Wccftech recently attended a remote press presentation in which French developer DON'T NOD (Life is Strange, Vampyr, Banishers: Ghost of New Eden, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage) unveiled an extended preview of Aphelion, their upcoming sci-fi narrative-driven adventure game, showcasing two early chapters that introduced the game's hostile alien world and the mechanics that will define the experience. The presentation was led by Dimitri Weideli, executive producer, and Florent Guillaume, creative director, who walked us through gameplay and then answered some questions. In this article: A Desperate Mission Gone Wrong Set in 2062, Aphelion tells the story of astronauts Ariane [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/dont-nod-aphelion-preview-alien-isolation-inspired-sci-fi-adventure/
Sony shuts down Bluepoint Games less than five years after acquiring it Sony has confirmed to Bloomberg that it will be shutting down Bluepoint Games in March. The studioβs closure will result in the loss of 70 jobs and mark the end of a studio with an almost impeccable legacy. Bluepoint Games is well-known for [β¦]
The post Sony shuts down Bluepoint Games, the remake masters appeared first on OC3D.
Vibe Otter is an AI website builder for busy people that generates a 90% complete site from your description, so you never start from a blank page. It includes custom domains, hosting, built-in SEO, and mobile optimization, allowing you to launch a professional online presence in about an hour without drag-and-drop complexity. You can edit content, swap images, capture leads with forms, and publish instantly; donations are supported today, and Shopify ecommerce integration is on the roadmap.
After MegaCrit missed its initial 2025 release goal for Slay the Spire 2, the beloved indie developer confirmed today that the long-awaited sequel to the popular roguelike deckbuilder will arrive on March 5, 2026. Announced during the Indie Fan Fest, its Early Access release trailer includes a few sneak peeks at gameplay mixed in between some high-quality animations. Back in September 2025, when MegaCrit confirmed that Slay the Spire 2 wouldn't arrive in 2025, it gave a release window that was vague and specific at the same time. The studio confirmed the game would arrive on "a secret Thursday in [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/slay-the-spire-2-release-date-megacrit/
Popular monitor maker AOC has added another QD-OLED gaming monitor in its Gaming series, filling the gap between Q27G4ZDR and Q27G4SDR. AOC Launches Gaming Q27G4ZD With 3rd-Gen QD-OLED Panel; Features 280 Hz Refresh Rate, QHD Resolution, and DisplayHDR400 Certification Monitor manufacturer AOC is back with another affordable gaming monitor in the Gaming series. AOC recently launched its first QD-OLED gaming monitors in the Gaming lineup, following a couple of high-end OLED monitors in the AGO PRO lineup. The Gaming OLED series has been further expanded with the launch of the Q27G4ZD gaming monitor, which fills the gap between the two [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/aoc-launches-q27g4zd-qd-oled-280hz-gaming-monitor/
Toronto-based developer Hilltop Studios has just revealed its second major project, Curse of Resthaven, a narrative-driven roguelike that studio director Scott Christian calls "a radical shift" from the team's award-winning debut game, Lil' Guardsman. Announced during the Indie Fan Fest, you'll enter the dark and gloomy island colony of Resthaven with seven days to discover the mystery behind the cursed island and save its inhabitants from the time loop. While the colourful presentation of Lil' Guardsman can make you feel like the stakes are relatively small, deciding whether or not to let people into the kingdom with its comedic twist [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/lil-guardsman-developer-reveals-curse-of-resthaven-radical-shift-from-debut-award-winning-game/
Intel has rolled out its virtual assistant on Microsoft's Copilot Studio platform, aiming to solve user queries about hardware problems and, hopefully, find solutions. Intel's Virtual Assistant Helps Users to Solve Out Redundant Problems, Redirecting Complex Queries to Humans Intel's efforts for consumers have been really interesting over the past few months, given that the company saw massive success with its Panther Lake launch, which suggests that, at least on the launch front, Team Blue is doing great. However, in terms of after-sales services and customer support, Intel has lagged on several occasions, and we saw significant flaws in how [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intels-fix-for-system-problems-is-agentic-ai-a-microsoft-copilot-driven-bot/
Embark Studios has just revealed the next update and map condition coming to ARC Raiders, with hurricanes arriving next week on February 24, 2026, in the game's new Shrouded Sky update. The short teaser doesn't show any gameplay, but it does make it clear how disruptive and dangerous the hurricanes will be for raiders who choose to brave the weather while the condition is in effect. A blog post on the ARC Raiders' official website digs further into what raiders will have to deal with, and it's a little more than some high-speed winds. "The climate is damaged and unpredictable, [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/new-arc-raiders-hurricane-map-condition-arrives-in-shrouded-sky-update-next-week/
We've been surprised by video game studio closures before, like when Xbox shut down Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, but this latest studio closure is arguably the most shocking one we've seen in a long time. Bluepoint Games, the studio responsible for the Demon's Souls Remake and decades of remakes and remasters across several iconic franchises, is being shut down by PlayStation. It was Bloomberg's Jason Schreier who broke the news that just five years after the studio officially joined the PlayStation Studios family, its remaining 70 developers are losing their jobs in what is yet another baffling decision by [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/playstation-shutting-down-bluepoint-games/
OpenAI is serving ads inside ChatGPT, and new findings suggest the experience looks quite different from what the company originally envisioned.
Whatβs happening. Research from AI ad intelligence firm Adthena has identified the first confirmed ads appearing on ChatGPT for signed-in desktop users in the U.S.
The big surprise. Early speculation suggested ads would only surface after extended back-and-forth conversations. Thatβs not whatβs happening. When a user asked βWhatβs the best way to book a weekend away?β, sponsored placements appeared immediately β on the very first response.
What they look like. The ads feature a prominent brand favicon and a clear βSponsoredβ label, a design that differs slightly from the concepts OpenAI had previously shared publicly.
Why we care. ChatGPT is one of the most visited sites on the internet. Ads appearing in its responses marks a significant moment for the future of AI monetization β and a potential shift in how brands reach consumers at the point of inquiry.
Between the lines. The immediacy of the ad trigger suggests OpenAI is treating single, high-intent prompts β not just sustained conversations β as viable ad inventory. Thatβs a meaningful strategic signal for advertisers evaluating where to place budget.
The bottom line. ChatGPTβs ad era has quietly begun. For marketers, the question is no longer if they need an AI search strategy β itβs whether theyβre already late.
First spotted. CMO of Adthena, Ashley Fletcher shared his team spotting the ads on LinkedIn.
Reddit is piloting a new AI-powered shopping experience that transforms its famously trusted community recommendations into shoppable product carousels β a move that could reshape how the platform monetizes its search traffic.
Whatβs happening. A small group of U.S.-based users are seeing interactive product carousels appear in search results when their queries signal purchase intent β think βbest noise-canceling headphonesβ or βtop budget laptops.β
How it works. The AI identifies purchase-intent queries, scans relevant Reddit conversations for product mentions, and assembles them into structured, shoppable cards. Users can tap a card to get more details and link out to retailers.
Why we care. Redditβs shopping carousels give advertisers a rare opportunity to reach consumers at peak purchase intent β at the exact moment theyβre seeking peer validation for a buying decision. Unlike traditional display ads, products surfaced here benefit from the implicit trust of Redditβs community context, making them feel less like ads and more like recommendations.
For brands already running Dynamic Product Ads on Reddit, this is a direct pipeline from community buzz to conversion.
Between the lines. Reddit is doing something its competitors havenβt quite cracked β using organic, peer-driven content as the foundation of a commerce experience rather than pure ad targeting.
Thatβs a meaningful distinction. Consumers increasingly distrust sponsored recommendations, and Redditβs entire value proposition is built on authentic community voice. Formalizing that into a shopping layer could give it a credibility edge over traditional retail media networks.
The big picture. Retail media is a fast-growing business, and platforms with high-intent audiences are racing to claim their share. Redditβs search traffic has grown significantly since its Google search partnership, making this a natural next frontier.
The bottom line. Reddit is experimenting with turning intent-driven search into commerce, aiming to make it easier for users to move from recommendation to transaction β without leaving the community context that drives trust.
Dig deeper. In Case You Saw It: We are Testing a New Shopping Product Experience in Search
AMDβs Zen 6 βOlympic Ridgeβ Zen 6 desktop CPUs will have between six and twenty-four CPU cores Core counts for AMDβs next-generation Zen 6 βOlympic Ridgeβ CPU lineup have leaked, confirming significant increases in core counts for AMDβs next-generation Ryzen processors. HXL (via WCCFTECH) has unveiled seven CPU core configurations, with four using a single [β¦]
The post Next-gen AMD Ryzen βOlympic Ridgeβ Zen 6 desktop CPU core counts leak appeared first on OC3D.
UniBee is an open-source billing platform designed for SaaS, fintech, and AI companies. It manages the full subscription lifecycle, including trials, renewals, and complex usage-based metering for API calls or tokens. You can automate global invoicing, handle multiple currencies, and use smart dunning to recover failed payments. Since itβs open-source, you can self-host to avoid vendor lock-in or choose our managed cloud. It connects to your existing payment gateways and provides real-time insights into MRR, churn, and customer lifetime value from one dashboard.
Google launched an AI Professional Certificate with seven self-paced modules and three months of AI Pro access. Eligible U.S. small businesses can enroll free.
The post Google Offers AI Certificate Free For Eligible U.S. Small Businesses appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
A new GPU overclocking world record has been set by AMD, using its budget Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU. Splave and AMD Collaborate to Break GPU Frequency World Record at AMD's Office; Overclock Radeon RX 9060 XT to 4.769 GHz There is only a single official 4.0+ GHz dGPU overclocking record ever registered, and that's by Splave on the GeForce RTX 4090. SkatterBencher also previously pushed the GPU frequency to 4.25 GHz, but it was on the integrated graphics on the Arrow Lake processor. These are the only two GPU OC world records to have ever crossed the 4.0 GHz [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-breaks-gpu-frequency-overclocking-world-record-by-pushing-radeon-rx-9060-xt-to-4-769-ghz/
Eternal Darkness and Legacy of Kain creator Denis Dyack shared a lot of interesting thoughts in a two-hour-long interview with KiwiTalkz, in which he addressed the lack of optimization of many Unreal Engine 5 games. You might remember that his upcoming game, Deadhaus Sonata, was powered by the Amazon Lumberyard engine when we last talked to him a few years ago. Well, Dyack's studio went through several engine changes before eventually landing on Epic's technology after patching things up with the company following their previous dispute over Too Human. Now a user of the leading game-making tool, Dyack pointed the [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/denis-dyack-defends-ue5-decries-state-of-the-industry/
No matter what you do, the notorious 16-pin power connector won't be safe. This user was another victim of connector melting, but he tried to mitigate it beforehand. User Reports Burnt 16-pin Power Connector on GIGABYTE RTX 5090 Despite Restricting it to Consume No More Than 500W The amount of effort users have to put in just to keep their GPUs safe from connector melting now feel unsettling. It was never like this with the regular 6-pin or 8-pin PCIe connectors, but the notorious 16-pin connector cannot just run without running into issues, despite numerous mitigation attempts by some manufacturers [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-rtx-5090-gets-its-top-connector-row-cooked-despite-a-500w-max-power-ceiling-by-the-user/
Owners of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX GPUs & DGX Spark systems can enjoy OpenClaw AI Agent on their system for free with boosted performance. Planning To Run OpenClaw On Your RTX System? NVIDIA Dishes Out A Full Guide That Enables Users To Run Local AI Agents On RTX GPUs & DGX Spark Recently, AI Agents such asΒ Clawbot,Β Motlbot, andΒ OpenClawΒ have become very popular. These agents act as your personalized AI assistants and run on virtually any machine with persistent memory support and the ability for users to give access to the entire system. Openclaw has also been gaining popularity due to its "local-first" [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-gpu-dgx-spark-owners-can-run-openclaw-boosted-ai-performance/
The Ubisoft Toronto team is at the helm of what is arguably one of Ubisoft's most significant projects, the long-awaited Splinter Cell Remake, and they're also the most recent team to get hit by the mass layoffs that Ubisoft has been conducting as part of its recently revealed "major reset." This is Ubisoft's fourth layoff announcement in 2026. First reported by MobileSyrup, Ubisoft confirmed the layoffs to Wccftech in a statement that marked this layoff as part of a "final phase" of the company's global cost-saving efforts. The company also confirmed that development of the Splinter Cell Remake continues at [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/splinter-cell-remake-team-ubisoft-toronto-layoffs/
Google Analytics is adding AI-powered Generated insights to the Home page and rolling out cross-channel budgeting (beta), moves designed to help marketers spot performance shifts faster and manage paid spend more strategically.
Whatβs happening. Generated insights now appear directly on the Google Analytics Home screen, summarizing the top three changes since a userβs last visit. That includes notable configuration updates, anomalies in performance and emerging seasonality trends β all without digging into detailed reports.
The feature is built for speed. Instead of manually scanning dashboards, marketers get a quick snapshot of what changed and why it may matter.
Cross-channel budgeting (Beta). Google is also introducing cross-channel budgeting in beta. The feature helps advertisers track performance across paid channels and optimize investments based on results.
Access is currently limited, with broader availability expected over time.
Why we care. These updates make it faster to spot performance shifts and easier to connect insights to budget decisions. Generated insights surface key changes automatically, reducing the time spent digging through reports, while cross-channel budgeting helps marketers allocate spend more strategically across paid channels.
