YouTube will send you fewer channel notifications if you don't engage with them
HookTide helps professionals grow their LinkedIn presence with voice-aware AI that learns your tone and positioning. It analyzes your profile and posts, generates authentic posts and carousels, and delivers weekly insights, goals, and action plans. You can track comments and get AI reply suggestions in the engagement hub, and monitor reach, sentiment, and trends with analytics. Teams can collaborate in shared workspaces and model brand or client voices.
Apple’s M2 MacBook Air offers decent hardware to those who require ample battery life and aren’t too worried about the lack of storage and memory upgrades available to them. However, there are always exceptions everywhere, and in light of the DRAM crisis, we’ll bear witness to some unorthodox examples of creative juices flowing on various social media channels. The latest mod involves a portable Mac owner who wasn’t going to pay the ludicrous premium for a solid-state drive, so he took some tape, an existing SATA SSD, and a USB-C dongle and attached all three things to the M2 MacBook […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/m2-macbook-air-sata-ssd-mod-using-a-dongle-and-tape/
One of the most highly anticipated AAA survival horror games is right around the corner, and while Capcom gets ready to officially launch Resident Evil Requiem this month, NVIDIA has launched its game bundle, where you get a free copy of the title with every purchase of an RTX 50 series GPU. Thankfully, this offer isn’t limited to desktop graphics cards and extends to gaming laptops, and you’ll be thrilled to learn that the MSI Vector 16 HX AI, which houses the RTX 5070 Ti, is $200 off on Amazon. In short, you’re not just pocketing extra savings, but you’re also getting […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/msi-vector-16-hx-ai-rtx-5070-ti-amazon-gaming-laptop-deal-save-200-and-get-resident-evil-requiem-free-copy/
First, Apple scaled back its World Knowledge Answers AI project, as well as an AI-driven overhaul of the Safari browser and the Apple Health app. Now, it seems the Cupertino giant is rolling back the launch of the new Gemini-backed Siri, resorting to a gradual feature drop approach instead. Apple's launch of the new Gemini-backed Siri hits roadblocks As we've been noting ad nauseum over the past couple of weeks, Apple has formally selected Google's Gemini to power the next generation of its on-device Foundation Models as well as a revamped version of Siri, which would bring the much-delayed in-app […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apples-much-anticipated-siri-overhaul-hits-a-snag-new-features-to-now-roll-out-in-batches/
CI Games is getting ready to release its third Lords of the Fallen game with Lords of the Fallen 2, sometime later this year, which we last got a look at during The Game Awards 2025 with a new gameplay trailer. Outside of CI Games' chief executive officer, Marek Tyminski, promising that this fantasy action game won't be "politically correct" and that it will feature female characters in revealing armour, in a new developer deep-dive, game director James Lowe promises that the combat will be "bolder, braver, bloodier." A quick rundown on the series, if you're confused as to why […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/bolder-braver-bloodier-ci-games-digs-into-lords-of-the-fallen-2-combat-in-new-developer-deep-dive/
Q4 2025 turned out to be a fantastic quarter for AMD with the highest CPU revenue and unit share in both EPYC and Ryzen segments. AMD x86 CPU Share Continues To Grow: Explosive Gains With Ryzen Desktop & Highest Share For EPYC AMD's CPU market share has been growing steadily, and the end of 2025 saw its biggest CPU unit and revenue figures, as reported by Mercury Research. The latest figures show share increases in both client and server segments, so let's break down the numbers, starting with the client market. In Q4 2025, AMD's Desktop Revenue share increased by […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-cpu-market-share-huge-growth-q4-2025-ryzen-desktop-highest-revenue-ever/
For years, the gold standard in Search ads was granularity. Advertisers built elaborate, multi-layered campaigns to cover every variable, from match types to device bids…Meta's 30th data center in the U.S. will help to power its AI ambitions.
Mini dramas are having a moment on TikTok, and Instagram's now taken notice.
The option gives you the capacity to change what you see in your Threads feed.
The new option will generate a Bitmoji for you, based on an image.
docs2excel.ai uses AI to extract custom data points or full tables from documents and convert them into Excel. No complex setup is required; just upload your documents and download the results. It is great for invoices, receipts, bank statements, and purchase orders, as well as resumes and research papers. Privacy is a priority: your files are processed only to deliver the service. They are never stored, sold, or used to train AI models.
Apple has just opened the proverbial floodgates by officially releasing the iOS 26.3, iPadOS 26.3, watchOS 26.3, tvOS 26.3, visionOS 26.3, HomePod Software 26.3, and macOS Tahoe 26.3 software updates. Apple iOS 26.3 goes official along with software updates for a wide range of Apple devices The iOS 26.3 software update includes the following changes as gleaned from the recent beta updates: Limit Precise Location Apple has added a new "limit precise location" feature, which limits carrier visibility to the neighborhood instead of the more precise street level. The following carriers will support this feature for now: Do note that this […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-officially-released-ios-26-3-update-and-more/
Hello Games has just released Remnant, another free update for No Man's Sky. The patch (6.2) introduces gravity manipulation mechanics, extensive vehicle customization, and industrial waste processing facilities. The headline feature of Remnant is arguably the Gravitino Coil, a new Multi-Tool upgrade that fundamentally changes how players interact with the game world. This device allows travelers to magnetize, carry, and launch objects, creating entirely new gameplay possibilities through physics manipulation. No Man's Sky players are now able to grab and fling various items scattered across planets, including golden artifacts discovered in planetary ruins. However, the developers believe the tool's most […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/no-mans-sky-remnant-update-adds-gravity-manipulation/
For the second year in a row, Xbox has revealed the games awarded with its signature stamp of excellence in the Xbox Excellence Awards. The awards list 20 titles in four categories, though several of them are repeats, which means only 55 individual titles have made the cut this year. Of those 55, included are titles like ARC Raiders, Battlefield 6, Helldivers 2, and Hollow Knight Silksong, all of which made the cut as some of the best-selling games on the Xbox platform in 2025. The games are listed alphabetically in the Xbox Wire post announcing the winners, so we […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/arc-raiders-battlefield-6-helldivers-2-and-hollow-knight-silksong-were-some-of-the-best-selling-games-on-xbox-in-2025/
Verizon is showcasing its data throughput prowess this week after the Sunday's Super Bowl LX match in San Francisco, where the carrier says that it provided median download speeds of 2.16 Gbps at the height of the action. Verizon claims the data throughput it offered during this year's Super Bowl Sunday was the result of "nearly 200 individual network projects across the Bay Area" Verizon has just given a snapshot of the data throughput it powered via its dense network in the Bay Area: Do note that Verizon is the official 5G network of the NFL. As such, the network […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/verizon-customers-used-40-32-tb-of-data-in-the-vicinity-of-levis-stadium-on-super-bowl-sunday/
We have another film adaptation of a video game to look forward to, and it's once again another PlayStation franchise to add to the list of adaptations under the belt of Sony and PlayStation Productions. This time, it's Fast & Furious director Justin Lin taking on an adaptation of Arrowhead Games' Helldivers, with Dune's Duncan Idaho, Jason Momoa, starring in the film. The news comes from a report from Deadline, which adds that the film will premiere next year, on November 10, 2027, with Lin's Perfect Storm Entertainment and PlayStation Productions producing the film. Other adaptations, whether they're set to […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/jason-momoa-star-helldivers-film-fast-and-furious-director-justin-lin/
HP, one of the biggest PC manufacturers, has given its verdict on the ongoing DRAM shortages, and the solution is renting gaming laptops. Yeah, you read it right. HP Is Now Offering Four Different OMEN Laptop Configurations to Rent, And You'll Never Own the Device The DRAM supercycle has disrupted the PC supply chain, and it appears manufacturers have few options on board to mitigate the risks posed by rising DRAM prices. One solution discussed in the industry is sourcing Chinese memory modules, which is thought to be a cheaper option, but we won't go into that for now. In […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/hp-response-to-memory-shortages-isnt-switching-to-chinese-suppliers-or-cutting-specs-its-asking-gamers-to-rent-laptops/
ARC Raiders wouldn't be an extraction shooter if Embark Studios didn't have people asking you to bring stuff back from your trips Topside. That's why there are plenty of quests you'll be asked to complete for each of the traders featured. Though the actual tasks these quests require you to complete are relatively simple, they're not always simple to complete. Besides avoiding other players and ARCs to make it to your destination, if you're not thorough, you run the risk of needing multiple visits Topside just to get one objective completed. This guide will run you through how to complete […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/arc-raiders-the-league-quest-guide/
TikTok US brings its local content display to American users.
Google's head of ads and commerce has shared some insights into what's coming.
The Wild West of web scraping is changing, due in large part to OpenAI’s deal with Disney. The deal allows OpenAI to train on high-fidelity, human-verified cinematic content – intended to combat AI slop fatigue.
This deal opens up new opportunities to reinforce your brand’s visibility and recall. AI models are hungry for high-quality data, and this shift turns video into an essential asset for your brand.
Here’s a breakdown of why video is the new source of truth for AI and how you can use it to protect your brand’s identity.
When a large language model’s training set lacks data on a specific brand, the LLM doesn’t admit that it doesn’t know. Instead, it interpolates, filling the gaps in your brand’s story. It makes guesses about your brand identity based on patterns from similar brands or general industry information.
This interpolation can lead to brand drift. Here’s what it looks like when an AI model narrates an inaccurate version of your business.
Say you represent a SaaS company. A user asks ChatGPT about one of your product’s features. But the model doesn’t have information about that specific feature.
So, the model constructs elaborate setup instructions, pricing tiers, and integration requirements for the phantom feature.
This has surfaced for companies like Streamer.bot, where users regularly arrive with confidently wrong instructions generated by ChatGPT – forcing teams to correct misinformation that the product never published.
AI brand drift happens to local businesses, too. As one restaurant owner told Futurism, Google AI Overviews repeatedly shared false information about both specials and menu items.
To correct brand drift and prevent AI from distorting your brand message, your company must provide a canonical source of truth.
By producing authoritative videos (e.g., a demo that explicitly clarifies pricing), you provide strong semantic information through the transcript and visual proof. The video becomes the canonical source of truth that makes things clear, overriding opinions from Reddit and other sources.
In contrast, a text file contains low entropy. A statement like “50% off” is identical whether it was written in 2015 or 2025. Text often lacks the timestamp of reality, making it easy for AI to manipulate or lose the context of the real world.
To fix this, you need a medium with more data packed into every second. A five-minute video at 60 frames per second contains 18,000 frames of visual evidence, a nuanced audio track, and a text transcript.
Video enables LLMs to capture non-verbal, high-fidelity cues, creating a validation layer that preserves the visual evidence often flattened or lost in written content.
Creative studios like Berlin-based Impolite specialize in high-production-value video that provides the chaotic, non-repetitive entropy that AI needs to verify. The studio’s work for global brands serves as the high-density data source that prevents brand drift.
For example, Karman’s “The Space That Makes Us Human” project is a masterclass in creating a canonical source of truth, using high-fidelity, expert-led video to anchor brand identity.
Dig deeper: How to optimize video for AI-powered search
As deepfakes proliferate, authenticity is shifting from a vague moral concept to a hard technical signal. Search engines and AI agents need a way to verify the provenance.
Is this video real? Is it from the brand it claims to be?
For AI models, real-world human footage is the ultimate high-trust data source. It provides physical evidence, such as a person speaking, a product in motion, or a specific location. In contrast, AI-generated video often lacks the chaotic, non-repetitive entropy of real-world light and physics.
The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) is developing a new provenance standard to verify authenticity. The organization, which includes members such as Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and OpenAI, provides the technical specifications that enable this data to be cryptographically verifiable.
At the same time, the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), spearheaded by Adobe, drives the adoption of open-source tools for digital transparency.
Together, the two organizations go beyond simple watermarking. They allow brands to sign videos the moment they begin recording, providing a signal that AI models can prioritize over unverified noise.
Ever notice that tiny “CR” mark in the corner of certain media on LinkedIn? This label stands for content credentials. It appears on images and videos to indicate their origin and whether the creator used AI to produce or edit them.
When you click or hover over the “CR” icon on a LinkedIn post, a sidebar or pop-up appears that shows:
Some creators are already looking to circumvent the icon. Some have shared tips to hide the tag.
While some call it LinkedIn shaming, its presence signals authority. It’s also gaining traction.
Google has begun integrating C2PA signals into search and ads to help enforce policies regarding misrepresentation and AI disclosure. The search giant has also updated its documentation to explain how C2PA metadata is handled in Google Images.
Dig deeper: The SEO shift you can’t ignore: Video is becoming source material
For content marketers, adopting C2PA is a defensive moat against misinformation and a proactive signal of quality.
If a bad actor deepfakes your CEO, the absence of your corporate cryptographic signature acts as a silent alarm. Platforms and AI agents will immediately detect that the content lacks a verified origin seal and de-prioritize it in favor of authenticated assets.
Here’s how it works in practice.
Select Sony cameras use the brand’s camera authenticity solution to embed digital signatures in real time. The signature uses keys held in a secure hardware chipset. Sony uses 3D depth data alongside the C2PA manifest rather than a 2D screen or a projection to verify that a real 3D subject was filmed.
Similarly, select Qualcomm’s products support a cryptographic seal that proves the photo’s authenticity. In addition, apps like Truepic and ProofMode can sign footage on standard devices.
C2PA-aware software, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, integrates content credentials. This allows brands to embed a manifest listing the creator, edits, and software.
Think of it as a content ledger. Content credentials act as a digital paper trail, logging every hand that touches the file:
If the content is altered outside of a C2PA-compliant tool, the cryptographic link is severed.
When an AI model performs an evidence-weighting calculation to decide which information to show a user, it will see this broken signature.
Dig deeper: How to dominate video-driven SERPs
Information overload is constant nowadays. Traditional gatekeepers are struggling because AI generates content faster than humans can verify it. Authenticity becomes scarce online as Audiences increasingly seek out authenticity and strive to distinguish signal from noise.
From LLMs to search engines like Google, AI systems struggle with the same challenge. Verified subject matter experts (SMEs) are emerging as critical differentiators and as guarantors of credibility and pertinence.
An SME is a human anchor point of credibility for both humans and machines. When brands pair expertise with verifiable video documentation, they create something AI can’t replicate: authentic authority that audiences can see, hear, and trust.
A video transcript of an expert explaining a complex topic often captures colloquial, nuanced details that polished, static blog posts miss. Here’s how to use expert-led videos as the starting point of your content flywheel:
By repurposing a single high-density video asset across these formats, you create a self-reinforcing loop of authority.
This increases the probability that an AI model will encounter and index your brand’s expertise in the format that the model prefers. For example, Gemini might index the video, while Perplexity might index the transcript.
It doesn’t have to be fancy, as this clip from Search with Sean shows:
Before you hit record, identify where your brand is most vulnerable to AI drift. To maximize the surface area for AI retrieval, proceed this way:
Here’s a concrete example recorded with Semrush’s Brand Control Quadrant framework:
Dig deeper: The future of SEO content is video – here’s why
With infinite, low-cost AI slop cropping up, it’s going to get harder and harder to fight deepfakes. But it’s harder for an AI to hallucinate a real physical event than a sentence.
The most valuable asset a brand owns is its verifiable expertise. By anchoring your brand in expert-led, multimodal video, you ensure that your identity remains consistent, protected, and prioritized.
A clear hierarchy of data is emerging: high-fidelity, cryptographically signed video is the premium currency. For every other brand, the mandate is simple: Record reality. If you don’t provide a signed, high-density video record of your business, the AI will hallucinate one for you.
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of positioning your brand and content so that AI platforms like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity cite, recommend, or mention you when users search for answers.
