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Americans are growing increasingly concerned about their ability to find a good job under President Donald The President, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds, in what is a potential warning sign for Republicans as a promised economic boom has given way to hiring freezes and elevated inflation. High prices for groceries, housing and health care persist as a fear for many households, while rising electricity bills and the cost of gas at the pump are also sources of anxiety, according to the survey. Some 47% of U.S. adults are “not very” or “not at all confident” they could find a good job if they wanted to, an increase from 37% when the question was last asked in October 2023. Electricity bills are a “major” source of stress for 36% of U.S. adults at a time when the expected build-out of data centers for artificial intelligence could further tax the power grid. Just more than one-half said the cost of groceries are a “major” source of financial stress, about 4 in 10 said the cost of housing and health care were a serious strain and about one-third said they were feeling high stress about gasoline prices. The survey suggests an ongoing vulnerability for The President, who returned to the White House in January with claims he could quickly tame the inflation that surged after the pandemic during Democratic President Joe Biden’s term. Instead, The President’s popularity on the economy has remained low amid a mix of tariffs, federal worker layoffs and partisan sniping that has culminated in a government shutdown. Linda Weavil, 76, voted for The President last year because he “seems like a smart businessman.” But she said in an interview that the Republican’s tariffs have worsened inflation, citing the chocolate-covered pecans sold for her church group fundraiser that now cost more. “I think he’s doing a great job on a lot of things, but I’m afraid our coffee and chocolate prices have gone up because of tariffs,” the retiree from Greensboro, North Carolina, said. “That’s a kick in the back of the American people.” Voters changed presidents, but they’re not feeling better about The President’s economy The poll found that 36% of U.S. adults approve of how The President is handling the economy, a figure that has held steady this year after he imposed tariffs that caused broad economic uncertainty. Among Republicans, 71% feel positive about his economic leadership. Yet that approval within The President’s own party is relatively low in ways that could be problematic for Republicans in next month’s races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and perhaps even in the 2026 midterm elections. At roughly the same point in Biden’s term, in October 2021, an AP-NORC poll found that 41% of U.S. adults approved of how he was handling the economy, including about 73% of Democrats. That overall number was a little higher than The President’s, primarily because of independents — 29% approved of how Biden was handling the economy, compared with the 18% who currently support The President’s approach. The job market was meaningfully stronger in terms of hiring during Biden’s presidency as the United States was recovering from pandemic-related lockdowns. But hiring has slowed sharply under The President with monthly job gains averaging less than 27,000 after the April tariff announcements. People see that difference. Four years ago, 36% of those in the survey were “extremely” or “very” confident in their ability to get a good job, but that has fallen to 21% now. Biden’s approval on the economy steadily deteriorated through the middle of 2022 when inflation hit a four-decade high, creating an opening for The President’s political comeback. Electricity costs are an emerging worry In some ways, The President has made the inflation problems harder by choosing to cancel funding for renewable energy projects and imposing tariffs on the equipment needed for factories and power plants. Those added costs are coming before the anticipated construction of data centers for AI that could further push up prices without more construction. Even though 36% see electricity as a major concern, there are some who have yet to feel a serious financial squeeze. In the survey, 40% identified electricity costs as a “minor” stress, while 23% said their utility bills are “not a source” of stress. Kevin Halsey, 58, of Normal, Illinois, said his monthly electricity bills used to be $90 during the summer because he had solar panels, but have since jumped to $300. Halsey, who works in telecommunications, voted Democratic in last year’s presidential election and described the economy right now as “crap.” “I’ve got to be pessimistic,” he said. “I don’t see this as getting better.” At a fundamental level, The President finds himself in the same economic dilemma that bedeviled Biden. There are signs the economy remains relatively solid with a low unemployment rate, stock market gains and decent economic growth, yet the public continues to be skeptical about the economy’s health. Some 68% of U.S. adults describe the U.S. economy these days as “poor,” while 32% say it’s “good.” That’s largely consistent with assessments of the economy over the past year. In addition, 59%, say their family finances are “holding steady.” But only 12% say they’re “getting ahead,” and 28% say they are “falling behind.” People see plenty of expenses but few opportunities The sense of economic precarity is coming from many different directions, with indications that many think middle-class stability is falling out of reach. The vast majority of U.S. adults feel at least “minor” stress about the cost of groceries, health care, housing, the amount they pay in taxes, what they are paid at work and the cost of gas for their cars. In the survey, 47%, say they are “not very” or “not at all” confident they could pay an unexpected medical expense while 52% have low confidence they will have enough saved for their retirement. Also, 63%, are “not very” or “not at all” confident they could buy a new home if they wanted to. Young adults are much less confident about their ability to buy a house, though confidence is not especially high across the board. About 8 in 10 U.S. adults under age 30 say they are “not very confident” or “not at all confident” they would be able to buy a house, compared with about 6 in 10 adults 60 and older. For 54% of U.S. adults, the cost of groceries is a “major source” of stress in their life right now. Unique Hopkins, 36, of Youngstown, Ohio, said she is now working two jobs after her teenage daughter had a baby, leaving Hopkins with a sense that she can barely tread water as part of the “working poor.” She voted for The President in 2016, only to switch to Democrats after she felt his ego kept him from uniting the country and solving problems. “It’s his way or no way,” she said. “Nobody is going to unite with The President if it’s all about you, you, you.” The AP-NORC poll of 1,289 adults was conducted Oct. 9-13, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. This story has been corrected to reflect that the name of the NORC Center is NORC Center for Public Research, not Public Affairs. —Josh Boak and Linley Sanders, Associated Press View the full article

Verdict in case over providing banking services to former ruler could open door to thousands more claims, lawyers argueView the full article

A practical reference for marketers who want to connect reliable market data with strategic SEO and investment decisions. The post 17 Data Reports That Every SEO Should Be Tracking in 2026 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Agents of Transformation entries selected from among more than 6,000 submissions from more than 43 countries. By CPA Trendlines Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Agents of Transformation entries selected from among more than 6,000 submissions from more than 43 countries. By CPA Trendlines Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Google’s quiet retirement of the num=100 parameter might look trivial to the rest of the world, but for SEO professionals, it’s another step deeper into the dark. That small setting allowed us to see the full top 100 results at once, which made competitive research and rank tracking more complete. Its disappearance comes on the heels of Google requiring JavaScript execution for scraping (temporarily breaking many rank trackers) and alongside AI Overviews that steal clicks surface answers without disclosing sources. Piece by piece, the data we’ve relied on to measure SEO impact is slipping away. We are entering a black box era. Note: If your impressions suddenly dropped in Google Search Console, it’s not necessarily bad news. Google’s removal of num=100 made the data more human-accurate: Fewer phantom impressions from bots. Fewer empty long-tail reports. A clearer view of what people actually see. Search has never been entirely transparent, but it used to give us proxies and breadcrumbs – rankings, impressions, clicks – that were stable enough to build reports around. Now those numbers are fragmenting, misleading, or vanishing outright. That doesn’t mean SEO is irrelevant. It means the way we measure and report it has to change. When the data stops adding up The loss of num=100 doesn’t just obscure rank tracking. It quietly alters the way we: Conduct keyword research. Evaluate striking distance opportunities. Understand how often humans actually see a page in search results. Before this change, SEO tools could request the full first hundred results for a query, showing where every relevant page ranked. That allowed for deeper keyword mapping and for spotting low-hanging fruit: pages sitting just beyond page one that could be optimized to climb. Now that view is gone, and most third-party tools can only sample partial SERPs. As a result, the list of keywords a page ranks for is truncated, and the data used for identifying opportunity gaps is less complete. What’s more, this change clarifies our perception of human impressions. Much of the long‑tail “impressions but no clicks” we used to see were probably generated by bots, scrapers, and non‑human activity surfaced by deep‑page result views. By effectively focusing reporting on Page 1 exposure – where, let’s be honest, human users actually look – Search Console now reflects human behavior more closely. The trade‑off: cleaner, human‑aligned data, but less visibility into the long tail we once used for discovery and diagnostics. Rank tracking degraded Once reliable, it’s now fragile and expensive because tools must execute JavaScript to render modern SERPs. Many providers can’t or won’t maintain full accuracy. Some abandoned the practice entirely. This makes it difficult to benchmark visibility and nearly impossible to compare week-to-week fluctuations without qualification. The cost of accurate rank data has ballooned, and some smaller tools are bowing out, leaving gaps in coverage. Dig deeper: 77% of sites lost keyword visibility after Google removed num=100: Data Search Console, cleaned up Losing num=100 also changes keyword research because tools can no longer show the complete tail of ranking keywords. This means SEOs lose visibility into emerging opportunities and the “striking distance” terms that once informed optimization strategies. At the same time, impression counts dropped and average positions shifted because many non‑human deep‑page impressions disappeared from the data. In practical terms, the denominator is smaller and more human‑true, so averages look better even though nothing may have moved. Trend analysis needs re‑baselining, and striking‑distance workflows need new inputs. AI Overviews limited visibility Whether your site is surfaced in Google’s AI-generated answers is mostly invisible. You either appear, or you don’t, with little trace or reporting trail. For marketers who built careers on metrics, that lack of transparency feels like flying blind. The cumulative effect? Precision reporting is falling apart. The dashboards we built entire workflows around no longer reflect reality. SEOs are still working, still optimizing, but they’re doing it through fog. Clients still expect dashboards This creates tension. Executives and clients still want to see tidy charts of rankings, impressions, and traffic – the same ones they’ve been getting for years. These metrics are familiar, and they look like proof. They make complex work seem measurable and orderly. Sadly, that proof is weaker than it once was. A dip might not be a true performance problem, but an artifact of reporting changes. An improvement might not mean stronger visibility, just an altered methodology. At best, these charts are incomplete, and at worst, they are misleading. The new challenge for SEO professionals is education. Stakeholders need to understand that less data doesn’t mean less performance – it means a changing measurement environment. Instead of precision, we need context: What we can know. What’s inferred. What’s simply unknowable now. This reframing moves SEO closer to brand strategy and communications – and further from the tidy dashboards that used to define success. Dig deeper: Google Search confirms it does not support the results per page parameter The once and future marketing In the 1960s, marketers didn’t have dashboards. They didn’t report keyword charts. They told clients whether their brand was visible in the places that mattered – television, magazines, newspapers – and whether it was shaping perception. Success was measured in publicity and reputation. The work was creative, not algorithmic or computational. Impact was judged by reach, resonance, and how much the audience believed what they saw. SEO is cycling back. Our job is shifting from proving keyword precision to proving presence. Did your brand appear in authoritative places? Was it cited by other experts? Is it being pulled into AI-driven answers? That’s the new reporting stack. For younger readers: think brand vibes over vanity metrics. (Homework: binge “Mad Men” and thank me later.) If you need a refresher, start with Don Draper’s famous carousel pitch (the Season 1 finale) – the moment he turns data and product features into emotion and story. That’s what we’re doing again, translating numbers into narrative. We’re not selling charts anymore; we’re selling belief. The best SEOs will sound less like analysts and more like Draper in full pitch mode: turning metrics into meaning. Peggy Olson would probably approve. Her character bridged the gap between intuition and insight, between creative storytelling and measurable performance. That’s exactly where modern SEO now lives. The irony is that we’re rediscovering what OG marketers knew all along – visibility and trust beat precision and position. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, but you can influence what people see and believe about you. That’s where SEO is heading again. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. What modern deliverables look like Here’s what SEOs should be reporting in the black box era. Each of these deliverables shifts SEO closer to communications strategy and away from raw technical metrics. They prove value through visibility, not position. Entity authority Is your brand in the Knowledge Graph? Is it consistently associated with your topics of expertise? Entity strength is replacing keyword rank as a core indicator. The stronger the entity, the more often you’ll appear in AI-driven answers and summaries. Track structured citations, schema consistency, and how your brand is referenced externally. Earned visibility Media mentions, guest articles, podcast appearances, and digital PR campaigns that build recognition outside of search. These aren’t vanity projects – they’re signals to algorithms and humans alike that your expertise is recognized. A citation from a credible outlet can carry more SEO weight than 50 backlinks from middling directories. AI citations Screenshots and evidence of appearing in AI Overviews, ChatGPT Browse, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot. Sure, it’s crude, but increasingly critical. Several tools already offer partial tracking of AI Overview appearances – SEOs should be testing those platforms to establish baselines and spot patterns. Over time, expect new tools to formalize this tracking. Some of these tools can be expensive, so if you don’t have a budget, start now with manual observation. You can’t optimize what you never document. Share of answer How often your brand is represented in synthesized responses compared to competitors. This is the modern evolution of “share of voice.” It’s not about who ranks first – it’s about who gets quoted when AI explains a concept. Trust signals Clear author bios, first-hand experience, and citations from other credible sites that give search engines and LLMs reason to choose your content. These indicators are the connective tissue between traditional E-E-A-T principles and AI-era credibility. Closing the SEO-PR divide This transition also forces SEOs and PR professionals closer together. The earned media placements that once seemed “outside SEO” are now essential inputs for AI visibility. Citations and mentions strengthen entities, reinforce authority, and surface your brand where dashboards cannot. It’s worth remembering that PR isn’t new to SEO, though plenty of people are suddenly discovering it as a fresh idea. Press releases, brand mentions, and syndicated coverage have always had a role in search. The early goal was backlinks: Issue a press release. Have it picked up by an AP-connected outlet. Watch as it spreads across dozens of affiliated news sites, generating authoritative links. Today, the value is different. You still want that pickup, but not just for link equity. You want visibility, brand reinforcement, and the chance for your content to appear in AI systems’ training data. Fresh, credible information is currency in this new environment, and PR remains one of the most reliable ways to mint it. The irony is that SEOs spent years trying to escape the fuzzy world of “awareness” that PR operated in. We loved our charts because they looked precise. Now those charts are hollow, and we’re returning to the older, messier, but more meaningful work of building reputation. If this feels like a step backward, it isn’t. It’s a maturation. Digital marketing has always been about bridging technology and human behavior. Now that our ability to quantify is limited, our ability to influence must take over. Smart brands will adapt by blending PR’s narrative instincts with SEO’s technical rigor. The result: campaigns designed for credibility rather than clicks. Dig deeper: Why PR is becoming more essential for AI search visibility What SEOs should do next Before diving into tactical next steps, keyword research itself must evolve. With full SERP visibility gone, SEOs will need to supplement Search Console with third-party datasets, paid search data, and clickstream insights to recreate a fuller view of opportunity. Striking-distance analysis must become probabilistic – based on blended data and modeled visibility rather than exact ranks. This shift will push keyword research toward market modeling and competitive intelligence, where intuition, experience, and context matter as much as raw numbers. Audit your reporting stack: Flag the metrics that are unreliable post-num=100 and explain to stakeholders why they’ve changed. Create a short guide outlining which metrics remain solid and which are subject to distortion. Track AI visibility: Even if it’s screenshots, start logging where you appear in AI answers. Early baselines will be valuable. Use these moments to illustrate visibility that can’t be measured through Search Console. Reframe KPIs: Replace “rankings” with deliverables that prove presence – earned citations, knowledge graph entries, and AI mentions. Focus on showing why you’re included, not just where you show up. Integrate PR: Collaborate on campaigns that generate buzz and authoritative mentions. These feed the same systems AI draws from and help reinforce topical relevance. Educate stakeholders: Reporting will feel uncomfortable for a while. Be transparent about what’s changing and why. Build trust by communicating what can’t be known rather than pretending certainty. The future of SEO is persuasion, not precision We can’t control Google’s opacity or AI systems’ black boxes, but we can control how we prove value. Instead of chasing precision that no longer exists, we need to return to fundamentals: authority, visibility, and credibility. The data is thinner, but the strategy is richer. The future of SEO will reward those who think like communicators, not just technicians. This evolution also hands SEOs a chance to reclaim leadership: to step out from behind dashboards and back into the role of storytellers, strategists, and advisors who shape how brands are perceived. In other words, your SEO reports are about to look less like a Looker Studio dashboard and more like a Don Draper pitch – built on presence, persuasion, and proof that your brand is the one everyone else is quoting. View the full article