Together, they streamline analysis and improve how quickly teams can
Bottom line. Together, Generated insights and cross-channel budgeting aim to reduce reporting friction and improve decision-making β giving marketers faster answers and more control over how they allocate budget across channels.
Linux compiler work unveils new mobile Radeon graphics architecture New Linux efforts for AMDβs Radeon software stack have unveiled a new graphics architecture, one that sits between RDNA 3.5 and RDNA 4 in terms of functionality. Right now, Phoronix, which uncovered these changes, calls this new architecture RDNA 4m, as this GPU is likely to [β¦]
The post AMD βRDNA 4mβ GPU spotted for future mobile CPUs appeared first on OC3D.
RepoClip turns your GitHub repository into a polished demo video in minutes. Paste a public or private repo URL and its AI analyzes your code, writes a clear script, generates matching visuals, and adds professional narration. You can export videos in 720p to 4K and customize the tone, style, voice, and focus. Use it to announce features, pitch investors, promote open source projects, or create social content without manual editing, with private access secured via GitHub connection.
In what is a testament to Apple's penchant for optimizing its products to the umpteenth extent, the iPhone 17 models show the least performance variation between the early review units and their mass production counterparts, with many Chinese OEMs predictably faring quite poorly against Apple's benchmark consistency. Apple's iPhone 17 production models show admirable performance consistency against early review units As per a recent test that compared various flagships based on the performance of early review units with their production-ready counterparts, Apple's iPhone 17 lineup showed lowest variance overall, with the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max going so far [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/another-reason-to-go-with-apple-iphone-17-lineup-shows-the-lowest-performance-variation-between-early-review-units-and-production-models/
Last week, we reported that the popular sci-fi action RPG looter-shooter Warframe would make its worldwide debut on Android devices on February 18, 2026, after arriving first in Canada. That was, of course, true at the time. But a last-minute, one-day delay pushed the release back by, well, a day. So as of today, February 19, 2026, developer Digital Extreme's game is now officially out on Android mobile devices across the globe, and it still has another platform to hit, as it'll be coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 "soon." This new version of Warframe almost rounds out the full [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/warframe-out-now-android-devices-globally-nintendo-switch-2-edition-coming-soon/
For a good while now, the gaming industry has been grappling with the controversial integration of generative Artificial Intelligence in game development, with more and more studios and publishers implementing it in a variety of ways. Other studios, however, are still keeping an eye on the technology, only using it as a tool to enhance the human touch that makes games special, such as Bethesda Game Studios with its cautious, hands-off approach. In a recent appearance on the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Bethesdaβs studio head Todd Howard addressed again the hot topic of AI usage in video game development. While many [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/its-certainly-not-a-fad-bethesda-todd-howard-ai-generate/
When you start your journey in ARC Raiders, certain ARCs, like Rocketeers and Bastion's, can send a chill down the spine of any new Raider. You'll eventually learn how to take these machines down, but there's always something bigger waiting in the wings, and in this new extraction shooter, that 'something bigger' is the Matriarchs. They're the closest thing ARC Raiders has to a boss encounter. You can't take them down yourself (not without some serious luck and know-how), and they're arguably the most deadly machines you'll face as far as the game's PvE elements are concerned. But that hasn't [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/embark-gave-arc-raiders-players-too-effective-abilities-take-down-matriarchs/
Three new Chrome features designed to give you a productivity boost: Split view, Save to Google Drive and PDF annotations.Introducing Pomelli Photoshoot, turn product photos into professional studio shots instantly using Nano Banana.In 2025, we significantly enhanced the Google Play and Android app ecosystems.3.1 Pro is designed for tasks where a simple answer isnβt enough.Search is no longer a blue-links game. Discovery increasingly happens inside AI-generated answers β in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other LLM-driven interfaces. Visibility isnβt determined solely by rankings, and influence doesnβt always produce a click.
Traditional SEO KPIs like rankings, impressions, and CTR donβt capture this shift. As search becomes recommendation-driven and attribution grows more opaque, SEO needs a new measurement layer.
LLM consistency and recommendation share (LCRS) fills that gap. It measures how reliably and competitively a brand appears in AI-generated responses β serving a role similar to keyword tracking in traditional SEO, but for the LLM era.
Traditional SEO metrics are well-suited to a model where visibility is directly tied to ranking position and user interaction largely depends on clicks.
In LLM-mediated search experiences, that relationship weakens. Rankings no longer guarantee that a brand appears in the answer itself.
A page can rank at the top of a search engine results page yet never appear in an AI-generated response. At the same time, LLMs may cite or mention another source with lower traditional visibility instead.
This exposes a limitation in conventional traffic attribution. When users receive synthesized answers through AI-generated responses, brand influence can occur without a measurable website visit. The impact still exists, but it isnβt reflected in traditional analytics.
At the core of this change is something SEO KPIs werenβt designed to capture:
Traditional SEO analytics largely stop at indexing and ranking. In LLM-driven search, the competitive advantage increasingly lies in recommendation β a dimension existing KPIs fail to quantify.
This gap between influence and measurement is where a new performance metric emerges.
The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need.
LLM consistency and recommendation share is a performance metric designed to measure how reliably a brand, product, or page is surfaced and recommended by LLMs across search and discovery experiences.
At its core, LCRS answers a question traditional SEO metrics canβt: When users ask LLMs for guidance, how often and how consistently does a brand appear in the answer?
This metric evaluates visibility across three dimensions:
LCRS isnβt about isolated citations, anecdotal screenshots, or other vanity metrics. Instead, it focuses on building a repeatable, comparative presence. That makes it possible to benchmark performance against competitors and track directional change over time.
LCRS isnβt intended to replace established SEO KPIs. Rankings, impressions, and traffic still matter where clicks occur. LCRS complements them by covering the growing layer of zero-click search β where recommendation increasingly determines visibility.
Dig deeper: Rand Fishkin proved AI recommendations are inconsistent β hereβs why and how to fix it
LCRS has two main components: LLM consistency and recommendation share.
In the context of LCRS, consistency refers to how reliably a brand or page appears across similar LLM responses. Because LLM outputs are probabilistic rather than deterministic, a single mention isnβt a reliable signal. What matters is repeatability across variations that mirror real user behavior.
Prompt variability is the first dimension. Users rarely phrase the same question in exactly the same way. High LLM consistency means a brand surfaces across multiple, semantically similar prompts, not just one phrasing that happens to perform well.
For example, a brand may appear in response to βbest project management tools for startupsβ but disappear when the prompt changes to βtop alternatives to Asana for small teams.β
Temporal variability reflects how stable those recommendations are over time. An LLM may recommend a brand one week and omit it the next due to model updates, refreshed training data, or shifts in confidence weighting.
Consistency here means repeated queries over days or weeks produce comparable recommendations. That indicates durable relevance rather than momentary exposure.
Platform variability accounts for differences between LLM-driven interfaces. The same query may yield different recommendations depending on whether a conversational assistant, an AI-powered search engine, or an integrated search experience responds.
A brand demonstrating strong LLM consistency appears across multiple platforms, not just within a single ecosystem.
Consider a B2B SaaS brand that different LLMs consistently recommend when users ask for βCRM tools for small businesses,β βCRM software for sales teams,β and βHubSpot alternatives.β That repeatable presence indicates a level of semantic relevance and authority LLMs repeatedly recognize.
While consistency measures repeatability, recommendation share measures competitive presence. It captures how frequently LLMs recommend a brand relative to other brands in the same category.
Not every appearance in an AI-generated response qualifies as a recommendation:
When LLMs repeatedly answer category-level questions such as comparisons, alternatives, or βbest forβ queries, they consistently surface some brands as primary responses while others appear sporadically or not at all. Recommendation share captures the relative frequency of those appearances.
Recommendation share isnβt binary. Appearing among five options carries less weight than being positioned first or framed as the default choice.
In many LLM interfaces, response ordering and emphasis implicitly rank recommendations, even when no explicit ranking exists. A brand that consistently appears first or includes a more detailed description holds a stronger recommendation position than one that appears later or with minimal context.
Recommendation share reflects how much of the recommendation space a brand occupies. Combined with LLM consistency, it provides a clearer picture of competitive visibility in LLM-driven search.
To be useful in practice, this framework must be measured in a consistent and scalable way.
Dig deeper: What 4 AI search experiments reveal about attribution and buying decisions
Measuring LCRS demands a structured approach, but it doesnβt require proprietary tooling. The goal is to replace anecdotal observations with repeatable sampling that reflects how users actually interact with LLM-driven search experiences.
The first step is prompt selection. Rather than relying on a single query, build a prompt set that represents a category or use case. This typically includes a mix of:
Phrase each prompt in multiple ways to account for natural language variation.
Next, decide between brand-level and category-level tracking. Brand prompts help assess direct brand demand, while category prompts are more useful for understanding competitive recommendation share. In most cases, LCRS is more informative at the category level, where LLMs must actively choose which brands to surface.
Tracking LCRS quickly becomes a data management problem. Even modest experiments involving a few dozen prompts across multiple days and platforms can generate hundreds of observations. That makes spreadsheet-based logging impractical.
As a result, LCRS measurement typically relies on programmatically executing predefined prompts and collecting the responses.
To do this, define a fixed prompt set and run those prompts repeatedly across selected LLM interfaces. Then parse the outputs to identify which brands are recommended and how prominently they appear.
You can automate execution and collection, but human review remains essential for interpreting results and accounting for nuances such as partial mentions, contextual recommendations, or ambiguous phrasing.
Early-stage analysis may involve small prompt sets to validate your methodology. Sustainable tracking, however, requires an automated approach focused on a brandβs most commercially important queries.
As data volume increases, automation becomes less of a convenience and more of a prerequisite for maintaining consistency and identifying meaningful trends over time.
Track LCRS over time rather than as a one-off snapshot because LLM outputs can change. Weekly checks can surface short-term volatility, while monthly aggregation provides a more stable directional signal. The objective is to detect trends and identify whether a brandβs recommendation presence is strengthening or eroding across LLM-driven search experiences.
With a way to track LCRS over time, the next question is where this metric provides the most practical value.
LCRS is most valuable in search environments where synthesized answers increasingly shape user decisions.
Marketplaces and SaaS platforms benefit significantly from LCRS because LLMs often act as intermediaries in tool discovery. When users ask for βbest tools,β βalternatives,β or βrecommended platforms,β visibility depends on whether LLMs consistently surface a brand as a trusted option. Here, LCRS helps teams understand competitive recommendation dynamics.
In βyour money or your lifeβ (YMYL) industries like finance, health, or legal services, LLMs tend to be more selective and conservative in what they recommend. Appearing consistently in these responses signals a higher level of perceived authority and trustworthiness.
LCRS can act as an early indicator of brand credibility in environments where misinformation risk is high and recommendation thresholds are stricter.
LCRS is also particularly relevant for comparison-driven and early-stage consideration searches. LLMs often summarize and narrow choices when users explore options or seek guidance before forming brand preferences.
Repeated recommendations at this stage influence downstream demand, even if no immediate click occurs. In these cases, LCRS ties directly to business impact by capturing influence at the earliest stages of decision-making.
While these use cases highlight where LCRS can be most valuable, it also comes with important limitations.
Dig deeper: How to apply βThey Ask, You Answerβ to SEO and AI visibility
LCRS is designed to provide directional insight, not absolute certainty. LLMs are inherently nondeterministic, meaning identical prompts can produce different outputs depending on context, model updates, or subtle changes in phrasing.
As a result, you should expect short-term fluctuations in recommendations and avoid overinterpreting them.
LLM-driven search experiences are also subject to ongoing volatility. Models are frequently updated, training data evolves, and interfaces change. A shift in recommendation patterns may reflect platform-level changes rather than a meaningful change in brand relevance.
Thatβs why you should evaluate LCRS over time and across multiple prompts rather than as a single snapshot.
Another limitation is that programmatic or API-based outputs may not perfectly mirror responses generated in live user interactions. Differences in context, personalization, and interface design can influence what individual users see.
However, API-based sampling provides a practical, repeatable reference point because direct access to real user prompt data and responses isnβt possible. When you use this method consistently, it allows you to measure relative change and directional movement, even if it canβt capture every nuance of user experience.
Most importantly, LCRS isnβt a replacement for traditional SEO analytics. Rankings, traffic, conversions, and revenue remain essential for understanding performance where clicks and user journeys are measurable. LCRS complements these metrics by addressing areas of influence that currently lack direct attribution.
Its value lies in identifying trends, gaps, and competitive signals, not in delivering precise scores or deterministic outcomes. Viewed in that context, LCRS also offers insight into how SEO itself is evolving.
Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform.
The introduction of LCRS reflects a broader shift in how search visibility is earned and evaluated. As LLMs increasingly mediate discovery, SEO is evolving beyond page-level optimization toward search presence engineering.
The objective is no longer ranking individual URLs. Instead, itβs ensuring a brand is consistently retrievable, understandable, and trustworthy across AI-driven systems.
In this environment, brand authority increasingly outweighs page authority. LLMs synthesize information based on perceived reliability, consistency, and topical alignment.
Brands that communicate clearly, demonstrate expertise across multiple touchpoints, and maintain coherent messaging are more likely to be recommended than those relying solely on isolated, high-performing pages.
This shift places greater emphasis on optimization for retrievability, clarity, and trust. LCRS doesnβt attempt to predict where search is headed. It measures the early signals already shaping LLM-driven discovery and helps SEOs align performance evaluation with this new reality.
The practical question for SEOs is how to respond to these changes today.