If that sounds abstract, the results aren’t.
For bootstrapped form builder tool, Tally, ChatGPT became the #1 referral source.
They’re not alone. Across industries, the shift is already measurable.
ChatGPT reaches over 800 million weekly users. Google’s Gemini app has surpassed 750 million monthly users. And AI Overviews are appearing in at least 16% of all searches (significantly higher for comparison and high-intent queries).
The question isn’t whether AI is changing discovery. It’s whether your brand is showing up when it happens.
So GEO is real. But is it stable enough to invest in seriously?
That’s a fair question.
When we tracked 2,500 prompts across Google AI Mode and ChatGPT through the Semrush AI Visibility Index, the first thing we noticed was volatility.
Between 40 and 60% of cited sources change from month to month.
But underneath the variances, patterns emerged.
The brands showing up consistently shared specific structural characteristics. Entity clarity, content extractability, multi-platform presence made them easier for AI systems to find, trust, and reference.
In this guide, I’ll share what we’ve found about what GEO requires, how it differs from SEO, and the framework for increasing your visibility in AI-driven discovery.
GEO helps your brand appear in AI-generated answers.
For example, when someone asks an AI tool “What is the best whey protein powder for a mom in their 50s,” the response typically evaluates brands and recommends options based on ingredients, reviews, and credibility signals.
If your content or brand is included in that response, it’s an example of GEO in action.
Getting there requires coordinated effort across several areas:
These activities overlap with traditional SEO, but the emphasis shifts.
GEO builds on the same SEO fundamentals you already use. But it shifts the focus from rankings and clicks to how your brand is mentioned and cited inside AI-generated answers.
Here’s a snapshot of some key differences between GEO and traditional SEO:
| What Changes | Traditional SEO | GEO |
| Primary goal | Rank in top search positions | Be referenced or mentioned in AI answers |
| Success metrics | Rankings, clicks, traffic | Citations, mentions, share of voice |
| How users find you | Click through to your site | AI includes you in generated responses |
| Key platforms | Google, Bing | Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity |
| How you optimize content | Title tags, keywords, site speed, content quality | Self-contained paragraphs, clear facts, structured data |
| How you build credibility | Backlinks, author credentials, reviews, domain authority | Positive mentions across trusted platforms and communities |
Use this table to update your mental model.
Traditional SEO fundamentals still matter. We’re just adapting how we apply them as AI systems change how people discover information.
Now, let’s break down what this means in practice.
The core principles behind effective SEO still apply to GEO.
You still need to publish high-quality, authoritative content for real users. Your site still needs to be technically accessible. You still need credible signals of trust and expertise. And you still need to understand user intent and deliver clear value.
AI systems tend to reference content that is authoritative, well-structured, and easy to interpret. Those are the same qualities that support strong SEO performance.
If you already have a solid SEO foundation, GEO builds on it rather than replacing it.
Further reading: SEO vs. GEO, AEO, LLMO: What Marketers Need to Know
Where GEO diverges is in how that foundation is applied.
Traditional SEO focuses primarily on your owned properties, i.e. your website and blog.
GEO benefits from strategic presence across platforms where AI tools discover information, including:
AI systems extract specific passages from your content to construct answers. They pull a paragraph here, a statistic there, and weave them together.
This changes how you need to structure information.
When you’re explaining a concept, defining a term, or sharing data, that paragraph should ideally work on its own. AI systems often extract these substantive passages without the conversational setup around them. (We’ll cover the mechanics of how this works in the strategic framework later.)
You need clear headings to help AI identify which section answers which question.
Also, putting answers early in sections may make them easier for AI to find and extract.
Traditional SEO often rewards comprehensive coverage. GEO places more emphasis on content that’s easy to extract and reassemble. We’re still learning exactly how different AI systems prioritize structure, but clarity consistently helps.
Traditional SEO metrics like rankings, clicks, and bounce rate tell part of the story.
GEO adds new measurements, like:
Together, these metrics help you understand not just whether you’re visible, but how your brand is being positioned inside AI-generated responses.
You need both traditional SEO metrics and AI visibility metrics to understand your full organic search presence in 2026.
Note: You can track these metrics using Semrush’s Enterprise AIO, which monitors your brand’s visibility across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity.
It provides granular tracking of mentions, sentiment, share of voice, and competitive benchmarking to help you optimize your AI visibility strategy.
An effective GEO strategy rests on five connected principles that work together to maximize your AI visibility.
(As AI systems evolve, specific patterns may shift, but these underlying principles provide a stable foundation.)
Each one addresses how AI systems discover, evaluate, and reference your brand.
Let’s look at them in detail.
SEO fundamentals still matter for GEO, but for a different reason than in traditional search.
In AI-driven discovery, these fundamentals still function as optimization levers, but they influence retrieval, interpretation, and attribution rather than rankings alone.
They create the baseline conditions that allow AI systems to retrieve information, interpret it accurately, and attribute it to a source with confidence.
For instance, AI-generated answers are assembled from content that is accessible, readable, and attributable.
When accessibility, readability, or clear attribution are weak, even strong content becomes harder for AI systems to surface or reference reliably.
This is why many sources cited by AI platforms share characteristics long associated with solid SEO foundations.
The overlap exists because clarity and reliability still matter across discovery systems, even as the surfaces change.
Technical accessibility plays a role here.
Content that cannot be consistently crawled, indexed, or rendered introduces uncertainty at the retrieval layer.
Page performance has a similar effect. Slower or unstable experiences don’t block inclusion outright. But they reduce how dependable a source appears when answers are assembled.
JavaScript-heavy implementations highlight this dynamic.
Many AI crawlers still struggle to consistently process client-side rendered content, which can make core information harder to extract or interpret.
When that happens, AI systems have less certainty about using the content as a reference point.
But technical setup is only part of the equation.
AI systems also assess content quality and credibility. Information that reflects real experience, clear expertise, and identifiable authorship is easier to contextualize and trust.
Signals associated with E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) influence not just whether content is referenced, but how it is framed within an answer.
Taken together, these foundations explain why SEO still underpins GEO. Not as a ranking system, but as the infrastructure that makes AI visibility possible.
Further reading: A technical SEO blueprint for GEO: Optimize for AI-powered search
Entities help AI systems understand and categorize information on the web. This includes distinguishing your brand from similar names, identifying what category you belong to, and understanding which topics you’re credible for.
AI systems don’t just read words. They interpret structure.
Before schema ever comes into play, they look for clear signals about:
The most reliable way to provide those signals is through well-structured information.
If those signals are unclear or inconsistent, AI systems have less confidence when deciding whether and how to reference you.
Take monday.com as an example. When AI systems crawl websites and process information, they see “monday” mentioned in many different contexts.
Clear, consistent descriptions across the site and supporting sources help AI understand that monday.com refers to project management software. Not the day of the week.
The same principle applies to category clarity. If you sell organic dog food, AI needs to categorize your brand under pet nutrition, not general groceries or pet accessories.
When someone asks “what’s the best grain-free dog food,” AI is more likely to consider brands it can clearly place in the correct category.
On a product page, it should be unambiguous what each element represents — the product name, the description, the price, the attributes, availability and variants.
That clarity needs to exist in the visible page content first.
Schema markup can then mirror that structure in a machine-readable format (typically JSON-LD). And that same structured understanding should also be reflected in downstream systems, like your product feed submitted to Google Merchant Center.
In other words, the page structure, the schema markup, and the commerce feed should all describe the same thing in the same way.
The goal isn’t to “add schema.” The goal is to make your information logically structured so machines can consistently understand it across systems.
This is important because we don’t know how structured data is used inside large language models. Or how exactly schema influences training, retrieval, or real-time answer generation.
But we do know this: AI systems cross-reference signals from multiple sources and formats.
Your brand description on LinkedIn should align with what appears on your site. Profiles on Crunchbase, review platforms, or industry directories should reinforce the same category, positioning, and value proposition.
When these signals are consistent across sources, AI systems can categorize and reference your brand with greater confidence. When they conflict, confidence drops, and your brand is less likely to be mentioned.
This is why entity clarity isn’t just about a single markup tactic. It comes from designing your content and presence so machines can reliably understand who you are, what you offer, and where you belong wherever your brand appears.
Further reading: How Ecommerce Brands Actually Get Discovered In AI Search
Tip: You can check if your site has missing structured data that makes entity relationships unclear — along with other issues that could potentially be hurting your AI search visibility — using Semrush’s Site Audit.
If entity clarity determines whether AI systems consider your content at all, extractability determines which specific parts get pulled into AI-generated answers.
This principle operates at the retrieval layer.
AI systems don’t consume pages the way humans do. When generating answers, they retrieve specific passages from across the web and assemble them into a response.
Here’s how it works mechanically:
LLMs break content into chunks, convert those chunks into numerical representations (vectors), and retrieve the most relevant passages when assembling an answer.
Those retrieved chunks are then synthesized into a response — often without the surrounding context from your original page.
This has practical implications.
Based on what we’ve observed, passages that retain meaning when read in isolation are more likely to be retrieved and used accurately. Passages that rely on conversational setup or references like “as mentioned above” or “this is why” tend to lose clarity when extracted.
Now this may not apply to every paragraph on a page.
But paragraphs that contain definitions, explanations, comparisons, or key facts should ideally stand on their own. These are the passages AI systems are most likely to extract without the surrounding narrative.
So what makes content extractable?
One important distinction: This principle mainly applies to retrieval-augmented systems — like Google AI Mode and Perplexity with grounding, and ChatGPT with browsing enabled. These systems get content in real-time.
For base model knowledge (what the LLM learned during training), content structure is less important. That knowledge comes from training, not from retrieving per-query. Building presence in training data takes time and requires consistent, authoritative publishing.
Below is an example of self-contained content that AI systems can easily extract and reference.
The same extractability principle shows up in everyday writing as well.
For example, compare these two ways of explaining the same cooking technique:
Hard to extract: “There are several reasons this method works. After trying it, most people find their eggplant tastes better. That’s why many chefs use it.”
Easy to extract: “Salting eggplant for 15 minutes before cooking removes bitterness and excess moisture. This technique improves the final texture.”
Both explain the same idea. But the second version states the technique, timing, benefit, and result clearly, which makes it easy for AI to extract as a standalone passage.
Here are other examples:
When content is structured this way, AI systems can reliably retrieve relevant passages and include them in answers.
Over time, that increases the likelihood that your expertise is surfaced accurately when users ask questions related to your domain.
AI systems don’t just pull from your website when building answers. They gather information from YouTube, Reddit, review sites, industry publications, social platforms, and more.
This creates two opportunities for visibility:
Owned presence is content you or your team create on platforms beyond your website.
Podcasts, webinars, conference presentations, and educational platforms provide additional long-form content AI systems can extract from.
These platforms often play an important role in AI discovery.
In fact, Reddit, Linkedin, and YouTube were among the top cited sources by the top LLMs in October 2025.
When your brand creates valuable content on these platforms, you give AI systems more material to draw from.
But the key is creating substantive, helpful content that addresses real problems in your industry.
Earned mentions are references to your brand that you don’t directly control.
When multiple independent sources discuss your brand in relevant contexts, AI systems have clearer signals to interpret your credibility.
Further reading: 7 ways to grow brand mentions, a key metric for AI Overviews visibility
Side note: Tools like Semrush’s AI PR Toolkit make this easier to evaluate at scale. Beyond counting earned mentions, it shows how your brand is framed across sources, including whether mentions skew positive, neutral, or negative.
This metric can be very important as you work to extend brand visibility beyond your website. Because sentiment influences how AI systems frame your brand in answers, not just whether they mention you at all.
Owned presence and earned mentions work together.
Your owned content demonstrates expertise and provides detailed information AI can reference. Earned mentions from customers and industry sources validate your credibility.
When AI systems encounter both, they build a comprehensive understanding of what you offer.
This owned and earned content may also become part of LLM training data in the future, shaping how AI systems learn about and reference your brand long-term.
Traditional SEO metrics (like rankings, clicks, and traffic) only tell part of the story. But they had one major advantage: the attribution path was clear.
A user clicked, landed on your site, and either converted or didn’t. You could tie that traffic directly to revenue.
AI search breaks that path. When an AI tool recommends your product to a user, they might never click through to your site. The conversion may still happen — they Google your brand name later, sign up the following week — but your analytics won’t connect it back to the AI mention that started it.
That’s the real measurement challenge. It’s not just that the metrics are different. It’s that the link between visibility and revenue becomes harder to trace.
The value here isn’t just the click. It’s being part of the answer.
This requires measuring your visibility differently.
Here are the key metrics to consider:
The challenge is that traditional analytics platforms (like GA4 or Google Search Console) cannot track these signals. They only see what happens after a click.
This creates a “measurement blind spot.” You might be the most mentioned brand in ChatGPT, but your standard dashboards would show zero activity.
Platforms like Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit are built to solve this specific problem. They help quantify these “invisible” GEO metrics, turning qualitative data (like sentiment and mention frequency) into trackable numbers.
Its Brand Performance report shows how visible your brand is in AI answers, how you compare to competitors, and whether mentions skew positive, neutral, or negative.
The toolkit also highlights AI visibility insights, helping you understand how your brand is currently interpreted in AI answers and where adjustments may improve visibility.
Ultimately, a modern search strategy requires monitoring two distinct dashboards:
One for your website’s performance (rankings and traffic) in traditional search. And one for your brand’s mentions across AI search
You need both to see the full picture.
These principles increase your probability of appearing in AI answers. They don’t guarantee it.
The volatility in AI citations means even well-optimized brands experience fluctuation.
Different AI platforms weigh signals differently. User context and conversation history affect what gets cited. And AI systems are evolving rapidly — what works today may shift as models update.
Think of GEO like brand building: you’re increasing your odds across many moments of potential visibility, not securing a fixed position.
The brands that do this well show up more often, more accurately, and in better context. But there’s no “rank #1” equivalent to chase.
That realism isn’t a reason to ignore GEO. It’s a reason to approach it as an ongoing discipline. Showing up consistently, across surfaces, over time, is how you build trust with AI systems.
The biggest misconception is that AI-generated answers are too volatile to optimize for.
While individual responses change, the underlying inputs do not. AI systems consistently rely on durable signals like authority, clarity, and trust. Brands with strong entity clarity and credible sources appear repeatedly, even as surface-level outputs fluctuate. The patterns are stable enough to act on.
No, GEO builds on SEO fundamentals.
Traditional SEO optimizes for rankings and clicks. GEO optimizes for mentions, citations, and recommendations inside AI-generated answers.
They work together. Strong SEO creates the foundation (technical accessibility, quality content, credibility signals) that AI systems rely on when deciding which brands to reference.
The clearest way to frame it is as a hierarchy.
GEO sits inside AI SEO as one way to improve visibility within generative systems. The goal is not optimizing for a single model or interface. The goal is being seen, trusted, and reused wherever people search for answers.
Further reading: How to Rank in AI Search (New Strategy & Framework)
Content that is easy for AI systems to retrieve, understand, and reuse is most likely to appear in generative AI responses.
In practice, this means clear, direct answers to specific questions, self-contained explanations, fact-based comparisons, and concise definitions that make sense without surrounding context. AI systems tend to pull individual passages, not entire pages, so structure and clarity matter more than length.
Well-known brands often start with more authority, but they don’t automatically win. Smaller publishers can compete when they own a clearly defined topic, show up consistently across platforms, and are easy for AI systems to understand and trust.
In practice, focused niche sites may outperform larger brands when their expertise is clearer, better structured, and tightly aligned with specific audience needs.
The right way to think about GEO is as a long-term visibility discipline, not a short-term optimization tactic.
