Promotional performance in the app was significantly more effective than for traditional linear television advertising, according to new data from the company.
ToolsFree.ai offers a collection of free online calculators, converters, and utility tools across finance, health, web development, unit conversion, text, and math. Use it without signup or limits on any device; every tool runs in your browser, so your data stays on your device. Explore mortgage and loan calculators, BMI and calorie calculators, QR and password generators, JSON formatting, and more, while following updates as new tools launch.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has revealed that the next-generation Xbox is codenamed Project Helix and says it will βlead in performance,β with rumors pointing to a powerful new console arriving in 2027.
All the ways to watch Australian Grand Prix 2026 live streams online and from anywhere, as F1's new season introduces the biggest regulation shake-up in years.
The Oukitel RG14-P combines rugged durability, solar charging, hot swappable batteries, and integrated lighting for demanding industrial field environments.
The $7 million in annual recurring revenue that Cluely CEO Roy Lee shared last summer was a lie, its founder and CEO Roy Lee admitted on Thursday on X.
The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is now teaching a lesson to those willing to learn: a masterclass in how to debut new tech, replete with genuine innovation rather than gimmicks and outright falsehood Γ la what Samsung just did at its Galaxy Unpacked event for the new S26 series. Samsung's disastrous Galaxy Unpacked event: Pre-leaks and falsehoods For the benefit of those who might not be aware, Samsung experienced a particularly egregious bout of channel leaks in the run up to its Galaxy Unpacked event, one that saw an unreleased Galaxy S26 Ultra fall into the hands of a tech [β¦]
The record-breaking Q1 2026 quarter saw Apple bring in a mammoth $143.756 billion, but this impressive figure was also accompanied by a statement made by CEO Tim Cook, hinting at which silicon would be found in the newly announced MacBook Neo. The A18 Pro found in the latter is still an insanely powerful chip, but the A19 Pro is on another level, and had it not been for the supply situation, weβd be getting a different set of specifications for the latest low-cost portable Mac. Supply constraints from TSMCβs end meant that Apple couldnβt secure sufficient A19 Pro shipments to [β¦]
The Trump administration is exploring options to address AI chip exports, and initial reports suggest the proposed regulations are far more aggressive than the industry anticipated. The US Is Planning New AI Chip Export Regulations, By Looking at Compute Power Being Shipped Out The debate around AI chip exports has emerged several times since chip manufacturers like NVIDIA and AMD achieved significant compute breakthroughs. This matter was also under intense focus by the Biden administration, which introduced the "AI Diffusion" act that addresses AI chip exports by categorizing countries into different levels, each with its own caveats. The Diffusion Act [β¦]
Gentlemen, we meet yet again. It's only been a week since the last time I wrote an article about Optiscaler, but development on the mod is happening at such a rapid pace that I once again have some updates to share with you. This time, it's AMD's Ray Regeneration that's getting the Optiscaler treatment. Thanks to the work done by DarkHelmet, you can now swap Nvidia's Ray Reconstruction for AMD's legally distinct Ray Regeneration denoiser. This is huge news, since currently there's a grand total of two titles with support for Ray Regen, and one of them isn't out till [β¦]
Expect to hear more about Microsoftβs βnext generationβ Xbox at GDC 2026 Microsoftβs Asha Sharma, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming (Xbox), has unveiled Project Helix. Helix is the codename for Microsoftβs next-generation Xbox console, and Microsoft plans to discuss the system in depth at GDC 2026. Project Helix will be able to play βXbox and [β¦]
Diablo 4 developers reveal the mechanical and thematic DNA of the upcoming Warlock class. Launching on April 28 with the Lord of Hatred expansion, we got to try it for the first time.
An issue with ARC Raiders' Discord integration led to the game recording private DM messages between players in "serious privacy and security violations."
March is in full bloom, and that means a fresh wave of games heading to the cloud. 15 new titles are joining the GeForce NOW library this month. Leading the March lineup is Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert, an openβworld actionβadventure set in a warβtorn fantasy land, alongside plenty of other games to explore. Whether looking to shake off the winter blues or jump into some bracketβworthy gaming action, there's something for everyone in the cloud. March into the cloud and see what's new - and keep an eye on GFN Thursdays all month for more updates. This week kicks off the month with eight new games.