As LLM-driven search continues to reshape how users discover information, SEO teams need to expand how they think about visibility. Rankings and traffic remain important, but they no longer capture the full picture of influence in search experiences where answers are generated rather than clicked.
The key shift is moving from optimizing only for ranking positions to optimizing for presence and recommendation. LCRS offers a practical way to explore that gap and understand how brands surface across LLM-driven search.
The next step for SEOs is to experiment thoughtfully by sampling prompts, tracking patterns over time, and using those insights to complement existing performance metrics.
PC gamers will soon be able to enjoy an early demo version of Ashes of the Singularity 2 Stardock Entertainment and Oxide Games have confirmed that Ashes of the Singularity II (ATOS2) will be getting a free PC demo next week as part of Steam Next Fest. This demo will become available on February 23rd, [β¦]
The post Ashes of the Singularity II will soon have a free PC demo appeared first on OC3D.
Have you heard of the Quantum Cable Untangling Contest, or the VR Headset Balance Race? How about the World Server Throwing Championship?
Triagly collects feedback from email, your website widget, Slack, and CSV imports. Then, AI classifies it, detects duplicates, finds patterns, and scores priority automatically. Based on your settings, Triagly creates issues in GitHub, Linear, or Asana, pre-filled with title, description, tags, and context. Every week, a brief lands in your inbox that you can read in two minutes. The feedback loop closes itself.
Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron are now entering into the 'production expansion' timeline, but estimates suggest that any capacity increase won't help with the memory shortages for consumers. Memory Manufacturers Are Desperate to Address Shortages, To Ensure That They Don't Miss Out on the Supercycle Memory shortages have now entered a phase in which sellers dominate, as demand has outpaced supply by a wide margin. Given the AI buildout, companies are rushing to secure LTAs with the likes of Micron, and at the same time, demand from the consumer sector isn't slowing down, which means the only possible solution for [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/memory-makers-rush-to-build-new-facilities-but-dont-expect-the-extra-capacity-to-help-anyone-outside-the-ai-elite/
NVIDIA's popular GeForce NOW cloud streaming service is celebrating its sixth anniversary this month, and for this week's GeForce NOW Thursday, 12 games are getting added to the service, which has expanded to include over 4,500 games. The only unfortunate aspect of this week's batch of games is that only two of them are arriving as RTX 5080-ready titles, but at least both of those titles are brand new releases. The games in question are Styx: Blades of Greed and Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown, both of which you can check out reviews for on Wccftech. On top [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-now-adds-12-games-expansive-4500-games-library/
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition launched last year on the Nintendo Switch, finally allowing players to experience one of Monolith Softβs most unique entries on modern hardware. While that version was a significant visual step up from the Wii U original, it notably lacked 60 FPS gameplay, despite a high framerate mode being discovered hidden deep within its files. As many speculated at the time, that discovery was clearly groundwork for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, which officially launched digitally worldwide today. Announced via a new launch trailer, this updated version brings 4K resolution support in Docked mode and 60 [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/xenoblade-chronicles-x-definitive-edition-nintendo-switch-2-edition-brings-up-to-60-fps-4k-resolution-today/
AMD will roll out its next-gen Olympic Ridge Ryzen "Zen 6" Desktop CPUs with up to 24 cores in dual and 12 cores in single CCD configurations. AMD Preps Several Next-Gen Ryzen "Olympic Ridge" Desktop CPU SKUs, Starting at 6 With Up To 24 Cores AMD's next-gen Ryzen Desktop CPUs will feature the brand new Zen 6 core architecture and will be codenamed under the Olympic Ridge family. This next-gen lineup will be a major upgrade for AM5 platforms, offering architectural improvements, IPC uplifts, higher core configurations, advanced X3D stacking technologies, faster clocks, and newer features on existing and newer [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-6-ryzen-olympic-ridge-desktop-cpus-24-20-16-12-10-8-6-core-configs/
Get Google certified in the practical AI skills employers value most. Includes 3 months of Google AI Pro.Scenario Planner makes MMM insights accessible to marketers. The no-code UI helps teams turn complex data into actionable plans.Digital marketing teams have long debated the balance between SEO and PPC. Who owns the keyword? Who gets the budget? Who proves ROI most effectively?
For years, the division felt clear. SEO optimized for organic rankings, while paid media optimized for auctions. Both fought for visibility on the same results page, but operated under fundamentally different mechanics and incentives.
ChatGPT ads are beginning to erase that line. The separation between organic and paid isnβt just blurring, itβs breaking down inside conversational AI.
The new battleground isnβt the SERP. Itβs the prompt. The intersection of PPC and SEO now lives inside ChatGPT ads.
Search marketing has always revolved around keywords: bidding strategies, landing page optimization, and even attribution modeling.
Generative AI doesnβt operate on keyword strings the same way. It operates on intent-rich, multi-variable prompts.Β
βBest CRMβ becomes βWhatβs the best CRM for a B2B SaaS company under 50 employees?β βProject management toolβ becomes βWhat project management tool integrates with Slack and Notion?β
These prompts carry deeper layers of context and specificity that traditional keyword research often flattens to accommodate SERP coverage rather than answer an individualized question.
When ChatGPT introduces sponsored placements beneath its answers, ads donβt appear next to a head term. They show under a fully articulated need. That changes everything.
ChatGPT ads are structurally different. They:
This isnβt a classic auction layered over a keyword strategy. Itβs contextual alignment layered over a conversational experience. For marketers, that means three things:
Dig deeper: Ads in ChatGPT: Why behavior matters more than targeting
If ChatGPT ads represent a new demand capture environment, the first strategic question becomes, βHow do we know which prompts to prioritize?β
The answer isnβt buried in Google Search Console, Keyword Planner, or any other SERP research or keyword mining tool. Itβs surfaced in LLM performance that SEO counterparts have been analyzing for the past several months.
The first intersection of PPC and SEO begins with organic LLM visibility. We can start developing a ChatGPT ads strategy by mining high-performing LLM prompts. To do this, weβll need to understand:
This is prompt intelligence. Instead of asking, βWhat keywords are we ranking for?β the question becomes, βWhich conversational queries are surfacing our brand?β
When you analyze those prompts, you uncover something even more valuable: fanout keywords.
Fanout keywords are contextual signals embedded within prompts. For example, take this prompt: βBest CRM for B2B SaaS startups with under 50 employees that integrates with HubSpot.β
Traditional keyword tools might surface relevant targets as βCRM for SaaS,β βbest CRM,β and βB2B CRM,β focusing on the root terms and the core subject of the prompt.
The fanout structure would include βSaaS startups with under 50 employees,β βHubSpot integration,β βbudget sensitivity,β and βgrowth-stage scaling,β focusing not only on the root terms and core subject but also on factors like company size, growth trajectory, and pain-point considerations.
These arenβt simple keyword variations to cover semantic phrasing. Theyβre layered qualifiers that reveal nuance and support us as marketers in identifying additional high-intent segments, highlighting underserved or undiscovered audience segments, and identifying potential gaps in paid keyword coverage. This is an example of PPC and SEO converging.
Dig deeper: Why AI optimization is just long-tail SEO done right
After extracting fanout keywords from high-performing LLM prompts, run a paid coverage audit to see whether your strategy addresses the nuanced variants that surfaced, whether youβre over-indexed on root terms while missing higher-intent expansions, and whether competitors dominate contextual areas youβve overlooked.
You can prioritize where to activate paid media based on this audit:
The opportunity lies where organic LLM visibility and paid gaps intersect. If your brand frequently appears in conversational responses for βCRM for early-stage SaaS,β but you arenβt targeting that intent via paid placements, youβre leaving incremental demand on the table.
ChatGPT ads can become a mechanism for defending and amplifying organic AI authority.
Until now, PPC and SEO teams may have both sent traffic to the same landing pages, but each team optimized them based on independent factors. That approach wonβt hold in conversational AI.
When prompts become hyper-specific, landing pages must mirror that specificity. Consider this group of queries: βBest CRM for 10-person SaaS team,β βAffordable CRM for startups,β and βCRM with simple onboarding for founders.β
If all of those drive to a generic βCRM softwareβ page, conversion friction increases and conversion rates drop.
Instead, we can use these groups to build intent-specific landing pages, add content tied to common keyword fanout themes, adjust messaging to mirror conversational phrasing, and highlight deeper, relevant information for the customer.
The more your landing page reflects the nuance of the prompt, the stronger alignment becomes across ad relevance, user experience, conversion performance, and even LLM organic authority.
The critical loop is this: Improved landing page clarity doesnβt just increase conversion. It increases the likelihood that LLMs understand and surface your brand appropriately in future prompts.
This is the new feedback cycle between SEO and paid.
In traditional search, SEO influenced PPC through factors like Quality Score and brand demand. Paid media influenced SEO indirectly through brand lift. With conversational AI, the loop tightens.
This isnβt parallel channel management anymore. It has to be a unified system.
Dig deeper: SEO vs. PPC vs. AI: The visibility dilemma
One of the most common objections to emerging ad formats is the ability to accurately measure performance and report ROI.
ChatGPT ads operate with privacy-forward controls and aggregate reporting. We wonβt have pixel-level behavioral depth or cross-session tracking parity with traditional paid media.
This continues to force a shift in how marketing performance is evaluated, away from click-based attribution models. Instead of relying exclusively on click-based ROI, teams should prioritize:
If ChatGPT ads reinforce high-intent conversational exposure, that impact might show up downstream in branded search, direct traffic, and higher close rates in assisted funnels.
We shouldnβt think of this as a purely demand capture channel, but as a hybrid of capture and demand influence or creation.
This shift is less about media buying and more about team structure. To execute effectively, marketing organizations need to prioritize.Β
SEO and paid teams must work together to group queries into prompt categories. For example, role-based queries (e.g., CMO, founder, or operations lead); industry-based queries (e.g., SaaS, healthcare, or ecommerce); and constraint-based queries (e.g., budget, team size, or integrations).
These groupings should inform both content and paid media structure and bidding strategies.
Instead of separate keyword and ranking reports, teams should see:
Paid media budget allocation should consider where:
This isnβt about shifting dollars from Google Ads to ChatGPT. Itβs about reallocating dollars based on a deeper understanding of user demand and behavior.
Dig deeper: Why 2026 is the year the SEO silo breaks and cross-channel execution starts
Zoom out. Search engines were the gateway to information. Social feeds were the gateway to discovery. Conversational AI is becoming the gateway to decision-making.
If that trajectory continues, optimizing for LLM visibility becomes as critical as ranking on Google once was. Now that ads are layered into that experience, paid media and SEO become inseparable.
The future wonβt be defined by organic rankings or paid media CPC efficiency alone. It will be defined by how effectively brands show a unified message and experience across:
The introduction of ads into ChatGPT isnβt just another platform beta. Itβs a structural signal.
The channel divide between SEO and paid media, a debate that has shaped marketing teams for as long as theyβve existed, is dissolving inside conversational AI.
The brands that win will:
The intersection of paid and SEO is no longer a shared SERP. Itβs a shared intelligence system.
ChatGPT ads may be the first clear signal that conversational AI isnβt just changing how people search. Itβs changing how we structure growth.
Google is launching Scenario Planner, a no-code tool that lets you test budget scenarios and forecast ROI using its Meridian marketing mix model without needing data science expertise.
Whatβs new. Scenario Planner turns complex MMM outputs into actionable marketing insights:
Why we care. With predictive marketing insights at your fingertips, you can test budgets, predict returns, and adjust campaigns in real time β so you plan smarter and make the most of every dollar.
Closing the MMM actionability gap. Scenario Planner bridges the long-standing βusability gapβ in Marketing Mix Models, which traditionally required specialized skills. Nearly 40% of organizations struggle to turn MMM outputs into actionable decisions, according to Harvard Business Review.
Bottom line. By combining the rigor of MMM with an intuitive, interactive interface, Scenario Planner helps you plan smarter, optimize your spend, and make confident, data-driven decisions β without relying on technical experts.
Just as things were starting to look up for Bungie, with some positive buzz building around Marathon as we inch closer to the new extraction shooter's arrival, the tides take a turn for the worse once again. In a statement shared on its social media channels, the studio has announced that the next major update for Destiny 2, the upcoming Shadow and Order update, which was supposed to be out on March 3, 2026, has been delayed by three months and will now arrive on June 9, 2026. A lack of promotional marketing for the update this close to its [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/destiny-2-shadow-and-order-update-gets-last-minute-3-month-delay-bungie/
Google shocked many tech enthusiasts by equipping the just-announced Pixel 10a with the older-gen Tensor G4, effectively breaking away from a long-held, industry-wide convention of sorts by glossing over the newer Tensor G5 chip. Yet, there is a method to this apparent madness, one that can be easily decoded via hard numbers. The veritable windfall in cost savings that Google stands to amass by opting for the Tensor G4 chip in the just-announced Pixel 10a Consumers do not typically pay for planned obsolescence. And, it is for this reason that smartphone OEMs typically equip their various lineups in a given [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/google-pixel-10a-the-case-for-using-the-older-tensor-g4-chip-in-hard-numbers/
Youβre tracking the wrong numbers β and so is almost everyone else in SEO right now.
Weβve all been there. You present a chart showing organic traffic up 47%, only to get blank stares from the CMO who wants to know why revenue hasnβt budged. Or you celebrate a top-three ranking for a keyword nobodyβs actually searching for anymore.
The metrics that made you look good in 2019 are actively misleading your decision-making in 2026.