Success comes from making your expertise clear, consistent, and reusable wherever AI systems look for answers. That requires strong alignment across content, SEO, brand, PR, product, and customer touchpoints.
AI search does not change the goal of helping users. It raises the standard for coherence, accuracy, and trust across the entire web.
Starting with Minecraft: Bedrock Edition 26.0, Mojang is switching to a year-based versioning scheme. The update also refreshes several baby mob models and textures, fixes a Nether Portal lava ignition bug, and includes smaller gameplay polish under the hood.
Google's VP of Ads & Commerce published her annual letter previewing agentic commerce updates, AI Mode ad expansion, and creator-brand matching tools for 2026.
The post Google’s Ads Chief Details UCP Expansion, New AI Mode Ads appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
At the start of 2026, Ubisoft didn't just announce layoffs at one of its studios (which is how it started 2025). It announced a "major reset," which included layoffs at multiple studios, the shuttering of Ubisoft Halifax, the cancellation of the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake, and significant changes to its operating structure, alongside some unpopular new policies like a return-to-office mandate. The response to these changes has not exactly been positive, both internally within Ubisoft and externally across the industry. On the stock market, the announcement of the restructure saw the company's stock price drop 34%, which […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/1200-ubisoft-employees-kick-off-three-day-international-strike/
Arkheron, the interesting and ambitious blend between Diablo, PUBG, and Dark Souls from Bonfire Studios, which we first got a look at last September. It will have its first public playtest via the launch of a brand new demo arriving on February 20, 2026, just ahead of the first Steam Next Fest of 2026, which will officially kick off three days later on February 23. The news of the new demo also came along with a new trailer, where Bonfire Studios takes players through some of its plans for Arkheron as the team gets closer to launch, and some of […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/bonfire-studios-mix-of-diablo-pubg-and-dark-souls-arkheron-will-get-a-steam-next-fest-demo-ahead-of-launch-later-this-year/
On paper, the Galaxy S26 Ultra specifications can be termed as boring, but instead of following what other companies are doing, such as incorporating high refresh rate displays and going for record-high brightness levels, Samsung is adding something that will actually be of use to the average buyer. According to one tipster, the privacy display called ‘Flex Magic Pixel’ is expected to arrive with the Korean giant’s top-end flagship, and it could end up becoming the device’s signature feature. Developers taking advantage of the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s privacy display can take the technology’s usefulness to another level, if implemented properly On […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/galaxy-s26-ultra-privacy-display-addresses-concerns-rather-than-incremental-upgrades/
Rapidus, one of Japan's biggest native chipmakers, now plans to take its 2nm production ambitions to new heights, aiming to reach a respectable production capacity by 2028. Rapidus Plans to Achieve 60,000 WPM By 2028 For Its 2nm Process, Making It Japan's Most Ambitious Chip Fab The semiconductor industry is heating up, not just in terms of the competition it faces, but also in the demand foundries like TSMC are seeing amid the AI frenzy. While most chip orders are currently focused on the Taiwan chip giant, it appears that multiple competitors are seeking an 'opening window', among them Rapidus. […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/rapidus-accelerates-2nm-push-and-plans-dramatic-production-expansion/
MercurySteam, the developer behind the critically acclaimed 2D action game, Metroid Dread, followed up its beloved Nintendo-exclusive outing with something completely different last year. Blades of Fire was a new 3D action-adventure game that saw you take the role of Aran de Lira, the last blacksmith capable of wielding and forging true steel, who is tasked with killing the Queen to save humanity. When it launched in May 2025, Wccftech's Francesco De Meo reviewed it, and despite it lacking in originality with its fantasy setting and narrative, he praised the weapon variety and forging mechanics, giving it an 8.5/10. A […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/blades-of-fire-steam-version-2-0-release-date-nvidia-dlss-4-mercurysteam/
In less than a year since its release, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has become almost legendary. Breaking all records for Game of the Year awards, the role-playing game developed by Sandfall Interactive has enjoyed immense popularity thanks to its classic JRPG gameplay and incredible art direction. Funnily enough, that art direction is so convincing that it recently triggered a national antiquities investigation in the Middle East. "This can't be for real, my Expedition Journal that comes with the Monolith Set got detained by customs for being 'possibly ancient", reported Reddit user Ahmed15252 on the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 subreddit. "Customs […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-art-direction-is-so-authentic-it-triggered-a-national-antiquities-investigation/
The PC cooler industry remains vibrant with several options for users to select from. There are several well-known and go-to brands for cooling enthusiasts, but every once in a while, we get an opportunity to review products from companies that are unheard of. ASRock is the latest entrant in this market who have been steadily expanding its PC hardware and component reach into various segments. At CES, we got to see their full-fledged lineup, ranging from entry-level to mainstream and high-end designs. Today, we are going to test one of their higher-end gaming AIO coolers, the Phantom Gaming 360 LCD, […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/asrock-phantom-gaming-360-lcd-360mm-aio-liquid-cooler-review-great-cooling-with-vrm-fan-halo-argb-fan-frame/
Google VP Vidhya Srinivasan shares how Google is reimagining commercial experiences to be fluid, assistive and personal in 2026.Google today announced an early preview of WebMCP, a new protocol that defines how AI agents interact with websites.
WebMCP lets developers tell large language models exactly what each button or link on a website does. WebMCP allows websites to explicitly publish a clear “Tool Contract” that defines available actions.
It runs on a new browser API, navigator.modelContext. Through that API, the website shares a structured list of tools — such as buyTicket(destination, date). The AI can then call those functions directly, making interactions faster, more accurate, and far more reliable.
Structured interactions for the agentic web. WebMCP introduces two new APIs that let browser agents act on a user’s behalf:
These APIs act as a bridge, making your website agent-ready. They enable faster, more reliable agent workflows than raw DOM manipulation.
Use cases. Google shared use cases that show how an AI agent can handle complex tasks for your users with speed and confidence:
How to access the preview. You can apply for the preview to WebMCP here.
Why we care. Agentic experiences are shaping the future of search—and possibly SEO. Dan Petrovic called it the biggest shift in technical SEO since structured data. Glenn Gabe called this a big deal. It’s worth exploring these new protocols now.
Google is redesigning shopping and advertising around AI-powered, agent-driven experiences, and said speed and certainty will converge for consumers and brands in 2026.
In her third annual letter, Vidhya Srinivasan, Google’s VP and GM of Ads and Commerce, outlined how Search, YouTube, and its shopping infrastructure are being rebuilt for the agentic era — where AI doesn’t just surface information but actively assists, recommends, and completes transactions.
Key trends. Google is redefining commercial intent across Search, YouTube, and AI interfaces. Ads are moving deeper into conversational experiences like AI Mode, creative production is becoming AI-native, and checkout is embedding directly into Search. Here are key takeaways from Srinivasan’s letter:
Why we care. Adapting to AI-mediated commerce is increasingly necessary to stay competitive. Buying decisions are shifting — more often happening inside AI-driven search, creator content, and agent-powered checkout flows that could reshape traffic and conversion paths. These changes may create new ways to reach high-intent shoppers, but they also signal growing platform control over discovery, measurement, and transactions, potentially affecting competition, costs, and brand visibility.
Google’s blog post. What to expect in digital advertising and commerce in 2026
As consumers lean into AI search, the industry has focused on the technical “how” – tracking everything from Agentic Commerce Protocols (ACP) to ChatGPT’s latest shopping research tools. In doing so, it often misses the larger shift: conversational search, which is changing how visibility is earned.
There’s a common argument that big brands will always win in AI. I disagree. When you move beyond the “best running shoes” shorthand and look at the deep context users now provide, the playing field levels. AI is trying to match user needs to specific solutions, and it’s up to your brand to provide the details.
This article explains how conversational search changes product discovery and what ecommerce teams need to update on product detail pages (PDPs) to remain visible in AI-driven shopping experiences.
While semantic search is critical for understanding the meaning and context of words, conversational search is the ability to maintain a back-and-forth dialogue with a user over time.
Semantic search is the foundation for conversational visibility. Think of it like a restaurant: If semantic search is the chef who knows exactly what you mean by “something light,” conversational search is the waiter who remembers that you’re ordering for dinner.
| Feature | Semantic search | Conversational search |
| Goal | To understand intent and context | To handle a flow of questions |
| How it thinks | It knows “car” and “automobile” are the same thing | It knows that when you say “how much is it?”, “it” refers to the car you just mentioned |
| The interaction | Searching with a phrase instead of keywords | Having a chat where the computer remembers what you were asking about before |
| Example | Asking “What is a healthy meal?” and getting results for “nutritious recipes.” | Asking “What is a healthy meal?” followed by “give me a recipe for that.” |
AI blends them together. It uses semantic understanding to decode your complex intent and conversational logic to keep the thread of the story moving. For brands, this means your content has to be clear enough for the “chef” to interpret and consistent enough for the “waiter” to follow.
I recently shared how my mom was using ChatGPT to remodel her kitchen. She didn’t start by searching for “the best cabinets.” Instead, she leveraged ChatGPT as her pseudo-designer and contractor, using AI to solve specific problems.
Product discovery happened naturally through constraint-based queries:
Her conversations were piling up, allowing her to reach multiple solutions at once. Her discovery journey was layered. When ChatGPT recommended products to complete her tasks, she simply followed up with, “Where can I buy those?”
Brands and marketers need to stop optimizing for keywords and start optimizing for tasks. Identify the specific conversations where your product becomes the solution. If your data can’t answer the “Will this fit?” or “Is this easy?” questions, you won’t be part of the final recommendation.
“Recommend products” is the top task users trust AI to handle, highlighting a clear opportunity for brands, according to Tinuiti’s 2026 AI Trends Study. (Disclosure: I am the Sr. Director of AI SEO Innovation at Tinuiti.)
For your brand to be the one recommended, your PDPs must provide the “ground truth” details these assistants need to make a confident selection.
Dig deeper: How to make ecommerce product pages work in an AI-first world
Step away from the keyword research tools and stop asking for “prompt volumes.” In an AI-driven world, intent is more important than volume. Before changing a single page, you need to understand the high-intent journeys your personas are actually taking.
To identify your high-intent semantic opportunities:
Your PDP should operate like a product knowledge document and be optimized for natural language. This helps an AI system decide whether to recommend the product for a specific situation.
Content should support better decision-making. Audit your PDPs to determine whether they provide enough detail on who the product is best for – and not for. Does the page explicitly name your ideal buyer, their skill level, lifestyle constraints, and deal-breakers?
AI shopping queries often include exclusions, and clearly outlining the important parts of your user search journey will help you understand where your products fit best.
Compatibility feels synonymous with electronics (e.g., “Will my headphones connect to this computer?”). But think beyond one-to-one compatibility and expand into lifestyle compatibility:
People are searching for how products fit into their lifestyle needs. Highlight and emphasize the features that make your products compatible with their lifestyle.
Dig deeper: How to make products machine-readable for multimodal AI search
Breaking down your customer search journey and listening to your customers’ concerns, either through AI sentiment analysis, social listening, or product reviews, will help you understand what you need to be specific about.
If your biggest customer complaint is understanding when and how to use your products, you’re likely not making it easy enough for them to buy. Better defining your product attributes helps users and LLMs alike better understand your products.
AI shopping discovery is driven by constraints instead of keywords. Shoppers aren’t asking for “the best laptop bag.” They’re asking for a bag that fits under an airplane seat, survives a rainy commute, and still looks professional in a meeting.
PDPs should be written to reflect that reality. Audit your product pages to see whether they answer common “Can I …?” and “Will this work if …?” questions in plain language. These details often live in reviews, FAQs, or support tickets, but rarely surface in core product copy where AI systems are most likely to pull from.
Here’s what transforming your content can look like:
Traditional PDP copy
PDP copy written for constraints
LLMs evaluate how well a product satisfies specific constraints in conversational queries or based on predetermined user preference information.
PDPs that clearly articulate those constraints are more likely to be selected, summarized, and recommended. This type of copy should also help your on-site customers better understand your products.
Dig deeper: Why ecommerce SEO audits fail – and what actually works in 30 days
Just because search platforms change doesn’t mean we should abandon everything we’ve learned in traditional optimization.
Technical SEO fundamentals still heavily apply in AI search:
In conversational shopping, structured data is playing a different role than it did in traditional SEO strategies. In conversational shopping, it’s about verification.
AI systems use your schema to validate facts before they risk reusing them in an answer. If the AI can’t verify your price, availability, or shipping details through a merchant feed or structured data, it won’t risk recommending you.
Variant clarity is just as important. When differences like size, color, or configuration aren’t clearly defined, AI systems may treat variants as separate products or merge them incorrectly. The result is inaccurate pricing, incompatible recommendations, or missed visibility.
Most importantly, structured data must match what’s visibly true on the page. When schema contradicts on-page content, AI systems avoid recommending uncertain information.
Dig deeper: How SEO leaders can explain agentic AI to ecommerce executives
Success on the digital shelf has moved beyond high-volume keywords. In this new era, your visibility depends on how well you satisfy the complex constraints users can provide in a single search. AI models are scanning your pages to see if you meet specific, nuanced requirements, like “gluten-free,” “easy to install,” or “fits a 30-inch window.”
The shift to conversational discovery means your product data must be ready to sustain a dialogue. The goal is simple: provide the density of information necessary for an AI to confidently transact on a user’s behalf. Those who build for these multi-layered journeys will own the future of discovery.
In a conversation on the OpenAI podcast, host Andrew Maine spoke with OpenAI executive Assad Awan, who detailed how ads will roll out in ChatGPT, who will see them and how the company plans to protect user trust.
Who will see ads:
The guardrails: Awan emphasized that OpenAI is structuring ads around strict trust principles:
According to Awan, the model itself doesn’t know when ads are present and can’t reference them unless a user explicitly asks about one.
Zoom in. OpenAI internally prioritizes user trust over user value, advertiser value and revenue, Awan said — a framework meant to prevent ads from shaping how the model responds.
For small businesses. Awan described a future where AI acts as an advertising agent, helping small businesses run campaigns by describing goals in plain language rather than managing complex dashboards.
Why we care. ChatGPT ads could open a new, high-intent channel where businesses reach users during active conversations and decision-making moments. The platform’s focus on relevance, AI-driven matching and agent-style campaign tools could lower the barrier to entry for small and midsize advertisers while improving performance for larger brands.
If OpenAI succeeds in building a trusted ad environment, it may reshape how advertisers think about discovery and customer engagement in AI-driven interfaces.
What’s next. Early ad tests will be conservative, focusing on usefulness and relevance over volume as OpenAI refines formats and placement.
The big picture. Through advertising, OpenAI is aiming to scale ChatGPT access while maintaining a trust-first design — a balance the company says is central to its long-term strategy.
Dig deeper. Watch full interview with Assad Awan
Google Ads is rolling out recommended experiments on the Experiments page, surfacing test ideas based on an account’s setup and performance data.
How it works: The platform suggests experiment opportunities — such as testing bidding strategies, creative variations, or new campaign features — and presents them directly inside the Experiments dashboard.
Why we care. By removing the need to build tests from scratch, Google is lowering the barrier to experimentation. Advertisers can act on optimization ideas faster and more consistently. However, advertisers should still ensure that the right tests/configurations are being launched to avoid wasted time and budget.
Zoom in. Example prompts include suggestions like enabling final URL expansion to improve campaign performance, displayed through in-dashboard popups tied to the Experiments interface.
The big picture. Google is increasingly embedding automated guidance into Ads workflows, nudging advertisers toward continuous testing and data-driven optimization.
First seen. This update was spotted by PPC News Feed owner, Hana Kobzová.
