reimbursed for e-books or physical copies, we also encourage borrowing from local libraries. You can browse what the Buffer team is reading any time at buffer.com/books. Do you know a library that’s looking to amplify its reach online?We know many public libraries are doing important work to reach their communities online. If you know a public library that could use support with its social media efforts, send them here. We’d love to partner with them and offer a 50% discount to help them keep supporting their impact in the world. 🤓 📚 View the full article

The data center boom is fully underway, and the numbers are staggering: billions of dollars in costs, millions of square feet worth of buildings, gigawatts of energy, and millions of gallons of water used per day. But before these AI-fueling behemoths can get up and running, there’s an extensive amount of prep work needed to build the infrastructure those data centers rely upon, with a whole other set of staggering costs, material flows, and resource requirements. The infrastructure behind (and below) the data center boom is in the midst of its own massive scale building boom, with no end in sight. That’s created a thriving business for the companies that provide the raw materials used to make that infrastructure. “The focus for the most part is always on the facility . . . but what gets a lot less attention today is actually what it takes to build the infrastructure around them,” says Nathan Creech, president of the Americas division at CRH, the $81 billion market cap building materials company. “Most people don’t see the below-the-ground infrastructure for water, for telecom, for energy that it takes, or the road systems to get in.” CRH is the largest building materials company in North America and Europe, providing aggregates, cement, road, and water infrastructure for building projects around the world. The company is currently working on more than 100 data centers in the U.S. This data center work was highlighted in the company’s third quarter financial results as a “robust” growth area and part of its $11.1 billion in quarterly revenue, which the company expects to continue to rise for the foreseeable future. Most of CRH’s large data center projects are covered by nondisclosure agreements, but you can probably imagine some of its potential customers. As competition for AI dominance heats up, so-called hyperscalers like Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle are investing in ever bigger data centers. AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have announced multibillion-dollar data center building sprees. According to one report, total data center construction spending is expected to exceed $52 billion in 2025. These investments will lead to a lot of state-of-the-art buildings. But first, they’ll require even more traditional infrastructure. And with construction material costs rising 40% over the past five years, all that infrastructure is part of the reason so much money is being spent to build these data centers. “Think about the water, energy, and communication systems required to operate them—it’s a huge logistical challenge and demands a significant amount of expertise,” says Creech. What it takes to build a data center Once a big tech company has identified the site for a new data center—a process that requires its own complex calculus to balance spatial demands, electricity generation capacity, and access to water—a significant amount of concrete and asphalt has to be laid down. The estimated size of data centers varies from 20,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet, but CRH notes that average data center building typically requires 150,000 tons of aggregates, or enough to build a four-mile long lane of interstate highway. This is used to lay the concrete foundation for the building, as well as subsurface structures like water retention cisterns and retaining walls. Most of this material is mined and supplied locally. Roads have to be built to access these sites both during construction and operation, requiring even more raw materials. CRH operates more than 2,000 manufacturing plants and quarries across the U.S., and Creech estimates that 85% of U.S. data centers sit within 30 miles of one of these facilities. For those projects that aren’t located near an existing facility, CRH builds them. “You hear about the main investments, but what you never hear about are the investments that we’re making in greenfields and building out new mines and making sure that there’s asphalt plants and concrete plants and pipe plants and paver plants that are in the area,” Creech says. “Because our products, you can’t ship them very far.” Speed has become a priority for many of these projects. Earlier this year Meta revealed that it was accelerating the startup time for new data centers by building them with hurricane-proof tents. A spokesperson told Fast Company at the time that tents are currently being set up as part of at least one of the multi-gigawatt data centers the company is building, located in New Albany, Ohio. Creech says this time pressure has also changed the way CRH approaches these big projects. Typically site works and utility infrastructure can take between three and six months to build, but he says there have been cases where CRH has sped up the delivery timeline of the baseline concrete pad infrastructure to just four weeks. The race to stand up AI data centers has some analysts concerned about overbuilding, cautioning that dynamics in data center technology and future demands may put some of the infrastructure being built at risk of becoming obsolete or even unnecessary. Some have even called this an “infrastructure bubble.” In the near term, none of these concerns seem to be stopping the building boom that’s now underway. And as it continues to progress, it’s going to require a whole lot of concrete. View the full article