March Gaming Madness
LORT dials chaos up to 11 and snaps the knob clean off. Big Distraction's offβtheβrails adventure hurls players into a world where every corner hides a bad idea waiting to become a great story, powered by wild weapons, weirder characters and "Did that just happen?" moments. Catch every glorious disaster in full fidelity and play it on GeForce NOW, available this week.
Many associate the NAND crisis with higher priced memory sticks for desktops or laptops, more expensive consumer electronics like Raspberry Pi hobby boards, and smartphones with less RAM than we are accustomed to. Companies like Nintendo also have to be cognizant of how the shortage will affect software sales.
On the surface, the change might look like semantics. But it reflects a broader evolution inside Apple Silicon that moves beyond the traditional mobile-processor model where "big" cores handle demanding work and "little" cores handle background tasks for efficiency's sake. By renaming its cores (in pure Apple's marketing style), the...
Track My Visibility monitors how your brand appears in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. It runs prompts at scale, measures mentions, citations, position, and sentiment, and shows which pages drive visibility. You can compare against competitors, audit query coverage, and view URL-level citation paths. A dashboard displays model-wise coverage, share of voice, and AI-ready scores, while actionable recommendations help you address gaps and increase AI citations.
BYD reveals details about its second-generation Blade Battery for electric vehicles, which promises more range, ultra-fast charging speeds and improved longevity
pureLiFi introduces 10Gbps LiFi for indoor networks with plug-and-play installation, but faces practical limitations caused by the inherent line-of-sight requirement.
If you're looking to upgrade to the stylish Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, it's now reduced by $130 at Amazon, bringing it down to the best price since Black Friday.
With the updated Fire TV app, users can browse and discover content directly from their phone, manage their watchlist on the go, and play titles on their TV from the mobile app.
Italian authorities are making progress in their investigation into a wide-ranging spyware scandal in Italy involving Paragon spyware. But the mystery of who hacked two Italian journalists with Paragon spyware continues.
The Department of Defense has officially labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk, making the AI firm the first American company with the label. Meanwhile, the DOD continues to use Anthropic's AI in Iran.
Asha Sharma, the recently installed chief executive officer of Microsoft Gaming and the new head of Xbox following Phil Spencer's retirement, has just teased the next-generation Xbox console in a post on her personal X (formerly Twitter) account, which we now know is codenamed Project Helix. Sharma shared the codename and what appears to be a new look for the Xbox logo, while also teasing that this new console will "lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games," confirming reports that the next generation of consoles from Xbox will bea hybrid between a PC and console, capable of [β¦]
The launch of the 13-inch and 15-inch M5 MacBook AirΒ is excellent news for those wanting a jaw-dropping deal on a portable Mac because Appleβs older-generation M4 MacBook Air has dropped by $300 on Amazon. Of course, it should be mentioned that the extensive price cuts have been observed on a few 15-inch models, but thatβs still an attractive deal because we donβt remember the last time that such discounts were introduced. Unfortunately, the stock is slowly dwindling, and if you donβt act fast, youβll be out of luck and a cheaper M4 MacBook Air. If a chipset upgrade and base [β¦]
Over the past few months, Iβve been shopping around for a first home, and one of the requisites was to have a dedicated office space. Fast forward to November 1st of this year, and my wife and I signed the final documents to get the keys to our new home. Autonomous actually reached out to us much earlier in the year and sent samples of both their Desk 5 Pro and ErgoChair Ultra (in black and white to match the Wccftech logo), but remained sealed in a box until I finally had the space to install a brand new desk. [β¦]
Embark Studios' latest update for ARC Raiders isn't your bog-standard fixes or new content release. Instead, it's an update that the team rushed out the door this morning after a report from tech blogger and systems engineer Timothy Meadows pointed to an incident where two ARC Raiders players' private Discord DMs (direct messages) appeared in a game log file. Per Meadows report, the game's Discord SDK captured private messages between two users and a Discord Bearer token. It was a massive over-extension of the data that Embark collects through ARC Raiders' Discord SDK, an issue that is thankfully now fixed [β¦]
The Trump administration is working on sweeping export regulations over AI hardware that will make large AI clusters a topic of intergovernmental talks.