AMD’s next-generation “Medusa Halo” CPUs will be gaming MONSTERS AMD’s Strix Halo processors bring together strong Zen 5 CPU cores with a powerful RDNA 3.5 GPU. While “Gorgon Halo” will refresh this range as the Ryzen AI Max 400 series, AMD has something much bigger planned with “Medusa Halo”. Rumour has it that this chip […]
The post Expect a BIG BOOST from AMD Medusa Halo thanks to LPDDR6 support appeared first on OC3D.
RED NOW streamlines short-form content creation with one-click video generation for TikTok and other platforms. Paste a link to start and produce ready-to-post clips without complex editing. The platform supports formats like vlogs, product marketing, reviews, tutorials, and more. RED NOW also outputs structured shot lists and timing guides, helping creators plan and execute content faster while maintaining a consistent style and workflow.
Google's John Mueller explains how a leftover HTTP homepage invisible to Chrome users can cause site-name and favicon problems in search results.
The post Hidden HTTP Page Can Cause Site Name Problems In Google appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Warframe, the popular free-to-play action RPG from Canadian developer Digital Extremes (that's also the MMO model that other MMO developers should be looking to), is rounding out its list of available platforms by finally arriving on Android mobile devices today. That said, it's a Canada-exclusive release today, and for the coming week, before it arrives on Android devices globally on February 18, 2026. With Warframe being one of the most successful live-service titles to come out of Canada that's currently active, this first week of exclusivity is a way for Digital Extremes to prioritize its Canadian players and give them […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/warframe-android-mobile-devices-launch-canada-first-digital-extremes/
Google Ads rolled out a new feature that shows advertisers which campaigns their products are eligible for, directly in the Products section.
How it works. A new dashboard in the Products section includes:
Why we care. dvertisers can now quickly identify products that are missing from key campaigns or unintentionally overlapping across Shopping and Performance Max. The added visibility reduces the need to jump between campaign views to diagnose eligibility gaps.
The big picture: The changes help advertisers quickly identify products that aren’t running in expected campaigns, spot campaign overlap before it becomes a budget problem and save time troubleshooting product-level issues.
Between the lines. This is Google’s latest move to give advertisers more granular control over Shopping campaigns, where product-level optimization can make or break profitability.
When. Available now in Google Ads.
First seen. This update was spotted by PPC News Feed owner Hana Kobzová.
AI search influence didn’t show up in our SEO reports or AI prompt tracking tools. It showed up in sales calls.
“Found you via Grok, actually,” a new lead said.
That comment stopped us cold. We hadn’t tried to rank in Grok. We weren’t tracking it. Yet it was influencing how buyers discovered and evaluated us.
That disconnect kept appearing in client conversations, too. Everyone was curious about AI search, but no one trusted the data.
Teams wanted visibility in ChatGPT and other AI tools, then asked the same question: “Why invest in a channel that doesn’t show up cleanly in attribution?”
To answer that, we ran controlled experiments using assets we could fully control – an agency website, personal sites, an ecommerce brand, and purpose-built test domains.
The goal wasn’t to win AI rankings. It was to understand what still matters once AI enters the decision process:
Most AI search conversations fixate on visibility signals like brand mentions, citations, or visibility screenshots from AI prompt tracking tools.
Search has always had one job: help people make a decision.
We wanted to know if AI search performed the same job and actually changed commercial outcomes.
AI systems now operate at the stage where buyers compare options, shortlist providers, and reduce risk.
If AI mattered, it had to show up at the moment of decision.
On measurement limits:
A simple tactic became popular over the past year:
I’ve seen agencies do this locally and felt conflicted about it.
It wasn’t spam. But it relied on a blind spot – LLMs struggle to separate independent rankings from self-written ones.
Around the same time, Ahrefs published a large study that helped explain why this works. Glen Allsopp analyzed ChatGPT responses across hundreds of “best X”-style prompts and found that “best” list posts were the most commonly cited page type.
Two things from the study stood out:
I could have tested these observations on StudioHawk. Instead, I did it on my personal brand website to manage the risk.
I published a list of the “Best SEO agencies in Sydney” and included my own website among the entries to test whether AI would “take the bait,” so to speak.
Within two weeks, LawrenceHitches.com appeared across AI tools for “best SEO agency Sydney” style searches:
The speed was surprising – traditional SEO rarely moves that fast.
If visibility appears this easily, then visibility alone can’t mean much, so I tested it again.
Initially, I could have been piggybacking off the already established StudioHawk brand, so I decided to run a self-promotion test on a fake website
We used a basic landscaping site built only for SEO and AI testing and published the same type of page, a “best X” list.
This time, the topic was “best landscapers in Melbourne”:
Within two weeks, the list appeared in AI responses again. The result repeated almost exactly.
If a brand-new test site can surface this fast, then “appeared in AI” doesn’t mean much on its own.
These two experiments showed one thing clearly: LLMs are still easy to influence at the surface level.
I ran these tests back in August 2025, but the same pattern still appears today.
A “best SEO agency Sydney” search run in January 2026 shows the same list-driven results:
This creates a real conflict for brands.
On one side, the data says yes – the Ahrefs research shows “Best X” pages attract citations. Large brands like Shopify, Slack, and HubSpot publish self-ranked lists without obvious damage to rankings or AI visibility.
On the other side is buyer trust.
As Wil Reynolds put it, listing yourself first on your own site doesn’t build confidence with buyers. That’s the tension.
When bullish founders ask for the secret sauce to appear in ChatGPT, I’m blunt. List-based “best of X” pages that rank the author first have been a fast way to surface in some AI results.
That doesn’t work everywhere, and it’s unlikely to hold up long term.
Dig deeper: Google may be cracking down on self-promotional ‘best of’ listicles
If a landscaping site with no reputation can surface this quickly, then appearing in AI means very little on its own.
A lot of money is flowing into AI prompt tracking tools. Clients ask for them constantly. We use them too, but with a clear warning.
I wouldn’t make major decisions based on screenshots or Reddit threads about where a brand appears in ChatGPT.
Brand overlap between API outputs and real user sessions was as low as 24%, according to recent research from Surfer SEO comparing tracking APIs with scraped user experiences.
That means three times out of four, what the API told you was happening wasn’t what the user was actually seeing.
If a brand can appear in a screenshot but disappear in a real user session, then appearance alone isn’t a metric.
We stopped asking if we showed up.
Instead, we started asking, “Did this change how buyers behaved?”
These signals were harder to collect.
Dig deeper: 7 hard truths about measuring AI visibility and GEO performance
Kadi, an ecommerce brand we invested in that sells luggage, provided insight into our questions about whether AI results were affecting buyer behavior.
Running tests on Kadi has been an eye-opening experience for two reasons:
To move fast, we led with digital PR.
Kadi’s SEO foundation was solid but not perfect. We wanted to see how far off-site mentions could push SEO and AI visibility without heavy technical work or a polished site structure.
We conducted a large number of creative data campaigns and product placements, including:
It worked:
But there was a catch: Digital PR alone wasn’t enough to close the gap with competitors. It created quick traction in search results, but it didn’t resolve the underlying issues.
After launch, SEO foundation work became the priority.
Then, Black Friday made the reality obvious. A customer found Kadi through ChatGPT on a “kids carry-on” query.
We saw this happen on the day of the query and showed the pathway:
That order was the largest of the Black Friday period.
On paper, AI did nothing. In reality, it was part of shaping the decision.
Digital PR can get you visibility spikes, but it doesn’t address the whole picture.
While AI traffic does convert, the attribution is inconsistent.
Across 2024 and 2025, StudioHawk underwent a full website rebrand and migration from WordPress to HubSpot.
Our own site sat at the bottom of the priority list for years. It was always the project we would get to later.
Finally, we paused other priorities and rebuilt the entire site.
The work started in 2023, before terms like “GEO” existed. We were focused only on rebuilding service pages, social proof, and user experience end to end.
After launch, rankings improved and continue to grow.
In 2025, SEO became the agency’s strongest channel by efficiency. It drove 65% of inbound leads and close to 60% of new revenue.
Between July and December 2025, AI search leads began to appear more often:
Initially, these were “Oh, cool, we got a lead from AI” moments around the office.
Sales calls started skipping early education. New leads arrived aligned based on fit and expectations.
Over time, we saw that:
That 10-day gap mattered.
It meant less time educating, fewer scope objections, lower price sensitivity, and higher confidence earlier in the process.
Within the first year, AI-influenced conversations contributed over $100,000 in closed revenue from 20+ leads, including deals with direct attribution from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok.
The blind spot remains attribution paths such as Instagram, direct, or organic, where AI influenced the decision but didn’t appear in reporting (as seen in the Kadi example).
Where direct AI attribution existed, buyers were more prepared. That preparedness shortened sales cycles and lifted revenue.
We started by asking where people would search next.
Our key finding? AI search doesn’t replace discovery. It compresses the consideration phase.
Consideration is that messy middle where buyers reduce risk, shortlist vendors, compare tradeoffs, and ask, “Who should I trust?”
They answer these questions before a buyer ever clicks a link.
It means your website no longer carries the full load – AI summaries and third-party mentions do the pre-selling for you.
This is the shift we now describe as the new consideration era.
As the map illustrates, we’ve moved from a straight funnel to a complex, AI-influenced pathway where consensus is key:
Because this happens off-site, last-click attribution is broken.
A buyer might use ChatGPT to create a shortlist but convert later via direct search.
Strong SEO metrics were a core across all our experiments, but we’ve stopped viewing them as the primary driver of value:
Traditional SEO became a supporting signal – proof that the foundation is sound, rather than the end goal.
After running a variety of AI search experiments, here’s what I think brands should focus on.
Stop obsessing over prompt appearances (e.g., citations, mentions). These are shiny objects, but they fluctuate too easily.
Instead, measure:
AI hates vagueness. Making pages that make it clear what you do and who it’s for.
Pay attention to content that answers questions about risk, comparison, and price.
Focus on content that answers comparison, risk, and pricing questions. This makes a bigger difference than general category explanations.
Lack of consistency makes people doubt themselves. Conversely, consistency boosts confidence.
Check to see that your website, reviews, and digital PR all talk about your brand in the same way.
In the end, the results were the same across all experiments. What we got from our sales pipeline was typical:
AI search isn’t replacing basic SEO. Instead, it shows weak positioning more quickly than traditional search ever did.
What does that mean?
Simply put, AI speeds up decisions that were already forming.
Dig deeper: From searching to delegating: Adapting to AI-first search behavior
When left to its own devices, there are a couple of things Performance Max is absolutely great at doing for lead gen campaigns:
It’s not inherently surprising that Google is doing what’s best for Google – that is, lining its own pockets – by heavily optimizing toward the cheapest, path-of-least-resistance conversion events.
From experience with campaigns we inherit from new clients, this performance often catches brands off guard – especially those who take Google sales reps’ “helpful advice” at face value.
It can take time for those brands to look past PMax’s shiny, low CPAs and realize the truth: those leads do little to nothing for real pipeline or revenue.
However, Performance Max, when given the proper guardrails, can be a good source of incremental, quality leads – but the trick is in building those guardrails.
This article covers lead quality tactics that work and how to execute them, tactics that don’t work, and important differences between Performance Max campaigns in Google and Bing.
These are the specific levers that consistently influence lead quality in Performance Max.
Dig deeper: Top Performance Max optimization tips for 2026
The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need.
On the other hand, some of the usual campaign optimization strategies won’t do much to move the needle on PMax lead quality. If that’s your sole focus, you can de-prioritize:
Both Google and Bing have Performance Max campaigns, but there are differences in their offerings.
Google’s Performance Max network spans search, display, YouTube, discovery campaigns, and Gmail. It’s an absolutely huge amount of inventory – especially display and YouTube, which can be huge spam drivers if left unchecked.
Microsoft has far less video and display inventory. Their PMax campaigns primarily include Bing search, syndicated search, and the Microsoft audience network (which spans display, Outlook, and MSN).
When comparing performance between the two, we haven’t seen any notable differences, but it’s worth monitoring updates to each platform’s reporting and inventory going forward.
Dig deeper: Google and Microsoft: How their Performance Max approaches align and diverge
Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform.
If you’re considering running PMax for lead gen, you should approach it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
While PMax has been effective at driving scalable revenue for ecommerce,those campaigns need considerable guidelines to maintain lead quality.
For instance, preventing a high-end shoe retailer from racking up tons of conversions on things like replacement laces and shoe polish will require that the campaign develop sufficient PMax guardrails.
Considering how Google is moving toward additional automation and AI in campaigns, it’s important to keep testing and experimenting to gain an understanding of the tools available to analyze and shape PMax campaigns.
Google has issued some new releases to help as of late, including channel-level reporting, more options for exclusions, and campaign-level negative keywords.)
There is a lead scale out there that can provide a healthy ROAS if you’re willing and able to wrestle the algorithm into submission.
If you’ve tested Performance Max campaigns for lead gen but paused them once it was clear they weren’t driving revenue, do a quick post-mortem on your past efforts. You might find there’s room to whip Google into shape to do better this time around.
Take note of the tactics you haven’t yet implemented and prioritize putting them in place before you waste another dollar of your 2026 budget on poor-quality leads that just junk up your CRM.
Intel Core Ultra 400 “Nova Lake” die sizes leak – bLLC is HUGE! Thanks to HXL, new details have leaked for Intel’s upcoming Core Ultra 400 series “Nova Lake” CPUs, and to put it simply, these processors are HUGE! Compared with AMD’s leaked Zen 6 CPU die sizes, Intel’s CPU dies are much larger. Both […]
The post Intel’s Nova Lake CPUs are HUGE, leak reveals – Especially if you include bLLC appeared first on OC3D.
Cloud-native standardization and deep-layer AI integration enable AI to execute security operations more efficiently. It addresses the challenge of accountability by enabling full-process auditing, providing optimal response strategies, and allowing rollbacks, which reduces concerns for security teams. With 24/7 uninterrupted, fully automated, and intelligent security operations, it offers a lighter, more cost-effective solution that delivers better and richer choices.
AMD's Zen 3 is going strong, but the rise of the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 5800X/XT is surprising, as it is closest to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in sales figures. AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT and 5800X Secure the 2nd Position in Best Selling CPUs List on Amazon and Mindfactory; Sells Nearly 3,000 Units in a Month With the comeback of the AM4 platform, the AMD Zen 3 processors are selling like hotcakes once again. AMD's 8-core processors are growing in demand, and we can clearly see the effect in the sales data. Till now, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 7800X3D have […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-5800x-xt-outsells-nearly-every-cpu-on-amazon-us/
This morning, Korean publisher Kakao Games shared its updated release schedule during the Q4 2025 earnings report, including two highly anticipated MMORPGs: ArcheAge Chronicles and Chrono Odyssey. Both games have already been delayed; they were originally slated for 2025, but got pushed to 2026. Now, Chrono Odyssey has been moved even further away, to Q1 2027, whereas Archeage Chronicles is still holding fast to its Q4 2026 window. This is slightly surprising, because ArcheAge Chronicles still hasn't hosted any Closed Beta Tests in Western countries, yet Kakao Games is confident it will debut globally before the end of this year. […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/archeage-chronicles-still-slated-q4-2026-chrono-odyssey-q1-2027/
The die sizes of Intel's Nova Lake compute tiles have been revealed, with the base die measuring slightly smaller than Arrow Lake's compute tile. Intel's Nova Lake bLLC Compute Tile Measures Slightly Bigger Than Standard Variant, Dual Compute Tile Variants To Take 300mm² of Space on Package Details regarding Intel's Nova Lake CPUs continue to be shared online. The latest information comes from HXL regarding the die sizes of two compute tiles based on the 8+16 configuration. As we know from earlier reports, Intel's Nova Lake CPUs, both desktops and laptops, will make use of an 8+16 configuration, which will […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-nova-lake-compute-tile-die-sizes-revealed-110mm-bllc-variant-at-150mm/
Apple is reported to improve upon its satellite connectivity on the iPhone 18 series launching later this year, with its C2 5G modem being set up as the backbone of the configuration. The company’s Emergency SOS via satellite feature, which arrived with the iPhone 14 family, was a literal lifesaver, but it wasn’t without its shortcomings. These limitations are expected to be addressed later this year with a new connectivity protocol that will enable 5G satellite connectivity for the company’s upcoming flagships, allowing both handsets to treat each low-orbit satellite as if it were just another cell tower. The C2 modem will support […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/iphone-18-pro-c2-5g-modem-to-treat-satellites-as-distant-cell-towers/
The God of War series is one of the tentpole PlayStation franchises, and one that represents the brand's identity best. Moving from the character-action experiences of the first three entries in the series, the franchise starring Kratos has evolved into a compelling action-adventure series with the latest two games. Such a drastic departure in gameplay and tone is obviously making fans of the series curious about the franchise's future, but as of now, not much is known about how God of War will evolve in future games. Before a new main entry in the series, however, it is rumored a […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/next-god-of-war-is-reportedly-considered-for-a-multiplatform-release-day-one-on-pc-or-something-more/
Every seasoned PPC pro carries a few scars — the kind you earn when a campaign launches too fast, an automation quietly runs wild, or a “small” setting you were sure you checked comes back to bite you.