While the iPhone 17 is expected to be one of the hottest gifts this holiday season, some of the early adopters of Apple’s latest phone may be moving on to something different already. New data from B-Stock, a B2B marketplace for wholesale liquidation of returned and overstock inventory, finds that large cellular carriers are already moving “bulk quantities” of iPhone 17s through the resale channels for B2B customers. One sale on the site currently offers 111 iPhone 17 Pro Max units (with bidding for the lot standing at $80,200 as of Wednesday afternoon). All totaled, there were more than 300 iPhone 17 devices up for resale on the site as of Wednesday. The sales aren’t impacting the value of the phones, however. B-Stock says it’s seeing resale prices on the phones maintaining 94% of the retail price. And to be clear, there’s not a big wave of people returning their phones. B-Stock says the return rates are largely in line with predecessors on a percentage basis (and actually lower than the iPhone 16). But with the strong sales of the 17, an overall greater number of units is expected to be returned. The used-phone market has been gaining strength for some time. Earlier this year, tech research and advisory firm CCS Insight said the secondhand smartphone market is growing faster than the primary market, with a growth rate of 6% year over year in 2024. Apple devices make up 60% of the overall used market. “The growing demand for used smartphones is driven by a stronger desire for low-cost devices, increased consumer awareness, and partnerships between telecom operators and retailers,” said Leo Gebbie, CCS Insight’s principal analyst and director for the Americas, in a statement. “Refurbished smartphones, which are often up to 50% cheaper than new devices, now also come with warranties, flexible financing options, and reliable after-sales service, increasing consumer trust.” Last year, secondhand smartphones generated revenues of $7.6 billion in the U.S. (and another $13.2 billion in the Asia-Pacific region). Meanwhile, International Data Corp. (IDC), a market intelligence firm, forecasts global shipments of used smartphones will grow by 3.2% year over year in 2025, which is triple its prediction of sales gains from new smartphones. That’s due to a growing number of trade-in programs, improvements in the quality of refurbished devices, and a rising environmental awareness among consumers. The trend isn’t likely to slow down anytime soon. IDC expects the used smartphone market to see 5.8% growth in 2026 before tapering off slowly to 4.9% by 2029. B-Stock is not the only company seeing the latest round of iPhones hold their value. On SellCell, a marketplace for consumers to sell their smartphones and devices, the iPhone Air had a trade-in value of $760 as of Wednesday, compared with a retail price of $999 for the same model. That’s despite numerous reports that demand for the iPhone Air model was significantly lower than expected, with Apple reportedly cutting production on the line. It’s not just the iPhone 17 that’s seeing sustained demand. The iPhone 16 is retaining 72% of its original price, B-Stock reports. And the iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro Max, and iPhone 14 Pro Max are the three most frequently sold models on the site’s B2B platform. The strong demand in the used smartphone market doesn’t seem to be impacting sales of new iPhone models. Apple is expected to have a record year in 2025, thanks to the latest series of phones, with shipment forecasts of 247 million or more, IDC says. The iPhone 17 is selling very well in China, Apple’s largest market, and has reversed the slowdown Apple was seeing in the U.S. and Western Europe. In fact, the popularity of the iPhone 17 was a key reason Apple’s market capitalization topped $4 trillion earlier this year. View the full article