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. Welcome to The Out of Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture, where I make sense of youth nonsense. This week, kids are bringing hollowed-out pumpkins into Starbucks and demanding they be filled with pumpkin spice lattes; TikTok is obsessed with a fake video game called Bird Game 3; everyone’s growing the universe's AI slop-pile with videos about a fictional video game, and teens are fighting about Lorax costumes. Plus the world's police departments are issuing a warning about a prank that is not funny and you should never do. Filling pumpkins with pumpkin spice latteLook, we're all excited for Halloween; it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers. But please, in the name of all that is holy, do not bring a hollowed-out pumpkin to the Starbucks drive-through and ask the baristas to fill it with a pumpkin spice latte. Even if influencers on TikTok are doing it. Even if their videos are getting millions of views. Virality is not a permission slip. It's fine, sometimes heroic, to be whimsical, but baristas are doing seven invisible jobs at once and being paid for half a job, and trying to force them to be extras in your twee little video is job number eight. Maybe they'll force a smile when you hand them the gourd, but when they say “oh, cute,” there will be murder in their eyes. They want to react like this, I promise: What is "Bird Game 3"?Bird Game 3 is the name of an imaginary video game for the imaginary Xbox50 game system. Making AI videos of people who are very excited to play Bird Game 3 is becoming a hot thing to do on TikTok and elsewhere. Unlike almost all other AI slop videos, some of the Bird Game 3 videos are actually funny. Like this one: And this one: I don't know what everyone is so excited about. Now, when I played the first Bird Game at E3 2010, that was exciting. Everyone is making "celebrity elevator selfies"Speaking of AI slop, if you've been anywhere near TikTok lately, you've likely seen the proliferation of posts of people posing with celebrities in elevators, like this one: They are, of course, fake—products of AI image generation tools—but it's a fun kind of fakery that's easy to be part of. You just use CapCut or Gemini, or any AI-slop-making machine, and you too can pretend you rode an elevator with Brian Boitano or Ice Spice. If you'd like more detailed instructions, I broke it down here. On a more serious note, the kids making these fake videos are devaluing the unique and meaningful relationship between some random person and a celebrity jerk who are forced to interact because they're trapped in an enclosed space. Now no one will believe my dream-come-true celebrity elevator encounter with Dr. Phil actually happened. Viral videos of the week: Invasion of the Lorax girls Over the last few years, TikTok and Instagram have been taken over by Lorax girls every October. Videos of girls dressed as Dr. Seuss's self-righteous hero are everywhere. Here's a typical example: The Lorax costume pioneer seems to be TikToker McKenna, who posted a Lorax video in 2023 that went viral to the tune of over 30 million plays: Since then, the costume has become very popular; there are over 200,000 TikTok videos tagged #Lorax. The trend has become so widespread that a backlash is building. The word among young men/boys is that only "unfunny popular girls" dress as the Lorax for Halloween. Some teenage boys are even calling the costumes a red flag and posting anti-Lorax-Girl meme videos like these: Fellas, the only thing less funny than dressing as the Lorax for Halloween is complaining about other people dressing as the Lorax for Halloween. Face it: You're actually mad because girls are doing something that isn't designed for male approval. On the flip side of the coin, I can totally understand the appeal of the costume for "popular girls." You gotta really work on shaping your personality to be "well-liked" in the murder pit of high school popularity, so having a night where you dress like a pot-bellied goof and act the fool must be liberating, especially when acting the fool in an established way that won't reflect badly upon your image and might get millions of views. Police warn of AI homeless prankLast week, I laid out the basics of the AI Homeless Person prank going viral—basically, kids are AI-faking images of homeless dudes in their houses and sending them to their parents as a funny joke. Well, the cops want everyone to know it's not funny and no one should do it, because some parents, understandably, seem to have called the cops when they got the message. The police in Salem, MA got the ball rolling by issuing a statement warning that pranksters could face up to two and a half years in jail for the stunt. Many other police departments followed, from all over the U.S. and even overseas. My favorite is from Yonkers, NY, who posted this on its Facebook: "We get it — some pranks are funny and we like to laugh at the best of them. Some, though, pose a public safety risk..." Yonkers Police Department, you do not "like to laugh at the best of them." I've had enough teachers use that line to know it's a lie. But on a serious note, it's actually a bad idea to pretend a homeless person is in your house to scare your parents. It wastes resources and the cops coming to your door is almost always a bad thing. If you must pull a prank, try the less confrontational option of generating a shirtless plumber to prank your boyfriend: View the full article