At SMX Next, we had a candid, refreshingly honest conversation about the mistakes that still trip us up, no matter how long we’ve been in the game. I was joined by Greg Kohler, director of digital marketing at ServiceMaster Brands, and Susan Yen, PPC team lead at SearchLab Digital.
Read on to see the missteps that can humble even the most experienced search marketers.
This might be the most notorious mistake in PPC — and yet it keeps happening. Yen shared that campaigns often go live on Fridays, driven by client pressure and the excitement to move fast.
The risk is obvious. If something breaks over the weekend, you either won’t see it or you’ll spend Saturday and Sunday glued to your screen fixing it. One small slip — like setting a $100 daily budget instead of $10 — can burn through spend before anyone notices.
Kohler stressed the value of fresh eyes. Even if you build campaigns on Friday, wait until Monday to review and launch. Experience can breed overconfidence. You start to believe you won’t make mistakes — until a Friday launch proves otherwise.
The lesson: Don’t launch before holidays, before time off, or on Fridays. If clients push back, be the “annoying paid person” who says no. You’ll protect your sanity — and the campaign’s performance.
Kohler shared a mishap where location targeting didn’t carry over correctly while copying campaigns in bulk through Google Ads Editor. By Saturday morning, those campaigns had already racked up 10,000 impressions — because the ads were running in Europe while the intended U.S. audience slept.
The lesson: Some settings, especially location targeting, are safer to configure directly in the Google Ads interface. There, you can explicitly set “United States only,” which reduces the risk of accidental international targeting.
Yen made it clear: reviewing search term reports isn’t optional. It matters for every campaign type—standard search, Performance Max, and AI-driven campaigns included. Skip this step, and it looks like you’re chasing clicks instead of qualified traffic.
The real damage shows up months later. Explaining to a client where their budget went—when you could’ve caught irrelevant queries early—leads to uncomfortable conversations. Yen recommends reviewing search terms at least once a month. The time required is small compared to the spend it can save.
The lesson: Regular reviews also help you decide what to add as keywords and what to block as negatives. The goal is balance. Too many new keywords create cluttered accounts. Too many negatives often signal deeper issues with match types.
The conversation surfaced a familiar frustration: Google Ads Editor and the main interface don’t always play well together. Features roll out to the interface first, then slowly make their way to Editor, which creates gaps and surprises.
Yen explained that her team builds campaigns in Excel first, including character counts for ad copy, before uploading everything into Editor. Even so, they avoid setting most campaign configurations there. Instead, they rely on the interface to visually confirm that every setting is correct.
Kohler added that Editor shines for franchise accounts with dozens — or hundreds — of near-identical campaigns. It’s especially useful for spotting inconsistent settings at scale.
The lesson: For precision work like location targeting or building responsive display ads, the interface offers better control and clearer visibility.
Kohler called out automatically created assets as a major pain point. These settings default to “on,” and turning them off means clicking through multiple layers — assets, additional assets, then selecting a reason for disabling each one.
The frustration gets worse when Google introduces new automated asset types, like dynamic business names and logos, and automatically applies them to every existing campaign by default. For Kohler’s team, which manages 500 accounts per brand, that meant reopening every account just to turn off the new features.
The lesson: Set recurring calendar reminders to review these settings every few months. Google isn’t slowing down on automation, and most of it requires opting out.
Yen warned about the risks of importing Google campaigns into Microsoft Ads without a thorough review. The import tool feels convenient, but it often introduces real problems:
Kohler added that Microsoft Ads’ forced inclusion in the audience network makes things worse. Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn’t offer a simple opt-out from display. Advertisers must manually exclude placements as they surface, or work directly with Microsoft support for brands with legitimate placement concerns.
The lesson: import once to get a starting point, then stop. Treat Microsoft Ads as its own platform, with its own strategy, budgets, and ongoing optimization.
Audience member Jason Lucas shared a painful lesson about forgetting to turn off app audiences for B2B display campaigns. The result was a flood of spend on “Candy Crush” views — completely irrelevant for business marketing.
Yen confirmed this is a common problem, made worse by how well Google hides the settings. To exclude all apps in the interface, advertisers must manually enter mobile app category code 69500 in the app categories section. In Editor, it’s easier — you can exclude all apps in one move.
Kohler added another familiar mistake: forgetting to exclude kids’ YouTube channels. His brands have accidentally spent so much on the Ryan’ World YouTube channel that they joke about helping fund the kid’s college tuition.
The lesson: Build a blanket exclusion list that covers apps, kids’ content, and inappropriate placements, then apply it to every campaign — no exceptions.
Beyond app exclusions, the group stressed the need for comprehensive content exclusions across every campaign. Their advice is to apply these exclusions at launch, then review placement reports a few weeks later to catch anything that slips through.
The lesson: Consistency. Even when exclusions are in place, Google doesn’t always honor them. That makes regular placement monitoring essential. Automation can ignore manual rules, so verification is still the only real safeguard.
When the conversation turned to call tracking, Yen stressed the need for consistent client communication. Many businesses lack a CRM or close alignment with their sales teams, making it hard to evaluate call quality.
The lesson: Hold monthly check-ins that focus specifically on call quality, Yen said. If calls aren’t converting, the problem may be what happens after the phone rings, not marketing.
Kohler added a technical tip for CallRail users. Separate first-time callers from repeat callers in your conversion setup. Send both into Google Ads, but mark return calls as secondary conversions. That way, automated bidding doesn’t optimize for repeat callers the same way it does for new prospects.
Litner flagged ongoing frustration with scheduled headline assets appearing outside their intended dates, especially for time-sensitive promotions. Although the issue now seems resolved, he still double-checks at both the start and end of each promotional period.
Kohler reported similar problems with automated rules. Scheduled rules sometimes don’t run at all or trigger a day early, which can pause campaigns too soon or activate them late.
The lesson: If you schedule a launch for a specific day, verify it manually that day. Don’t rely on automation alone.
The conversation also touched on Google’s AI Max campaigns. Chad pointed out that all AI Max settings default to “on,” with no bulk way to disable them. The only option is digging into individual campaigns and ad groups.
Kohler suggested checking Google Ads Editor for workarounds. In some cases, Editor makes it easier to control settings like landing page expansion across multiple ad groups at once.
The lesson: While AI Max and Performance Max have improved, Yen noted they still demand close monitoring and manual exclusions to avoid wasted spend.
Yen called out an easy-to-miss issue: account-level auto-apply settings that don’t play nicely with AI Max and Performance Max campaigns. These controls live in three different places in the interface, which makes them easy to overlook unless you’re checking deliberately.
The lesson: Build a standard checklist of account-level settings and run through it whenever you touch a new account or launch automated campaign types.
Several themes kept surfacing throughout the discussion:
The bigger message: Mistakes happen to everyone, no matter how experienced you are. The real difference between novices and experts isn’t avoiding errors — it’s catching them fast, learning from them, and building systems so they don’t happen again.
As Kohler put it, these platforms will eventually humble everyone. The key is staying alert, questioning automation, and never launching campaigns on Fridays.
Nvidia partners with Capcom to give Resident Evil Requiem to new RTX 50 series GPU purchasers Nvidia has partnered with Capcom to create its new Resident Evil Requiem Game Bundle. This allows purchasers of specific RTX 50 series GPUs to get a free copy of the game with GeForce GPUs, laptops, and desktops. This bundle […]
The post Nvidia bundles Resident Evil Requiem with select RTX 50 series GPUs appeared first on OC3D.
KlyptAI helps video creators and marketers organize their scattered footage libraries. Upload your raw clips, B-roll, and completed projects by dragging and dropping files into a centralized, private library. Once uploaded, KlyptAI automatically analyzes each video, generating descriptions, transcripts, and searchable tags without any manual tagging. Stop wasting hours scrubbing through disorganized folders to find a specific clip. Instead of relying on memory or vague file names, use natural language to search, such as 'city skyline at night' or 'talking head clips about marketing.' Rediscover your best content, speed up your editing workflow, and create more.
Number7 AI is an AI-native accounting platform designed to address the "Fintech Island Problem" by replacing disconnected tools with a single autonomous engine. While traditional solutions require teams to switch between fragmented products for OCR, accounts payable, and spend management, Number7 uses a unified data model that provides continuous visibility across all financial boundaries.
The platform's proprietary AI engine manages document chaos that often disrupts standard automation, including handwritten, faded, and multi-page invoices. By integrating directly with ERPs and bank feeds, Number7 automates everything from invoice ingestion to real-time reconciliation.
In what is nothing short of a huge shocker, TrendForce has just reported that memory costs continue to escalate rapidly, and currently constitute nearly half of a given smartphone's Bill of Materials (BOM). In this melee, Apple remains relatively insulated for now after having instituted a series of cost management steps. TrendForce: "Memory, which historically accounted for around 10–15% of a smartphone’s BOM, has now surged to 30–40%" In a hard-hitting report, TrendForce has just reported that the cost of a typical 8GB+256GB memory configuration has surged by nearly 200 percent year-over-year in Q1 2026, roughly tripling from the same […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/memory-costs-now-make-up-nearly-half-of-a-given-smartphones-bom-but-apple-remains-insulated-for-now/
This is a rare incident that was successfully captured on a camera, but the user cannot apply for RMA this time. MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Trio Catches Fire Instantly Upon Switching on the System; User Captures the Incident on his Camera Things can sometimes turn out wild if you own a GeForce RTX 5090, but you won't always be that lucky. The 16-pin connector melting issue is quite common, and users are able to get a replacement, assuming they have followed the manufacturer's guidelines. That said, this user saw something more terrible than just a regular connector melting. A video […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/user-captures-his-geforce-rtx-5090-catching-fire-on-camera/
Speculation is already running rampant on which games will be featured in tomorrow's State of Play, and one of the most anticipated PlayStation games of the year is certainly Marvel's Wolverine from Insomniac Games. However, the studio has just dropped a tidbit hinting that it might not be featured at the event. Replying on X to a user who asked when they'd release more information, the developers said it's happening at some point this Spring. Obviously, we are not in Spring yet. It's possible they might still show off a brief new trailer without any further details about the game, […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/marvels-wolverine-unlikely-state-of-play-more-info-spring/
MSI Afterburner 4.6.7 BETA is now available for download, offering a big update with support for RTX 5090 Lightning & new MSI AI PSUs. MSI Afterburner 4.6.7 Adds Several New Features Including Support For RTX 5090 Lightning & AI PSUs, Auto Power-Limit Reduction To Prevent 16-Pin Connector Issues MSI is rolling out two major products this month, the RTX 5090 Lightning graphics card and its new MPG AI PSUs. To prepare for these hardware launches, MSI has rolled out the latest Afterburner utility, which is designed for tuning, overclocking, and monitoring various hardware components in your PC. MSI is making […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/msi-afterburner-4-6-7-available-5090-lightning-ai-psu-support-16-pin-connector-saftey/
Most smartphone manufacturers would have gladly equipped their flagships with Qualcomm’s pricey Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro had it not been for rising DRAM and NAND flash prices. Xiaomi, which has always announced its premium smartphones sporting the top-end silicon first, is starting to feel this weight on its shoulders. On top of that, the transition to TSMC’s 2nm process for this year’s chipsets isn’t going to be cheap, so in light of all these factors, a new rumor is doing the rounds, claiming that Xiaomi’s entire flagship smartphone lineup may only be equipped with the standard Snapdragon 8 […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/xiaomi-will-not-use-snapdragon-8-elite-gen-6-pro-in-its-flagships-due-to-high-price/
AMD has launched a new game bundle, and it applies to AMD CPUs, GPUs, and gaming laptops AMD has officially launched its newest “AMD Rewards” game bundle, offering PC gamers copies of Crimson Desert with eligible AMD Ryzen CPUs, Radeon GPUs, and AMD-powered gaming laptops. Crimson Desert is the next action-adventure open-world game from Pearl […]
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Following a recent Marathon hands-on event organized by Bungie for Chinese media, new gameplay footage and impressions are now available online. The event reportedly took place in Shanghai earlier this month and was the first held outside North America. The most impressive aspect reported by attendees was the significant expansion of worldbuilding and narrative depth. The tutorial and faction introductions now provide clear origins and motivations for the playable characters, creating a more coherent story framework for the extraction shooter game. Players can discover Dr. Strauss's will; he's a pivotal figure who connects multiple narrative threads from the original Marathon […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/marathon-new-footage-impressions-chinese-event-seasons-roguelike/
AMD's openSIL "Open-Source" firmware has been successfully ported to existing AM5 motherboards ahead of Zen 6's debut. Preparing For Next-Gen Zen 6 CPUs! AMD's openSIL Firmware Gets First Support on Existing AM5 Motherboards Blog 3mdeb has been successful in porting an existing AM5 motherboard to Coreboot, a CPU initialization firmware for AMD's CPUs under the new openSIL initiative. openSIL was announced back in 2023 as a full-on replacement to the existing AGESA firmware, paving the way forward for open-source firmwares that'll be used by future AMD chips. Last year, AMD confirmed that EPYC Venice CPUs based on the Zen 6 […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-opensil-open-source-firmware-lands-on-am5-motherboards-prepped-for-zen-6/
The limited-edition NVIDIA RTX 5090 is not just expensive; users will also need to be lucky enough to buy it by winning the lottery in some regions. MSI RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z is Only Available via Lottery System in Taiwan; Only 100 Units Allocated to the Country Regular GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs are already way above their MSRPs, but if you had your eyes on the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z limited edition, then you won't just have to pay a hefty $5200+ for the GPU, but also have to participate in a lottery system if you […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/only-100-units-of-msi-rtx-5090-lightning-z-have-been-allocated-to-taiwan-with-lottery-system/
Grasshopper Manufacture's ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN released yesterday to fairly positive critical reviews. In Wccftech's review (8.7/10), Francesco De Meo wrote: It is the most mechanically polished and stable game since the original Shadows of the Damned, yet it beats with the heart of Flower, Sun, and Rain. It leaves behind the technical jank and the empty-world frustrations of No More Heroes III without losing the "punk" soul that makes a Suda51 game essential. It is a game that respects your time with its 12-hour runtime, but still leaves its mark with its fever-dream narrative. The debut on Steam seems very solid, too, with a 'Very Positive' verdict from user […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/romeo-is-a-dead-man-isnt-only-grasshopper-manufacture-game-2026/
The SEO tool for ChatGPT, Gemini and AI search engines
Creative effects processor for designers
Security-scored directory for AI skills and agent tools
A notebook for drafting AI prompts with a clarity score
An infinite canvas for ChatGPT branches
A humanlike agent that knows who, what and when to respond
Clearical delivers AI-powered automatic time tracking for Mac. It captures periodic screenshots, summarizes your activity on-device, and categorizes work while keeping your data private. With one click, you can push tracked time to Jira and Tempo, complete timesheets in seconds, and export to CSV. It also syncs with your calendar, learns your workflow, and works offline.