Columbia Sportswear just lauched its Endor collection, and I want it all. Inspired by the clothes worn by the rebel squad that took on the Death Star’s shield generator in Return of the Jedi, it’s the latest and largest Star Wars drop from Portland, Oregon-based company. It’s also the best fit for the brand since its Empire Strikes Back‘s Echo Base Han Solo parkas, which I missed back in 2017, and I will forever feel like a dumb Tauntaun for not grabbing one (they run for almost $1,000 each now). The highlight of the collection is General Han Solo’s Trench, a $600 jacket that mimics the camouflage duster that Harrison Ford wore while leading the strike team on the forest moon. Unlike cheap Amazon costumes, this and the rest of the line is built with actual functional specs, using an Interchange system that pairs a waterproof shell with an inner vest lined with Columbia’s Omni-Heat Infinity gold thermal reflectors. Yes, the fabric that literally went to space (unlike Ford). It’s loaded with fan-service details, including Aurebesh messages—the basic galaxy alphabet—and a Rebel Alliance patch, but it’s the practical application that matters. You can wear it to sneak into an Imperial bunker or just to survive a rainy commute in Seattle. Six hundred galactic credits for a trench may seem like a lot, but according to Erin Steele, Special Projects Manager for Columbia Sportswear, the Endor drop’s prices are consistent with similar styles in their product line. Steele says that like the other Star Wars drops they developed closely with Disney and Lucasfilm, this clothing line is very far from cosplay. “The Battle of Endor is such an outdoor rich moment in the film, so we were really excited by the range of silhouettes, especially since outerwear is truly our specialty,” she says. “While we leaned heavily on the original costume pieces for inspiration, we identified silhouettes that are modern and wearable for everyday life.” In the movie, she points out, Han is wearing a standard trench layered over his vest and shirt. In their version, they translated those layers into the company’s 3-in-1 multilayer technology, called Interchange. Plus they added a hood that wasn’t in the original. If you want to look more like Luke or Leia speeding through the redwoods, there is the Endor Issue Poncho, which goes for $400. This piece replicates the hand-sprayed camouflage look of the original film costumes, but adds modern waterproofing. For those who prefer something less flowing, the Endor Issue Cargo Vest ($150) and Endor Issue Pant ($130) offer a more tactical, everyday utility vibe. Both feature the collection’s signature camo print and functional pockets, making them the most wearable items if you don’t want to look like you just walked off a convention floor. There is the $220 Endor Issue Boot, a rugged hiker that has a Rebel insignia on the tongue and comes with two sets of laces, because apparently, even in a galaxy far, far away, shoe customization was a thing, too. And, of course, you can’t do Endor without the anthropophagous murder bears. I hate with a vengeance almost as much as I hate to admit that the Ewok Fleece Jacket is pretty damn cute. It is exactly what it sounds like: a high-pile, ultrasoft fleece jacket that has a Ewok-shaped hood with ears on it. It’s available in adult sizes for $80, and in youth ($75) or infant bunting ($70) versions if you have kids. One bit I like: It features original concept art on the chest patch, a nice nod to the Lucasfilm archives. Same technology as the regular Columbia stuff According to Becca Johnson, the company’s special projects director, the Ewok Bunting and Jacket use “tried-and-true plush, cozy fleece, with warmth as the main objective for those styles.” She says that “during testing with kids, they were so well received that they literally didn’t want to take them off.” They do look comfy. Although they are clearly Star Wars design, the nature of the Endor drop makes it look like a perfect fit for a company like Columbia. They work just the same, too. Johnson tells me that all these products use their core technologies for body and footwear. “All of these materials have already gone through rigorous real-world testing. We know they perform in dense, damp environments here on Earth, so we’re confident they’ll hold up just as well on Endor,” Johnson says. The collection drops on December 11, 2025. If you are a Columbia Greater Rewards member, you get early access at 6:30 a.m. PST; everyone else has to wait until 7 a.m. PST. Given how fast previous drops have sold out (the Empire Strikes Back Han Solo’s parka sold out in just six minutes), you might want to set an alarm and hope the Force is with you. Or just wait five years and pay triple on eBay like I am tempted to do with that damn coat every single winter. View the full article

Big players, Wall Street and tech firms stand to gain. Community lenders call for policymakers to protect g-fee parity and the cash window. Part 5 in a series. View the full article

Bank statement loans, a home equity credit card and a blockchain investment product are among the new offerings designed to reach an $11 trillion market. View the full article