Having a strong LinkedIn game is no longer an option. What we’re witnessing in today’s tough economy is the inevitable rise of social selling. This trend leverages social media platforms to build connections and establish meaningful relationships with potential business prospects — and when it comes to social selling, LinkedIn is the MVP. The reality is that the best LinkedIn users are marketing machines. They use the platform as a content distribution system, not a resume builder. This is your street credibility and personal brand all rolled into one. It’s the first impression you’ll make on prospective employers, clients, partners, or investors — so make it count. My own LinkedIn experienceI’ve been posting on LinkedIn once a week without fail for six years. Thanks to that hard work and consistency, I've established a personal brand grounded in credibility and respect, and grown my follower count to 45,000. I've built real friendships with the best B2B marketers in the world and I’m on a text-message basis with countless founders, CEOs, VPs, and executives. I've earned millions in salary and consulting contracts, 100 percent inbound driven. I’ve been invited to speak on hundreds of podcasts and written for some of the most prestigious websites in business and marketing, like Buffer, HubSpot, Nasdaq, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, NBC, and more. What’s the true ROI? Thanks to all of the above, I’ll never have to apply for a job again. I’ve been posting on LinkedIn 1x per week for 6 years straight. The ROI is insane. Literally millions of dollars. The compounding network growth, career growth, personal brand growth, etc has translated into referrals, positive recommendations and 6 figure client contracts. — Gaetano 🇺🇦 (@gaetano_nyc) July 12, 2023 Here’s what I’ve avoided: I’ve never posted memes, clickbait, or gimmicky stories.I’ve never created LinkedIn content with the “goal” of lead generation or immediate-term sales.I’ve never used a content calendar or automation tool (although some of them can be useful).I’ve never cared about factors like which day of the week is best to post.Here’s what I've done consistently: I’ve always prioritized sharing lessons “from the trenches” — real-world learnings directly from my day-to-day experiences as a marketing leader.I’ve always written posts using informal, simple, easy language.I’ve always made sure to connect with second-degree connections who comment on my posts.I’ve always made sure to engage and respond to people who leave comments.In this article, I'll dive deeper into tactics for making your profile stand out on the increasingly crowded platform. LinkedIn profile optimization best practicesGone are the days when your LinkedIn page was nothing more than a digital resume to try and get job offers — it’s so much more now — and utilizing LinkedIn’s new features will help you get the maximum ROI from the platform. You need a super compelling profile to enhance your online visibility and gain trust. Here are some top tips for creating a great LinkedIn profile. 1. Choose a distinctive profile and background photoYour LinkedIn profile picture and background photo are the first visual impressions you make on visitors. Conventional wisdom says to choose a professional, high-quality, and recent headshot of yourself — but I’d argue you can also pick something that displays your personality even if it’s not super “business–y.” Take my LinkedIn profile example below, you’ll see my avatar plus Eddie Van Halen cover photo — this is by design, as it reflects the impression I want to share with my network. Now, keep in mind that I’m a solo consultant and not affiliated with any specific company. If you’re a full-time employee, you may want to consider a banner that is aligned with your company’s corporate branding. 2. Write a catchy headline and LinkedIn summaryYour LinkedIn headline, limited to 220 characters, should succinctly capture who you are as a professional. Incorporate keyword-rich terms that potential employers, clients, or business partners might use to find someone with your skills or work experiences. For the LinkedIn summary, you can weave a narrative about your professional journey, skills, achievements, and aspirations. My profile summary explains my origin story as a musician and how that helped shape my career as a marketer. Another cool example I really like is Tito Bohrt — he stands out with the pseudo, “Sales Mad Scientist” — which demonstrates confidence and a unique identity online. 3. Write a detailed experience sectionThe 'Experience' section of your LinkedIn profile is your online resume. So if you really want to stand out to hiring managers, follow these tips: Be specific. Don't just list your job titles and tactical specialties. Instead, be specific about what you accomplished in each role. What were your key responsibilities? What were your biggest successes?Use keywords and bullet points. When you're writing your experience, be sure to use keywords that are relevant to your industry and the jobs you're interested in. Using bullet points helps keep things clear and concise.Quantify your results. Whenever possible, quantify your results and remove as many buzzwords as possible. This will help you to demonstrate the impact of your work and make you more marketable to potential employers.4. Add your skills, endorsements, and recommendationsIt’s time to buff up that skills section. Include skills that are relevant to your industry and that align with your career goals. And you’ll want to throw in a mix of hard vs soft skills: Here are some examples of hard skills: Coding: The ability to write code in a programming language.Graphic design: The ability to create and edit graphics using software such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.Data analysis: The ability to collect, analyze, and interpret data.Customer service: The ability to interact with customers in a friendly and helpful manner.Sales: The ability to persuade others to buy a product or service.Here are some examples of soft skills: Communication: The ability to clearly and concisely communicate with others, both verbally and in writing.Commitment: What’s something that took a long time to achieve?Leadership: The ability to motivate and inspire others to achieve a common goal.Adaptability: The ability to adjust to change and new situations.Regularly updating this section and getting endorsements from colleagues can bolster your credibility. For example, this is a recommendation I’ve earned from the CMO of Cognism. These types of endorsements are priceless. 5. Showcase licenses and certificationsIf you have any licenses or certifications relevant to your profession, be sure to include them. LinkedIn has a dedicated section for these credentials, which increases your credibility and sets you apart from others in your field. Not sure what to showcase? If you’re a social media content creator — try this selection of courses recommended by Buffer. If you’re in B2B marketing — try HubSpot Academy to showcase your skills. If you’re in B2B sales — SaaS sales training programs are a no-brainer for leveling up. 6. Engage thoughtfullyThis cannot be overstated. The top LinkedIn users regularly share, post, and engage with content that aligns with their professional interests. Your activity on LinkedIn reflects your knowledge and passion in your field. These engagements can be a rich source of keywords and demonstrate your thought leadership. Here are some of the best tips for engaging with people on LinkedIn: Be authentic. People can spot a fake from a mile away, so be yourself and let your personality shine through in your interactions.Be helpful. Offer to help others with their questions and problems, and share your knowledge and expertise.Be consistent. Engage with people on a regular basis, and don't just disappear after you've made a connection.Comment on their posts. When someone you're connected to posts something, take a few minutes to read it and leave a thoughtful comment.Share other people’s content. If someone you're connected to has shared valuable content, repost it to your own network.Demonstrate business acumen. You need to show potential business partners that you possess intelligent strategic acumen.Invite them to connect with you. If you see someone who you think you could benefit from connecting with, send them an invitation.Job seekersUse LinkedIn to network with people in your field. Attend industry events, join relevant LinkedIn groups, and reach out to people you admire.Highlight your skills and experience in your profile. Make sure your profile is up-to-date and includes all of your relevant skills and experience.Use LinkedIn to research companies. Before you apply for a job, do some research on the company on LinkedIn. This will help you learn more about the company and its culture, and it will also give you some talking points for your interview.SalespeopleUse LinkedIn to find potential leads. LinkedIn is a great way to find potential leads who are interested in the products or services you sell.Send personalized messages. Send tailored, customized messages. Be human and write conversationally. Avoid being overly corporate or stuffy.Don’t be annoying. Be professional. Don’t connect and pitch. Leave deposits before attempting to make withdrawals.Business ownersUse LinkedIn to build your brand. LinkedIn is a great way to build your brand and establish yourself as an expert in your field.Share your content. Share valuable content on LinkedIn, such as blog posts, articles, and videos.Engage with your audience. Respond to comments and questions on your content, and participate in conversations on LinkedIn.Pro tip: You can also leverage LinkedIn to build a referral marketing program that drives passive lead flow — the gift that keeps on giving.7. Customize your LinkedIn URLA small yet essential aspect of profile optimization is customizing your LinkedIn URL. A customized URL is not only more professional and easier to share, but it also enhances your personal brand. Here’s how to claim your custom LinkedIn URL: Locate and select the ‘Me’ icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.Click ‘View Profile’ and select ‘Edit Public Profile and URL’On the right hand side of the screen, select ‘Edit Custom URL’Your current URL will appear like this: www.linkedin.com/in/yournameType your desired new URL in the text box and click ‘Save’8. Include volunteer experienceVolunteer experience often gets overlooked but can be a powerful component of your LinkedIn profile. It demonstrates your commitment to community and social causes, providing a holistic view of your character beyond professional achievements. This can be considered a cause marketing strategy, and can help you stand out in the sea of clutter. 9. Use the featured sectionThe Featured section is a space on your profile where you can showcase work samples, achievements, and publications. You can use this section to highlight your best work, whether it's a blog post, a project, a certificate, or even a video from a webinar or a speech you've delivered. 10. Follow influencers and top companiesFollow influencers, leaders, and companies in your industry to stay updated with trends and discussions. Engaging with their content shows your enthusiasm for your field and keeps you visible to your professional network. 11. Adjust your public profile settingsLastly, ensure your profile settings are adjusted for maximum visibility. Under the Privacy settings, make sure your profile can be seen by everyone, including search engines — this matters quite a lot for personal brand SEO. Profile optimization is a continuous process. Keep updating and refining your LinkedIn profile as you progress in your career, acquire new skills, and achieve new milestones. Remember, a well-optimized LinkedIn profile isn’t just a static CV, it's a dynamic, evolving representation of your professional journey. LinkedIn for job seekingLinkedIn has become an essential tool for jobseekers worldwide, even in today’s difficult job market — in case you missed it, Crunchbase reported 150K tech layoffs this year. With a multitude of features specifically designed to help you connect with potential employers and discover new opportunities, knowing how to effectively utilize the platform is paramount. 12. Optimize your job preferencesLinkedIn allows you to set your job-seeking preferences, including the types of roles you're interested in, your preferred location, and whether or not you're open to remote work. This not only helps LinkedIn's algorithm to show you the most relevant job postings but also signals to potential employers that you're actively looking for opportunities. 13. Consider the 'Open to Work' featureUsing LinkedIn's 'Open to Work' feature helps recruiters know that you're actively seeking a new role. This can be displayed on your profile picture for all to see, or you can choose to only show this to recruiters. 14. Build and nurture your networkConnecting with industry professionals, alumni, and influencers can significantly improve your job-seeking efforts. However, it's not just about increasing your connection count; meaningful engagement with your network through likes, shares, and comments can foster relationships that could lead to job opportunities. Be selective about who you connect with. When you're adding people to your network, make sure they're people you actually know or who you're genuinely interested in connecting with. Don't just add people for the sake of adding people.Send personalized connection requests. When you send a connection request, take the time to write a personalized message explaining why you want to connect. This will show that you're not just adding people for the sake of adding people, and it will make people more likely to accept your request.Engage with your connections. Once you've connected with someone, don't just add them to your network and then forget about them. Engage with them by liking and commenting on their posts, sharing their content, and reaching out to them to ask questions or offer help.Attend industry events and meetups. Another great way to meet new people and grow your network is to attend industry events and meetups. This is a great way to meet people who are already working in your field and who can offer you advice and support.15. Use LinkedIn Job AlertsLinkedIn's Job Alerts feature ensures that you get immediate notifications about new job postings that match your preferences. This can give you a head start, allowing you to apply early and increase your chances of getting noticed by recruiters. 16. Beware of scams and social engineeringThis applies to both employees and job seekers — social engineering threats and job scams are sadly far too common on LinkedIn these days. From the fake CEO boss text, to the phony recruiter scheme — LinkedIn users should remain vigilant to avoid getting tricked. 17. Craft a personalized connection requestWhen reaching out to new connections or potential employers, always personalize your connection request. A generic request may be ignored, but a personalized message demonstrates your genuine interest in connecting and can foster a more positive impression. Here are some tips for writing a personalized connection request: Explain why you're interested in connecting. What do you admire about the person's work? What do you hope to learn from them?Be specific. Don't just say that you're interested in connecting. Be specific about why you're interested in connecting and what you hope to gain from the connection.Keep it short and sweet. No one wants to read a long, rambling connection request. Keep it short and to the point.Use a call to action. Ask the person if they'd be open to connecting, whether that’s over a virtual coffee or knowledge-share.Don’t “Connect and Pitch.” Please… just don’t.Remember, job seeking on LinkedIn is about more than just applying for jobs or trying to pitch your products and services. It's about establishing a personal brand, networking with the right people, staying informed about trends in your industry, and demonstrating your passion and expertise. With these tips, you'll be well-equipped to make LinkedIn a powerful tool in your job search. LinkedIn for executivesFor entrepreneurs, LinkedIn is more than just a networking platform; it's a tool for digital marketing, brand-building, recruiting, and even learning. Knowing how to maximize LinkedIn can give your organization a significant boost. 18. Establish your professional brandA strong professional brand demonstrates expertise and builds trust with your audience. To establish this: Highlight your skills, experience, testimonials, and accomplishments in your profile.Regularly share and publish relevant content that demonstrates your expertise and perspective. This could include blog posts, articles, case studies, or insightful comments on industry trends.💡Work smarter, not harder: Use Buffer to schedule your LinkedIn ideas to go out at the best times for maximum engagement, gather all your post ideas in one place, and use our AI tool to help you write content. Get started here.19. Attract the right audienceLinkedIn provides several tools to help you find the right people: Use LinkedIn's advanced search features to identify potential connections based on various criteria such as industry, job role, and geography.Follow influencers, join groups, and participate in discussions in your target industry to discover potential business partners and other ways to collaborate.20. Engage with valueSharing valuable content helps build credibility and initiate meaningful conversations. Share industry news, trends, and your own insights to have new interactions.Engage with your connections’ posts by liking, commenting on, and sharing their content.Use LinkedIn's insights and updates to personalize your engagement with new connections or potential partners. For instance, congratulate them on a new role or comment on their recent post.21. Build meaningful relationshipsBuilding trust and maintaining relationships is essential for LinkedIn success. Connect with potential partners by sending personalized connection requests.Nurture your relationships with regular check-ins, updates, and sharing of relevant content.Have meaningful offline conversations — invite connections to a 1:1 coffee chat.Studies have shown that salespeople who build relationships with potential customers are more successful than those who don't.Being genuine during the sales process is said to be one of the most important parts of modern selling strategies.22. Empower employees to amplify your brandCompanies should do a better job training their teams to be successful on LinkedIn, but they often fail. This goes beyond LinkedIn profile badges and certifications — it’s about investing in the success of everyone at the company. Here are some ways companies can do a better job preparing their teams for LinkedIn: Understand the algorithm — LinkedIn's algorithm prioritize real-world expertise and practical advice from experts.Use training software — Corporate learning platforms can really make a huge difference in helping employees reach their full potential, by realizing what to do (and what not to do) to help promote the company online.Empower your partners and affiliates — Most in-house enablement collateral is a sloppy, disorganized mess. A member training system can help transform your partners and affiliates into an army of marketers for your brand on LinkedIn.Watch tutorials — There are tons of great YouTube tutorials that can give you inspiration for better marketing on LinkedIn.23. Tell the founder storyAs the founder, you are quite literally the face of your business. A strong personal brand can lend credibility to your company and attract potential partners, customers, and investors. Highlight your expertise, passion, and the vision behind your startup in your headline, summary, and experience sections. Founders should also strive to be visionary and tell the company’s origin story. Videos can be clipped and repurposed across LinkedIn and other social media platforms, Liquid Death, while gimmicky, may be the best example of this I’ve ever seen. 24. Showcase your thought leadershipThought leadership is about becoming an authority in your field, someone others look to for insights, expertise, and guidance. For entrepreneurs and CEOs, flexing your area of expertise on LinkedIn can build credibility, attract potential customers or investors, and open doors to new opportunities. Here's how to showcase your thought leadership on LinkedIn: Write blog posts and articles. Some people say publishing LinkedIn Articles is a dying art form — but I believe they can still be valuable. For example, when I joined Aura as their VP of Growth, I wrote an article called Why I’m Joining Aura, which earned tons of engagement.Record and share videos. Videos are a great way to share your expertise and insights in a more personal and engaging way. In fact, LinkedIn videos receive five times more comments than other LinkedIn post types. Videos with closed captions are the most effective because they allow viewers to understand your video with their sound off. When recording videos, be sure to speak clearly and concisely.Host podcasts and workshops. Podcasts and workshops are a great way to share your expertise with a large group of people. When hosting a podcast or workshop, be sure to promote it to your LinkedIn network and send texts or DMs to get people sharing.Become a speaker at industry events. Speaking at industry events is a great way to share your expertise with a large audience and to build your personal brand. When speaking at an event, be sure to prepare your presentation in advance and practice it several times.Contribute to industry publications. Contributing to industry publications is a great way to share your expertise with a wider audience. For example, if you’re an advertising executive, contributing to AdWeek or Forbes could bode well for your personal brand.Connect with other thought leaders. Building relationships with other thought leaders is a great way to share your expertise and to learn from others. When building relationships with other thought leaders, be sure to reach out to them and introduce yourself. You should also follow them on LinkedIn and engage with their content.25. Use LinkedIn for hiringLinkedIn can be a powerful recruiting tool. Posting jobs on LinkedIn can help you find qualified candidates. You can also use the platform's search functions and LinkedIn Recruiter tools to proactively find and reach out to potential candidates. 26. Build a strong company pageBeyond your personal profile, a compelling LinkedIn company page is essential. It's where you can showcase your products or services, share updates, and post job openings. Make sure your page has a high-quality logo and banner image, a compelling 'About' section, and regular updates about your company. Regularly update your page with news, achievements, and insights about your company. This helps create an active, engaging presence that can attract potential candidates.Showcase your company culture. Upload pictures from team events, highlight employee achievements, and share posts that give a glimpse into your work environment.27. Post detailed job listingsLinkedIn offers a feature-rich job posting platform where you can list open positions. Make your job descriptions clear and engaging. Detail the role responsibilities, desired skills and qualifications, and what the candidate can expect from working with your company.Leverage LinkedIn targeting to reach relevant candidates. You can target based on location, job function, industry, and more.28. Use LinkedIn recruiterLinkedIn Recruiter is a premium tool specifically designed to help hiring managers and recruiters find, connect with, and manage potential candidates. Use advanced search filters to identify suitable candidates. You can filter by skills, experience, location, industry, and more.For example, if you are trying to hire sales reps — you can filter by experience levels such as seniority, company size and annual revenue to find qualified candidates who align with the job requirements.Reach out to potential candidates directly using InMail, even if they're not in your network.You can also send them connection requests and keep in touch with them, so that in the future they will see your posts and engage with your content.29. Tap your networkYour own network and your employees' networks can be valuable sources of potential candidates. Encourage your employees to share job openings with their networks. Employee referrals often result in high-quality candidates.Share job openings on your own profile and ask your connections to spread the word.30. Engage with potential candidatesSimply posting a job and waiting for applications is a passive approach. Actively engage with potential candidates to increase your chances of finding the right fit. Engage with people who comment on your job postings. Answer any questions they have and thank them for their interest.Keep an eye on people who regularly engage with your company page. They already have an interest in your company and could be potential candidates.31. Showcase your employer brandEmployer branding is about showcasing what it's like to work at your company. A strong employer brand can make top talent want to work for you. Share content that showcases your company culture, values, and work environment.Encourage your employees to share their experiences and to engage with your company posts.Highlight benefits, professional development opportunities, and unique aspects of your company culture.32. Be responsive and communicativeGood communication can significantly enhance candidate experience. Respond promptly to inquiries about job listings.If a candidate reaches out directly, take the time to engage with them, even if they might not be the right fit for current openings.After interviews, let candidates know the next steps and timelines. If they didn't get the job, a kind rejection can leave a positive impression and keep the door open for future opportunities.If all else fails with recruiting leaders for your startup, you can always try an executive recruiting firm to accelerate the process and land your dream candidate. Navigate LinkedIn with confidenceWhether you're growing in your current job, hunting for a new job, closing a major sales deal, or hustling to scale your startup — LinkedIn offers a multitude of features and resources to help you achieve your career goals. Remember, the key to success on LinkedIn lies in consistent, meaningful engagement. It took me over five years to earn 50,000+ followers. With dedication, you can do it too. View the full article

One of the stocks with the highest surges in premarket trading this morning is Beyond Meat, Inc. (Nasdaq: BYND). As of the time of this writing, shares in BYND are up a staggering 67% before the opening bell. But what’s driving this surge? Here’s what you need to know. Beyond Meat’s recent struggles Today’s premarket stock price jump follows a significant rally on Friday for Beyond Meat, the California-based producer of plant-based meat alternatives, whose shares closed up more than 24% to end the trading week at 64 cents per share, according to data from Yahoo Finance. The stock price surge, which is now in its second trading day, may come as a surprise to many, considering that Beyond Meat is experiencing significant financial woes as of late. As noted by Bloomberg, the company has seen a decline in interest in its plant-based products in recent years, with consumers being put off by high prices, the taste of the product, and its excessive processing. Weakening demand for meat alternatives in the U.S. helped lead to a 19.6% decline in sales in Beyond Meat’s most recent quarter, Q2 2025. Beyond Meat reported $75 million in revenues during that quarter. Earlier this year, Beyond Meat had attempted a brand pivot in hopes of returning to its former glory, as Fast Company reported. More recently, however, the company announced that its creditors had agreed to a debt swap, in which the company will issue 316 million new shares—thereby diluting the value of its current shares. This event contributed to a significant fall in the stock. As of Friday’s closing price, BYND shares were down more than 82% for the year. Beyond Meat shares surge in premarket trading So why are BYND shares surging this morning? Yahoo Finance points out that Friday’s and today’s share price surge is not due to any fundamental financial shifts in the company. Instead, it is the result of “a sudden spike in trading volume amid a classic short squeeze, where a heavily shorted stock experiences a sharp rise, forcing bearish investors to buy back shares to limit losses.” As investors are forced into buying back the stock, its price rises. Some retail traders on Reddit have been pumping up the stock, even though analyst ratings have largely turned negative. In the past, Beyond Meat has been cited as being among the so-called meme stocks that online traders rally behind, a list that has included Krispy Kreme, GoPro, and others this year. Even with today’s premarket stock price surge, BYND shares have performed poorly in 2025. In February, they were trading above $4.40 per share at one point. And even that 2025 share price high is dismal when you consider the company’s stock price going back further. In 2019, shortly after Beyond Meat went public, its shares were trading north of $230 at one point. The stock’s price has dropped massively since its IPO debut, leading to a decline of more than 98% as of Friday’s close. Earlier this month, it entered penny stock territory, hitting a low of around 50 cents a share. View the full article

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. It seems like common sense that the longer you go without retrieving a memory, the harder it is to retrieve—but it wasn’t always one of those things we simply knew to be true. In the 1880s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied the phenomenon and published his findings, giving the world the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. The curve is a simple graphic demonstrating how information is lost over time, but it proved that time-related forgetting is real (and has been reaffirmed by further study since). Want to fight the curve and hold on to your memories, especially when you’re studying? Here’s how. How long do memories of new information last?Ebbinghaus concluded that how quickly we forget something depends on factors like how difficult or meaningful the material was, but also how tired or stressed we are, so there’s no clear-cut answer to the question of how many days you’ll hold on to a piece of information if you don’t think about it. It depends on things like what you study, how into it you are, and how stressed you are, there are just too many variables—and for the average student, those shift every day. We do know that the order in which information is presented matters a lot when it comes to how long we store it in our short-term memory, so there are even more factors that go into our memory retrieval and retention abilities. I'm sorry to say there's no black-and-white answer when it comes to how long you'll hold onto a piece of information, but there are a few answers Ebbinghaus and today’s educators agree on when it comes to how you can better retain it. Beat the forgetting curve with spaced repetitionThe first strategy you can use to better retain information is called spaced repetition or distributed practice, an evidence-based technique that helps learners absorb numerous pieces of information and store them in their memory. Basically, you need to study the material multiple times, giving yourself space between each review. The amount of time you go without studying the material depends largely on how well you’re already remembering it, which means the longer you review, the longer the periods between each review should be. Reviewing your notes for a difficult class should be done more frequently than reviewing the notes for a class where you easily get the concepts, for instance. Instead of subjectively deciding if you’re retaining the information and need to review it or not, try using the Leitner system, which helps you schedule your studying based on whether or not you answered a particular flashcard correctly the last time you went through it. If you got it right, you don't need to pick that one up as often going forward. If you're hesitant about using old-school methods like hand-written flashcards, don't be. Writing by hand can actually help you retain information better, so using the Leitner system that way can have a two-for-one benefit. Then again, it's time-consuming and inconvenient, so if writing it all out and hauling 100 index cards around doesn't exactly work for you, you have other options. Here's a list of my favorite flashcard apps, many of which rely on a Leitner-esque strategy to force distributed practice without you having to do much of anything beyond indicate whether you got an answer right or wrong. You can also try scheduling your review and revision using a technique like 2357, which has you study again on the second, third, fifth, and seventh days after first going over something. If you're going to do that, I recommend sticking with a dedicated scheduler, like the My Study Life app, just to keep things organized. Beat the forgetting curve with engaged learningTeaching resources recommend that educators use methods to make lessons more engaging to help kids beat the forgetting curve, but you can apply that same idea to your own individual studying, no matter what level you're at. When you’re reading new information, for instance, use techniques that help you stay absorbed in the material. Try examining new info through the lens of Kolb’s learning cycle, for instance, which relies on the belief that you need to have concrete learning, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation to truly learn something. Alternately, use a critical-thinking method, like SQ3R or KWL, to track your progress on a topic. With SQ3R, you’ll write down a little of what you can gather from a review of the material, then questions you want to answer when you give it a more thorough read, so you’ll stay engaged as you go, searching for the answers to your questions. KWL is similar, but you start by writing down what you think you know, what you want to know based on a brief overview of the material, and what you ended up learning. View the full article