HBM memory will see a big upgrade with next-gen HBM5 and HBM6 standards, which are already being developed with new TC Bonders. Semiconductor Firm, Hanmi, Showcases First Wide TC Bonders Designed For Next-Gen HBM5 and HBM6 Memory NVIDIA and AMD are both going to launch their next-gen AI accelerators this year with HBM4 memory. These include the Vera Rubin and Instinct MI450 series products. But given the pace at which the AI tech industry is moving, work is already underway on the next-gen standards, namely HBM5 and HBM6. A report from Korean outlet, Heraldcorp, reveals that the first Wide TC […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/work-on-next-gen-hbm5-hbm6-memory-already-underway-new-wide-tc-bonders-ready/
After ASRock, ASUS also released its latest BIOS update with the latest AGESA firmware. However, it's still in the Beta version. ASUS Rolls Out BIOS Update for AM5 800-Series Motherboards with AMD AGESA 1.3.0.0a Firmware It's clear that major motherboard vendors are well aware of Ryzen 9000 CPU failures on 800-series motherboards. It wasn't just ASRock, which acknowledged the CPU failures on its AM5 motherboards, but recently, ASUS also released a statement considering the dead CPU reports that have been emerging for a long time. Similar to ASRock, ASUS also announced that it is working closely with AMD to investigate […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/asus-releases-latest-bios-for-am5-motherboards-featuring-agesa-1-3-0-0a-firmware/
More details of Intel's Nova Lake Desktop CPUs have been revealed by various leakers and insiders, such as OC, Power & NPU performance. Intel Nova Lake Desktop CPUs To Boast New Core Cluster Arrangement - Overclocking, Power Limits & NPU Explained A Bit More Yesterday, we reported that Intel's Nova Lake Desktop CPUs would consume over 700W of power in their dual compute tile configuration with up to 52 cores, along with insights on the cache & peak temperature limits. Now, several insiders have revealed even more details for the upcoming desktop processor family, such as overclocking support, power limits, […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-nova-lake-desktop-cpus-dont-allow-lpe-core-overclocking-power-npu-detailed/
Dictation for Cursor & AI IDEs, the fastest way to vibe code
One brain for ad research, insights and testing.
AI with accurate replies that tackle the next-step tasks
Meet in any language with live translations
A collaborative workspace for songwriting
Scroll on a isolated window while waiting for AI responses
Collect, save, and keep your foraging spots private
Build agents & automations integrated across your workspace
Local tool-calling AI agents with SLMs
An easy way to save, organize, and find bookmarked reels
The agent-native computer, for the rest of us
Turn your special date into "living" generative art
Turn hundreds of documents into one clean spreadsheet
Track paid subscriptions w/ analytics from multiple sources
Find any moment inside YouTube videos with AI search
The security layer for AI agents to scan, fix verify via MCP
Make emails sexy again
See your stress patterns to break stressful loops
Give your AI agents human-like memory
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Detects and obscures people in realtime video streams
Write like a native in any language with one shortcut
Run hundreds of cloud agents in parallel
Connect your own AI with unlimited prompts and easy deploy
BoTTube is a video platform built for AI agents. Bots create, watch, and earn while humans are welcome to explore and participate. With a simple Python client and API, you can register an agent in seconds and upload videos with a single command. The site showcases trending and recent uploads from agents and creators, making it easy to discover and engage with machine-generated content.
Strategic Prompt Architect helps individuals, developers, and enterprises secure AI workflows. It addresses risks like prompt injection and credential leaks with two offerings: the MPS-Agentic API for scalable, programmatic scanning and MalPromptSentinel, a privacy-first browser extension that runs entirely locally. You can scan files, prompts, and web content before they reach your AI, block threats at input boundaries, and protect sensitive data across chat interfaces and agentic pipelines.
This coming Thursday, February 12, 2026, is when Sony and PlayStation will host the first State of Play event of 2026. It is set to air at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm BT, and we now know that it's not the only showcase event of the evening. Konami has revealed that it will host a Silent Hill Transmission event that same night, featuring news about what's next for the Silent Hill franchise, including Silent Hill: Townfall. And it'll kick off approximately an hour after the State of Play ends. The news was announced in a short post on […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/silent-hill-transmission-event-following-state-of-play-konami/
HEVCut compresses videos from your iCloud photo library by up to 70%, allowing you to reclaim storage on both your iPhone and iCloud without losing quality. It scans your entire library, lets you choose what to compress, and processes everything locally on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac for privacy.
Start for free and unlock unlimited compression with an optional Pro upgrade. Use batch compression to quickly free up gigabytes, keep your memories intact, and avoid the 'Cannot Take Photo' warning.
Obsclair helps you find local spots, compare vibe, distance, and availability, and book in seconds with clear pricing and confirmations. You can browse profiles, filter what matters, and get reminders to ensure you show up on time. Obsclair also supports creators and venues with calendar and wallet features!
Bluesky's growth has slowed, but it is seeing some growth early in the new year.
A misplaced iPhone 17 Pro Max always feels like you’ve been punched in the gut, which is why the astute decision would always be to pay a monthly AppleCare+ fee that covers theft and loss. One lucky customer, who may not have known that he would fall into this specific circumstance, recounts how Apple sent a new unit touting eight times the internal memory of the first one. Keeping in mind the ludicrous premium the technology giant charges for storage upgrades, whether it’s an iPhone or a Mac, getting a replacement with more space than before will always put a sparkle […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/iphone-17-pro-max-customer-received-replacement-with-eight-times-the-internal-storage/
The latest feature updates from YouTube.
SearchAblePDF converts image-only PDFs into selectable, searchable documents with an invisible text layer while preserving layout and formatting. It extracts up to 4.5 times more text than basic OCR by deskewing pages, boosting resolution, and reducing noise and watermarks, while supporting over 35 languages.
Use it to make documents accessible to screen readers, indexable by search engines, and easy to find across your files. Files auto-delete after 24 hours, and temporary access tokens keep data private.
With modern PC games continuing to push the trend of increasingly demanding requirements on PC hardware, default — and especially maximum — graphics presets often miss that coveted sweet spot between performance and visuals. Nioh 3 is expected to be no exception to this rule. Unfortunately, early impressions from the gaming press and community alike show a mixed bag of technical behavior across a multitude of PC setups, with reports of lower-than-expected framerates, high CPU usage, and other miscellaneous technical issues. Consequently, this guide's purpose is to help you attain an optimal balance between performance and visuals in Nioh 3. We shall […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/nioh-3-pc-graphics-tuning-guide-how-to-get-the-best-experience-on-pc/
StepCapture lets you capture workflows and turn them into clear SOPs in seconds. Start a recording in your browser, and it automatically takes smart screenshots, labels clicks and keystrokes, and compiles step-by-step guides with editable page titles and URLs that you can share via encrypted links.
You can use StepCapture to onboard faster, train teams, and publish searchable knowledge bases with custom branding. Its features include advanced blur, AI-powered capture, and one-click sharing across any website or app.
Last week, Blizzard Entertainment hosted the second of its flurry of showcases to kick off 2026 with an Overwatch Spotlight, digging into the future of the game and everything players can expect for the coming year. Outside of the official name change back to just 'Overwatch,' we got a look at everything coming in Season 1: Reign of Talon, which has officially gone live. The showcase clearly reinvigorated the Overwatch community, because not only did the game have its "biggest weekend by player count in over a year," according to a press release after the showcase, but the launch of […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/overwatch-season-1-reign-of-talon-goes-live-as-it-hits-reaches-record-setting-100k-players-on-steam/
Apple has managed to use its considerable market heft to aggressively manage the cost of various key components, allowing the base storage variants of the upcoming iPhone 18 lineup to launch at the same price points as their iPhone 17 counterparts, as per a fresh supply chain analysis. Jeff Pu: Apple’s goal is to keep starting selling prices of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max "unchanged or at a similar level" to those of their iPhone 17 counterparts TF International Securities analyst, Ming Chi-Kuo, noted towards the end of January that Apple was working round the clock to prevent […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apples-cost-management-efforts-pay-off-as-iphone-18-pro-and-pro-max-base-storage-variants-to-avoid-price-hikes/
The new app would be based on the Shots function that was tested on Instagram.
The number of wishlists a game has is never a one-to-one for how many copies it'll see when it finally releases, but you can't say those wishlists count for nothing, especially when there are millions of them, which is exactly what Subnautica 2, Forza Horizon 6, and Resident Evil Requiem have on Steam. Instead of its usual sales reporting, analyst firm Alinea Analytics' latest report digs into which upcoming titles have the most wishlists on Steam. Now, it's worth noting that the report clarifies that Valve's own ranking for the 'Top Wishlists' games on Steam also accounts for how quickly […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/subnautica-2-is-reportedly-the-most-wishlisted-game-on-steam-among-upcoming-2026-titles/
According to two separate and trustworthy sources, Microsoft is reportedly considering the merging of the Xbox Game Pass Premium console subscription tier with PC Game Pass. The Verge's Tom Warren heard that the plans are far from finalized, but that's what Microsoft is thinking right now, and Windows Central has subsequently backed up the reporting with its own sources. Here's a breakdown of the respective feature sets as they are currently available to users: Feature PC Game Pass Xbox Game Pass Premium Price $11.99/month $14.99/month Platforms PC only Console, PC, Cloud First-Party Day-One Access Yes No (added within 1 year) […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/xbox-game-pass-could-be-merged-with-pc-game-pass/
Learn more about Google Photos’ new Ask button as well as other functions of its Ask Photos feature.New court cases could lead to new laws governing social media apps.
Meta is keen to show off its AI tools.
Some pointers for content efforts in the age of AI.
Expect huge power draw from Intel’s 52-core Nova Lake CPU flagship According to the leaker kopite7kimi, the next-generation CPU flagship from Intel will have a HUGE maximum power draw. With 52 total cores, Intel’s next-generation “Nova Lake” flagship will reportedly be able to draw over 700 watts of power. This is for a dual Compute […]
The post Intel “Nova Lake” 400K CPUs to consume over 700W of power! appeared first on OC3D.
UppaGame empowers K-12 teachers, educators, and homeschoolers to generate national standards-aligned lessons and exams in minutes, emphasizing critical thinking through AI-driven variability. It reduces over 20 hours of prep time weekly, helping to combat teacher burnout. Tailored to curricula in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US, UK, South Africa, and Singapore, it ensures a seamless local fit from launch.
Intel's ZAM memory approach has seen significant traction recently, and Team Blue has surprisingly unveiled the prototype of the technology, making promising claims. Intel & Partners Are Working on the Z-Angle Memory to Solve Thermal & Compute Constraints With Existing Solutions While Team Blue has been out of the DRAM business for several decades now, the company has recently entered a new frontier with the SoftBank subsidiary Saimemory, unveiling a solution called Z-Angle Memory (ZAM) to break HBM's monopoly. While we did discuss on ZAM last week, it appears that Intel was quick to showcase a prototype to the world, […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-showcases-its-zam-memory-prototype-for-the-first-time/
Later this week, Sony is set to host its first State of Play event of 2026. This hour-long showcase will include several announcements we could guess at, and many we won't be able to, but a new report from Billbil-kun at Dealabs has pretty much cemented one of the announcements that we'll see at Thursday's show (if we don't see it tomorrow): the games entering the PS Plus Extra Catalog for February 2026. Which, according to the report, will be headlined by Marvel's Spider-Man 2. The first of Insomniac's Spider-Man titles, Marvel's Spider-Man (the remastered variant, that is), entered the […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/marvels-spider-man-2-will-reportedly-headline-februarys-ps-plus-extra-games/
PlayStation is ready to reclaim the spotlight after the Xbox Developer Direct and the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase. After a quiet start to the year, Sony has officially pulled back the curtain on a massive February State of Play, which promises to be a beefy broadcast that will set the tone for the PS5’s 2026 lineup. With rumors of new first-party reveals and long-awaited updates on third-party projects, here is everything you need to know about the upcoming showcase. When and Where to Watch State of Play February 2026 Sony has confirmed that this State of Play will feature a […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/february-2026-playstation-state-of-play-where-to-watch-what-to-expect/
Google is now promoting its own AI features inside Google Ads — a rare move that inserts marketing directly into advertisers’ workflow.
What’s happening. Users are seeing promotional messages for AI Max for Search campaigns when they open campaign settings panels.
Why we care. The in-platform placement signals Google is pushing to accelerate AI adoption among advertisers, moving from optional rollouts to active promotion. While Google often introduces AI-driven features, promoting them directly within existing workflows marks a more aggressive adoption strategy.
What to watch. Whether this promotional approach expands to other Google Ads features — and how advertisers respond to marketing within their management interface.
First seen. Julie Bacchini, president and founder of Neptune Moon, spotted the notification and shared it on LinkedIn. She wrote: “Nothing like Google Ads essentially running an ad for AI Max in the settings area of a campaign.”
Microsoft today launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools in beta. AI Performance lets you see where, and how often, your content is cited in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries, and select partner integrations, the company said.
What’s new. AI Performance is a new, dedicated dashboard inside Bing Webmaster Tools. It tracks citation visibility across supported AI surfaces. Instead of measuring clicks or rankings, it shows whether your content is used to ground AI-generated answers.
What it looks like. Microsoft shared this image of AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools:
What the dashboard shows. The AI Performance dashboard introduces metrics focused specifically on AI citations:
These metrics only reflect citation frequency. They don’t indicate ranking, prominence, or how a page contributed to a specific AI answer.
Why we care. It’s good to know where and how your content gets cited, but Bing Webmaster Tools still won’t reveal how those citations translate into clicks, traffic, or any real business outcome. Without click data, publishers still can’t tell if AI visibility delivers value.
How to use it. Microsoft said publishers can use the data to:
The guidance mirrors familiar best practices: clear headings, evidence-backed claims, current information, and consistent entity representation across formats.
What’s next. Microsoft said it plans to “improve inclusion, attribution, and visibility across both search results and AI experiences,” and continue to “evolve these capabilities.”
Microsoft’s announcement. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview
B2B advertising faces a distinct challenge: most automation tools weren’t built for lead generation.
Ecommerce campaigns benefit from hundreds of conversions that fuel machine learning. B2B marketers don’t have that luxury. They deal with lower conversion volume, longer sales cycles, and no clear cart value to guide optimization.
The good news? Automation can still work.
Melissa Mackey, Head of Paid Search at Compound Growth Marketing, says the right strategy and signals can turn automation into a powerful driver of B2B leads. Below is a summary of the key insights and recommendations she shared at SMX Next.
Automation systems are built for ecommerce success, which creates three core obstacles for B2B marketers:
Despite these challenges, proven strategies can make automation work for B2B lead generation.
Connecting your CRM to Google Ads or Microsoft Ads is essential for making automation work in lead generation. This isn’t optional. It’s the foundation. If you haven’t done this yet, stop and fix it first.