The Phoenix Mercury rebranded for the first time in team history, and the new look is part of a wider trend across the WNBA as teams modernize their logos for a growing league. The new Mercury logo shows an “M” that’s a simplified version of the letter taken from the team’s old script wordmark. The bottom of the “M” is angled up at 19.97 degrees as a nod to the team’s 1997 founding as one of the league’s eight original franchises, and it’s set on a circle with a crescent shadow that represents the planet Mercury. The modernized logo was designed in-house. The rebrand comes at an inflection point for the team, which lost star player Diana Taurasi to retirement in February, and lost the 2025 WNBA championship to the Las Vegas Aces in October. The Mercury are considered the WNBA’s best-run organization, according to an anonymous survey of WNBA players released by The Athletic in July, in part because of their facilities. Mercury President Vince Kozar tells Fast Company, “Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to be a fan.” It also comes at an inflection point for the league. Game attendance is at an all-time high, and the WNBA is expanding. The Golden State Valkyries joined last season, with the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo set to debut next year, and future franchises planned for Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia, which would bring the league to 18 teams by 2030. In a more crowded league, teams are simplifying their branding to stand out. Before the Mercury, the New York Liberty introduced a simplified version of the team’s Statue of Liberty logo in 2020 that’s just Lady Liberty’s hand holding a torch. And in 2021, the Seattle Storm dropped a logo showing a detailed Space Needle illustration in favor of a simpler form of the landmark. “What we learned looking at the Storm and Liberty examples was you can do a really clean modernization—one that cleans up the ’90s busyness of the logo and streamlines your color scheme—without completely rebooting or reimagining your marks,” Kozar says. The mark is the team’s primary logo, but it has other new marks too, including those that set the team name in a futuristic sans-serif font. There’s a global mark that wraps the Mercury logo in a roundel, a “Merc” logo that writes out the nickname over a map outline of the state of Arizona, and a “PHX” logo that Nike created in 2021. Kozar says these additional marks, which will appear on uniforms, courts, and merchandise, “just give our brand so much more depth and diversity.” View the full article

Policy document blasts traditional allies while failing to criticise RussiaView the full article

Authenticity is currency. You can spend it recklessly and go broke, or invest it strategically and build wealth. Most leaders are choosing bankruptcy without even realizing it. Right now, workplaces are debating authenticity. Some call “bring your whole self to work” a dangerous myth that punishes marginalized employees. Others claim it’s the secret to engagement and retention. Both are right—and both are missing something. Unfiltered authenticity without skill can be destructive. And yes, marginalized employees pay a higher price when they try to be authentic in systems that weren’t built for them. But your team already knows when you’re faking it. That difference between genuine authenticity and performed authenticity determines everything—trust, safety, retention, innovation. Think about the best leader you’ve ever had. Now the worst. What separated them? Kevin Built Wealth. Nancy Went Broke An employee once described two former managers to me—let’s call them Kevin and Nancy. Kevin had emotional intelligence. When you sent an email that landed wrong, he’d follow up: “Hey, I think you meant this . . .” He remembered small details from weeks ago. You felt seen. He operated from a place of genuine care. Nancy was polished. She said all the right things about supporting her team. But over time, you realized it was packaging—friendly but transactional. Like a car salesman calling you “buddy” while steering you toward the close. Surface-level all the way down. The result? People trusted Kevin enough to be vulnerable, to take risks, to bring their full selves. With Nancy, they performed. Stayed professional. Protected themselves. Kevin built wealth. Nancy went broke—losing her best people in the process. The Cost of Going Broke When leaders perform authenticity instead of practicing it, the price is steep. Trust erodes: Employees start second-guessing everything you say. They stop bringing you problems until they’ve become crises. They smile in meetings but vent about you in private Slack threads. Performance declines: When people feel unheard, they stop trying. They do the minimum, knowing their ideas will be dismissed or reworked later. Half-hearted efforts, wasted hours, and endless redos are all symptoms of leadership that performs authenticity instead of practicing it. Psychological safety vanishes: When you fake authenticity, your team learns to fake it right back. No one risks being vulnerable or challenges ideas. Creativity dies quietly in conference rooms where everyone nods along. Your best people leave: Not always loudly. Not immediately. But they start looking. They stop investing. They give you their labor, not their loyalty. For marginalized employees, the cost is even higher: Research shows the toll of code-switching and masking isn’t just emotional—it’s biological. Black adults, for example, “weather” years faster under chronic workplace stress, aging 6.1 years beyond their peers. Ninety-one percent of neurodivergent employees mask their traits at work, and most report burnout as a direct result. That’s what happens when people spend their careers navigating leaders like Nancy—constantly calculating, code-switching, and self-protecting while leadership performs its way through “authenticity.” It doesn’t just drain engagement—it