EU seeks to secure deal on frozen Russian assets and more sanctions on Moscow to show support for UkraineView the full article

For many small business owners, managing growth often means juggling too many systems — from spreadsheets to accounting tools to supplier portals — each working in its own silo. That’s the exact challenge Odeko set out to solve. Originally launched in New York, the company began as a disruptor in the café and coffee shop supply chain space, offering independent operators a way to consolidate their vendor relationships and ordering processes into one simple platform. Instead of having to “talk with five, six, eight vendors a day,” as Kelly Simons, Director of Enterprise Systems at Odeko, put it, small coffee shops could focus on what matters most — running their business and serving their customers. In our conversation, Simons shared how Odeko’s digital-first approach has evolved alongside its rapid growth. As the company expanded from local delivery to a full omnichannel operation — including service, e-commerce, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) lines — its need for a unified system of record became clear. That’s where NetSuite came in. Simons explained how the company transitioned from basic accounting software to a full ERP platform capable of supporting acquisitions, financial consolidation, and automation across teams. For small business leaders facing similar scaling challenges, Odeko’s journey shows how the right systems foundation can transform complexity into opportunity — without losing sight of operational efficiency or customer experience. Here is the full transcript of the interview: Leland McFarland So, uh Kelly, for readers who may not be familiar, uh can you start by telling us a bit about Odeko? Uh, what do you do and what type of customers do you serve? Kelly Simons Sure. Uh, well, first of all, let me introduce myself officially for you so you know where I fit in the organization. My name is Kelly Simons, I’m the Director of Enterprise Systems at Odeko. So anything that doesn’t have the Odeko name on it, like our ordering portal or an e-com site, all falls to me to do. I’m the de facto owner. So Odeko, uh originally started as a disruptor in the supply chain area. Uh, for mostly targeting mom and pop’s, uh coffee shops, independent chains, cafes, that kind of thing. Um, they we developed a portal that was homegrown and custom built to allow them to place orders in a seamless manner. Uh, one of the things that happens in the world is if you are an independent company, um, you have to talk with five, six, eight vendors a day, right? That’s not efficient. You want to focus on running your business. Um, and also you don’t always get the best prices because you’re buying a case of oat milk instead of like allowing us to buy it, you get the better discount. So the goal was to kind of consolidate and give a one-stop shop point for these people that own these businesses to place orders and to get benefits of more bulk buying power, right? Um, and that was the original genesis of our business. Um, originally started in New York and uh that’s what we still call our home. And we have an office, a mothership I call it, in New York because it’s just a small drop station. Our company is digital focused and we’re remote first on our corporate level. Um, and so that’s how we interact with our customers. Leland McFarland Perfect. Uh, what was happening in your business or tech stack that made you decide it was time to implement NetSuite? Kelly Simons So, predates me being there, but, um, research, questioning, that kind of thing. Um, at one point in our business, uh, they were on the typical small basic business model of accounting software. Um, I’m sure we all know which one of those could be because that’s very common. Um, and uh there was an inflection point where they realized that they needed something more powerful in order to lay the foundation for growth. And that was one of the things that they were looking for was a system that was reasonably priced, fit the needs of the market, and could grow as the business grew. Uh, that was one of the main focuses on it. Now, there was a talk at one time of building their own ERP. Evidently, I heard that there were people that looked at people like they had lost their mind because NetSuite has spent 27 years crafting an ERP and it still grows every day. Uh, so that was kind of the impetus behind it. Laying a platform that they could use uh to consolidate and talk one language: inventory, ordering, accounting, finance, typical things that you would do. Leland McFarland Okay. Uh, when did you first begin your NetSuite journey and what were the top goals you were uh hoping to achieve? And by you, I know now that you uh, it’s more of Odeko, not uh… Kelly Simons Yeah, yeah. So, um, whenever you’re in a rapid growth model for a startup business, um, people come on and as you make an acquisition, let’s say, they don’t speak the same language, they don’t have the same information, the systems are different. Um, so having a system that is the source of truth that allows you to pump things in and out of it back and forth. Uh, the goals were to be able to to unify, have a common point to go get information, and to consolidate financials to so our shareholders were happy. We could say, “Hey, look, here’s the information.” Right? So that’s some of the main things that we did. Leland McFarland Great. Um, can you walk us through your uh NetSuite setup? Uh, which models and tools are most crucial for uh your your daily operations? Kelly Simons Sure. So we are a OneWorld instance for NetSuite. Uh, we did have multiple subsidiaries. We’ve recently collapsed some of them just because we’ve kind of restructured a little bit. Um, so it’s very valuable to us to be able to use that to utilize if we need to have different subsidiaries and if we do a different new product, which we just recently launched. Sometimes we may want to put it as a different business unit so if we needed to jettison it, God forbid, you could easily, right? Um, we regularly on a daily basis are using inventory management, operations tools for ordering and fulfillment and all of the normal things to get orders through and out the door to our customers. Uh, there’s a lot of financial tracking that goes along with that. Um, being able to use the traditional models, fixed assets, which was done all on a spreadsheet, which is now internally in the system. Uh, just, um, it allows us to be a little bit more agile to pivot faster and to see things quicker. We also have leveraged the extensibility of the system by going with partners. So Celigo, Brex, those kind of things for anything that we needed to be a little bit more sophisticated than some of the standard models might be, right? So, that’s what we do on a daily basis. It’s our lifeblood now. Leland McFarland Now you’re you’re attached at the hip with uh NetSuite, right? Kelly Simons Well, I’ve always been attached to the hip with NetSuite. That’ll be what I do until I retire in 10 years. So… Leland McFarland Um, how has NetSuite changed the way your finance or operations teams work on a day-to-day? Kelly Simons So before, if we had bought a company or did anything like that, we’d have to go to three or four systems, pull data, try to match the data, try to align the data to make sure it works, right? Um, nowadays when we acquire a company using our repetitive playbook, um, we groom the data, put it in the system so it all matches. They go to our chart of accounts, they go to our structure for customers, things like that. And so in the given day, people are more agile, more efficient, and are able to process things more quickly. A a good good tidbit here is we use Celigo to take our e-com business into NetSuite, all of our ordering. That was a manual process a year ago, took two people 90 hours a week just to process manual e-com orders. And now we’ve grown the business about 40% year over year with the same amount of people because we’ve automated. So all those kind of efficiencies that we gain from being able to quickly pull financials and metrics and things are huge in our company. Leland McFarland Perfect. Um, how have you customized or extended NetSuite to fit the unique needs of a business like yours? Kelly Simons So we have, um, an engineering team internally and they focus primarily on our portal and our front-end processes, right? And some of the integration stuff, like microservices into into NetSuite. Um, but we have some workflows that we do to add pieces of data. We have some custom scripting. Uh, we built a workflow that forces invoices to print twice a day. Right? It creates the invoices twice a day. So somebody doesn’t have to manually monitor those. Um, we’ve used custom fields and rules and forms and records, you name it, we’ve done it. Uh, we haven’t gone too far afield and crazy, right? Uh, but we are using that. And then of course, again, as mentioned, we leveraged the extensibility from the partner network to help us if we need to extend beyond. Right? Leland McFarland Do do you know how the implementation went uh originally? Kelly Simons So from my understanding, the initial implementation went pretty well. Um, again, you’re typically dealing with people who have never used NetSuite before, so they make decisions are made that maybe, you know, five years down the road probably were need to be reviewed and refined. Uh, I don’t think it went really badly, but of course it was a very skeletal implementation. So it was like a very small segment. I use the analogy it was like the iceberg. They got the tip, but there was all underneath that wasn’t being used yet. And so, um, it, I don’t think there was a lot of bumps. I do, I will say there was some clarity that was needed about what NetSuite could do. And uh they were also, keep in mind, doing this around the time when a lot of the pandemic was coming around and, you know, so the world was different. We all know the world in that time period was different, right? So… Leland McFarland Yeah. So it was kind of more of a gradual integration? Kelly Simons Yeah, so they did a, they did the first part which is more financials and some of the order managing and that kind of process. But as time has passed, and especially as I’ve joined as well, we’ve, not saying I’m perfect or the be-all end-all, but we’ve moved it more and more into the center and started to use more and more of the layers of the product. Leland McFarland Perfect. All right. So NetSuite has been making big moves with AI this year. Um, has Odeko started using any of uh NetSuite’s AI-driven tools or automation? Kelly Simons So, some of them are like really new, hot off the press. The one that I use the most right now that I love is in the NetSuite knowledge management area. There is thousands upon thousands upon thousands of articles and how-tos, right? And in the times past, you’d have to go type in what you want, it would give you a list of 200 articles, you’d have to click into them, then you go into a rabbit hole where you click into another article that was on another article, that was on another article, right? Um, the new language that they use where I can human speak and type in a prompt and it returns me the top things that it might be, and says here’s one, two, three, four, this is your best option, has been game-changing for me because it takes me what would have taken hours is like seconds to find an answer usually. Um, and I love the fact, one of them the other day actually said, “I’m sorry, you can’t do that from in NetSuite.” It just said you can’t. I was like, “Okay, that’s good to know.” That that’s nice to know, you know, I’d rather you tell me I can’t. Um, I guess, you know, and I’m excited about some of the things coming. Uh, I’m also equally a little bit nervous about NetSuite Next and how much more. Um, but we’re slowly but surely starting to adopt some of those principles in NetSuite. Leland McFarland Now you mentioned NetSuite Next. Is that the thing, like, out of all the AI advancement, you know, the the the coming soons, um, is that the one that you’re kind of looking forward to most or is there another AI tool that you’re kind of… Kelly Simons Well no, so I’m really looking forward to NetSuite Next. But again, cautiously optimistic. Because in my mind, I see a positive, but I also know that in the adoption curve, if you move too quickly with some users, they are paralyzed. And now I can see a prompt for a controller and they’re going to be fine, but a warehouse clerk may struggle a little bit more with a prompt, right? Now we all know in the AI world that the world will change and a BA might not be a true BA like we’re used to now or a developer even might not be a true developer. They may leverage an AI tool to do their job and then their responsibility is to check the work, right? Um, so I I think that that’s where I’m most excited about. I’m excited to see things come in. One of the things that I know is coming that I think is going to be awesome is uh being able to tell it what I want a workflow. I can type in what I want and it will give me basically what needs to be done or tell it to go do it itself. Another thing that I’m really excited about that I just learned about here is the autonomous close process. Right? Now, we’ve gotten our close down to pretty tight. We’re about three to five days. When I first started, it was close to 30 for a monthly close, which was insane to me. But the autonomous close process that it basically goes and acts on your behalf in the back, posts the things up, you need to review and you hit yes. It just, I’m I’m in awe. You know what I mean? It’s going to be a great, it’s it’s going to be a very big game-changer in our company. Leland McFarland Now, now you talked about adoption and having uh users adopt it. Now, we’ve all seen the the the old person, you know, not necessarily old, the person who loves the older systems in the back doing everything pen and paper and using an abacus. Um, how do you address uh those types of users? Kelly Simons So, first of all, one thing that is really hard for me to kind of do is a lot of the people I know of that are in like warehouse jobs and things like that, they equate AI to job loss. So the first thing you have to do is retool that narrative of it’s not a job loss, it’s a direct, your job is evolving, right? So that’s always a new thing. I think, uh, change management is one of the hardest things to do. And there are people that I know of that sometimes I have to get on with them and I’m like, okay, let’s walk through this. Okay, now tell me what you don’t understand, right? So it’s a little bit of hand-holding with them, which I don’t mind. I would rather them ask and we spend time than them to assume and something just paralyze them, right? Um, there is the theory of the adoption curve, which I’m, I don’t know if you’re familiar with. It’s like an 80, it’s a 20-60-20. There are those people, like, for instance, that bought the iPhone. They were standing in line when the first iPhone came out. Then there’s that middle group that waits to see what happens with the first phone and then they buy it. And then there’s the group that you have to wrap a a rope around their feet and drag them behind you to get them to buy said thing. It’s the same thing with this. Uh, there are going to be some people that it just, they’re not going to transcend into AI very well and it’s because there’s a fear. And it’s how do you address them where they are? How do you meet them where they’re at? Because my mother would be good at AI because that’s just her. My stepdad, no. He he’ll be completely lost. So that’s the same thing with people we work with. Leland McFarland All right. Final question. Yep. Um, what’s next for Odeko and how do you see your partnership with NetSuite evolving over the next few years? Kelly Simons So, we are now an omnichannel company. We have a service line, we have a a BU, an e-com line, we have a regular local delivery line, we just launched a new project that’s uh a software SaaS product that we’re rolling out. Uh those are going to continue just to accelerate. This year we bought five companies. We have, yeah, so there’s that. In 2026, our focus is on organic change with some other additional acquisitions possibly. Now I don’t know for sure. It’s always one of those things that’s up in end. Um, we are going to continue to grow. That’s the goal. Is to continue to become a larger company, more and more, more and more market share, that kind of thing. Uh with the ultimate goal at some point of pre IPO. And uh how our partnership with NetSuite is just my platform that’s going to continue to be my base to help me enable that. Um, even whenever they come to me sometimes and say, “Hey, I want to go do blah blah blah,” and I’m like, “NetSuite can do that.” “But I still want to talk to someone else.” “Okay, fine.” But in the back of my mind, NetSuite is still going to be the one to do that. You know what I mean? But sometimes you have to do that. Uh so NetSuite is still going to be our partner. It’s going to be there for a while. Um, I don’t see us ever moving away from it in the next five years. As Odeko continues its upward trajectory — having acquired five companies this year alone — its partnership with NetSuite remains central to its long-term vision. “NetSuite is still going to be our partner. It’s going to be there for a while. I don’t see us ever moving away from it in the next five years,” said Simons. With plans to expand organically while eyeing a potential pre-IPO future, the company is using its ERP backbone not just for accounting, but as a growth engine. Simons described how automation and AI are now reshaping everyday workflows, from financial closes to order processing. Tasks that once took “two people 90 hours a week” are now handled in a fraction of the time thanks to integrated tools like Celigo. She’s also optimistic — yet cautious — about NetSuite’s next wave of AI innovations, such as autonomous close processes and natural language workflows. “I’m excited to see things come in,” she said. “It’s going to be a very big game-changer in our company.” For small business owners watching AI transform enterprise software, Odeko’s experience offers a practical roadmap: start by building a solid digital core, embrace automation thoughtfully, and lead your team through change with patience and vision. Growth is no longer about scaling chaos — it’s about scaling smarter. This article, "Interview with Kelly Simons of Odeko" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