In Google Ads’ Data Manager, you’ll find hundreds of CRM integration options. The most common B2B setups include:
Micro conversions signal intent. They show a “hand raiser” — someone engaged on your site who isn’t an MQL yet but clearly interested.
The key is assigning relative value to these actions, even when you don’t know their exact revenue impact. Use a simple hierarchy to train automation what matters most:
This value structure tells automation that one MQL matters more than 999 video views. Without these distinctions, campaigns chase impressive conversion rates driven by low-value actions — while real leads slip through the cracks.
You might dismiss Performance Max (PMax) for lead generation — and for good reason. Run it on a basic maximize conversions strategy, and it usually produces junk leads and wastes budget.
But PMax can deliver exceptional results when you combine conversion values and offline conversion data with a Target ROAS bid strategy.
One real client example shows what’s possible. They tracked three offline conversion actions — leads, opportunities, and customers — and valued customers at 50 times a lead. The results were dramatic:
Closed deals became the campaign’s top-performing metric because they reflected real, paying customers. The key difference? Using conversion values with a Target ROAS strategy instead of basic maximize conversions.
Campaign-specific goals let you optimize campaigns for different conversion actions, giving you far more control and flexibility.
You can set conversion goals at the account level or make them campaign-specific. With campaign-specific goals, you can:
This approach avoids asking someone to “marry you on the first date.” It also keeps campaigns from competing against themselves by trying to optimize for conflicting goals.
Portfolio bidding groups similar campaigns so you can reach the critical 30-conversions-per-month threshold faster.
For example, four separate campaigns might generate 12, 11, 0, and 15 conversions. On their own, none qualify. Grouped into a single portfolio, they total 38 conversions — giving automation far more data to optimize against.
You may still need separate campaigns for valid reasons — regional reporting, distinct budgets, or operational constraints. Portfolio bidding lets you keep that structure while still feeding the system enough volume to perform.
Bonus benefit: Portfolio bidding lets you set maximum CPCs. This prevents runaway bids when automation aggressively targets high-propensity users. This level of control is otherwise only available through tools like SA360.
First-party audiences send strong signals about who you want to reach, which is critical for AI-powered campaigns.
If HubSpot or Salesforce is connected to Google Ads, you can import audiences and use them strategically:
Audiences make it much easier to trust broad match keywords and AI-driven campaign types like PMax or AI Max — approaches that often feel too loose for B2B without strong audience signals in place.
AI tools can significantly improve B2B advertising efficiency when you use them with intent. The key is remembering that most AI is trained on consumer behavior, not B2B buying patterns.
Always tell the AI you’re selling to other businesses. Start prompts with clear context, like: “You’re a SaaS company that sells to other businesses.” That single line shifts the AI’s lens away from consumer assumptions and toward B2B realities.
Use AI to build detailed client profiles by feeding it clear inputs, including:
Create a master template or a custom GPT for each client. This foundation sharpens every downstream AI task and dramatically improves accuracy and relevance.
Competitive analysis that once took 20–30 hours can now be done in 10–15 minutes. Ask AI to analyze your competitors and break down:
AI delivers clean, well-structured tables you can screenshot for client decks or drop straight into Google Sheets for sorting and filtering. Use this insight to spot gaps, uncover opportunities, and identify clear strategic advantages.
Use tools like Semrush or SpyFu to pull competitor keyword lists, then let AI do the heavy lifting. Create a spreadsheet with columns for each competitor’s keywords alongside your client’s keywords. Then ask the AI to:
What once took hours of pivot tables, filtering, and manual cleanup now takes AI about five minutes.
The Experiments feature is widely underused. Put it to work by testing:
Google Ads automatically reports performance, so there’s no manual math. It even includes insight summaries that tell you what to do next — apply the changes, end the experiment, or run a follow-up test.
Solutions are prebuilt Google Ads scripts that automate common tasks, including:
Instead of hunting down scripts and pasting code, you answer a few setup questions and the solution runs automatically. Use caution with complex enterprise accounts, but for simpler structures, these tools can save a significant amount of time.
Automation wasn’t built for lead generation, but with the right strategy, you can still make it work for B2B.
YUMI remains a reliable pick for building multi-boot USB drives, especially if you like having control over how your media is set up. The latest release introduces a handy new preparation menu: users can now reserve unformatted space and choose the target filesystem upfront, making it easier to fine-tune a USB stick for specific use cases or future expansion.
Envoye Pay turns handshakes into legally binding contracts with built-in payments and e-signatures. Pick a customizable template, set terms like payment plans, interest, hold fees, and milestones, and invite the counterparty to sign. Contracts are securely stored, with payment tracking and a full paper trail. Stripe Connect powers transactions with automated reminders, allowing you to cut out the 30% middlemen and $500+ lawyers for vehicle sales, equipment purchases, and freelance projects, all for a simple 1% platform fee.
Artwurk.ai enables you to create AI videos, images, talking avatars, and your own AI clone without the need for editing skills. Generate text-to-video and image-to-video clips, design product videos, and produce studio-quality results rapidly. Craft images using text-to-image and image-to-image tools, and customize actors, style, voice, and emotions to match your brand. Designed for creators and teams, Artwurk.ai includes commercial rights and offers plans that scale from hobbyists to studios.
Supermassive Games, the studio you'll recognize as the team behind games like Until Dawn and The Quarry, has announced the release date for their next narrative-driven horror adventure, Directive 8020. This new sci-fi entry in Supermassive's Dark Pictures anthology will arrive on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S this coming May 12, 2026. The news was announced with a new release date trailer, which also ushered in the launch of pre-orders going live on both PS5 and Xbox Series. Pre-orders for the game on Steam will go live "soon" according to the video description, so just keep an eye on […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/directive-8020-release-date-ps5-pc-dark-pictures-supermassive-games/
China's CXMT is expanding its presence in the HBM market, aiming to capitalize on the AI frenzy, as the company is now reported to be converting a large chunk of its DRAM output. CXMT's Capacity Shift Towards HBM Does Put the Idea of "Cheaper" Consumer Memory Under Threat Given how competitive the DRAM industry has become in recent times, it has opened up newer opportunities for Chinese memory manufacturers like CXMT. One of the more interesting talks in recent times is how DRAM suppliers from China are 'somehow' going to save gamers from the ongoing memory shortages, but it appears […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/china-largest-memory-manufacturer-cxmt-plans-to-allocate-a-large-chunk-of-its-dram-production-to-hbm3/
A series of older games and some newer ones have started to make their way to iOS and Android as native ports, as smartphone chipsets have finally attained sufficient performance and efficiency to fluidly run titles that were heavily taxing on decade-old systems. On this occasion, Tomb Raider 2013 is demonstrated to maintain a healthy 60FPS average during various parts of the game when running on both the A19 Pro and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. However, a consistent framerate doesn’t necessarily mean the game is running at the same image quality on both phones, with the details posted below. […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/a19-pro-and-snapdragon-8-elite-gen-5-get-60fps-running-tomb-raider-2013/
The February Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase brought new information about several third-party games launching on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. A good portion of the presentation focused on ports launching this year for the current-generation Nintendo system, including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. With the recent Nintendo Switch 2 port of Final Fantasy VII Remake Integrade running and looking great on the system, many are wondering how the console will handle the second entry in the series, which is a more complex game […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/the-nintendo-switch-2-can-handle-final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-surprisingly-well-and-may-even-surpass-the-steam-deck-too/
Update 11/02/2026: Following the publication of this article, it's been discovered that the ESRB rating for Resident Evil 5 identified in this article is not brand new, and is in fact a year old, dating back to February 2025. You can see the initial post through the Internet Archive. That said, the ESRB rating being old doesn't mean we can throw out any idea of an RE5 Remake. Besides the fact that Capcom has made its plans clear to continue remaking the RE games, it's unlikely that a new ESRB rating would be referring to the backwards compatible versions of […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/resident-evil-5-remake-capcom/
There are some truths and judgements that should not be viewed via a political lens. And, Trump Mobile's T1 phone constitutes one such occasion, where irrespective of the inherent political bias, the beholder is forced to concede that the device is an extremely tacky imitation of what a sleek smartphone looks like. The T1 Phone is a device that is all show, and retains an empty void for a soul; cheap, gaudy, garish, and an abomination of the device's original promise. Trump Mobile's T1 Phone has now surfaced in its final form, and we can't help but cringe at the […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/trump-mobiles-t1-phone-is-a-tacky-gaudy-and-garish-imitation-of-a-sleek-smartphone/
Monster Hunter Wilds will be getting a "large-scale expansion" later this year, with Capcom set to reveal the expansion at some point in Summer 2026, the company confirmed today in its update regarding what's coming to the game in February 2026. After digging into what players can look forward to in Monster Hunter Wilds' new update, which is set to be out on February 18, 2026, producer Ryozo Tsujimoto concluded by looking ahead to what's next for Wilds as we move deeper into the year. "Now, I'd like to talk about what's next for Monster Hunter Wilds," Tsujimoto began. "We […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/monster-hunter-wilds-large-scale-iceborne-sunbreak-sized-expansion-summer-2026-capcom/
Let me guess: you just spent three months building a perfectly optimized product taxonomy, complete with schema markup, internal linking, and killer metadata.
Then, the product team decided to launch a site redesign without telling you. Now half your URLs are broken, the new templates strip out your structured data, and your boss is asking why organic traffic dropped 40%.
Sound familiar?
Here’s the thing: this isn’t an SEO failure, but a governance failure. It’s costing you nights and weekends trying to fix problems that should never have happened in the first place.
This article covers why weak governance keeps breaking SEO, how AI has raised the stakes, and how a visibility governance maturity model helps SEO teams move from firefighting to prevention.
I know what you’re thinking. “Great, another framework that means more meetings and approval forms.” But hear me out.
The Visibility Governance Maturity Model (VGMM) isn’t about creating red tape. It’s about establishing clear ownership, documented processes, and decision rights that prevent your work from being accidentally destroyed by teams who don’t understand SEO.
Think of it this way: VGMM is the difference between being the person who gets blamed when organic traffic tanks versus being the person who can point to documentation showing exactly where the process broke down – and who approved skipping the SEO review.
This maturity model:
Remember when SEO was mostly about your website and Google? Those were simpler times.
Now you’re trying to optimize for:
And you’re still dealing with:
Without governance, you’re the only person who understands how all these pieces fit together.
When something breaks, everyone expects you to fix it – usually yesterday. When traffic is up, it’s because marketing ran a great campaign. When it’s down, it’s your fault.
You become the hero the organization depends on, which sounds great until you realize you can never take a real vacation, and you’re working 60-hour weeks.
Dig deeper: Why most SEO failures are organizational, not technical
VGMM doesn’t care about your keyword rankings or whether you have perfect schema markup. It evaluates whether your organization is set up to sustain SEO performance without burning you out. Below are the five maturity levels that translate to your daily reality:
Level 1: Unmanaged (your current nightmare)
Level 2: Aware (slightly better)
Level 3: Defined (getting somewhere)
Level 4: Integrated (the dream)
Level 5: Sustained (unicorn territory)
Most organizations sit at Level 1 or 2. That’s not your fault – it’s a structural problem that VGMM helps diagnose and fix.
Dig deeper: SEO’s future isn’t content. It’s governance
VGMM coordinates multiple domain-specific maturity models. Think of it as a health checkup that looks at all your vital signs, not just one metric.
It evaluates maturity across domains like:
Each domain gets scored independently, then VGMM looks at how they work together. Because excellent SEO maturity doesn’t matter if the performance team deploys code that breaks the site every Tuesday or if the content team publishes AI-generated nonsense that tanks your E-E-A-T signals.
VGMM produces a 0–100% score based on:
The final score isn’t about effort – it’s about whether governance actually works.
Before VGMM-style governance:
After governance maturity improves:
You move from reactive firefighting to proactive prevention. Your weekends become yours again.
VGMM doesn’t score you on technical SEO execution. It checks whether the organization has processes in place to prevent SEO disasters.
SEO Governance Maturity Model (SEOGMM) asks:
Content Governance Maturity Model (CGMM) asks:
Website Performance Maturity Model (WPMM) asks:
You get the idea. Each domain has its own checklist, and VGMM shows leadership where gaps create risk.
Dig deeper: SEO execution: Understanding goals, strategy, and planning
You don’t need to explain VGMM theory. You need to connect it to problems leadership already knows exist.
Organizations with higher VGMM maturity experience measurably better outcomes:
But the real win for you personally:
Your job becomes about building and improving, not constantly fixing.
Step 1: Self-assessment
Look at the five maturity levels. Where is your organization honestly sitting? If you’re at Level 1 or 2, you have evidence for why governance matters.
Step 2: Document current-state pain
Make a list of the last six months of SEO incidents:
This becomes your business case.
Step 3: Start with one domain
You don’t need to implement full VGMM immediately. Start with SEOGMM:
Step 4: Show results
Track prevented problems. When you catch an issue before it ships, document it. When a process prevents a regression, quantify the impact. Build your case for expanding governance.
Step 5: Expand systematically
Once SEOGMM is working, expand to related domains (content, performance, accessibility). Show how integrated governance catches problems that individual domain checks miss.
Governance isn’t about making your job harder. It’s about making your organization work better so your job becomes sustainable.
VGMM gives you a framework for diagnosing why SEO keeps getting undermined by other teams and a roadmap for fixing it. It translates your expertise into language that leadership understands. It protects your work from accidental destruction.
Most importantly, it moves you from being the person who’s always fixing emergencies to being the person who builds systems that prevent them.
You didn’t become an SEO professional to spend your career firefighting. VGMM helps you get back to doing the work that actually matters – the strategic, creative, growth-focused work that attracted you to SEO in the first place.
If you’re tired of watching your best work get undone by teams who don’t understand SEO, if you’re exhausted from being the only person who knows how everything works, if you want your expertise to be recognized and protected – start the VGMM conversation with your leadership.
The framework exists. What’s missing is someone in your organization saying, “We need to govern visibility like we govern everything else that matters.”
That someone is you.
Dig deeper: Why 2026 is the year the SEO silo breaks and cross-channel execution starts
ParrotOS is a compelling Linux alternative for users who want strong security features without the bloat. Version 7.0 is a significant upgrade, bringing a reworked backend, a modern KDE Plasma 6 desktop, and a refreshed Echo theme, while keeping the system lean and responsive.
Google's Results about you tool now monitors Search results for government-issued IDs like passports, driver's licenses, and Social Security numbers.