literally accelerates aging and drives talent out the door. What Building Wealth Actually Looks Like Kevin didn’t just happen to be authentic. He had the emotional intelligence to make authenticity work. Here’s what that looks like in practice—the four pillars of authentic leadership: Self-Awareness (Know Yourself): Kevin knew his triggers and blind spots. When he got impatient, he recognized it and communicated expectations clearly instead of lashing out. Nancy probably had no idea how she came across—or worse, she knew and didn’t care. Transparency & Honesty (Show Yourself): Kevin admitted mistakes and shared challenges thoughtfully. Nancy talked about transparency but never revealed anything real. Her vulnerability was scripted. Consistency & Integrity (Be Yourself): Kevin’s actions matched his words whether you were in the room or not. People knew what to expect. Nancy adapted to the audience—warm in meetings, different behind closed doors. Respectful Adaptation (Balance Yourself): Kevin was authentic without being unfiltered. He knew how to disagree respectfully, to be real without being reckless. Nancy confused polish with professionalism and never learned the difference. Without EQ, authenticity is chaos—bluntness masquerading as bravery, oversharing disguised as vulnerability. With EQ, authenticity becomes the foundation for trust, creativity, and growth. Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself Here’s the uncomfortable truth: You might be Nancy and not know it. Cognitive dissonance lets us live with a lie. When we forfeit self-awareness for comfort, we convince ourselves we’re being authentic while we’re actually performing. We package our niceness. We script our vulnerability. We say the right words while our team watches our actions—and knows better. If this stirs some discomfort, that’s your cue to practice emotional intelligence—to pause, reflect, and not defend. Try this on Monday morning: Practice the pause. When someone challenges you, do you immediately defend—or take a beat to ask, “What if they’re right?” Audit yourself. Do you remember what your people tell you? Do you follow up weeks later? When you admit a mistake, are you learning—or just managing your image? These small acts separate the leaders building wealth from those heading toward bankruptcy. The Return on Investment When you invest authenticity wisely—with emotional intelligence as your guide—the returns compound: Trust multiplies: People stop hedging. They bring their full thinking, their wild ideas, their honest concerns. Problems get solved faster because no one’s wasting energy performing. Retention stabilizes: Your best people stay not for perks but for purpose. They don’t just work for you—they work with you. Innovation accelerates: Psychological safety fuels risk-taking. Teams build what matters—not just what looks good in presentations. Culture sustains itself: Authentic leaders create authentic teams. It spreads. New hires learn what’s truly valued—not what’s written on the wall, but what’s modeled in the room. The difference between Kevin and Nancy wasn’t personality or charisma. It was the willingness to do the inner work required to show up authentically and skillfully. Kevin built wealth because he had the emotional intelligence to make authenticity work. Nancy went broke because she never learned the difference between saying the right words and being real. The question isn’t which leader you want to be. The question is: Which leader are your people actually experiencing? View the full article

In 1983, Howard Schultz was an employee of Starbucks, a small chain of coffee stores that mainly sold beans (and no drinks), when he was sent to Milan for a trade show. As Schultz observed Italians visiting their local cafés, he loved what he saw, describing it as a “sense of community, a real sense of connection between the barista and the customer.” A few years later, after Schultz convinced Starbucks’s owners to sell him the company, the new owner attempted to build that same type of connection here in the U.S. To do so, Schultz knew he had to take care of his people. He called them “partners,” not employees, a symbol of a more collaborative working relationship. Over the years, Starbucks offered perks that were typically unheard of for part-time workers in food service, benefits like health insurance and contributions to college education. Nowadays, though, Starbucks seems to have lost the reputation for looking after its people. No doubt, at least part of the reason for that is Schultz has stepped down as CEO, multiple times, returning as the company struggled under his successors. A few years ago, after taking over on an interim basis, Schultz even went on a “listening tour,” visiting stores across the country to find out how the company had lost its way. Starbucks’s brass, and even Schultz himself, became hopeful when the company tapped Brian Niccol, former CEO of Chipotle, to take over the helm. In the world of fast food and fast casual dining, Niccol was a superstar. Most recently, he had completed a major turnaround at Chipotle, a company that saw sales double in Niccol’s first year as CEO, along with a major rise in stock price. Everyone wondered