For many small business owners, managing growth often means juggling too many systems — from spreadsheets to accounting tools to supplier portals — each working in its own silo. That’s the exact challenge Odeko set out to solve. Originally launched in New York, the company began as a disruptor in the café and coffee shop supply chain space, offering independent operators a way to consolidate their vendor relationships and ordering processes into one simple platform. Instead of having to “talk with five, six, eight vendors a day,” as Kelly Simons, Director of Enterprise Systems at Odeko, put it, small coffee shops could focus on what matters most — running their business and serving their customers. In our conversation, Simons shared how Odeko’s digital-first approach has evolved alongside its rapid growth. As the company expanded from local delivery to a full omnichannel operation — including service, e-commerce, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) lines — its need for a unified system of record became clear. That’s where NetSuite came in. Simons explained how the company transitioned from basic accounting software to a full ERP platform capable of supporting acquisitions, financial consolidation, and automation across teams. For small business leaders facing similar scaling challenges, Odeko’s journey shows how the right systems foundation can transform complexity into opportunity — without losing sight of operational efficiency or customer experience. Here is the full transcript of the interview: Leland McFarland So, uh Kelly, for readers who may not be familiar, uh can you start by telling us a bit about Odeko? Uh, what do you do and what type of customers do you serve? Kelly Simons Sure. Uh, well, first of all, let me introduce myself officially for you so you know where I fit in the organization. My name is Kelly Simons, I’m the Director of Enterprise Systems at Odeko. So anything that doesn’t have the Odeko name on it, like our ordering portal or an e-com site, all falls to me to do. I’m the de facto owner. So Odeko, uh originally started as a disruptor in the supply chain area. Uh, for mostly targeting mom and pop’s, uh coffee shops, independent chains, cafes, that kind of thing. Um, they we developed a portal that was homegrown and custom built to allow them to place orders in a seamless manner. Uh, one of the things that happens in the world is if you are an independent company, um, you have to talk with five, six, eight vendors a day, right? That’s not efficient. You want to focus on running your business. Um, and also you don’t always get the best prices because you’re buying a case of oat milk instead of like allowing us to buy it, you get the better discount. So the goal was to kind of consolidate and give a one-stop shop point for these people that own these businesses to place orders and to get benefits of more bulk buying power, right? Um, and that was the original genesis of our business. Um, originally started in New York and uh that’s what we still call our home. And we have an office, a mothership I call it, in New York because it’s just a small drop station. Our company is digital focused and we’re remote first on our corporate level. Um, and so that’s how we interact with our customers. Leland McFarland Perfect. Uh, what was happening in your business or tech stack that made you decide it was time to implement NetSuite? Kelly Simons So, predates me being there, but, um, research, questioning, that kind of thing. Um, at one point in our business, uh, they were on the typical small basic business model of accounting software. Um, I’m sure we all know which one of those could be because that’s very common. Um, and uh there was an inflection point where they realized that they needed something more powerful in order to lay the foundation for growth. And that was one of the things that they were looking for was a system that was reasonably priced, fit the needs of the market, and could grow as the business grew. Uh, that was one of the main focuses on it. Now, there was a talk at one time of building their own ERP. Evidently, I heard that there were people that looked at people like they had lost their mind because NetSuite has spent 27 years crafting an ERP and it still grows every day. Uh, so that was kind of the impetus behind it. Laying a platform that they could use uh to consolidate and talk one language: inventory, ordering, accounting, finance, typical things that you would do. Leland McFarland Okay. Uh, when did you first begin your NetSuite journey and what were the top goals you were uh hoping to achieve? And by you, I know now that you uh, it’s more of Odeko, not uh… Kelly Simons Yeah, yeah. So, um, whenever you’re in a rapid growth model for a startup business, um, people come on and as you make an acquisition, let’s say, they don’t speak the same language, they don’t have the same information, the systems are different. Um, so having a system that is the source of truth that allows you to pump things in and out of it back and forth. Uh, the goals were to be able to to unify, have a common point to go get information, and to consolidate financials to so our shareholders were happy. We could say, “Hey, look, here’s the information.” Right? So that’s some of the main things that we did. Leland McFarland Great. Um, can you walk us through your uh NetSuite setup? Uh, which models and tools are most crucial for uh your your daily operations? Kelly Simons Sure. So we are a OneWorld instance for NetSuite. Uh, we did have multiple subsidiaries. We’ve recently collapsed some of them just because we’ve kind of restructured a little bit. Um, so it’s very valuable to us to be able to use that to utilize if we need to have different subsidiaries and if we do a different new product, which we just recently launched. Sometimes we may want to put it as a different business unit so if we needed to jettison it, God forbid, you could easily, right? Um, we regularly on a daily basis are using inventory management, operations tools for ordering and fulfillment and all of the normal things to get orders through and out the door to our customers. Uh, there’s a lot of financial tracking that goes along with that. Um, being able to use the traditional models, fixed assets, which was done all on a spreadsheet, which is now internally in the system. Uh, just, um, it allows us to be a little bit more agile to pivot faster and to see things quicker. We also have leveraged the extensibility of the system by going with partners. So Celigo, Brex, those kind of things for anything that we needed to be a little bit more sophisticated than some of the standard models might be, right? So, that’s what we do on a daily basis. It’s our lifeblood now. Leland McFarland Now you’re you’re attached at the hip with uh NetSuite, right? Kelly Simons Well, I’ve always been attached to the hip with NetSuite. That’ll be what I do until I retire in 10 years. So… Leland McFarland Um, how has NetSuite changed the way your finance or operations teams work on a day-to-day? Kelly Simons So before, if we had bought a company or did anything like that, we’d have to go to three or four systems, pull data, try to match the data, try to align the data to make sure it works, right? Um, nowadays when we acquire a company using our repetitive playbook, um, we groom the data, put it in the system so it all matches. They go to our chart of accounts, they go to our structure for customers, things like that. And so in the given day, people are more agile, more efficient, and are able to process things more quickly. A a good good tidbit here is we use Celigo to take our e-com business into NetSuite, all of our ordering. That was a manual process a year ago, took two people 90 hours a week just to process manual e-com orders. And now we’ve grown the business about 40% year over year with the same amount of people because we’ve automated. So all those kind of efficiencies that we gain from being able to quickly pull financials and metrics and things are huge in our company. Leland McFarland Perfect. Um, how have you customized or extended NetSuite to fit the unique needs of a business like yours? Kelly Simons So we have, um, an engineering team internally and they focus primarily on our portal and our front-end processes, right? And some of the integration stuff, like microservices into into NetSuite. Um, but we have some workflows that we do to add pieces of data. We have some custom scripting. Uh, we built a workflow that forces invoices to print twice a day. Right? It creates the invoices twice a day. So somebody doesn’t have to manually monitor those. Um, we’ve used custom fields and rules and forms and records, you name it, we’ve done it. Uh, we haven’t gone too far afield and crazy, right? Uh, but we are using that. And then of course, again, as mentioned, we leveraged the extensibility from the partner network to help us if we need to extend beyond. Right? Leland McFarland Do do you know how the implementation went uh originally? Kelly Simons So from my understanding, the initial implementation went pretty well. Um, again, you’re typically dealing with people who have never used NetSuite before, so they make decisions are made that maybe, you know, five years down the road probably were need to be reviewed and refined. Uh, I don’t think it went really badly, but of course it was a very skeletal implementation. So it was like a very small segment. I use the analogy it was like the iceberg. They got the tip, but there was all underneath that wasn’t being used yet. And so, um, it, I don’t think there was a lot of bumps. I do, I will say there was some clarity that was needed about what NetSuite could do. And uh they were also, keep in mind, doing this around the time when a lot of the pandemic was coming around and, you know, so the world was different. We all know the world in that time period was different, right? So… Leland McFarland Yeah. So it was kind of more of a gradual integration? Kelly Simons Yeah, so they did a, they did the first part which is more financials and some of the order managing and that kind of process. But as time has passed, and especially as I’ve joined as well, we’ve, not saying I’m perfect or the be-all end-all, but we’ve moved it more and more into the center and started to use more and more of the layers of the product. Leland McFarland Perfect. All right. So NetSuite has been making big moves with AI this year. Um, has Odeko started using any of uh NetSuite’s AI-driven tools or automation? Kelly Simons So, some of them are like really new, hot off the press. The one that I use the most right now that I love is in the NetSuite knowledge management area. There is thousands upon thousands upon thousands of articles and how-tos, right? And in the times past, you’d have to go type in what you want, it would give you a list of 200 articles, you’d have to click into them, then you go into a rabbit hole where you click into another article that was on another article, that was on another article, right? Um, the new language that they use where I can human speak and type in a prompt and it returns me the top things that it might be, and says here’s one, two, three, four, this is your best option, has been game-changing for me because it takes me what would have taken hours is like seconds to find an answer usually. Um, and I love the fact, one of them the other day actually said, “I’m sorry, you can’t do that from in NetSuite.” It just said you can’t. I was like, “Okay, that’s good to know.” That that’s nice to know, you know, I’d rather you tell me I can’t. Um, I guess, you know, and I’m excited about some of the things coming. Uh, I’m also equally a little bit nervous about NetSuite Next and how much more. Um, but we’re slowly but surely starting to adopt some of those principles in NetSuite. Leland McFarland Now you mentioned NetSuite Next. Is that the thing, like, out of all the AI advancement, you know, the the the coming soons, um, is that the one that you’re kind of looking forward to most or is there another AI tool that you’re kind of… Kelly Simons Well no, so I’m really looking forward to NetSuite Next. But again, cautiously optimistic. Because in my mind, I see a positive, but I also know that in the adoption curve, if you move too quickly with some users, they are paralyzed. And now I can see a prompt for a controller and they’re going to be fine, but a warehouse clerk may struggle a little bit more with a prompt, right? Now we all know in the AI world that the world will change and a BA might not be a true BA like we’re used to now or a developer even might not be a true developer. They may leverage an AI tool to do their job and then their responsibility is to check the work, right? Um, so I I think that that’s where I’m most excited about. I’m excited to see things come in. One of the things that I know is coming that I think is going to be awesome is uh being able to tell it what I want a workflow. I can type in what I want and it will give me basically what needs to be done or tell it to go do it itself. Another thing that I’m really excited about that I just learned about here is the autonomous close process. Right? Now, we’ve gotten our close down to pretty tight. We’re about three to five days. When I first started, it was close to 30 for a monthly close, which was insane to me. But the autonomous close process that it basically goes and acts on your behalf in the back, posts the things up, you need to review and you hit yes. It just, I’m I’m in awe. You know what I mean? It’s going to be a great, it’s it’s going to be a very big game-changer in our company. Leland McFarland Now, now you talked about adoption and having uh users adopt it. Now, we’ve all seen the the the old person, you know, not necessarily old, the person who loves the older systems in the back doing everything pen and paper and using an abacus. Um, how do you address uh those types of users? Kelly Simons So, first of all, one thing that is really hard for me to kind of do is a lot of the people I know of that are in like warehouse jobs and things like that, they equate AI to job loss. So the first thing you have to do is retool that narrative of it’s not a job loss, it’s a direct, your job is evolving, right? So that’s always a new thing. I think, uh, change management is one of the hardest things to do. And there are people that I know of that sometimes I have to get on with them and I’m like, okay, let’s walk through this. Okay, now tell me what you don’t understand, right? So it’s a little bit of hand-holding with them, which I don’t mind. I would rather them ask and we spend time than them to assume and something just paralyze them, right? Um, there is the theory of the adoption curve, which I’m, I don’t know if you’re familiar with. It’s like an 80, it’s a 20-60-20. There are those people, like, for instance, that bought the iPhone. They were standing in line when the first iPhone came out. Then there’s that middle group that waits to see what happens with the first phone and then they buy it. And then there’s the group that you have to wrap a a rope around their feet and drag them behind you to get them to buy said thing. It’s the same thing with this. Uh, there are going to be some people that it just, they’re not going to transcend into AI very well and it’s because there’s a fear. And it’s how do you address them where they are? How do you meet them where they’re at? Because my mother would be good at AI because that’s just her. My stepdad, no. He he’ll be completely lost. So that’s the same thing with people we work with. Leland McFarland All right. Final question. Yep. Um, what’s next for Odeko and how do you see your partnership with NetSuite evolving over the next few years? Kelly Simons So, we are now an omnichannel company. We have a service line, we have a a BU, an e-com line, we have a regular local delivery line, we just launched a new project that’s uh a software SaaS product that we’re rolling out. Uh those are going to continue just to accelerate. This year we bought five companies. We have, yeah, so there’s that. In 2026, our focus is on organic change with some other additional acquisitions possibly. Now I don’t know for sure. It’s always one of those things that’s up in end. Um, we are going to continue to grow. That’s the goal. Is to continue to become a larger company, more and more, more and more market share, that kind of thing. Uh with the ultimate goal at some point of pre IPO. And uh how our partnership with NetSuite is just my platform that’s going to continue to be my base to help me enable that. Um, even whenever they come to me sometimes and say, “Hey, I want to go do blah blah blah,” and I’m like, “NetSuite can do that.” “But I still want to talk to someone else.” “Okay, fine.” But in the back of my mind, NetSuite is still going to be the one to do that. You know what I mean? But sometimes you have to do that. Uh so NetSuite is still going to be our partner. It’s going to be there for a while. Um, I don’t see us ever moving away from it in the next five years. As Odeko continues its upward trajectory — having acquired five companies this year alone — its partnership with NetSuite remains central to its long-term vision. “NetSuite is still going to be our partner. It’s going to be there for a while. I don’t see us ever moving away from it in the next five years,” said Simons. With plans to expand organically while eyeing a potential pre-IPO future, the company is using its ERP backbone not just for accounting, but as a growth engine. Simons described how automation and AI are now reshaping everyday workflows, from financial closes to order processing. Tasks that once took “two people 90 hours a week” are now handled in a fraction of the time thanks to integrated tools like Celigo. She’s also optimistic — yet cautious — about NetSuite’s next wave of AI innovations, such as autonomous close processes and natural language workflows. “I’m excited to see things come in,” she said. “It’s going to be a very big game-changer in our company.” For small business owners watching AI transform enterprise software, Odeko’s experience offers a practical roadmap: start by building a solid digital core, embrace automation thoughtfully, and lead your team through change with patience and vision. Growth is no longer about scaling chaos — it’s about scaling smarter. This article, "Interview with Kelly Simons of Odeko" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Artificial intelligence has often felt out of reach for many small businesses—too complex, too costly, and too disconnected from the tools they already use. Zoho Corporation is aiming to change that. The company announced a wave of new “agentic AI” features across its collaboration, customer experience, and human resources apps—tools designed to help businesses save time, work smarter, and make AI a practical part of daily operations. The updates, which include Zoho’s workplace suite (Mail, Cliq, Sheet, and Tables), are available at no additional cost to current users. Zoho says the goal is to remove the “adoption friction” that has slowed small business AI use by embedding intelligence directly into the tools teams already rely on. In Zoho Mail, new features like Ask Zia and the Lead Generation Agent take automation to the next level. Ask Zia allows users to issue natural-language prompts such as “Find emails from Zylker Travels, summarize them into a doc, and send it to Paula,” and the system will execute the entire task chain across Zoho apps. The Lead Generation Agent, meanwhile, can scan unread messages for sales inquiries and automatically create leads in Zoho CRM—something that could save small teams hours each week. Other agents handle more routine yet critical functions: a Cleanup Agent that identifies large emails and suggests cleanup plans, a Threat Mitigation Agent that scans for and resolves security issues, and a Writing Agent that drafts responses, schedules follow-ups, and creates reminders. For smaller organizations that can’t afford full-time IT or admin staff, these automations could significantly lighten the workload. In Zoho Cliq, the team chat app, agentic AI is being woven into nearly every workflow. Features like Unread Message Summaries, Meeting Transcripts and Action Items, and Automatic Thread Titles make it easier to stay on top of conversations. The system can even analyze tone, translate messages instantly, and summarize multimedia content—capabilities that could benefit remote teams and global collaborations. Zoho also plans to add multi-vendor AI support, allowing teams to connect their preferred AI engines—such as OpenAI, Google Gemini, or Anthropic—alongside Zoho’s own Zia. The inclusion of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) will let users integrate external large language models like Claude or Visual Studio Code directly into Cliq conversations. That move may appeal to tech-savvy small businesses that want flexibility without additional infrastructure costs. Meanwhile, Zoho Tables and Sheet received updates that focus on smarter data management. AI Base Creation can generate a complete database with sample data and linked fields from a short prompt. For businesses managing multilingual or customer feedback data, new fields like Language Detector, Sentiment Analysis, and Keyword Extraction automate tasks that previously required manual review. In Zoho Sheet, features such as PatternFill, Translation from images, and AI Formulas will help users clean and analyze data faster. With these upgrades, even non-technical employees can automate repetitive data work, turning time once spent on spreadsheets into time focused on strategy or customer engagement. The following table outlines each of the newly released AI-powered features across Zoho’s collaboration tools, along with their descriptions and current availability by region. ApplicationFeatureFeature DescriptionAvailabilityAvailable Territories Zoho Mail Ask Zia in WorkplaceAsk Zia a prompt, Zia will handle across email, word processor, file manager, and chat at onceAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Zoho Mail + Zoho CRM: Lead Generation Agent Looks into your unread messages when you login, recognizes Sales-queries using AI and converts them into a lead in Zoho CRMAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Ask Zia in Mail Converse to Zia over an email. Take actions over multiple Zoho apps, get additional details, or draft a reply—all based on your conversations with ZiaAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Cleanup AgentCategorizes emails by size, suggests email cleanup planAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Threat Mitigation Agent identifies security incidents, eliminates threats, creates mitigation plan for future threatsAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Writing AgentGenerate email drafts and replies automatically while also looking for scheduling conflicts and automatically creating reminders based on generated email contentAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Zoho Tables AI Base Creation with ZiaZia will create base with relevant tables, sample data and linked fields based on user promptsAvailableUS, CA, IN Sentiment Analysis FieldAutomatically analyzes customer sentiment based on context, tone and emotion in textAvailableUS, CA, IN Language Detector Field Automatically detects language of text data when multilingual data is involvedAvailableUS, CA, IN Keyword Extraction Field Identifies and extracts essential words and phrases for quick summary in SEO, content analysis, and moreAvailableUS, CA, IN Zoho Cliq Unread Message SummaryGet a crisp gist of all your unread messages at a glance, so you can stay updated without having to scroll through each conversationAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Meeting Transcript, Summary and Action Items Provides a recorded transcript, a concise summary of the transcript, and highlights of key action items for every meetingAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Automatic Thread Title GenerationAutomatically creates clear and relevant titles for threads to keep things organized and easy to followAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Sentiment Analysis - Writing AssistantEnsures every message you send is clear, polished, and perfectly tailored to your audience with automatic grammar and tone checksAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Automated Message TranslationInstantly translates messages into your preferred language for smooth, multilingual communicationAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA OCR-Based SearchQuickly find your files using OCR-based search; text inside images is automatically recognized, making searching for files easierAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Virtual Background and FiltersCustomize your meetings with fun/professional backgrounds and filters for a polished, distraction-free lookAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Text ExtractionEasily extract text from images, PDFs, or documents, no need to type it out manuallyAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Whiteboard Content GenerationAutomatic shape recognition turns rough sketches into clean shapes, making ideas easier to understand and share in real timeAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Multimedia SummariesAutomatically summarizes the content of attachments and voice messages shared in chats, so you can grasp the key details instantlyQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Live TranscriptionReal time meeting transcriptionQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Multi-vendor SupportIntegrates Cliq with leading AI providers, including Zia (Zoho's native AI), OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic, Cohere, and Deepseek, giving teams the flexibility to choose and work with the AI that best suits their needsQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Model Context Protocol (MCP)Unlock AI in your chats with the Zoho Cliq Model Context Protocol (MCP), letting your AI agents and LLMs (Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, Visual Code Studio) access Cliq conversations, allowing automation, insights, and intelligent interactions across your team’s communicationQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Quick RepliesSave time in conversations with automatic, context-based reply options, making it easy to respond instantly without extra effort.Q4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Zoho Sheet TranslationConvert tabular data from pictures or hard copies into structured data in a sheetAvailableUS, IN, EU, CA PatternFillAutomatically detects patterns in data and fills in the remaining values AvailableUS, IN, EU, CA Sheet AssistanceHelps users analyze, visualize and manipulate data more efficiently.Q4 2025US, IN, EU, CA AI TemplateReady-made, customizable models allowing users to instantly create a template for a specific need Q4 2025US, IN, EU, CA AI FormulasSpecialized commands in spreadsheets that use AI to perform complex tasks Q4 2025US, IN, EU, CA For small business owners, the practical upside is clear: AI can now assist in managing leads, emails, meetings, and data without requiring an additional budget or outside developer. The challenge, however, lies in understanding how to integrate these features effectively into existing processes. While Zoho’s interface aims to simplify adoption, the learning curve around prompt-based automation could still be steep for teams unfamiliar with AI tools. Still, Zoho’s decision to include these capabilities at no extra cost marks a meaningful shift. As more AI vendors move toward premium pricing, Zoho’s all-inclusive approach may help level the playing field—giving small businesses access to the same intelligent systems that large enterprises use, but without the financial barrier. The new agentic features are available now in early access across the U.S., India, and select international markets, with broader rollout planned by the end of the year. For businesses looking to experiment with practical, embedded AI, Zoho’s latest updates could offer an easy—and affordable—way to start. This article, "Zoho Adds Free AI Collaboration Tools to Simplify Work for Small Businesses" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Artificial intelligence has often felt out of reach for many small businesses—too complex, too costly, and too disconnected from the tools they already use. Zoho Corporation is aiming to change that. The company announced a wave of new “agentic AI” features across its collaboration, customer experience, and human resources apps—tools designed to help businesses save time, work smarter, and make AI a practical part of daily operations. The updates, which include Zoho’s workplace suite (Mail, Cliq, Sheet, and Tables), are available at no additional cost to current users. Zoho says the goal is to remove the “adoption friction” that has slowed small business AI use by embedding intelligence directly into the tools teams already rely on. In Zoho Mail, new features like Ask Zia and the Lead Generation Agent take automation to the next level. Ask Zia allows users to issue natural-language prompts such as “Find emails from Zylker Travels, summarize them into a doc, and send it to Paula,” and the system will execute the entire task chain across Zoho apps. The Lead Generation Agent, meanwhile, can scan unread messages for sales inquiries and automatically create leads in Zoho CRM—something that could save small teams hours each week. Other agents handle more routine yet critical functions: a Cleanup Agent that identifies large emails and suggests cleanup plans, a Threat Mitigation Agent that scans for and resolves security issues, and a Writing Agent that drafts responses, schedules follow-ups, and creates reminders. For smaller organizations that can’t afford full-time IT or admin staff, these automations could significantly lighten the workload. In Zoho Cliq, the team chat app, agentic AI is being woven into nearly every workflow. Features like Unread Message Summaries, Meeting Transcripts and Action Items, and Automatic Thread Titles make it easier to stay on top of conversations. The system can even analyze tone, translate messages instantly, and summarize multimedia content—capabilities that could benefit remote teams and global collaborations. Zoho also plans to add multi-vendor AI support, allowing teams to connect their preferred AI engines—such as OpenAI, Google Gemini, or Anthropic—alongside Zoho’s own Zia. The inclusion of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) will let users integrate external large language models like Claude or Visual Studio Code directly into Cliq conversations. That move may appeal to tech-savvy small businesses that want flexibility without additional infrastructure costs. Meanwhile, Zoho Tables and Sheet received updates that focus on smarter data management. AI Base Creation can generate a complete database with sample data and linked fields from a short prompt. For businesses managing multilingual or customer feedback data, new fields like Language Detector, Sentiment Analysis, and Keyword Extraction automate tasks that previously required manual review. In Zoho Sheet, features such as PatternFill, Translation from images, and AI Formulas will help users clean and analyze data faster. With these upgrades, even non-technical employees can automate repetitive data work, turning time once spent on spreadsheets into time focused on strategy or customer engagement. The following table outlines each of the newly released AI-powered features across Zoho’s collaboration tools, along with their descriptions and current availability by region. ApplicationFeatureFeature DescriptionAvailabilityAvailable Territories Zoho Mail Ask Zia in WorkplaceAsk Zia a prompt, Zia will handle across email, word processor, file manager, and chat at onceAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Zoho Mail + Zoho CRM: Lead Generation Agent Looks into your unread messages when you login, recognizes Sales-queries using AI and converts them into a lead in Zoho CRMAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Ask Zia in Mail Converse to Zia over an email. Take actions over multiple Zoho apps, get additional details, or draft a reply—all based on your conversations with ZiaAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Cleanup AgentCategorizes emails by size, suggests email cleanup planAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Threat Mitigation Agent identifies security incidents, eliminates threats, creates mitigation plan for future threatsAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Writing AgentGenerate email drafts and replies automatically while also looking for scheduling conflicts and automatically creating reminders based on generated email contentAvailable Early Access, only in US, IN Zoho Tables AI Base Creation with ZiaZia will create base with relevant tables, sample data and linked fields based on user promptsAvailableUS, CA, IN Sentiment Analysis FieldAutomatically analyzes customer sentiment based on context, tone and emotion in textAvailableUS, CA, IN Language Detector Field Automatically detects language of text data when multilingual data is involvedAvailableUS, CA, IN Keyword Extraction Field Identifies and extracts essential words and phrases for quick summary in SEO, content analysis, and moreAvailableUS, CA, IN Zoho Cliq Unread Message SummaryGet a crisp gist of all your unread messages at a glance, so you can stay updated without having to scroll through each conversationAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Meeting Transcript, Summary and Action Items Provides a recorded transcript, a concise summary of the transcript, and highlights of key action items for every meetingAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Automatic Thread Title GenerationAutomatically creates clear and relevant titles for threads to keep things organized and easy to followAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Sentiment Analysis - Writing AssistantEnsures every message you send is clear, polished, and perfectly tailored to your audience with automatic grammar and tone checksAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Automated Message TranslationInstantly translates messages into your preferred language for smooth, multilingual communicationAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA OCR-Based SearchQuickly find your files using OCR-based search; text inside images is automatically recognized, making searching for files easierAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Virtual Background and FiltersCustomize your meetings with fun/professional backgrounds and filters for a polished, distraction-free lookAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Text ExtractionEasily extract text from images, PDFs, or documents, no need to type it out manuallyAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Whiteboard Content GenerationAutomatic shape recognition turns rough sketches into clean shapes, making ideas easier to understand and share in real timeAvailableUS, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Multimedia SummariesAutomatically summarizes the content of attachments and voice messages shared in chats, so you can grasp the key details instantlyQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Live TranscriptionReal time meeting transcriptionQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Multi-vendor SupportIntegrates Cliq with leading AI providers, including Zia (Zoho's native AI), OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic, Cohere, and Deepseek, giving teams the flexibility to choose and work with the AI that best suits their needsQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Model Context Protocol (MCP)Unlock AI in your chats with the Zoho Cliq Model Context Protocol (MCP), letting your AI agents and LLMs (Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, Visual Code Studio) access Cliq conversations, allowing automation, insights, and intelligent interactions across your team’s communicationQ4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Quick RepliesSave time in conversations with automatic, context-based reply options, making it easy to respond instantly without extra effort.Q4 2025US, EU, IN, AU, JP, CA, SA Zoho Sheet TranslationConvert tabular data from pictures or hard copies into structured data in a sheetAvailableUS, IN, EU, CA PatternFillAutomatically detects patterns in data and fills in the remaining values AvailableUS, IN, EU, CA Sheet AssistanceHelps users analyze, visualize and manipulate data more efficiently.Q4 2025US, IN, EU, CA AI TemplateReady-made, customizable models allowing users to instantly create a template for a specific need Q4 2025US, IN, EU, CA AI FormulasSpecialized commands in spreadsheets that use AI to perform complex tasks Q4 2025US, IN, EU, CA For small business owners, the practical upside is clear: AI can now assist in managing leads, emails, meetings, and data without requiring an additional budget or outside developer. The challenge, however, lies in understanding how to integrate these features effectively into existing processes. While Zoho’s interface aims to simplify adoption, the learning curve around prompt-based automation could still be steep for teams unfamiliar with AI tools. Still, Zoho’s decision to include these capabilities at no extra cost marks a meaningful shift. As more AI vendors move toward premium pricing, Zoho’s all-inclusive approach may help level the playing field—giving small businesses access to the same intelligent systems that large enterprises use, but without the financial barrier. The new agentic features are available now in early access across the U.S., India, and select international markets, with broader rollout planned by the end of the year. For businesses looking to experiment with practical, embedded AI, Zoho’s latest updates could offer an easy—and affordable—way to start. This article, "Zoho Adds Free AI Collaboration Tools to Simplify Work for Small Businesses" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