The post Google Can Now Monitor Search For Your Government IDs appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Today, AMD and Pearl Abyss have announced the Crimson Desert AMD Game Bundle. Purchasing select AMD hardware from eligible retailers will give you access to the upcoming open world action/adventure game for free on PC. The following AMD processors, graphics cards, and laptops that include an AMD Ryzen processor are eligible: Qualifying AMD Products Crimson Desert AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3DAMD Ryzen 9 9900X3DAMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D*AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3DAMD Radeon RX 9070 XTAMD Radeon RX 9070 *Purchases of this product prior to the Campaign Period are eligible to receive a Coupon Code. ✓ Select laptops that contain an AMD Ryzen […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/crimson-desert-amd-game-bundle-announced-free-game/
NVIDIA's Resident Evil Requiem game bundle for GeForce RTX 50 GPUs is now available, offering gamers a free copy of the latest entry in the Resident Evil franchise. NVIDIA Bundles A Free Copy of Resident Evil Requiem In Latest GeForce RTX 50 GPUs Promo Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, is the latest title in the long-running survival horror/action franchise. The game comes out on the 27th of February, so with just a few days left, NVIDIA has decided to update its RTX bundle to include a free copy of the game with its RTX 50 series GPUs. As […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-resident-evil-requiem-game-bundle-geforce-rtx-50-gpus/
Mario Tennis has become one of Nintendo's most predictable franchises, showing up relatively early in the lifespan of all of the company's recent platforms, and sure enough, Mario Tennis Fever is being served up within the Nintendo Switch 2's first year on the market. Promising more characters and modes than ever before, as well as a wide array of new gameplay-altering "Fever Rackets," this may well be the most feature-rich Mario Tennis to date. Is Mario Tennis Fever a swinging good time or will it leave fans cold? Lace up your shoes and tighten your rackets; it's time to find […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/mario-tennis-fever/
Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture have always approached game design with an "art-first" philosophy. While their titles aren't always the most modern in terms of raw mechanics, they are always more than the simple sum of their parts. Powered by a singular, punk-rock vision, each title possesses a distinct flair that is becoming increasingly rare in the risk-averse AAA space. Following No More Heroes III, which was based on a very strong vision but was ultimately constrained by the unrealized open-world setting, and Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, a remaster of a rather niche game of the PS3/ Xbox 360 […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/romeo-is-a-dead-man-review-great-scott-what-a-ride/
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Samsung appears to have elevated it to an art form, riding Apple's coattails for the better or worse. This appears to be a growing view in light of a series of recent decisions by Samsung, be it the reintroduction of a variable aperture lens, the rumored Galaxy Z Wide Fold, or the aluminum frame for the upcoming Galaxy S26 lineup. Samsung appears quite fond of copying Apple, as evidenced by a spate of its recent decisions Apple introduced a titanium frame for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max in September 2023. […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/samsung-lacks-agency-in-smartphones-and-hangs-onto-apples-coattails-for-better-or-worse/
Battery drain tests conducted on smartphones often don’t show the full picture because, the majority of the time, these devices are exclusively connected to Wi-Fi. However, the latest comparison does things a little differently, with an iPhone 17 Pro Max taken through its paces solely on a 5G and home Wi-Fi network to see what kind of runtimes can be experienced. Even without checking the entire test, we can assume our winner, but if you read on, there are some bits you’ll find interesting. New battery drain test shows that the iPhone 17 Pro Max had 25% of charge remaining, while […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/iphone-17-pro-max-wifi-and-5g-battery-drain-test/
There’s a new, simpler way for people to request the removal of non-consensual explicit images from Search.Results about you tool now helps you find and request the removal of Search results containing your government-issued IDs.If you’ve been managing PPC accounts for any length of time, you don’t need a research report to tell you something has changed.
You see it in the day-to-day work:
When that happens, the reflex is to assume something broke – a tracking update, a platform change, or a misconfiguration buried somewhere in the stack.
But the reality is usually simpler. Many measurement setups still assume identifiers will reliably persist from click to conversion, and that assumption no longer holds consistently.
Measurement hasn’t stopped working. The conditions it depends on have been shifting for years, and what once felt like edge cases now show up often enough to feel like a systemic change.
I’ve been close to this problem for most of my career.
Before Google Ads had native conversion tracking, I built my own tracking pixels and URL parameters to optimize affiliate campaigns.
Later, while working at Google, I was involved in the acquisition of Urchin as the industry moved toward standardized, comprehensive measurement.
That era set expectations that nearly everything could be tracked, joined, and attributed at the click level. Google made advertising feel measurable, controllable, and predictable.
As the ecosystem now shifts toward more automation, less control, and less data, that contrast can be jarring.
It has been for me. Much of what I once relied on to interpret PPC data no longer applies in the same way.
Making sense of today’s measurement environment requires rethinking those assumptions, not trying to restore the old ones. This is how I think about it now.
Dig deeper: How to evolve your PPC measurement strategy for a privacy-first future
For many years, Google Ads measurement followed a predictable pattern.
This produced deterministic matches, supported offline conversion imports, and made attribution relatively easy to explain to stakeholders.
As long as the identifier survived the journey, the system behaved in ways most advertisers could reason about.
We could literally see what happened with each click and which ones led to individual conversions.
That reliability depended on a specific set of conditions.
Luckily, those conditions were common enough that the model worked really well.
Browsers now impose tighter limits on how identifiers are stored and passed.
Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention, enhanced tracking protection, private browsing modes, and consent requirements all reduce how long tracking data persists, or whether it’s stored at all.
URL parameters may be stripped before a page loads. Cookies set via JavaScript may expire quickly. Consent banners may block storage entirely.
Click IDs sometimes never reach the site, or they disappear before a conversion occurs.
This is expected behavior in modern browser environments, not an edge case, so we have to account for it.
Trying to restore deterministic click-level tracking usually means working against the constant push toward more privacy and the resulting browser behaviors.
This is another of the many evolutions of online advertising we simply have to get on board with, and I’ve found that designing systems to function with partial data beats fighting the tide.
On my own team, GA4 is a frequent source of frustration. Not because it’s incapable, but because it’s built for a world where some data will always be missing.
We hear the same from other advertisers: the data isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s harder to reason about.
This is the bigger challenge. Moving from a world where nearly everything was observable to one where some things are inferred requires accepting that measurement now operates under different conditions.
That mindset shift has been uneven across the industry because measurement lives at the periphery of where many advertisers spend most of their time, working in ad platforms.
A lot of effort goes into optimizing ad platform settings when sometimes the better use of time might’ve been fixing broken data so better decisions could be made.
Dig deeper: Advanced analytics techniques to measure PPC
So what approaches hold up under current constraints? The answer involves both client-side and server-side measurement.
Client-side pixels, like the Google tag, continue to collect useful data.
They fire immediately, capture on-site actions, and provide fast feedback to ad platforms, whose automated bidding systems rely on this data.
But these pixels are constrained by the browser. Scripts can be blocked, execution can fail and consent settings can prevent storage. A portion of traffic will never be observable at the individual level.
When pixel tracking is the only measurement input, these gaps affect both reporting and optimization. Pixels haven’t stopped working. They just no longer cover every case.
Some responses to declining pixel data focus on the mechanics of how pixels are served rather than measurement logic.
Google Tag Gateway changes where tag requests are routed, sending them through a first-party, same-origin setup instead of directly to third-party domains.
This can reduce failures caused by blocked scripts and simplify deployment for teams using Google Cloud.
What it doesn’t do is define events, decide what data is collected, or correct poor tagging choices. It improves delivery reliability, not measurement logic.
This distinction matters when comparing Tag Gateway and server-side GTM.
The two address different problems.
Here’s the key point: better infrastructure affects how data moves, not what it means.
Event definitions, conversion logic, and consistency across systems still determine data quality.
A reliable pipeline delivers whatever it’s given, so it’d be just as good at making sure the garbage you put in also comes back out.
Offline conversion imports take a different approach, moving measurement away from the browser entirely. Conversions are recorded in backend systems and sent to Google Ads after the fact.
Because this process is server to server, it’s less affected by browser privacy restrictions. It works for longer sales cycles, delayed purchases, and conversions that happen outside the site.
This is why Google commonly recommends running offline imports alongside pixel-based tracking. The two cover different parts of the journey. One is immediate, the other persists.
Offline imports also align with current privacy constraints. They rely on data users provide directly, such as email addresses during a transaction or signup.
The data is processed server-side and aggregated, reducing reliance on browser identifiers and short-lived cookies.
Offline imports don’t replace pixels. They reduce dependence on them.
Dig deeper: Offline conversion tracking: 7 best practices and testing strategies
Even with pixels and offline imports working together, some conversions can’t be directly observed.
When click IDs are unavailable, Google Ads can still match conversions using other inputs.
This often begins with deterministic matching through hashed first-party identifiers such as email addresses, when those identifiers can be associated with signed-in Google users.
This is what Enhanced Conversions help achieve.
When deterministic matching, if this then that, isn’t possible, the system relies on aggregated and validated signals rather than reconstructing individual click paths.
These can include session-level attributes and limited, privacy-safe IP information, combined with timing and contextual constraints.
This doesn’t recreate the old click-level model, but it allows conversions to be associated with prior ad interactions at an aggregate level.
One thing I’ve noticed: adding these inputs typically improves matching before it affects bidding.
Bidding systems account for conversion lag and validate new signals over time, which means imported or modeled conversions may appear in reporting before they’re fully weighted in optimization.
Matching, attribution, and bidding are related but separate processes. Improvements in one don’t immediately change the others.
Modeled conversions are now a standard part of Google Ads and GA4 reporting.
They’re used when direct observation isn’t possible, such as when consent is denied or identifiers are unavailable.
These models are constrained by available data and validated through consistency checks and holdback experiments.
When confidence is low, modeling may be limited or not applied. Modeled data should be treated as an expected component of measurement rather than an exception.
Dig deeper: Google Ads pushes richer conversion imports
Tools like Google Tag Gateway or Enhanced Conversions for Leads help recover measurement signal, but they don’t override user intent.
Routing data through a first-party domain doesn’t imply consent. Ad blockers and restrictive browser settings are explicit signals.
Overriding them may slightly increase the measured volume, but it doesn’t align with users’ expectations regarding how your organization uses their data.
Legal compliance and user intent aren’t the same thing. Measurement systems can respect both, but doing so requires deliberate choices.
Missing signals are normal. Measurement systems that assume full visibility will continue to break under current conditions.
Redundancy helps: pixels paired with hardened delivery, offline imports paired with enhanced identifiers, and multiple incomplete signals instead of a single complete one.
But here’s where things get interesting. Different systems will see different things, and this creates a tension many advertisers now face daily.
Some clients tell us their CRM data points clearly in one direction, while Google Ads automation, operating on less complete inputs, nudges campaigns another way.
In most cases, neither system is wrong. They’re answering different questions with different data, on different timelines. Operating in a world of partial observability means accounting for that tension rather than trying to eliminate it.
Dig deeper: Auditing and optimizing Google Ads in an age of limited data
The shift toward privacy-first measurement changes how much of the user journey can be directly observed. That changes our jobs.
The goal is no longer perfect reconstruction of every click, but building measurement systems that remain useful when signals are missing, delayed, or inferred.
Different systems will continue to operate with different views of reality, and alignment comes from understanding those differences rather than trying to eliminate them.
In this environment, durable measurement depends less on recovering lost identifiers and more on thoughtful data design, redundancy, and human judgment.
Measurement is becoming more strategic than ever.
Agentic AI is increasingly appearing in leadership conversations, often accompanied by big claims and unclear expectations. For SEO leaders working with ecommerce brands, this creates a familiar challenge.
Executives hear about autonomous agents, automated purchasing, and AI-led decisions, and they want to know what this really means for growth, risk, and competitiveness.
What they don’t need is more hype. They need clear explanations, grounded thinking, and practical guidance.
This is where SEO leaders can add real value, not by predicting the future, but by helping leadership understand what is changing, what isn’t, and how to respond without overreacting. Here’s how.
A useful first step is to remove the mystery from the term itself. Agentic systems don’t replace customers, they act on behalf of customers. The intent, preferences, and constraints still come from a person.
What changes is who does the work.
Discovery, comparison, filtering, and sometimes execution are handled by software that can move faster and process more information than a human can.
When speaking to executive teams, a simple framing works best:
Once this is clear, the conversation becomes calmer and more practical, and the focus moves away from fear and toward preparation.
Another important role for SEO leaders is to slow the conversation down. Agentic behavior will not arrive everywhere at the same time. Its impact will be uneven and gradual.
Some categories will see change earlier because their products are standardized and data is already well structured. Others will move more slowly because trust, complexity, or regulation makes automation harder.
This matters because leadership teams often fall into one of two traps:
SEO leaders can offer a steadier view. Agentic AI accelerates trends that already exist. Personalized discovery, fewer visible clicks, and more pressure on data quality are not new problems.
Agents simply make them more obvious. Seen this way, agentic AI becomes a reason to improve foundations, not a reason to chase novelty.
Dig deeper: Are we ready for the agentic web?
One of the most helpful shifts in executive conversations is moving away from rankings as the main outcome of SEO. In an agent-led journey, the key question isn’t “do we rank well?” but “are we eligible to be chosen at all?”
Eligibility depends on clarity, consistency, and trust. An agent needs to understand what you sell, who it is for, how much it costs, whether it is available, and how risky it is to choose you on behalf of a user. This is a strong way to connect SEO to commercial reality.
Questions worth raising include whether product information is consistent across systems, whether pricing and availability are reliable, and whether policies reduce uncertainty or create it. Framed this way, SEO becomes less about chasing traffic and more about making the business easy to select.
Many executives still see SEO as a marketing channel, but agentic behavior challenges that view.
Selection by an agent depends on factors that sit well beyond marketing. Data quality, technical reliability, stock accuracy, delivery performance, and payment confidence all play a role.
SEO leaders should be clear about this. This isn’t about writing more content. It’s about making sure the business is understandable, reliable, and usable by machines.
Positioned correctly, SEO becomes a connecting function that helps leadership see where gaps in systems or data could prevent the brand from being selected. This often resonates because it links SEO to risk and operational health, not just growth.
Dig deeper: How to integrate SEO into your broader marketing strategy
For most ecommerce brands, the earliest impact of agentic systems will be at the top of the funnel. Discovery becomes more conversational and more personal.
Users describe situations, needs, and constraints instead of typing short search phrases, and the agent then turns that context into actions.
This reduces the value of simply owning category head terms. If an agent knows a user’s budget, preferences, delivery expectations, and past behavior, it doesn’t behave like a first-time visitor. It behaves like a well-informed repeat customer.
This creates a reporting challenge. Some SEO work will no longer look like direct demand creation, even though it still influences outcomes. Leadership teams need to be prepared for this shift.
The middle of the funnel also changes shape. Today, consideration often involves reading reviews, comparing options, and seeking reassurance.
In an agent-led journey, consideration becomes a filtering process, where the agent removes options it believes the user would reject and keeps those that fit.
This has clear implications. Generic content becomes less effective as a traffic driver because agents can generate summaries and comparisons instantly. Trust signals become structural, meaning claims need to be backed by consistent and verifiable information.
In many cases, a brand may be chosen without the user being consciously aware of it. That can be positive for conversion, but risky for long-term brand strength if recognition isn’t built elsewhere.
Dig deeper: How to align your SEO strategy with the stages of buyer intent
Executives care about measurement, and agentic AI makes this harder. As more discovery and consideration happen inside AI systems, fewer interactions leave clean attribution trails. Some impact will show up as direct traffic, and some will not be visible at all.
SEO leaders should address this early. This isn’t a failure of optimization. It reflects the limits of today’s analytics in a more mediated world.
The conversation should move toward directional signals and blended performance views, rather than precise channel attribution that no longer reflects how decisions are made.
The most important part of the leadership discussion is what to do next. The good news is that most sensible responses to agentic AI are low risk.
Improving product data quality, reducing inconsistencies across platforms, strengthening reliability signals, and fixing technical weaknesses all help today, regardless of how quickly agents mature.
Investing in brand demand outside search also matters. If agents handle more of the comparison work, brands that users already trust by name are more likely to be selected.
This reassures leaders that action doesn’t require dramatic change, only disciplined improvement.
For SEO leaders, agentic AI changes the focus of the role. The work shifts from optimizing pages to protecting eligibility, from chasing visibility to reducing ambiguity, and from reporting clicks to explaining influence.
This requires confidence, clear communication, and a willingness to challenge hype. Agentic AI makes SEO more strategic, not any less important.
Agentic AI should not be treated as an immediate threat or a guaranteed advantage. It’s a shift in how decisions are made.
For ecommerce brands, the winners will be those that stay calm, communicate clearly, and adapt their SEO thinking from driving clicks to earning selection.
That is the conversation SEO leaders should be having now.
Dig deeper: The future of search visibility: What 6 SEO leaders predict for 2026
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