With AI Overviews dominating search results, zero-click searches becoming the norm, and personalized SERPs making traditional rankings less meaningful, sticking with outdated measurements puts your strategy and budget at risk.
Letβs walk through the exact metrics your SEO team needs to retire this year and what you should measure instead.
As a standalone KPI, organic traffic has been the primary metric in SEO reporting since SEO began. But on its own, it lacks context.
Not all traffic is created equal. A thousand visitors who bounce in three seconds arenβt helping your business. A hundred visitors who convert at 8%? Thatβs a different story.
I worked with a local HVAC company that saw traffic drop 22% year over year. Panic mode, right? Except revenue from organic actually increased by 31%. Weβd pruned low-intent informational content and doubled down on high-intent service pages. Fewer visitors, better visitors.
Before you panic about any traffic drop, look at where youβre losing traffic. If itβs informational articles and customer login pages, thatβs not a revenue problem. Itβs noise leaving your dashboard.
This metric is equally misleading.
A million impressions from informational queries like βwhat is SEOβ might generate awareness, but zero revenue. Ten thousand impressions from commercial queries like βbest enterprise SEO agencyβ could fill your pipeline. Google Search Console gives you this data, but most teams donβt slice it intelligently.
This one gets SEO teams in trouble with executives. You walk into a quarterly review, proudly show a 35% increase in organic traffic, and the CFO asks, βGreat, how much revenue did that drive?β If you canβt answer that question, youβre just showing noise.
This looks useful in a dashboard but falls apart under scrutiny. If you rank No. 1 for a keyword with 10 monthly searches and No. 50 for a keyword with 50,000 monthly searches, your average position might look decent, but youβre getting crushed where it actually matters.Β
The metric treats all keywords as equal when they arenβt. And with personalized search results, βaverage positionβ varies widely by user and location.
Searchers donβt think in isolated keywords. They ask questions, explore topics, and refine queries. Google has shifted to semantic search and topic modeling.
Tracking βlawyerβ alone is useless without intent β criminal defense, divorce, or someone researching what lawyers do.
This metric sounds smart until you realize 80% of your top 10 rankings may be low-intent, low-volume informational queries. Meanwhile, competitors hold the top three spots for every high-intent commercial query in your niche.
One No. 1 ranking for a high-converting transactional keyword is worth more than 50 top-10 rankings for informational fluff.
DA and DR arenβt Google metrics. Theyβre proprietary scores created by SEO tool companies. Yet I see teams setting goals like βincrease DA from 42 to 50 by Q3.βΒ
You can have a DA of 65 and get crushed by a DA 35 competitor if that competitorβs content better matches search intent. Stop putting these in executive dashboards.
This is another vanity metric. Googleβs algorithm weighs link quality, relevance, and context.
A single link from a highly relevant, authoritative site in your niche is worth more than 500 spammy directory links. Iβve audited sites with 100,000+ backlinks that couldnβt rank for anything meaningful because 95% were junk.
This metric has been misunderstood for years. If someone searches βbusiness hours for [your company],β lands on your contact page, finds the hours, and leaves, thatβs a successful session with a 100% bounce rate.Β
Google replaced bounce rate with βengagement rateβ in GA4 for good reason. Similarly, session duration and pages per session need context. A high pages-per-session metric on your pricing page might mean users are confused rather than engaged.Β
The search landscape has fundamentally shifted. Up to 58.5% of U.S. Google searches and 59.7% of EU searches now end without a click to any external website, according to SparkToroβs zero-click study. That means for every 1,000 searches, only 360 clicks go to the open web.
AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are pulling information and synthesizing answers without requiring a click. Your content can be highly visible and influential without generating a single session in Google Analytics.
In many verticals, AI is now the primary discovery layer.
Buyers are discovering vendors inside AI tools, then turning to Google to confirm what theyβve already heard. This means your SEO teamβs goal is no longer just to βdrive traffic.β Itβs to make sure your brand shows up when buyers are deciding which options to consider.
Modern customer journeys are also messy. A prospect might discover you via organic search, return through a paid ad, sign up for your email list, and finally convert through direct traffic. If youβre using last-click attribution, SEO looks ineffective. But without that initial organic touchpoint, the conversion never wouldβve happened.
Dig deeper: Measuring zero-click search: Visibility-first SEO for AI results
For ecommerce, track revenue from organic sessions by product category and landing page. For lead-gen businesses, track qualified leads from organic and how many convert to customers. Use CRM integration to connect the dots.
Nobody cares about your DA if you can show organic contributed $1.2 million in revenue last quarter.
Track your visibility specifically for high-value terms that actually drive conversions.
A franchise client shifted to this metric and discovered they were dominating low-intent queries but barely visible for high-intent local service terms. We reallocated resources, and qualified leads doubled in four months.
This replaces individual keyword rankings. Track how well you rank across entire topic clusters, how many related keywords you rank for, average visibility across the cluster, and total traffic and conversions from that cluster. This gives you a holistic view of topical authority.
Measure how much of the search results page you own, not just organic listings, but featured snippets, knowledge panels, local packs, and People Also Ask boxes. Owning multiple SERP features for a high-value query means youβve effectively blocked out competitors.
How often is your brand mentioned or recommended in AI-generated responses? Brand recommendations now matter as much as clicks.
If you have a 90%+ recommendation rate across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews for your core topics, youβre winning, even if your click-through traffic looks flat.
Tools are emerging to track this, but you can also do manual spot checks. This visibility builds authority and awareness, leading to brand searches and conversions down the line.
Hereβs something most teams miss: When buyers discover your brand through AI tools or zero-click searches, they donβt click through. They search your brand name directly or type your URL into their browser. That traffic shows up in your branded search and direct channels, not organic.
If your nonbranded organic traffic is flat but branded searches and direct visits are climbing, thatβs often a sign your content is being cited in AI Overviews and LLM responses. Track these together.
A client of mine saw organic traffic plateau while brand search volume increased 40%. Their content was being cited in AI Overviews, building awareness without the click.
Dig deeper: 12 new KPIs for the generative AI search era
Changing your reporting framework is scary. Stakeholders have stared at the same metrics for years.
Start by auditing your current dashboard. Does each metric connect to a business outcome, or is it just activity?
Retire vanity metrics gradually. If youβve reported organic traffic as a standalone KPI, introduce βorganic traffic by intent segmentβ and βorganic-attributed revenueβ alongside it. Over a few reporting cycles, shift focus to the new metrics and phase out the old.
When introducing new metrics, explain them in business terms. Donβt say βconversion-weighted visibility.β Say βvisibility for the search terms that drive the most leads and revenue.β
Be transparent about why change is necessary. AI Overviews, zero-click results, and personalization have made old metrics less reliable. Thatβs not admitting failure. Itβs demonstrating youβre evolving with the reality of search in 2026.
The metrics you retire this year β organic traffic as a standalone number, average keyword position, domain authority, and bounce rate β arenβt bad. Theyβre incomplete. Worse, they create the illusion of progress while competitors focus on metrics that drive revenue.
The metrics you adopt β revenue contribution, conversion-weighted visibility, topic authority, SERP real estate ownership, and AI platform mentions β connect SEO directly to business outcomes. They prove ROI, justify budget, and align your strategy with what matters.
Take a hard look at your dashboard. Identify the metrics that make you look busy instead of effective. Retire them. Replace them.
No one cares how much traffic you drove or your DA score. They care whether SEO drove growth. Make sure your metrics prove it.
Bethesda confirms upgraded engine for The Elder Scrolls VI Bethesda is one of the few RPG makers still creating games with its own proprietary engine, and opinions on this are mixed. While many gamers are thankful that Bethesda isnβt using Unreal Engine 5, many of the technical shortcomings in their games can be attributed to [β¦]
The post Todd Howard confirms Creation Engine 3 for Skyrim sequel appeared first on OC3D.
After having been away from Monster Hunter Wilds since defeating Mizutsune in the game's first major update, I returned to the latest entry in the series this week with Update 1.041.00.00, finding a very different experience. While the performance improvements introduced in the last couple of patches have made the game run significantly better on my PC, it's the staggering amount of new content that impressed me the most. With a new endgame grind for Talismans and a host of new monsters, I expect to continue playing until the launch of the Master Rank expansion. While I looked at the [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/monster-hunter-wilds-patch-1-04-00-00-tempered-gogmazios-switch-2/
He didn't just get a cheap used motherboard, but several free functional NVMe SSDs that would have cost him over $1700. Redditor Receives 2x 4 TB, 2x TB NVMe SSDs with a $50 Used Z690 Motherboard; One SSD Filled with GOG Games Redditor u/R550MAGIC2 says he has used his luck for the entire year, as he was surprised to find expensive components in his purchase of a used motherboard. The user reports he saw an MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi motherboard on the marketplace for just $50, and while he already decided to buy it from the seller, he noticed that [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/user-tries-his-luck-on-a-50-z690-motherboard-receives-4x-nvme-ssds-pre-installed-worth-at-least-1700/
In the early days of SEO, authority was a crude concept. In the early 2000s, ranking well often came down to how effectively you could game PageRank. Buy enough links, repeat the right keywords, and visibility followed. It was mechanical, transactional, and remarkably easy to manipulate.
Two decades later, that version of search is largely extinct. Algorithms have matured. So has Googleβs understanding of brands, people, and real-world reputation.
In a landscape increasingly shaped by AI-powered discovery, authority is no longer a secondary ranking factor β itβs the foundational principle. This is the logical conclusion of a long, deliberate evolution in search.
Googleβs first major move against manipulation came with Penguin, which forced the industry to evolve. Thatβs when βdigital PRβ began emerging as a more palatable framing than link building.
Google also began experimenting with entity-based understanding. Author photos appeared in search results. Knowledge panels surfaced. Brands, authors, and organizations were treated less like URLs and more like connected entities.
Although experiments like Google authorship were eventually retired, the direction was clear. Google was redefining how it assessed website and brand authority.
Instead of asking, βWho links to this page?β the algorithms increasingly asked, βWho authored this content, and how are they recognized elsewhere?β
That shift has only accelerated over the past 12 months, as AI-driven search experiences have made the trend impossible to ignore.
Dig deeper: From SEO to algorithmic education: The roadmap for long-term brand authority
The integration of the helpful content system into Googleβs core algorithm marked a turning point. Sites that built visibility through over-optimization saw organic performance erode almost overnight. In contrast, brands demonstrating depth, experience, and strong brand authority gained ground.
Search systems are now far better at evaluating whether content reflects lived expertise. Over-optimized sites β those with disproportionately high link metrics but limited brand recognition β have struggled as a result.
In recent core updates, larger, well-known brands have consistently outperformed smaller sites that were technically strong but lacked brand authority. Authority, not optimization, has become a key differentiator.
Large language models (LLMs) learn from the open web: journalism, reviews, forums, social platforms, video transcripts, and expert commentary. Reputation is inferred through the frequency, consistency, and context of brand mentions.
This has profound implications for how brands approach SEO.
Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, YouTube, and trusted review platforms such as G2 are among the most heavily cited sources in AI search responses. These arenβt environments you can fully control. They reflect what people actually say about your brand, not what you claim about yourself.
In other words, authority is now externally validated β and much harder to influence. Visibility is no longer driven solely by what happens on your website. Itβs shaped by how convincingly your brand shows up across the wider digital ecosystem.
Market share data continues to show Google commanding over 90% of global search usage, with AI platforms accounting for a fraction of referral traffic. Even among heavy ChatGPT users, the vast majority still rely on Google as part of their search behavior.
Google is absorbing AI-style answers into its own interface through AI Overviews, AI Mode, and other generative enhancements. Users arenβt abandoning Google. Theyβre encountering AI within it.
The opportunity lies in building authority that performs across both traditional and AI-mediated search surfaces. Iβve previously written about the concept of building a total search strategy.
One of the more uncomfortable realizations for SEO practitioners is that some of the most effective authority signals sit outside traditional search channels.
Digital PR, brand advertising, events, partnerships, and even offline activity increasingly influence organic performance. A physical event can generate listings on event platforms, coverage in local press, and organic social discussion β each feeding into a broader perception of legitimacy. This is where paid and organic disciplines begin to converge.
Brand awareness improves clickβthrough rates. Familiar names attract citations. Mentions on YouTube or in long-form journalism reinforce topical authority in ways links alone never could. Weβve even seen a recent study showing YouTube comments as a leading factor correlated with AI mentions.
As someone who works across both paid and organic strategy, I see this multiplier effect repeatedly. Strong brands donβt just convert better β they now perform better organically, too.
Dig deeper: The new SEO imperative: Building your brand
Building authority requires a holistic approach β one that starts with brand strategy, category understanding, and a broader set of tactics than traditional SEO.
Iβve developed a simple framework that ensures consistent focus on three core pillars:
This is about defining how the category itself is understood, not merely competing within it. Authority begins upstream of content production, with a clear point of view on what matters, whatβs outdated, and whatβs misunderstood.Β
Rather than chasing keywords, the goal is to become the reference point others defer to when making sense of the space. This is the layer search engines and LLMs increasingly reward because it signals genuine expertise rather than tactical optimization.
If category authority sets the belief system, canonical authority operationalizes it. This is where brands invest in explanation-first content that answers questions properly, not superficially.Β
Canonical explanations are designed to be cited, reused, and paraphrased across the ecosystem: by journalists, analysts, creators, forums, and AI systems. They form the backbone of content infrastructure β hubs, guides, FAQs, and explainers that are structurally sound, consistently updated, and clearly authored.Β
In an AI-mediated search environment, these assets become the raw material models learn from and reference, making them central to long-term visibility.