The fastest-growing startups today leverage founder-led storytelling to create trust, credibility, and measurable business results. The post 3 LinkedIn Strategies To Turn Your Founder’s Voice Into A Pipeline Driver appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Anchor text, which is also known as link text, is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. It usually appears in a different color and is often underlined. Good anchor text tells readers what to expect when they click and gives search engines valuable context about the linked page. Getting your anchor text right helps users navigate your content more easily, improves your internal link structure, and provides search engines with clues about your page relationships, which can positively influence your SEO. Table of contents What does an anchor text look like? Why are link/anchor texts important? Different kinds of anchor text The competing links check in Yoast SEO How to improve your anchor link texts Internal links and anchor texts This is anchor text Key takeaways Anchor text enhances user navigation and provides context for search engines, improving SEO outcomes. Good anchor text clearly describes the linked content and avoids misleading or over-optimized phrases. Different types of anchor text exist, each with specific use cases; mix them for variety and clarity. Yoast SEO offers tools to analyze competing links and improve anchor text for better search engine ranking. To enhance anchor text, ensure it matches the linked content, flows naturally, and clearly signals clickable links. What does an anchor text look like? Anchor text is the part of a link that describes the linked page. It guides both readers and search engines toward relevant information. For example, if we link to our post about keyword research tools, the phrase “keyword research tools” is the anchor text. In HTML, it looks like this: <a href="https://yoast.com/keyword-research-tools/">keyword research tools</a> The first part is the URL, while the second, the visible text, is the anchor text. Ideally, the words you choose should naturally describe the content on the linked page. Why are link/anchor texts important? Links are vital for SEO. They show how your pages connect and help search engines understand your site structure. The anchor text in those links provides extra context. When Google crawls your site, it uses link text as a clue to what each linked page is about. If multiple links all use the same focus keyphrase, Google might not know which page should rank highest for that topic, leading to competition between your own pages. That’s why thoughtful, descriptive anchor text matters. It helps search engines interpret your site and helps readers decide whether a link is worth clicking. Over-optimized or misleading link text can confuse both. Tip: Avoid using your main focus keyphrase in multiple anchor texts within one post, as it can create competing links. Your linking should always feel natural and avoid over-optimization. Different kinds of anchor text Anchor text applies to both internal and external links. External sites can link to your content in various ways, and each type sends a different signal to search engines: Branded links: Use your brand name as anchor text (e.g., Yoast) Naked URLs: Just your site address (e.g., https://yoast.com) Site name: Written as Yoast.com Article or page title: Matches the title exactly (e.g., What is anchor text?) Exact-match keywords: The exact keyphrase of your target page Partial-match keywords: A variation that fits naturally in a sentence Related keywords: Phrases closely connected to your topic Generic links: Words like click here or read more — best avoided! Ideally, mix your link text types, prioritizing readability and context over repetition. The competing links check in Yoast SEO Yoast SEO for WordPress and Yoast SEO for Shopify include a competing links check. This tool analyzes your anchor texts to help you avoid competing links. If Yoast SEO detects that one of your links contains your focus keyphrase or a synonym of it, then Premium users get a warning. The reason? You don’t want multiple pages trying to rank for the same phrase. For example, say your focus keyphrase is potato chips. If you link to another page using that exact phrase, Yoast SEO will flag it as a competing link. You’ll see a notification in your SEO analysis, so you can adjust it before publishing. If you have Yoast SEO Premium or Yoast SEO for Shopify, the check will also look for the synonyms of your keyphrase. How to improve your anchor link texts If Yoast SEO alerts you about competing links, or if you simply want to improve the quality of your link text, here are some best practices to follow. 1. Create a natural flow Your writing should feel effortless. If a link feels awkward or forced into a sentence, it probably doesn’t belong there. Always prioritize readability, as a smooth flow improves both engagement and SEO. For more advice on writing content that feels natural while still ranking well, read our SEO copywriting guide. 2. Match the link text to the linked content Readers should immediately understand what to expect when they click on a link. For example, a link that says meta description should lead to a post explaining what a meta description is and how to optimize it. Clear, logical linking builds trust and helps users navigate your content with ease. 3. Don’t trick your readers Never mislead readers with inaccurate or confusing link text. If your link text says, “potato chips,” it shouldn’t lead to a page about cars. Consistent and honest linking keeps readers engaged and signals quality to search engines. 4. Make it clear that the link is clickable Use visual cues such as color contrast or underlining, so it’s easy to tell when text is a link. This not only improves usability but also helps people using assistive technology to navigate your content. To see more on writing accessible, well-structured posts, visit our blogging guide. 5. Bonus tip: put your entire keyphrase in quotes When using long tail keyphrases, you might see a warning about links that include parts of your focus keyphrase. To avoid this, put your full keyphrase in quotes, for example, “learning how to knit.” This tells Yoast SEO to look for the entire phrase rather than matching individual words. If you’d like to learn more about writing effective link text and improving your content for SEO, take our SEO copywriting course, which is included with Yoast SEO Premium. Go Premium and get free access to our SEO courses!Learn how to write great content for SEO and unlock lots of features with Yoast SEO Premium: Get Yoast SEO Premium »Only $118.80 / year (ex VAT) Internal links and anchor texts Internal links are one of the most effective SEO tools you can use. The Yoast SEO internal linking suggestions tool helps you find and add relevant links throughout your content. But internal links work best when you write good anchor text for them. Each link should serve a clear purpose and guide readers naturally to related topics. Avoid adding unnecessary or irrelevant links just for the sake of having more connections. Thoughtful internal linking improves the user experience and helps search engines understand your site’s structure, which is essential for strong SEO performance. This is anchor text Anchor text remains a small but powerful element of SEO. It helps users decide whether to click, gives search engines valuable context, and supports a logical site structure. Keep your anchor text relevant, natural, and transparent and avoid manipulative or over-optimized linking practices. Search engines are now smarter than ever at spotting unnatural links, especially in the era of AI and semantic understanding. So stay genuine, link with intent, and use Yoast SEO to guide you along the way. Read more: SEO basics: What is a permalink? » The post What is anchor text, and how can you improve your link texts? appeared first on Yoast. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. Whether you’re a fan of listening to music while you read or you simply live in a household of noisy people, silence may not be something you’re used to finding before hitting the books—but it should be and it can be. Despite the boom in popularity of study-based playlists on YouTube and Spotify, quiet is the way to go when you’re trying to retain information you’re taking in. Don’t take my word for; take science’s. What the research says First, research published in 2019 showed that “mental workload and visual/auditory attention is significantly reduced when the participants are exposed to noise at 95 dBA level.” That, per the Center for Hearing and Communication, is about how loud a blender or truck is. The 2019 study focused a lot on the way noise affects people at work, which is where people tend to do tasks they already have a grasp on; noise can be even more detrimental if you’re trying to attain new information. Other research that has focused specifically on studying has found noise to be even more of an issue: On average, participants experienced a 7% reduction in performance on a test when researchers introduced noises, when compared with quiet, per one 2021 report. Some research breaks things down further, examining different effects of noise on introverts’ and extroverts’ studying and information retention, but that’s both too granular and pretty irrelevant; for the most part, it still finds that noise is distracting and reduces cognitive ability. Other research is broken down by type of noise. For instance, one study found that while silence was beneficial for cognitive tasks, lo-fi music was better than music with lyrics (with the exception of when participants were doing math, when music type didn’t have any impact). What about white noise? Research shows that it's not as detrimental as lyric-filled music; in fact, it's helpful for studying. It can actually enhance your acquisition of new material. Anecdotally, that makes sense to me. I run white noise a lot in my apartment because my window directly overlooks the smoking section of a rowdy bar and I get tired of hearing the drunkest conversations known to man every night. It drowns all of that out, but also sort of fades into the background. It's not like I'm hearing or focusing on "Box Fan #10 Continuous Loop" or whatever I have queued up on YouTube. Exceptions to the ruleNo study solution is one-size-fits-all, although you'll have a hard time convincing me you can stay focused on physiology or world history with the new Taylor Swift album playing in the background. There are, of course, some exceptions to the rule, like the semi-acceptability of lyric-less tunes. Another exception to the "silence is best" rule is when you're using the production effect. This study technique involves speaking out loud to better retain information. Others, like dual coding, call on you to use two modalities to study at once, like drawing while you listen to a lecture or narrating while you label a diagram. Depending on what you are studying and how you prefer to do it, you may even want to make a personal study podcast by reading your own notes out loud into a recorder, then playing it back. Finally, I've found the ability to create custom "podcasts" out of study materials through Google's NotebookLM extremely helpful for studying while I do other tasks, like clean the house. Don't let the science-backed fact that silence is golden when you're studying deter you from trying out those techniques. Employing them isn't the same as trying to read a chapter in the middle of a bustling cafeteria or playing the latest episode of your favorite show while you take a practice quiz. As with any approach or suggestion, you have wiggle room to make it work for you. How to create more silenceIf you’re attached to lo-fi tunes for studying, that's fine. You just have to keep them low and make sure no lyrics sneak in. Otherwise, try to prioritize a reduction in noise as much as possible—especially outside noises, like chatter, household appliances, or traffic. Here are a few tools that might help: Grab a pair of the highly rated Loop Quiet ear plugs to reduce noise ($28) I can personally vouch for the noise-cancellation qualities of the AirPods Max ($450), which function well even when I'm not playing music Try the Grotheory door stopper to soundproof your study room ($14 for two) Use Mudboo acoustic panels to line the wall separating you from exterior noise ($13 for 12) Pick up a white noise machine for about $17 if you can't make the other noises stop View the full article