the same thing: Could Niccol do the same for Starbucks? In the beginning, I liked what I saw. Niccol vowed to return Starbucks to its roots, with a renewed focus on serving “the finest coffee” and a plan to update stores to make them more welcoming. Niccol also returned fan favorites, like condiment bars so customers have more control over customization. But as more details of Niccol’s turnaround plan surfaced, concern grew. Baristas would be required to adhere to a much stricter dress code. They were given a set of guidelines, even a script, detailing their interactions with customers. Baristas were instructed to write something “genuine” on each customer cup, with threats of repercussions if they didn’t. This is the fatal flaw in Niccol’s turnaround plans. The workplace has evolved, and command-and-control management is no longer effective, at least not long term. That’s especially true in the service industry, where trust empowers employees to connect with customers. Beyond that, Niccol’s latest policies are antithetical to how Schultz built Starbucks in the first place—a company that prided itself on putting its people at the center of everything it did. In contrast, Niccol and his team would benefit from taking a close look at a recent turnaround story, led by a CEO who, like Niccol, had experience resurrecting a dying brand: James Daunt of Barnes & Noble. A former investment banker turned bookstore owner, Daunt took over the helm of America’s largest bookstore chain in 2019, which had been in steady decline for years. Since Daunt took over, Barnes & Noble has experienced a resurgence, leading to an expansion of dozens of new stores in 2023. This wasn’t Daunt’s first successful turnaround. The British businessman did something similar in the U.K., where he revitalized another chain of flailing bookstores, Waterstones. So, how did Daunt get lightning to strike, twice? His hallmark strategy was simple: Give power to local store managers. “We sort of take three steps forward and then one step back,” Daunt once said in an interview with The New York Times. “The forward is my constantly encouraging and pushing for the stores themselves to have the complete freedom to do absolutely whatever they want—how they display their books, price their books, sort their sections, anything. Those freedoms are difficult if you lived in a very straitjacketed world where everything was dictated to you.” In essence, Daunt turned local Barnes & Noble stores, and Waterstones stores before that, into indie bookstores. The strategy worked because of the trust he put in his people, and the power he gave them. Of course, there’s more than one way to turn a company around. Niccol found success at Chipotle. But a focus on efficiency and policies over people is diametrically opposed to Schultz’s dream for Starbucks: that Italian-inspired vision of local connection between barista and customer. I believe Niccol’s overarching goal to return Starbucks to its roots is a good one. But the company’s ability to produce that experience of connection will depend on the people who are serving the drinks—and that will require rebuilding a culture where Starbucks employees feel supported and cared for, not threatened. If Starbucks can get back to taking care of its people, its people will take care of the customers. And the turnaround will take care of itself. —By Justin Bariso Sign up for my newsletter on how to build emotional intelligence in you and your team. This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister site, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

As Sir Isaac Newton discovered, the core scientific law of gravity is that what goes up must come down. The principle applies in many areas, which is why markets are jittery about the near-unchecked, three-year growth of stock prices fueled by the strength of the generative-AI revolution. The market is on a tear, with a large gap growing even wider between public market valuations and the significantly higher private-market valuations of AI-exposed companies. The top five tech companies in the U.S. are, collectively, valued at more than the combined size of the Euro Stoxx 50, the U.K., India, Japan, and Canada—and account for around 16% of the entire global public equity market, according to Goldman Sachs. It’s not just AI model makers and the firms that provide their infrastructure: It’s the associated industries that help serve the AI market. Earlier this year, Harvard economist Jason Furman estimated that U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was almost entirely due to investment in data centers. Investors in companies like Nvidia are seeing blockbuster returns, as the firm’s value has risen more than 1,200% in the past five years, thanks to being one of the few companies able to provide the computer chips required for the AI revolution. Even so, some are worried that Nvidia is providing financing to customers looking to buy its chips—a supposedly circular chain that short sellers have quibbled with. (Nvidia, for its part, has issued responses to market analysts to refute those claims.) It all adds up to a tetchy time, with nervousness and debate about an AI bubble. Not helping matters are the public comments about the current moment by some of the industry’s biggest names. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that we’re currently in an AI bubble where “investors as a whole are overexcited about AI.” Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called it a “frenzy.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a podcast in September that an AI bubble, and its potential burst, was “definitely a possibility.” Comparisons have been drawn to the 2000s-era dot-com bubble. Weathering the storm So if we are in an AI bubble and it does burst, then who’ll be left standing at the end of it? The idea that entire economies might be hit by the bursting of any bubble is unlikely to happen, reckons Christopher Tucci, professor of digital strategy and innovation at Imperial College Business School in London. “The internet bubble, for example, wiped out many companies and investors, but the technology itself only grew in importance afterwards,” he says. Tucci sees AI in a similar way, noting, “Even if the investment bubble bursts, the underlying technology will remain critical and will continue to advance.” And while the bubble continues to inflate, Tucci believes that’s good news for smaller companies. “At the moment, large amounts of money are flowing into AI startups,” he says. “This lowers startup costs, increases the number of competing companies, and creates vulnerabilities, mainly for investors.” But if and when that bubble bursts, those smaller companies are more likely to be exposed, while larger companies will be insulated from more significant risks. “Survivors will be the ones that own distribution,” says Sergey Toporov, partner at early-stage VC firm Leta Capital. Toporov is blunt about the lack of a moat for smaller companies, saying, “Nobody cares about your ‘best-in-class AI startup’ unless people actually know it exists.” In that view, companies like the big four AI firms—Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta—are likely to weather any storm, but smaller competitors could struggle. “The rest will consolidate or become specialized model shops,” Toporov says. Smaller companies that have what Toporov calls “defensible advantages” like proprietary data or deep integration into business workflows could withstand an AI-caused market correction. He says the same is true for firms with “strong distribution, recurring demand, and a deep technical moat.” Companies that piggyback on existing technology, including AI wrapper services that use their larger competitors’ AI models in order to provide answers to their customers, sometimes in specific specialties, may face a tough road ahead. Big unknowns However, not everyone agrees with that vision of the future. “AI apps with high valuations look the riskiest at the moment,” says Sampsa Samila, professor of strategic management at IESE Business School. “They don’t have easy moats against improving foundation models or other apps.” Samila believes even those that operate foundation models, like OpenAI, could be in a difficult position. “Foundation labs burning billions are also looking shaky,” he says. “It’s not at all easy to see how OpenAI will manage, unless it develops winner-take-all superintelligence.” In part, that’s down to what Samila sees as “circular financing deals,” including those supported by Nvidia’s funding in order to obtain Nvidia chips to power their models. While OpenAI could struggle because of its cash burn, Samila contends that bigger, more established names in the space are better placed to weather the problems. “Google is interesting because they control TPUs [tensor processing units], have proprietary data from Search, YouTube, and Gmail, and are already monetizing AI through Cloud,” he explains. But the big unknown for Google is whether its rollout of AI-native ads can replace its search revenue. Another area of concern for Google, given competition from the likes of Microsoft, is that its tech stack doesn’t always integrate well with the existing IT systems being run by organizations. “Amongst the AI apps, deep embedding into customer workflows is going to be key to survival,” Samila says. Many companies tend to use Microsoft’s products rather than Google’s in large part because it’s what they’ve always done. Whatever happens, most people believe there are fundamental differences between a possible imminent burst of the AI bubble and the dot-com stock market crash. The Magnificent Seven tech firms have a 24-month forward price-to-earnings ratio that is 25 times their collective valuation—high, but half the level it was in the dot-com era. Price-to-earnings growth is also around half the level it was a quarter century ago. And many of the biggest names in the space are well-capitalized tech firms with cash reserves that can pay for any financial hiccups ahead in a way that the dot-com era’s biggest names couldn’t. Regardless, those in and around the AI sector need to be aware of what’s ahead. “When a correction comes, venture capital will dry up, potentially for several years,” Tucci predicts. “In the long run, however, AI as a technology will continue to grow in importance, regardless of short-term investment cycles.” View the full article