What matters isnβt just what you publish, but how your brand shows up across platforms you donβt control. This includes:
Distribution and amplification arenβt afterthoughts. Theyβre how authority is stress-tested in public. Consistent, credible presence across these surfaces feeds both human perception and algorithmic inference, reinforcing legitimacy at scale.
Dig deeper: How paid, earned, shared, and owned media shape generative search visibility
Every evolution in search presents the same choice. You can react β scrambling to interpret updates, tweaking tactics, and hoping the next change favors you.
Or you can invest in becoming the recognized authority in your space. This requires patience, cross-channel collaboration, and genuine investment. But itβs the only approach thatβs proved durable across decades of algorithmic change.
The tactics influencing performance today feel less like legacy SEO and far more like classic marketing and PR: building authority, earning attention, and influencing demand rather than engineering visibility.
No doubt Google will continue to evolve. AI systems will mature. New discovery platforms will emerge. None of that changes the underlying truth: Authority has always been the hardest signal to earn β and the most valuable once established.
Rocket League isnβt leaving Valveβs Steam Deck behind with its Easy Anti-Cheat update Epic Games and Psyonix have confirmed that Rocket League will be receiving Easy Anti-Cheat support in the near future. This change is due to arrive in April as part of the gameβs Season 22 update. Easy Anti-Cheat will help Pysonix detect and [β¦]
The post Anti-Cheat is coming to Rocket League, and it will support Linux appeared first on OC3D.
polisignal is a B2B intelligence platform that monitors UK and EU policy and regulatory updates and uses AI to surface software opportunities. It scans official sources and regulator guidance, extracts concrete obligations like deadlines, reporting, and thresholds, and then converts them into ranked signals with citations.
Each signal explains who is affected, why it matters operationally, and practical product angles for builders. This information is delivered via a web dashboard and a curated daily email digest.
Looks like the higher VRAM price excuse won't help GPU manufacturers sell their GPUs at higher prices. Radeon RX 9000 Demand Dropped Due To Higher Prices; Retailers Are Now Lowering The Prices by 15-20% We are seeing a nearly 15% average price increase for the cheapest GPU models globally in the last three months, but a lot of GPUs easily jumped by 40-50% in price. The RAMmageddon has forced a lot of tech giants to increase product prices and reduce production. NVIDIA and AMD, being the major players in the GPU market, have also drastically increased prices for their consumer [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/gamers-ditch-amd-radeon-rx-9000-gpus-due-to-high-prices-forcing-retailers-to-drop-the-prices/
FFVII Remake Intergrade launched last month on Nintendo Switch 2 (and Xbox Series S). Overall, it was a solid port, though the Xbox Series S version offers better texture quality than the Switch 2 version, despite having less RAM available. However, Nintendo Switch 2 players have been slightly disappointed to see that FFVII Remake Intergrade is only available on Game Key Cards rather than regular cartridges. Game Key Cards were introduced with the new Nintendo console and offer a hybrid format: they are physical cards that users must insert into their console, but they don't actually contain any data. Instead, [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/ffvii-remake-dev-explains-game-key-cards-nintendo-switch-2/
The news that Sony Santa Monica is working on a God of War Trilogy remake certainly hyped fans, though it will likely be a long while until we get new information from the developer. Thankfully, actor Christopher Judge, who plays Kratos in 2018's God of War and 2022's God of War RagnarΓΆk, has kindly shared a few details while speaking to YouTuber Fuzhpuzy at Fan Expo Vancouver this past weekend. When asked if he would be featured in the God of War Trilogy remake, he predictably replied no, adding that the original actor who played Kratos in those games, TC [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/god-of-war-trilogy-remake-new-combat-system-cory-barlog-game-late-summer/
The iPhone AirΒ is Appleβs first to ship with the companyβs new and improved C1X 5G modem, ensuring better performance, reliability, and efficiency than Qualcommβs X75 running in the previous-generation iPhone 16 lineup, but the first crack in the technology giantβs in-house baseband solutions may have appeared. An owner of the companyβs sleek flagship found out one morning that the device had no cellular reception, and when he dove into the network settings, he found that the C1X had suffered a hardware failure. This incident is highly interesting, and we can imagine that Apple will be curious about what caused the [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/iphone-air-c1x-5g-modem-failure-spotted-online/
WorldSmith helps you play tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Build and organize your entire campaign in one place with drag-and-drop sections, book-style formatting, and 100% customization of fonts, layout, and content to match your table and your system.
WorldSmith also includes homebrew generators for maps, NPCs, monsters, shops, encounters, quests, spells, worlds, and more, along with a homebrew library where you can explore, save, and remix creations, campaigns, and one-shots from other creators. Players can create characters, join campaigns, view world details, and level up, ensuring everyone stays immersed between sessions.
Turn CapsLock into a Super Key & Boost Productivity
Get fundraising advice when you give to charity
Turn your voice into polished writingβwherever you go.
Your YouTube subscriptions, summarized and delivered by AI
Generate beautiful UI designs that you can instantly edit
One chat to control all your apps with Agentic AI
AI memory API with 3 types: facts, events, and workflows
Create winning ads without prompts or skills
Find your perfect leads with one prompt
Cut your AI token costs by 40-60% with one API call
No Boring Forms. Just Voice Conversations
OpenClaw in the Cloud with Zero Setup and on 24/7
AI-powered chargeback defense. Pay only when you win.
SpendRail gives finance teams real-time visibility into company spend and flags issues like overcharges, contract violations, and unusual vendor activity before close. It connects to your existing tools, learns normal spending patterns, and alerts teams when something looks off without spreadsheets or manual audits.
marketfunkers is a creative intelligence tool for people who make ads and are tired of guessing. You upload any video or image ad (yours or a competitorβs), and in under a minute it shows you why the ad works or fails, whatβs unclear, whatβs being ignored, and what to test next. It breaks down hooks, messaging, visuals, emotions, audience, and conversion potential, then turns insights into clear testing ideas.
marketfunkers isnβt a writing bot. Itβs built for ad decisions. It combines multiple AI models with real ad data and real audience language to replace messy research, vague feedback, and just test more thinking with clarity you can actually act on.
Subsight helps startups and growing teams track every SaaS subscription in one simple dashboard. Invite teammates, assign ownership, and see real-time spend, renewals, and seats to cut waste and avoid surprise charges. Import data from spreadsheets, PDFs, or bank statements, and receive renewal reminders via Slack and email with global currency support. Use Subsight to centralize your stack, cancel unused tools on time, and keep your software budget under control.
CEO Sundar Pichaiβs remarks at the opening ceremony of the AI Impact Summit 2026
Yacht Genius AI is an AI-powered platform for planning and booking crewed yacht charters. It combines a curated, verified fleet with clear specifications, regional guidance, sample itineraries, pricing context, and smart filters, allowing you to compare yachts and routes quickly. Ask Gizmo, the built-in assistant, to refine destinations, check amenities, or outline a 7-day plan, then request quotes and availability in one step. Browse special offers and make confident decisions without juggling multiple tabs.
Polywallets lets you explore any Polymarket wallet to see positions, P&L, and performance. You can search wallets, view holdings by market, and track top traders over 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days with global and market-level leaderboards.
Xora Analytics provides insights into product performance, focusing on actionable recommendations rather than just reporting events. While tools like Google Analytics show data such as traffic drops, Xora uses AI to explain the reasons behind these changes and offers specific recommendations for improvement.
Designed for SaaS founders and product teams overwhelmed by dashboards, Xora emphasizes the five metrics that matter most for predicting retention: time to first value, feature adoption, activation rate, weekly engagement, and cohort retention. A recent beta user was able to reduce churn by 34% in 60 days after Xora pinpointed their onboarding drop-off and recommended changes.
Your spam filter catches the obvious stuff. But what about the email that looks like your bank, your boss, or a delivery you're expecting? InboxGuard is an AI-powered email protection service that analyzes every inbound email for scams, phishing attempts, fraudulent links, and social engineering attacks. We detect the sophisticated threats that traditional spam filters miss β the ones designed to look legitimate. We're building modular AI protection that works with any email provider including Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. Choose your protection level, connect your email, and let AI handle the rest.
Nuanso connects to your Meta and Google ad accounts and delivers clear AI analysis through Nuno, allowing you to see what's working, what's not, and what to do next. It sends daily briefings to Slack or Teams, answers questions like why CPL spiked, and provides specific steps to improve your performance.
Nuanso runs in read-only mode via OAuth, stores data in the EU, and never resells it. You get fast setup, actionable insights, and 90 days of performance data without needing to switch between platforms.
This is not a startup. This is not a product. This is a concept experiment. It is a commentary on the direction of music today. Artists are fake, music is synthetic, artwork is hallucinated, bios are imaginary, and the codebase should be burned at the stake.
Slopify isnβt here to replace your favorite music platform - itβs here to parody the entire concept of content in the age of infinite generation. It is algorithmic noise pretending to be culture, and somehow, it slaps. Slopify is where the future of music goes to become soup.
Bethesda Game Studios boss Todd Howard spent an hour today talking about some of Bethesda's biggest franchises, including both Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, in an interview with Kinda Funny Games. While Howard didn't share too many details about upcoming projects, like refusing to elaborate beyond saying the team has "multiple" Fallout projects in the works, we did get some insight into how he prefers to approach game reveals, how the studio operates, and a tease that more Starfield news would be coming "soon." That said, Howard did add that there is no "Starfield 2.0" coming. Starting with The Elder [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/majority-bethesda-working-on-the-elder-scrolls-6-no-starfield-2-0-coming-todd-howard/
Google Ads now surfaces Performance Max (PMax) campaign data in the βWhere ads showedβ report, giving advertisers clearer insight into placements, networks, and impressions β data that was previously unavailable.
Whatβs new. The update makes it possible to see exactly where PMax ads are appearing across Googleβs network, including search partners, display, and other placements. Advertisers can now track impressions by placement type and network, helping them understand how campaigns are performing in detail.
Why we care. This update finally gives visibility into where PMax campaigns are running, including Google Search Partners, display, and other networks. With placement, type, and impression data now available, marketers can better understand campaign performance, optimize budgets, and make informed decisions instead of relying on guesswork. It turns previously opaque PMax reporting into actionable insights.
User reaction. Digital marketer Thomas Eccel shared on LinkedIn that the report was historically empty, but now finally shows real data.
The bottom line. This update gives marketers actionable visbility into PMax campaigns, helping them understand placement performance, optimize spend, and identify which networks are driving results β all in one report.
Peec AI analyzed fan-out queries from 10M+ ChatGPT prompts and found 43% of background searches ran in English, even for non-English prompts.
The post ChatGPT Search Often Switches To English In Fan-Out Queries: Report appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Publisher CI Games and developer Hexworks have released the minimum and recommended PC system requirements for Lords of the Fallen 2, the sequel to 2023's Soulslike game. The specs are listed on the game's Epic Games Store page and match the previous game's CPU and RAM requirements. However, the GPU requirements have increased: from Lords of the Fallen's GTX 1060/RX 590 and RTX 2080/RX 6700 to Lords of the Fallen 2's RTX 2060/RX 5700 and RTX 3080/RX 6800 XT. As a reminder, the game is powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 5, just like the previous installment. Spec Minimum Recommended OS [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/lords-of-the-fallen-2-minimum-recommend-pc-specs/
The new State of Video Gaming 2026 Report from Matthew Ball, chief executive officer at Epyllion, is now available, and as usual, there are more than a few solid insights and takeaways to make note of. Like how software sales for the global video game market in 2025 rose by 5.3% to a staggering $195.6 billion, but at the same time, funding from private investors hit another major dip, dropping by 55%. Console software sales also hit an all-time high, recovering from the post-COVID slump to hit $41.6 billion in spending, a 2.3% increase compared to the highs of the [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/global-video-game-content-sales-grew-to-195-6b-in-2025-while-private-funding-took-a-massive-dip/
LinkedIn Premium has seen a 50% rise in subscriptions over the past two years.
Organic search clicks are shrinking across major verticals β and itβs not just because of Googleβs AI Overviews.
Why we care. You arenβt just competing with AI Overviews. Youβre competing with Googleβs aggressive expansion of paid search real estate. Across every vertical analyzed, text ads gained more click share than any other measurable surface. In product categories, paid listings now capture roughly one-third of all clicks. As a result, several brands that are losing organic visibility are increasing their paid investment.
By the numbers. Across four verticals, text ads showed the most consistent, measurable click-share gains.
Classic organic is down everywhere. Year-over-year classic organic click share declined across all four verticals. Headphones saw the steepest drop. Even online games β historically organic-heavy β lost double digits. In two verticals (headphones, jeans), total clicks also fell.
Text ads are the biggest winner. Text ads gained share in every vertical; no other surface showed this level of consistent growth:
In product categories, PLAs compounded the shift:
AI Overviews surged unevenly. The presence of Google AI Overviews expanded sharply, but varied by vertical:
Zero-click searches are high β and mostly stable. Except for online games, zero-click rates didnβt change dramatically:
Brands losing organic traffic are buying it back. In headphones:
In jeans:
In online games:
The result? Weβre seeing a self-reinforcing cycle, according to the studyβs author, Aleyda Solis:
About the data. This analysis used Similarweb data to examine SERP composition and click distribution for the top 5,000 U.S. queries in headphones, jeans, and online games, and the top 956 queries in greeting cards and ecards. It compares January 2025 to January 2026, tracking how clicks shifted across classic organic results, organic SERP features, text ads, PLAs, zero-click searches, and AI Overviews.