In a recent study, Search Engine Land and Fractl found that 82% of consumers find AI-powered search more helpful than traditional SERPs. While the emergence of generative engine optimization (GEO) has marketers in a frenzy to own the latest industry keyword, agency thought leaders are finding common ground. Whether it’s Google or generative AI, brand visibility still comes down to two things: The depth of your original subject matter expertise. The breadth of your brand mentions. Together, these build a digital footprint of authority that both algorithms and knowledge graphs use to surface your brand. Here’s the rub: most brands are still playing a one-dimensional game. They’re optimizing content hubs around FAQs and target market needs while ignoring offsite authority signals like brand mentions, which strengthen visibility across genAI search. To highlight the need for a two-prong approach, my Fractl co-founder, Dan Tynski, scraped 8,090 keywords across 25 verticals to compare citations between Google’s AI Overviews and LLMs (GPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.) for identical queries. The result should give every marketer pause: only 7.2% of domains appeared in both systems. Of the 22,410 unique domains we identified: 15,848 domains (70.7%) appeared exclusively in Google AI Overviews. 4,951 domains (22.1%) appeared exclusively in LLM foundation models. 1,611 domains (7.2%) appeared in both systems. So, what does this mean for marketers? 1. Google’s AI Overviews still favor the old guard Unsurprisingly, Google’s AI system heavily favors the same reputable domains we’re used to dominating the SERPs. High-authority websites with robust content portfolios and strong backlink profiles dominated Google’s AI Overviews. These 15,848 domains were largely represented by: Established news and information sites (BBC, Yahoo, CNN). Educationally leaning social sites (Reddit, YouTube). Authoritative reference sources (Wikipedia, peer-reviewed journals). Government and institutional websites (.gov, .edu). 2. Publishers driving generative AI brand visibility and authority The 4,951 LLM-exclusive domains tell a different story. They’re significantly smaller – three times fewer than AI Overviews – and reflect what LLMs actually value: Investigative journalism from mainstream news publishers covering timely news pulled by RAG searches (e.g., USA Today, CNBC, The New York Times). Niche, vertical experts that demonstrate deep subject matter expertise within a specific vertical (e.g., Edmunds, Investopedia, All Recipes, Wired). Educational platforms and communities optimized for learning (Reddit, Github, Coursera, Khan Academy, University hubs). Authoritative industry data portals, such as peer-reviewed journals, patents, and standards, court and government transcripts. Ultimately, foundation models seem to prioritize publishers that provide topic depth over topic breadth, and educational value and conceptual clarity over traditional web authority signals. Your DA 90 site might be invisible to ChatGPT if it doesn’t clearly and effectively explain concepts, rather than just ranking well with authority. Based on our analysis, here are the five laws that determine whether your content gets cited across AI platforms: Authority creates trust loops in LLMs Strong editorial standards and human fact-checking (think NPR, NYT) get linked, cited, and re-crawled more often. Repeated crawls mean their phrasing becomes the “default” language models lean on when answering. Action items Publish sourced, well-edited, standards-based content. Earn links from high-authority newsrooms. Maintain freshness to trigger re-crawls. If it’s easy to skim, it’s easy to train Models love patterns, so think step-by-step how-tos, definition blocks, ordered lists, and comparison tables that use standard layouts that are machine-friendly. Action items Standardize your article templates. Mark up with headings, schema, bullets, FAQs, and TL;DR summaries. Vertical specialists train the model’s mental map Niche experts (Edmunds for cars, Mayo for health, etc.) flood the web with highly structured, topic-dense updates. Models learn, “When it’s cars, go to Edmunds; when it’s investing, go to Investopedia.” Action items Build the definitive source of knowledge for your industry. Create step-by-step how-tos, definition blocks, comparison tables – the structured content that models love to cite. Pitch experts to the media to reinforce association and expertise. Repetition and syndication = Statistical gravity Big outlets get quoted, reprinted, aggregated – each copy reinforces word patterns and narrative frames. One AP pickup becomes 200 local clones. Now that wording is everywhere in the model’s diet. Syndication is how one fact becomes “the fact” in AI. Action items Target syndication networks, wire partners, and data stories that invite re-use. Provide copy-and-paste-friendly assets (charts, stat bullets, embed codes). U.S. commercial bias skews the knowledge lens Training corpora over-index on U.S. English, ad-supported news, and commercial publishers due to current partnerships. Non-U.S., non-English, academic, or NGO sources are underweighted – leading to culturally narrow answers. Action item Earn media mentions in the same publishers generative AI platforms are using to train their models. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 3. Understanding how AI media partnerships influence brand visibility Beyond the content strategies that shape the knowledge graphs of generative AI platforms, I also wanted to understand which media conglomerates are being cited most frequently. Since I oversee our agency’s earned media team, it felt imperative to prioritize my digital PR team’s targeting of the most cited publishers within each client’s niche. I set off to research the “AI media partnerships” and licensing agreements that OpenAI, Perplexity, and others had arranged over the last few years. These partnerships pull three primary levers that shape a model’s internal neural network and knowledge graph about your industry and brand: Coverage: The legality, depth, and recency of the archives it can crawl and reuse. Context: The frequency with which those sources appear across pretraining data, retrieval indexes, evaluation sets, and safety workflows. Credibility: The confidence weight a system assigns when cross-checking and ranking those sources at answer time. When a publisher network becomes a model partner, it stops being just another website the AI can read – it becomes a trusted source the model actively learns from and reuses. Over time, that content becomes a landmark inside the system’s knowledge map, shaping how the model understands topics, brands, and credibility. As AI assistants build more structured “answer pipelines,” these publisher networks hold a real advantage – their stories are more likely to be cited, repeated, and remembered. As a brand, if your story lives outside these publisher networks, you’ll spend more time and budget fighting to be represented as an authority in generative answers. Dig deeper: Tracking AI search citations: Who’s winning across 11 industries 4. Getting off the Reddit hype train As generative AI continues to train on public web data, not all platforms are created equal. If trust becomes the new currency of the internet, then the source of that data, not just its scale, determines its long-term value in model training. Reddit, Quora, and other UGC-heavy platforms may dominate today’s AI citations. But they’re also the most vulnerable to contamination, bias loops, and synthetic noise. As the signal-to-slop ratio worsens, these sources could face a credibility correction once models start weighting for provenance, diversity, and verifiability. We built a forecasting trusted sources framework to quantify which publisher types are best positioned to retain influence in genAI ecosystems. By scoring platforms across seven trust signals – from scarcity and verifiability to legal clarity and longevity – we can forecast which media environments are most likely to feed the next generation of training data. In short: brands that invest in credible, human-authored, legally clear coverage today will become the foundational voices tomorrow’s models rely on. 5. What GEO means for your 2026 SEO strategy The brands that dominate generative engine optimization in 2026 won’t chase rankings. They’ll architect authority. They’ll prioritize strategies that build cross-channel visibility into a digital footprint strong enough to influence knowledge graphs, algorithms, and audiences alike. If you want to be that brand, here’s your action plan: Choose your lane and own it Generative visibility rewards depth, not breadth. The top performers – WebMD, All Recipes, U.S. News – own their verticals completely. Identify your subcategory and build the most complete knowledge base in it. Engineer for structure LLMs cite what they can parse. Standardize your content templates – definitions, FAQs, how-tos, comparison tables – and use clear schema markup. What’s good for machines tends to be good for humans, too. Leverage ‘statistical gravity’ Engineer syndication paths for every data study. Every syndicated mention, embedded chart, and reused quote compounds authority. Make it easy for journalists and genAI platforms to reuse your language, charts, and insights. One pickup can become 200 citations across the web. Monitor your partnerships ecosystem AI models favor content from trusted media groups (TIME, FT Group, Guardian Media, Axel Springer). Earn placements within those networks to increase your odds of inclusion in retrieval pipelines. Think global, not just Google U.S. outlets dominate AI training data, but multilingual and regional content can fill cultural gaps. Localize and translate your assets to improve visibility in global models. Rebuild for trust Peer-reviewed data, transparent sourcing, and expert-authored content outperform SEO-optimized filler in training value. In genAI search, credibility is the new ranking factor. Authority wins the race The next evolution of search isn’t a race for keywords. It’s a race for context, credibility, and coverage. Build your digital footprint of authority through brand mentions now, while your competitors are still optimizing the 101 of site architecture and content hubs. Once they understand the new rules of discoverability, the knowledge graphs will already know who to trust. View the full article