Google's Jeff Dean explains why latency and cost make Flash Google's production tier for AI search, and why models are built to retrieve, not memorize.
The post Why Google Runs AI Mode On Flash, Explained By Googleβs Chief Scientist appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
CI Games release Lords of the Fallen 2βs PC system requirements CI Games has released Lords of the Fallen 2βs PC system requirements on the Epic Games Store, unveiling the levels of PC power that gamers will require to run this action-RPG sequel. On PC, Lords of the Fallen 2 (LOTF2) is expected to launch [β¦]
The post Is your PC ready for Lords of the Fallen 2? appeared first on OC3D.
Pixel 10a is here! Our newest, most durable A-series phone has our best-in-class camera system and many of our most advanced AI tools, powered by our custom-built Googleβ¦Meta also shut down the separate Messenger app for Windows and Mac last year.Β
Reddit is already seeing an influx of interest in the event.Β
The platform's add-on subscription has become a valuable revenue driver for the business.
The deal will ensure that Meta can access the latest hardware for its expanding AI projects.Β
YouTube's also bringing its AI chatbot to Connected TV devices.
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out multi-image ads for Shopping campaigns in Bing search results, giving ecommerce brands a richer way to showcase products and capture shopper attention before the click.
Whatβs new. Advertisers can now display multiple product images within a single Shopping ad, letting shoppers preview different angles, styles or variations directly in search.
The format is designed to make ads more visually engaging and informative, helping consumers compare options quickly without leaving the results page.
How it works:
Why we care. Multi-image ads could increase engagement and purchase intent by presenting a fuller picture of a product. More visuals can highlight features, colors and design details that a single image might miss.
Discovery. The feature was first spotted by digital marketer Arpan Banerjee who shared spotting it on LinkedIn.
The bottom line. Multi-image Shopping ads give retailers more creative flexibility and shoppers more context at a glance β a shift that could improve ad performance and reshape how products compete in search results.
A new applied learning path from Microsoft Advertising is designed to help marketers get more value from Performance Max campaigns through hands-on, scenario-based training β not just theory.
Whatβs happening. The new Performance Max learning path bundles three progressive courses that focus on real-world setup, optimization and troubleshooting. The structure is meant to let advertisers learn at their own pace while building practical skills they can immediately apply to live campaigns.
Each course targets a different stage of expertise, from beginner fundamentals to advanced strategy and credentialing.
Whatβs included:
Course 1: Foundations
Course 2: Hands-on setup
Course 3: Advanced implementation
How it works. The third course introduces embedded support features that let learners access targeted educational resources mid-assessment via a βHelp me understandβ option. Users can review specific concepts in context and return directly to their questions.
The benefit. Learners can spend more time on weak areas while quickly progressing through familiar material.
Credential payoff. Completing the advanced course unlocks the chance to earn a Performance Max badge. The credential signals proficiency in implementing and optimizing PMax campaigns and applying best practices in real-world scenarios.
The badge is digitally shareable and verifiable through Credly, making it easy to display on professional platforms like LinkedIn.
Why we care. This update from Microsoft Advertising makes it faster and easier to build real, job-ready skills for running Performance Max campaigns β not just theoretical knowledge. The applied, scenario-based training helps marketers avoid common setup mistakes, optimize campaigns more confidently, and improve performance in live accounts.
Plus, the shareable credential adds professional credibility, signaling proven expertise to clients and employers.
The bottom line. The new learning path aims to close the gap between training and execution. By combining applied scenarios, embedded support and credentialing, it offers a structured route for advertisers to build confidence β and prove it β in Performance Max campaign management.
Earlier this week, developers RocketWerkz and GRIP Studios announced that the console release for the popular survival game, ICARUS, would be delayed by one month, from its initial February 26, 2026, release date to March 26, 2026. Along with announcing the delay, the studios also confirmed that the team would host a Reddit AMA on r/Survival Gaming, during which DayZ creator Dean Hall (who is also the creator of ICARUS) called on consumers to help "normalize delaying games." The statement doesn't come in the form of an answer from Hall, but rather as a preface before the AMA even kicks [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/dayz-creator-calls-on-consumers-to-help-normalize-delaying-games/
Today, Canadian developer Neojac Entertainment (known for the games Junk Survivor and Athos) announced that its next game, Frontier Legends, will debut this Spring on Early Access. As you could probably guess from the title, it is a Western game, and also an open world title with survival and adventure elements. It casts players as a greenhorn settler fresh off the train, dropped into the rugged and unforgiving American West with nothing but ambition and a will to survive. Players can then become a hunter tracking game through dense wilderness, a trader running goods between settlements, a lawman keeping order [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/frontier-legends-open-world-survival-western-game-launches-early-access-this-spring/
If you needed any reference as to how far behind Apple currently is in the ongoing AI race, look no further than the minuscule AI capabilities that the iPhone maker just rolled out with much fanfare for its Apple Music app, and then compare them with Google's latest model that is now creating entire tracks from scratch. Apple Music now uses AI to create playlists as Google's models are now building entire 30-second song tracks As we noted recently, with the iOS 26.4 update, the Apple Music app will let you create a playlist with a text-based prompt. Basically, you [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/google-just-put-apple-musics-ai-shenanigans-to-shame/
Highguard has become one of the most talked-about games to kick off 2026, but all for the wrong reasons. After its maligned reveal at The Game Awards, despite its launch drawing 97K concurrent players on Steam alone, those players didn't stick around, and it lost the vast majority of its player base almost immediately. It was review-bombed on Steam, and barely two weeks after it had arrived on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, "most" of the team at developer Wildlight Entertainment had been laid off. After one of the laid-off developers took to X (formerly Twitter) to call out [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/ex-highguard-staff-share-concept-art-and-videos-of-unreleased-in-engine-characters/
More mechanically complex than its predecessor, Transport Fever 3 lets players realize their tycoon dreams and build entire industries from the ground up.
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/freight-eningly-good-transport-fever-3-pc-hands-on-preview/
ChatGPT heavily favors the top of content when selecting citations, according to an analysis of 1.2 million AI answers and 18,012 verified citations by Kevin Indig, Growth Advisor.
Why we care. Traditional search rewarded depth and delayed payoff. AI favors immediate classification β clear entities and direct answers up front. If your substance isnβt surfaced early, itβs less likely to appear in AI answers.
By the numbers. Indigβs team found a consistent βski rampβ citation pattern that held across randomized validation batches. He called the results statistically indisputable:
At the paragraph level, AI reads more deeply:
The big takeaway. Front-load key insights at the article level. Within paragraphs, prioritize clarity and information density over forced first sentences.
Why this happens. Large language models are trained on journalism and academic writing that follow a βbottom line up frontβ structure. The model appears to weight early framing more heavily, then interpret the rest through that lens.
What gets cited. Indig identified five traits of highly cited content:
About the data. Indig analyzed 3 million ChatGPT responses and 30 million citations, isolating 18,012 verified citations to examine where and why AI pulls content. His team used sentence-transformer embeddings to match responses to specific source sentences, then measured their page position and linguistic traits such as definitions, entity density, and sentiment.
Bottom line. Narrative βultimate guideβ writing may underperform in AI retrieval. Structured, briefing-style content performs better.
The report. The science of how AI pays attention
Google Ads has launched a new Results tab inside its Recommendations section that shows advertisers the measured performance impact after they apply bid and budget suggestions.
How it works. After an advertiser applies a bid or budget recommendation, Google analyzes campaign performance one week later and compares it to an estimated baseline of what would have happened without the change. The system then highlights the incremental lift, such as additional conversions generated by raising a budget or adjusting targets.
Where to find it. Impact reporting appears in the Recommendations area of an account. A summary callout shows recent results on the main page, while a dedicated Results tab provides a deeper breakdown grouped by Budget and Target recommendations, with filtering options for each.
Why we care. Advertisers can now see whether Googleβs automated recommendations actually drive incremental results β not just projected gains β helping teams evaluate the business value of platform guidance.
What to expect. Results are reported as a seven-day rolling average measured across a 28-day window after a recommendation is applied. Metrics focus on the campaignβs primary bidding objective β such as conversions, conversion value, or clicks.
Between the lines. The feature adds a layer of accountability to automated recommendations at a time when advertisers are relying more heavily on platform-driven optimization.
Spotted by. Hana KobzovΓ‘ founder of PPCNewsFeed who shared a screenshot of the help doc on LinkedIn.
Help doc. Even though there isnβt a live Google help doc, a Google spokesperson has confirmed that thereβs an early pilot running.
Nvidia plans to βsurprise the worldβ at GTC 2026 Next month, Nvidia will host its annual GTC (GPU Technology Conference).Β According to Korean media (as reported byΒ WCCFTECH), Nvidiaβs CEO, Jensen Huang, said the company plans to announce a chip that will βsurprise the worldβ at the event. Unfortunately, Huang did not provide any details about the [β¦]
The post Jensen Huang claims that Nvidia will βsurprise the worldβ with a new chip at GTC 2026 appeared first on OC3D.
Publisher Nacon and developer Big Bad Wolf have debuted a new gameplay trailer for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, just ahead of when players will get a chance to try out the game themselves when a demo is released as part of Steam Next Fest on February 23, 2026. The trailer digs into one of the game's core mechanics, investigations, as the player character Noah investigates an underwater mining station that, at least at first glance, seems to be abandoned. The trailer showcases the dark corridors of the mining station and shows Noah exploring the hallways, scanning and analyzing clues, before [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/cthulhu-the-cosmic-abyss-gameplay-trailer-ahead-of-steam-next-fest-demo/
NVIDIA has sold off its 'last bits' of stake in ARM this week, coming a long way from actually acquiring the company a few years ago. NVIDIA's x86 Deal With Intel Is an 'Indirect Indication' That ARM Alone Cannot Handle the Agentic AI Buildup NVIDIA's partnership with ARM has been pivotal in the modern-day AI buildout, as the company's CPU architecture has enabled it to deliver impressive offerings under the Grace Hopper and Blackwell lineups. More importantly, ARM will also play an essential role in NVIDIA's upcoming Vera CPUs, as the importance of such processing units has been rising significantly. [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-closes-the-arm-chapter-by-selling-its-remaining-stake/
The near-constant dribble of leaks over the past few weeks left little to the imagination when it comes to the Pixel 10a. And now, Google has finally launched its latest Pixel-branded budget smartphone, bringing to the proverbial table a relatively hefty battery, albeit housed within the now-archaic form factor, but embellished with a number of handy AI features. Behold Google's Pixel 10a Physical features The Pixel 10a features a "perfectly flat" plastic back, where the camera module sits flush with the rear plane. It also has a Corning Gorilla Glass 7i cover glass, with a 6.3-inch FHD+ AMOLED "Actua" screen [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/google-pixel-10a-goes-live-with-the-same-archaic-form-factor-tensor-g4-chip-and-hefty-discounts/
An ad for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been banned in the UK after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) deemed that it was "irresponsible and offensive" for centring around humour that was "generated by the humiliation and the implied threat of painful, non-consensual penetration" of a man in the ad. Spotted by the BBC, the ad in question is part of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's 'Replacers' ad campaign, which featured Hollywood actors like Terry Crews, Nikki Glaser, and Peter Stromare. While there are several 'Replacers' ads, the one that got banned depicts Glaser and Stromare's characters [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/irresponsible-and-offensive-call-of-duty-black-ops-7-ad-banned-in-uk-for-joking-about-sexual-violence/
The semiconductor business belonging to Samsung is experiencing a comeback wave, with the major contributor to this segment being increased RAM and NAND flash prices because of the ongoing shortage, which the Korean giant has capitalized on. However, the company isnβt stopping here because it has set lofty goals towards accumulating a healthy margin for the year, with estimates projecting that an operating profit of $69 billionΒ or a 121 percent annual increase will be attained in 2026. To reach this figure, a new report states that Samsung will make adjustments to its strategies and production lines for its semiconductor division [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/samsung-semiconductor-business-aiming-for-50-percent-profit-margin/
The latest Windows 11 Release Preview build shows what to expect in the next feature drop, and it will mostly include taskbar updates. Windows 11's New Taskbar Improvements Bring a Built-in Speed Test and Other Enhancements Microsoft has rolled out its latest Windows 11 builds 26100.7918 and 26200.7918 to the Release Preview Channel, which has confirmed various refinements in the OS. As per the blog post, Microsoft is testing a new wave of updates for the Windows 11 taskbar as well as for the core experience in general in the Release Preview Channel. One of the most convenient and useful [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/microsoft-adds-built-in-internet-speed-test-for-windows-11-taskbar-in-latest-preview-build/
Although soaring RAM prices haven't yet had a widespread impact on the prices of current-generation consoles, it's highly probable that console manufacturers will eventually be forced to raise hardware prices. However, Sony has plans in place to minimize the effects of these high component costs, though it's definitely not good news for all current PlayStation 5 owners. As reported by Automaton, during Sony's latest earnings call, CFO Lin Tao addressed the current situation, stating that the company has secured the memory needed for the end-of-the-year sales season in the next fiscal year. However, the company plans to "minimize" the impact [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/playstation-5-price-increases-monetizing-install-base/
Lyria 3 is now available in the Gemini app. Create custom, high-quality 30-second tracks from text and images.Learn more about Googleβs new Pixel 10a, its latest A-series Pixel phone.We need to have a talk about KPIs and AI search.
Iβve observed numerous SEO professionals on LinkedIn and at conferences talking about βranking No. 1 on ChatGPTβ as if itβs the equivalent of a No. 1 ranking on Google:
On Google, being the first result is often a golden ticket.
Going from No. 2 to No. 1 in Google search will often result in 100%-300% increases in traffic and conversions.
This is almost certainly not the case with AI responses β even if they werenβt constantly changing.
Our teamβs research shows AI users consider an average of 3.7 businesses before deciding who to contact.
Being the first result in that list on ChatGPT isnβt the golden ticket it is in Google search.
This being the case, the focus of AI search really should be on βinclusion in the consideration setβ β not necessarily being βthe first mentioned in that setβ β as well as crafting what AI is saying about us.
Over the past several months, my team has spent more than 100 hours observing people use ChatGPT and Googleβs AI Mode to find services.
One thing came into focus within the first dozen or so sessions: User behavior on AI platforms differs from Google search in ways that extend far beyond using βnatural languageβ and having conversations versus performing keyword searches.
Which is overstated, by the way. About 75% of the sessions we observed included βkeyword searches.β
One key difference: Users consider more businesses in AI responses than in organic search.
It makes sense β itβs much easier to compare multiple options in a chat window than to click through three to five search results and visit each site.
Dig deeper: From searching to delegating: Adapting to AI-first search behavior
In both Google AI Mode and ChatGPT, users considered an average of 3.7 businesses from the results.
This has strong implications for the No. 1 result β as well as No. 4.
The value of appearing first drops sharply β and the value of appearing lower rises β when, in 75% of sessions, users also consider businesses in Positions 2 to 8.
Whatβs driving conversions isnβt your position in that list.
First of all, these arenβt rankings.
They are a list of recommendations that will likely get shuffled, reformatted from a list to a table, and completely changed, given the probabilistic nature of AI.
That aside, AI chat makes it much easier to scan and consider more options than Google search does.
Letβs look at the Google search results for βfractional CMO.β
If a user wants to evaluate multiple fractional CMO options for their startup, itβs more work to do so in Google Search than in ChatGPT.
Only two options appear above the fold, and each requires a click-through to read their website content.
Contrast this with the experience on ChatGPT.
The model gave them eight options, along with information about each one.
Itβs easy to read all eight blurbs and decide whom to explore further.
Which leads to the other thing we really need to focus on: what the model is saying about you.
Many search marketers focus on rankings and traffic, but rarely on messaging and positioning.
This needs to change.
In the case of the response for an ophthalmologist in southern New Jersey, you get an easily scannable list:
Roughly 60% make their entire decision based on the response, without visiting the website or switching to Google, according to our study.
So how do you drive conversion?
Deliver the right message β and make sure the model shares it.
Dr. Lanciano may be the best glaucoma specialist in the area. But if the model highlights Ravi D. Goel and Bannett Eye Centers for glaucoma care, and thatβs what the user needs, theyβll go there.
Bannett Eye Centers appears last in the AI response but may still win the conversion because of what the model says about it β something that rarely happens in Google Search.
Visibility doesnβt pay the bills. Conversions do. And conversions donβt happen when customers think someone else is a better fit.
Dig deeper: How to measure your AI search brand visibility and prove business impact
Weβre still thinking about AI search the way weβve thought about SEO.
In SEO, the top result captures most of the traffic. In AI search, it doesnβt.
AI users consider more available options.
Responses β and their format β change dramatically with each request.
βWinningβ in AI search means getting into the consideration set and being presented compellingly.
Itβs not about being first on a list, especially if whatβs said about you misses the mark.
In other words, SEOs who think like copywriters and salespeople will drive outcomes for their organizations.
Dig deeper: Is SEO a brand channel or a performance channel? Now itβs both
AMD engineer calls βBSβ on Instinct MI455X delay reports A report from SemiAnalysis has stated that βmanufacturing delaysβ are impacting the βmass production rampβ of AMDβs Instinct MI455X. It is claimed that AMD will only be able to deliver βengineering samples and low volume productionβ for its first rack-scale MI455X UALoE72 systems in Q2 2026. [β¦]
The post βBSβ β AMD engineer refutes claims of Instinct MI455X delays appeared first on OC3D.
Windows 11 Release Preview gains Internet Speed Test and more Microsoft has released a new Windows 11 Insider build that adds several new features and upgrades to the OS. For starters, this new version of Windows 11 will add an internet speed test to the OSβ taskbar, allowing users to test their internet connection on [β¦]
The post Microsoft preps Internet Speed Test for full Windows release appeared first on OC3D.
REPLACED, the 2.5D platformer from Sad Cat Studios that we've been waiting for since 2021 has been delayed once again, though it seems like this delay will be its last one ahead of its release. Now, instead of arriving on its previously set March 12, 2026, date, it'll hit PC and Xbox Series X/S on April 14, 2026. Earlier this month, ahead of the upcoming demo-fest of the year's first Steam Next Fest, Sad Cat Studios put out a demo for REPLACED (which you can still go play now), and according to the studio's statement, part of this delay is [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/replaced-delayed-a-few-more-weeks-sad-cat-studios-cyberpunk-platformer/
The reveal of Star Wars: Galactic Racer at The Game Awards 2025 was a nice surprise for all those gamers who were dearly missing a Star Wars racing game. The last one to be released was Star Wars: Racer Revenge, launched in February 2002 for the PlayStation 2 console. It's been an age, at least as far as gaming goes. Earlier this month, the developers at Fuse Games even confirmed that podracing would indeed be featured in the game, alongside other vehicle types. Then, last week, a new promising gameplay trailer was shared during the State of Play broadcast. Now, [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/star-wars-galactic-racer-dev-connects-season-pass-to-f2p-games/
If there's one thing that should be known about me, it's that I am a Trekkie. You can keep your Obi-Wan, the Solos, and the Skywalkers. I will pick Jean-Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko, and Kathryn Janeway every day of the week. That's what makes Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown such a compelling title to me. Even if I hadn't been sent a copy to review, I would have bought this because, as I've said, Star Trek. Now, with my love of the source material out in the open, I'm going to say that this has the potential to [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/star-trek-voyager-across-the-unknown-review/
Waze is once again teaming up with World of Warcraft, this time bringing a darker presence to your turn-by-turn directions: the Harbinger of the Void, Xalβatath.After thβ¦Perplexity is abandoning advertising, for now at least. The company believes sponsored placements β even labeled ones β risk undermining the trust on which its AI answer engine depends.
Why we care. If Perplexity remains ad-free, brands lose paid access to a fast-growing audience. The company previously reported that it gets 780 million monthly queries. With sponsored placements gone, brands have no way to get visibility inside Perplexityβs answers other than via organic citations.
What changed. Perplexity was one of the first AI search companies to test ads, placing sponsored answers beneath chatbot responses. It said at the time that ads were clearly labeled and didnβt influence outputs. Executives now say perception matters as much as policy.
Meanwhile. Perplexityβs exit comes as other AI platforms experiment with ads.
Perplexity says subscriptions are its core business. It offers a free tier and paid plans from $20 to $200 per month. It has more than 100 million users and about $200 million in annualized revenue, according to executives.
The report. Perplexity drops advertising as it warns it will hurt trust in AI (subscription required)
Search behavior is no longer just people typing keywords into Google. Itβs people asking questions and, in some cases, outsourcing their thinking to LLMs.
As Google evolves from a traditional search engine into a more question-and-answer machine, businesses need a robust, time-tested way to respond to customer questions.
AI changes how people research and compare options. Tasks that once felt painful and time-consuming are now easy. But thereβs a catch. The machine only knows what it can find about you.
If you want visibility across the widest possible range of questions, you need to understand your customersβ wants, needs, and concerns in depth.
Thatβs where the βthey ask, you answerβ framework comes in. It helps businesses identify and create the many questions and answers prospective customers already have in mind. Always useful, itβs a practical, actionable way forward in the age of AI.
βThey Ask, You Answerβ (TAYA) is a book by Marcus Sheridan. (I strongly recommend you read it.)
The concept is simple: buyers have questions, and businesses should answer them honestly, clearly, and publicly β especially the ones sales teams avoid.
No dodging. No βcontact us for a quote.β No βit dependsβ β sorry, SEO folks.
TAYA isnβt just an inbound marketing strategy. Itβs a practical way to map a customer-facing content strategy with an E-E-A-T mindset.
The framework centers on five core content categories:
These categories align with the moments when a buyer is seeking the best solution, reducing risk, and making a decision.
More of those moments now happen inside AI environments β on your smartphone, your PC, in apps like ChatGPT or Gemini, or anywhere else AI shows up, which at this point is nearly everywhere.
At their core, these are question-and-answer machines. You ask. The machine answers. Thatβs why the TAYA process fits so well.
The modern web is chaotic. Finding what you need can be exhausting β dodging ads, navigating layers of SERP features, and avoiding pop-ups on the site you finally click.
AI is gaining ground because it feels better. Easier. Faster. Cleaner. Less chaos. More order.
You could argue we already have a north star for content creation in E-E-A-T. But have you ever tried to build a content strategy around it? Great in principle, harder in practice.
They ask, you answer puts an E-E-A-T-focused content strategy on rails:
E-E-A-T can be difficult to target because there are many ways to build trust, show experience, and demonstrate authority. TAYA maps those signals across multiple areas within each category, helping you build a comprehensive database of people-first content that AI readily surfaces.Β
Dig deeper: How to build an effective content strategy for 2026
The skills and tools we use as SEOs already put us in a strong position for the AI era. They can help us build an integrated SEO, PPC, and AI strategy.Β
Often, you wonβt go wrong by simply searching for your own products and services. AI tools and search results will surface a wide range of questions, answers, and perspectives that can feed directly into your AI and SEO content strategy.Β
Also consider the internal sources available to you:
All of this helps you understand the question landscape. From there, you can begin organizing those insights within the five TAYA categories.
The framework centers on five core categories, reinterpreted for an answer-driven environment where Google, Gemini, and ChatGPT-like systems anticipate user needs.
For each, hereβs what it is, why it matters now, and examples to get you started.
Buyers want cost clarity early. Businesses avoid it because βit depends.β Both are true, but only one is useful.
AI systems will readily summarize typical costs, using someone elseβs numbers if you donβt publish your own. If you fail to provide a credible range with context, youβre effectively handing the narrative to competitors, directories, or a generic blog with a stock photo handshake.
How to do it
Content examples
One of the most cited examples in the TAYA world is Yale Appliance. The company embraced transparent, buyer-focused content and saw inbound become its largest sales channel, alongside significant reported growth.
The takeaway isnβt βgo sell fridges.β Itβs to answer money questions more clearly and honestly than anyone else. Do that, and you build trust at scale.
This category focuses on being honest about drawbacks, limitations, risks, and who a product or service isnβt for. You have to think beyond pure SEO or GEO.Β
A core communication strategy is taking a perceived weakness, such as being a small business, and reframing it as a strength, like a more personalized approach.
Own the areas that could be seen as problems. Present them clearly and constructively so customers understand the trade-offs and context.
The answer layer aims to provide balanced guidance. Pages that focus only on benefits read like marketing. Pages that acknowledge trade-offs read like advice.
People can spot spin quickly. Be direct. Own your limitations. When you do, credibility increases.
How to do it
Content examples
This is where your βexperienceβ in E-E-A-T becomes tangible. βWeβve seen this go wrong when β¦β carries far more weight than βweβre passionate about excellence.β
People rely on comparisons to reduce cognitive load. They want clarity. Whatβs the difference?
Comparison queries are ideal for answer engines because they lend themselves to structured summaries, tables, and recommendations. If you donβt publish the clearest comparison, you wonβt be the source used to generate the clearest answer.
How to do it
Content examples
SEO bonus: These pieces tend to earn links because theyβre genuinely useful and because many competitors hesitate to name alternatives directly.
Dig deeper: Chunk, cite, clarify, build: A content framework for AI search
This isnβt about asking for a five-star review. Itβs about creating review-style content that helps buyers evaluate their options.
AI summaries often rely on review-style pages because theyβre structured around evaluation. But generic affiliate reviews can be, at best, inconsistent in sincerity. Your advantage is first-hand experience and contextual truth.
How to do it
Content examples
If you want to be cited in AI answers, you have to sound like a source, not an ad.
Sheridanβs view, and itβs a bold one, is that you should sometimes publish βbest in classβ recommendations even when the best option isnβt you. Thatβs how trust is built.
The answer layer rewards utility. If your page genuinely helps users choose well, it becomes the kind of resource systems are more likely to reference.
How to do it
Content examples
The goal is for your brand to become a trusted educator, not just a vendor.
Strategic content marketing in the age of AI centers on middle-of-the-funnel content, where AI helps prospects make informed decisions. The content you publish and organize on your website remains the foundation, and SEO remains the backbone of AI visibility.Β
When leveraged effectively, TAYA is a powerful way to map what you should be addressing and to build a content strategy that ensures youβre represented across the AI landscape.
In practice, that means building an editorial program where:
This shift also changes how success is measured.
In classic SEO, the win was rank, click, convert.
In the AI era, the win is often be the source, earn trust, be chosen, with or without the click.
If your content is the clearest, most in-depth, most honest, and most experience-backed explanation available for the questions buyers are already asking, then whether someone discovers it through Google, Gemini, ChatGPT, or elsewhere, youβve built something durable.