Adviso once again is leading the way in the 11th annual Search Engine Land Awards. The Canadian agency is a finalist in six categories in 2025. This is the second year in a row that Adviso has topped our list of finalists. In 2024, the Canadian agency was a finalist in five Search Engine Land categories and won two Search Engine Land Awards. Two other agencies earning finalist status five times are: Razorfish LocalIQ Meanwhile, four agencies earned finalist status three times in the 2025 Search Engine Land Awards: Amsive. ATRA Bloom Digital. Digital Hitmen. The competition was once again stiff in nearly all of our categories. All the winners of the 2025 Search Engine Land Awards will be revealed next Monday, Oct. 27. Meet Search Engine Land 2025 award winners at SMX Next As has become tradition, we’re bringing some of this year’s award winners to SMX Next on Nov. 19 to answer your questions during two “Ask the Search Engine Land Award winners” panels. I’ll host the SEO winners session, while Search Engine Land’s Paid Media Editor Anu Adegbola will lead the PPC winners discussion. If you haven’t yet, make sure to register for free for SMX Next. The full list of finalists Best Use Of AI Technology In Search Marketing From Chaos to Clarity: How Mondou Built an AI Search Marketing Powerhouse (Adviso) 15x ROAS with AI: How CAMP Digital Redefined Paid Search for Home Services CB/I Digital + First Citizens Bank: Leading the Future of AI Search in Finance Predictive Lead Scoring Integrated with AI-Powered Google Ads Bidding (Level Agency) How Neighborly Increased Leads by 20% and AI Visibility by 458% with Scalable, AI-Driven SEO Best Overall PPC Initiative – Small Business Anchor Rides – Post-Hurricane PPC Comeback (AIMCLEAR) LOCALiQ Transforms Rehabs UK PPC with 323% More Leads and 82% Impression Share Landing Page CRO + PPC Optimization Cuts CPL by 51% and Nearly Doubles Conversions for Scar Healing Institute (Sagapixel) Somebody Digital & UpCloud: Delivering Customer Conversion & Volume How WSI | Utopiads Restored GarageTeks faith in PPC Best Overall PPC Initiative – Enterprise Simons’ AI-Powered PPC Transformation: A Model for Modern Retail (Adviso) How Amsive Proved Brand Media Increases Search Conversions by 217% for Commerce Bank ATRA & Jason Stone Injury Lawyers – Leveraging CRM Data to Scale Case Volume Search Smarter, Fly Further: Winning in a Mature Market with SEA & SEO (Dentsu) Driving Results: How Life Events Fuelled Smarter Insurance Targeting (Dentsu) Best Commerce Search Marketing Initiative – PPC Precision at Scale: How Royal Distributing Rewired Performance Max With Feed Intelligence (Adviso) Adwise & Azerty – 126% uplift in profit from paid advertising & 1 percent point net margin business uplift by advanced cross-channel bucketing How Cypress North Boosted Non-Brand Revenue 110% YoY for Dave & Adam’s Card World by Shifting Ad Spend From Inventory to Impact: How Automation Drove Sales for Leica’s Classic Store (Muhlert Digital GmbH) 132% More Purchases and $4M in Revenue Growth: How Searchbloom Scaled Sun & Ski Sports with Paid Search and Partnership Best Local Search Marketing Initiative – PPC How We Crushed Belron’s Lead Target by 238% With an AI-Powered Local Strategy (Adviso) ATRA & Raceway Car Wash — Scaling Local Revenue Through High-Intent Search Harmelin Media delivered a SWEET 65% improvement in Paid Search CPA Efficiencies for Hersheypark How Sixth City Marketing achieved 45x ROI by utilizing local search ads for Cristy’s Pizza How Workshop Digital Delivered 2x Leads & 49% Lower CPL for MannKidwell Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative – PPC Blackbird PPC and Customer.io: Advanced Data Integration to Drive 239% Revenue Increase with 12% Greater Lead Efficiency, with MMM Future-Proofing 2025 Growth Massive Lead Quality Gains in Google Ads: ePPC’s Custom AI Prediction Model for ATOM Mobility From Brand Defense to Revenue Offense: The Search Campaign that Changed Everything (Logical Position) How SupplyHouse lowered spend, increased revenue, and dramatically improved ROAS How Workshop Digital Drove a +302% Increase in Average Order Value and +155% ROAS for Murals Your Way Best Integration Of Search Into Omnichannel Marketing How NBC used search to drive +2,573 accounts in a Full-Funnel Media Push (Adviso) Let’s Par-tee! How Bloom Digital achieved 150% to targeted growth objectives for OuttaBounds DAC & Bridgestone Retail Operations – Rebalancing the Funnel How LOCALiQ Helped Cut & Craft Achieve 1,443% YoY Lead Growth with Omnichannel Search Integration From Strategy to Stethoscopes: How Marcus Thomas Helped Akron Children’s Attract the Best Talent in Pediatrics Best Overall SEO Initiative – Small Business How Bloom Digital helped OuttaBounds rank #1 on Google within months of tee off! (on a tiny budget) Digital Hitmen & Elite Tune: The Toyota Shift That Delivered 678% SEO ROI How Digital Hitmen Built an SEO Content Engine to Book Out Aussie Patio Designs‘ 2025 Jobs in Advance Small Business, Big Results: MissionOne Media Doubles Find Wunder’s Revenue With SEO Sagapixel‘s 114% Increase in Hair Transplant Conversions from Organic Search Using Video-to-Blog Best Overall SEO Initiative – Enterprise 825 Million Clicks, Zero Content Edits: How Amsive Engineered MSN’s Technical SEO Turnaround Lamark‘s Unified SEO + CRO: +518% Avg. Lead Growth Nationwide for Kanner & Pintaluga Reinventing SEO. Driving organic growth in a constantly evolving AI-driven discovery landscape. (NP Digital) Razorfish and Grey Goose Partner on Voice Search AI Content Strategy, Delivering 8.5M Impressions Razorfish SEO & Whirlpool: A Helpful Content Engine that Wins the AI SERP Best Commerce Search Marketing Initiative – SEO Scaling Non-Branded SEO for Assouline to Drive +26% Organic Revenue Uplift (Block & Tam) Optimized for Impact: How Marcus Thomas Fueled Product Adoption With SEO Power MissionOne Media helped Find Wunder drive organic growth and 103% increase in revenue Global SEO Excellence by Razorfish: Delivering 229% YoY Growth for Prezzee Best Local Search Marketing Initiative – SEO Sky Zone‘s Multi-Location Local SEO Success: How Acadia Delivered 15x ROI Despite Industry Decline Building an Unbeatable Foundation for Success: Using Hyperlocal SEO to Build Exceptional ROI (Digital Hitmen) Regional SEO Without Multiple GBPs: How Halstead Media Delivered 218% More Qualified Leads and 54% Revenue Growth for Premier Gunite Pools How iQuanti Scaled Local SEO for Edward Jones Across 20,000+ Locations Somebody Digital & NextCare: Local Care, Everywhere Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative – SEO How Acadia Built Warehouse Automation Authority with Exotec: 2,629 Strategic Clicks in 13 Months How Hot House Digital helped to deliver a 276% increase in Sales Qualified Leads Jordan Digital Marketing Developed Multi-Platform Proprietary Content to Drive 126% Inbound Lead Increase for SpyCloud Across Search, LLMs, and LinkedIn Page One, Pipeline Won: The B2B SEO Playbook That Turned 320 Visitors into $10.75M in Pipeline (LeadCoverage) How LOCALiQ’s SEO Strategy Beat the AI Click Drop and Grew Conversions Agency Of The Year – PPC How LOCALiQ Drove Over 84,000 Leads in 2024 with Search and a 323% Uplift for a Charity That Needed It Most Mindgruve Super Bowl campaign increased lead goals by 139% and drove 14,000+ store visits on a sub-$18K budget How Rank Secure Achieved Over 6,400 Conversions at $87 CPA Through Smart Segmentation and Scalable PPC Strategy Marriott‘s Enterprise and Franchise Program Coordinate to Drive an Over 400% Increase in Bookings Through Innovative Automation (Razorfish) Driving Growth Where Search Happens: Stella Rising’s Paid Search Transformation Agency Of The Year – SEO How Amsive Rescued MSN’s Global Visibility Through Enterprise Technical SEO at Scale Future-Proofing Luxury SEO: Block & Tam’s Work with Assouline How Lamark‘s SEO Translated to 35% Revenue Lift and 31% More Bookings for Trailways Driving 560% Visibility Gains and 320% Growth: LOCALiQ UK’s SEO Transformation Razorfish SEO Team Drives Growth for Clients Amid Industry Changes In-House Team Of The Year – SEO How the American Cancer Society’s Lean SEO Team Drove Enterprise-Wide Consolidation and AI Search Visibility Gains for Cancer.org Cha-Ching! How Talking About Costs Sent CareCredit Organic Traffic Soaring Critical Mass: Driving Search Innovation, AI-Optimized Ecosystems, and Award-Winning Growth for Next-Gen Digital Brands From 5 Agencies to 1 Unified SEO Force: How Neighborly Boosted Leads, Outranked the CDC, and Future-Proofed Content How TCWGlobal Achieved 2,066% SEO Growth and Generated 200 MQLs to Defeat the Sales Team Search Marketer Of The Tear Mike King Nick LeRoy Nicolas Villeneuve Samantha Torres Small Agency Of The Year – PPC 104% More Patients, 32% Lower Costs: How a Hyper-Localized PPC Strategy Transformed a Multi State Dermatology Network (Adcetera) ATRA & Jason Stone Injury Lawyers – Leveraging CRM Data to Scale Case Volume Scaling Synergy Health Partners with Better Tracking & Experiments (Blue Ox Digital) Turning Clicks Into Closings: How Bullseye Filled Shorecrest’s Sales Funnel with Qualified Buyers How Halstead Media Scaled Jan Fence’s Revenue by 790%, and Made PPC Their #1 Growth Engine Small Agency Of The year – SEO Future-Focused, Client-Centered: 9Sail Turns Collaboration into Sustained ROI From Zero to Top of the Leaderboard: Bloom Digital Drives Big Growth With Small SEO Budgets Small Team. Big Results. How Bullseye Strategy Leveraged SEO to Raise Giselle Miami to the Rooftops of Local Search How Hot House Digital helped to deliver a 276% increase in Sales Qualified Leads How Mickey Llew helped Investec outrank national news outlets in organic visibility on National Budget Day, beating its own click targets by nearly 300% A huge thank you to our judges A much-deserved thank you to our awesome group of judges for the 2024 Search Engine Land Awards. Our panel of judges had the difficult assignment of selecting the best of the best from a large number of submissions. Thank you: Anu Adegbola Matt Devinney Brad Geddes Celeste Gonzales Amy Hebdon Cory Henke Navah Hopkins Olya Ianovskaia Joseph Kerschbaum Ameet Khabra Melissa Mackey Mordy Oberstein Emily Popson Sara Resnick Barry Schwartz Danita Smith Jo Juliana Turnbull Adam Tanguay Julie Warnecke View the full article

The week is not off to a great start for much of the internet. In the early hours of the morning Pacific time, internet users around the world began experiencing issues with accessing various apps, websites, and platforms. Shortly after, a culprit emerged: Amazon Web Services (AWS)—or, more specifically, an outage at Amazon’s cloud computing platform. Here’s what you need to know about the AWS outage and what websites are affected. What’s happened? At around midnight Pacific time, internet users around the globe began experiencing issues accessing high-trafficked parts of the internet. Websites like Reddit, services like Lyft, and even apps from restaurant chains like McDonald’s seemed to be down or working intermittently. The source of the problem was shortly found: AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing platform that hundreds of thousands of websites and services rely on, including Reddit, Netflix, Pinterest, Spotify, and more. At 12:11 a.m. PDT, the AWS Health Dashboard posted its first notification about the problem, stating that the platform was “investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region.” By 12:51 a.m. PDT, AWS confirmed “increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region,” and by 1:26 a.m. PDT, AWS said it could “confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region.” But though the problem seemed to be affecting only the endpoint located in one region of the United States, any website, app, or service that ran data through that endpoint could be affected by its outage—no matter where in the world the end-user was located. And that was bad news for users around the globe who were attempting to access some of the globe’s most highly trafficked sites and apps. What websites went down? Users around the world have reported troubles accessing dozens of websites, apps, and services, according to data compiled by DownDetector. As of this writing, the DownDetector home page is showing that multiple websites and services that rely on AWS are being reported as down, including: Amazon Amazon Alexa Amazon Prime Video Apple Music AT&T Chime Delta Air Lines Epic Games Store Fortnite Internet Movie Database (IMDb) Lyft Max McDonalds app Reddit Ring Robinhood Roblox Roku Playstation Network Signal Snapchat Spectrum Starbucks Steam Ubisoft Connect Venmo Xbox Network Xfinity by Comcast Zoom This list above is not exhaustive. Users of many other websites, apps, and services have also reported additional outages, including on Coinbase and United Airlines. It’s also worth noting that some report being able to access select sites and services, while others report no luck while attempting access. What caused the AWS outage? Amazon has not yet mentioned whether a specific cause has been identified. A spokesperson for AWS referred Fast Company to its status page, which is still being updated with new developments. How long will the outage last? It’s unknown how long the AWS outage will last or for how long your favorite site or service will be down. The last update on the AWS Health Dashboard, posted at 3:35 a.m. PDT and stated that “the underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated,” adding “most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now.” However, the same notice warned that “Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution.” In other words, if you still can’t access your favorite site or platform, it’s best to try again in a little bit. This story is developing… View the full article

Rare earths are not the only Chinese product that America would struggle to replaceView the full article

Five weeks ago, Google announced a new feature named "Text'¬'­ guidelines'¬'­" at the Think Retail event. Google said these would roll out "over time this Fall." Well, some are now seeing the new feature.View the full article

Google is testing the ability to highlight portions of the response, to do a follow-up question on what you highlighted. It is similar to past tests on the AI Overview, but this is within AI Mode.View the full article

Overall, new 60-day-plus delinquencies totaled $2 billion, up from $1.69 billion in August, while maturity defaults accounted for half, or 51% ($1.05 billion) of new delinquencies. View the full article