Which is what strong SEO has always been about. The window has changed. The principles havenβt.
Dig deeper: Mentions, citations, and clicks: Your 2026 content strategy
With more than two decades in SEO, Iβve lived through every major disruption the industry has faced β from stuffing meta keywords to rank on AltaVista to Google reshaping search, to mobile-first indexing, and now AI.
What feels different today is the speed of change and the emotional weight it carries. I see growing pressure across teams, even among seasoned professionals who have weathered every major shift before this one.
Many have a legitimate concern: If AI can do this faster, where do I fit in? Thatβs not a technical question. Itβs a human one.
That uncertainty affects morale and adoption. Productivity slows. Experimentation stalls. Teams either overuse AI without judgment or avoid it altogether.
The real leadership challenge is about building confidence, capability, and trust in AI-assisted teams.
Building real confidence in AI within an SEO team isnβt about deploying new tools. Itβs about shifting the culture.
The most effective SEO teams arenβt the ones adopting the most tools. They use AI intentionally and with discipline. They automate data pulls, summarize research, and cluster keywords. This allows teams to focus on strategy, storytelling, and stakeholder alignment.
Technology adoption is largely cultural, as Harvard Business School has noted. Tools alone donβt drive change. Trust does. That insight applies directly to SEO teams navigating AI today.
Below are four strategies for building AI confidence in your teams through clarity, participation, and shared ownership, not pressure or hype.
A practical way to strengthen trust is to move from top-down implementation to shared ownership. People trust what they help create.
When AI is imposed on a team, resistance increases. Inviting people into evaluation and workflow design makes AI feel less intimidating and more empowering. Bringing teams in early also surfaces real-world insight into where AI reduces friction or introduces new risks.
Effective leaders:
When teams feel included, theyβre more willing to experiment. They learn and stretch into new capabilities. That openness fuels growth and innovation.
Dig deeper: Why SEO teams need to ask βshould we use AI?β not just βcan we?β
AI capability varies widely across SEO teams. Some practitioners experiment daily. Others feel overwhelmed or skeptical, often because theyβve seen past automation trends come and go.
Leaders who strengthen confidence understand that capability develops at different speeds. They create environments that encourage curiosity, where uncertainty is normal, and learning happens continuously, not just when itβs mandated.
That means:
Recognizing different starting points makes progress feel achievable rather than threatening.
Confidence grows through visible success.
When someone uses AI to cut a task from hours to minutes, itβs more than a productivity gain. It proves AI can support real work without replacing human judgment.
Effective teams:
My agency formed AI focus groups with members from across the organization. One group focused on integrating AI into project management, with representatives from SEO, operations, and leadership.
That shared ownership made adoption more successful. Teams werenβt just implementing AI; they were shaping how it fit into real workflows. The result was stronger buy-in, better collaboration, and greater confidence across the team.
Each group shared its successes and lessons. This built awareness of what worked and why. Momentum builds when teams see their peers using AI responsibly and effectively.
Dig deeper: The future of SEO teams is human-led and agent-powered
Fear of replacement is real. Ignoring it doesnβt make it disappear. Teams need explicit clarity about where human expertise still matters.
Reframing AI as a partner means emphasizing:
AI can help with execution, but it canβt replace strategic instincts, contextual judgment, or cross-functional leadership. Those are the skills that ultimately move performance forward.
AI has lowered the barrier to entry for many SEO tasks. With effective prompts, almost anyone can generate keyword lists, outlines, or summaries. With that accessibility, we see many short-lived tactics and recycled βquick wins.βΒ
Anyone whoβs been in SEO long enough has seen this cycle before. The tactics change. The fundamentals donβt. This is where experience becomes the differentiator.
AI can produce content and analyze data, but it doesnβt own outcomes. It doesnβt carry responsibility for brand reputation, compliance, or long-term performance.
SEO professionals remain accountable for:
AI executes. Humans decide. That distinction matters more than ever.
AI excels at surfacing patterns. It struggles to explain why they matter or whether they apply in a specific context.
Experienced SEOs bring a depth of understanding that AI canβt replicate. Their historical background helps them distinguish true shifts from industry noise.Β
Few industries have seen as many tactics rise and fall as SEO. Experience enables strategic thinking beyond what worked before and helps avoid repeating tactics that once succeeded but later failed.
AI suggests possibilities. Experience evaluates relevance.
In high-visibility search environments, mistakes scale quickly. AI can produce inaccuracies and hallucinations. These errors can put brands at risk of losing trust and facing compliance issues.
Teams with strong professional SEO foundations:
Integrity isnβt automated. Itβs practiced. In a high-speed AI environment, that discipline matters even more.
Dig deeper: How to build and lead a successful remote SEO team
AI is accelerating SEO execution.
As routine tasks become automated, the SEO professionalβs role shifts to strategic oversight. Time once spent on manual analysis can be redirected to interpreting user intent, shaping search strategy, guiding stakeholders, and assessing risk.
This makes fundamentals more important. Teams still need sound judgment, technical expertise, and accountability. AI can support execution, but professionals remain responsible for decisions, quality, and long-term performance.
Developing the next generation of SEOs requires more than proficiency with tools. It requires teaching:
Monster Hunter Wilds now runs much faster on PC thanks to update 1.041 Capcom has released patch 1.041 for Monster Hunter Wilds, delivering long-promised optimisation updates to the game on PC and consoles. This update implements both CPU and GPU optimisations into the game, which means that all gamers should see performance benefits. Specifically, new [β¦]
The post Monster Hunter Wildsβ latest patch packs new CPU/GPU optimisations appeared first on OC3D.
Intel Makoto OhnoIt is also predicted that by 2026, this will exceed half, with one in two computers being an AI PC. However, given the current situation, reasons for choosing an AI PC include its high performance and the long battery life provided by the use of an NPU. In other words, it is important to reflect on the fact that people are not currently purchasing an AI PC in order to use its AI-related functions.
Customermates is a modern AI-native CRM built specifically for businesses that don't want to deal with complex software. It's ready to use in about two minutes, requires no training, and feels intuitive from the first click. Customer data, notes, and interactions live in one clear place, supported by a sleek, distraction-free UI designed for everyday work. It integrates seamlessly with n8n, making it fully automatable and easy to connect with existing tools and workflows. Built in Germany and fully GDPR-compliant, Customermates offers a reliable alternative to enterprise AI CRMs, helping teams stay organized and build better customer relationships without unnecessary overhead.
Over the past year, we heard rumblings of a Chrono Trigger remake possibly being in development, but fans were consistently disappointed when it turned out to be either mistranslations or mere development considerations from Yuji Horii, the creator of the Dragon Quest series, who also served as one of the legendary game's writers. However, according to a known insider, a remake of the classic 16-bit JRPG is indeed in development. Commenting on a ResetERA forums in a thread regarding a recent survey shared by Square Enix's Team Asano - the studio behind the Octopath Traveler series which popularized the HD-2D [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/a-chrono-trigger-remake-is-already-in-development-insider-claims/
NVIDIA's CEO has spoken about what we could see next at the company's GTC 2026 event, hinting that we could see chips that the "world has never seen before". NVIDIA's Next Stage at GTC Could Feature Next-Gen Feynman Chips, Possibly Showcasing Groq's LPU Integration NVIDIA has been at the forefront of the AI technological revolution, mainly through its compute portfolio and its ability to keep up with its product cycles. At CES 2026, we saw Team Green showcase its Vera Rubin AI lineup, revealing it was in full production and included six newly designed chips, including the Vera CPUs and [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-ceo-to-unveil-chips-that-the-world-has-never-seen-before/
With the NZXT H2 ecosystem, users can either build a compact and powerful gaming PC or they can buy the H2 Mini PC with powerful hardware pre-installed. NZXT Debuts H2 Flow and C850 SFX for Compact Builds; H2 Mini PC Launched with Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Core Ultra 9 285K Processor Options Hardware manufacturer NZXT has launched its new lineup of computer hardware that comprises a PC case, a power supply, and a mini PC that utilizes both while delivering current-gen CPU and GPUs. The H2 Flow is its latest Mini ITX case that is designed to keep the footprint [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nzxt-launches-h2-flow-itx-case-c850-sfx-psu-and-amd-intel-h2-mini-pc-with-rtx-5080/
As far as triple-A-ish games go, Highguard might go down in history as one of the games that spent the least time in the spotlight, and even when it did, it was all for the wrong reasons. The game was a complete secret until The Game Awards 2025. The CEO of game developer Wildlight Entertainment, Dusty Welch, would later reveal that their original goal was to shadowdrop the game in late January, much as Respawn's Apex Legends did back in 2019 (on which several members of the team had worked). However, when Geoff Keighley suddenly came to Wildlight with the [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/highguard-website-remains-down-fans-worry-this-is-it/
Konami unveils Metal Gear Solid 4βs PC system requirements Metal Gear Solid 4 is coming to PC on August 27th as part of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2. Until then, Metal Gear Solid 4 will remain exclusive to Sonyβs PlayStation 3 console. On Steam, Konami has released PC system requirements for Metal [β¦]
The post Is your PC ready for Metal Gear Solid 4? appeared first on OC3D.
FindFi is a dedicated hiring platform for the finance industry, spanning DeFi protocols, crypto exchanges, blockchain startups, and traditional financial institutions. We solve a real problem: finance talent is scattered across generic job boards that don't understand the space. FindFi brings employers and candidates together in one focused marketplace with curated listings, talent profiles, and industry-specific search filters. Whether you're a Solidity developer, a compliance officer, or a DeFi analyst, FindFi is where your next opportunity lives.
OmniSocials is an all-in-one social media management platform that lets marketers, creators, and agencies publish to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and X from one dashboard. You can schedule posts, stories, and reels, tailor content for each channel, and track performance with unified analytics.
The social inbox allows you to reply to comments, mentions, and DMs, while you can collaborate with clients using roles and approval workflows. Pricing is a single $10/month per workspace billed annually, with optional $10/month seats for clients or colleagues.
PC gaming has been in a rough spot in the past few years, with too many games launching with technical and optimization issues that are left unresolved. However, there are times when a game's optimization is judged based on a game's Ultra settings, which creates a situation where developersβsuch as the Ys X: Proud Nordics PC, PS5, and Switch 2 version developer PH3's Peter "Durante" Thomanβhave to "protect players from themselves" and balance optimization with future-proofing their games. Speaking in a lengthy interview with RPGFan, the legendary developer, who some may remember for fixing the flawed PC port of the [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/protecting-players-from-themselves-ys-x-proud-nordics-dev-ultra-settings-optimization/
Resident Evil 3 Remake Last Escape is a new large scale mod project that aims to restore content cut by CAPCOM from the original game while also adding several things, including the classic Ink Ribbon save system and new locations. Here's the official overview: This mod is a complete reimagining and expansion of Resident Evil 3 Remake. Iβm restoring cut content and adding entirely new locations, expanding the city, and redesigning core gameplay systems to create a darker, more survival-focused experience inspired by the original game. Features: The YouTube channel includes several demonstration videos of Resident Evil 3 Remake Last [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/resident-evil-3-remake-last-escape-mod-restore-cut-content-add-things/
Apple has announced that it will host a product launch on March 4, which can potentially be the date for its M5 Pro and M5 Max that will be found in updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. One of the chipsetsβ biggest highlights is that both SoCs will switch to TSMCβs 2.5D chiplet design as Apple moves away from InFO technologyΒ (Integrated Fan-Out). This transition helps to improve heat dissipation and reduce defective chip rates, but thereβs one obstacle that the technology giant has been unable to scale for two generations, and that is raising the total number of CPU [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-m5-pro-and-m5-max-feature-more-cpu-gpu-cores-thanks-to-chiplet-design/
An overview of Googleβs new global partnerships and funding announcements at the AI Impact Summit in India.AI isnβt just helping people solve problems faster, itβs unlocking new possibilities for discovery and scalability. To support organizations at the forefront of scientifβ¦Government AI adoption isn't just a technical upgrade, it's a way to solve real world challenges and drive societal impact for communities. Yet new data reveals that whiβ¦A look at the partnerships and investments Google announced at the AI Impact Summit 2026.
Nvidia announces new multiyear deal with Meta for AI hardware deployments NVIDIA has confirmed that it has entered a βmultigenerational strategic partnershipβ with Meta that spans its on-premises, cloud, and AI infrastructure rollout. This includes Nvidiaβs first-ever large-scale deployment of its Grace-only CPU and a collaboration on next-generation Vera CPU deployments. This deal should also [β¦]
The post Nvidia expands multi-year AI deal with Meta with CPU, GPU and networking deployments appeared first on OC3D.
With DDR5 prices quadrupling as AI demand drains supply, we tested CXMT Chinese RAM to see how it stacks up against premium and budget kits in gaming.
We have the first Ryzen 7 9850X3D failure report from Reddit, and this one failed in less than three weeks. Redditor Says Ryzen 7 9800X3D Became Unstable on ASUS X870 Motherboard; Returns it and Buys Ryzen 7 9850X3D, Which Failed As Well It has been less than three weeks since AMD launched its fastest gaming processor yet. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which launched at the end of last month, quickly gained a lot of attention as it dethroned the Ryzen 7 9800X3D through higher clocks. However, being identical to 9800X3D in almost every area, it's as prone to failures as [β¦]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/user-reports-ryzen-7-9800x3d-and-9850x3d-failures-within-a-few-weeks-first-9850x3d-failure-case/
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