Google AI Max drives revenue but at a higher cost, according to Smarter Ecommerceβs Mike Ryan, who analyzed 250+ campaigns. Outcomes vary, and much more testing is still needed.
Why we care. AI Max isnβt a minor update. Itβs Googleβs most significant reimagining of Search campaigns in years, shifting away from keyword syntax toward pure intent matching. For you, thatβs both an opportunity (possible growth) and a risk (an efficiency tradeoff).
By the numbers. The result of the analysis:
Median revenue: +13%
Median CPA: +16%
ROAS range: +42% to -35%
Advertisers who activate AI Max typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS, rising to 27% for campaigns still relying on exact and phrase match keywords, Google says.
Turning on AI Max is essentially a coin toss: you may see a lift, but efficiency likely wonβt follow, Ryan concluded
What AI Max actually is. Rather than forcing Search campaigns into Performance Max, Google went the other direction β bringing PMax-style automation into classic Search. The result is three core features:
Search Term Matching (broad match expansion plus keywordless targeting),
Text Customization (dynamic ad copy), and
Final URL Expansion (automated landing page selection).
Four pitfalls Smarter Ecommerce identified:
Broad match cannibalization: Up to 63% of the time, recycling existing coverage rather than finding new queries.
Competitor hijacking: In one account, AI Max scaled so aggressively into competitor brand terms that it consumed 69% of total Search impressions.
Reporting overload: Search term and ad combination reports can run to tens of thousands of rows, making manual auditing nearly impossible without automation.
Search Partner Network blowouts: One campaign saw half a million monthly impressions land on SPN at a 0.07% conversion rate, versus 3.04% on standard Google Search.
Between the lines. Googleβs 14% uplift stat conspicuously excludes retail β an omission Ryan flags as significant for ecommerce advertisers. Thereβs also a deeper irony: youβre most likely to adopt AI Max if youβre already running Broad Match, DSA, and PMax β yet Google says those accounts will see the lowest incremental benefit.
Whatβs next. In a conversation with Ryan, Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed that Google plans to deprecate Dynamic Search Ads and migrate the technology into AI Max for Search. No firm timeline was given, though past Google deprecations often run about a year from announcement.
Ryan recommends activating AI Maxβs keywordless features in your existing Search campaigns now and beginning to wind down DSA β not migrating it to PMax.
Ryanβs verdict is cautious optimism. About 16% of advertisers are testing AI Max, and few have gone all in. Start small, audit aggressively, and donβt let FOMO around AI Overviews drive your decision.
Appleβs $599 MacBook Neo just landed, but Windows deals are in a post-holiday "dead period." Iβm looking at why the best rivals just got $200 more expensive.
Over a decade ago, the BC1 Open Benchtable launched with one clear goal: the ultimate portable platform for traveling overclocking enthusiasts. Its minimalist, toolless, flat pack design proved so effective that it quickly became the benchmark for open air builds, evolving from road warrior to permanent showcase platform for hobbyists and professionals alike.
Portability demanded compromises: slim profile, simple brackets, no native support for complete vertical builds. Today we close those gaps with precision engineered accessories that extend the BC1's legendary versatility without changing its core DNA.
Keychron recently announced the new Q HE 8K gaming keyboard line-up, starting with the Q1 HE, Q3 HE, and Q6 HE, all of which feature Keychron's Ultra-Fast Magnetic Lime switches and full metal construction. Keychron has now also added the Q5 HE 8K to the list, for those who want a slightly more compact layout but don't want to sacrifice the num pad in the process. The Q5 HE 8K is available on the Keychron web store in black and white colorways for $239.99. It will likely also launch on Amazon at a later date, but it is not yet available there.
Everything about the Q5 HE 8K is just about identical to the other keyboards in the series, with the exception of the layout, from the polyurethane foam gasket mount to the aluminium plate and OSA profile double-shot PBT keycaps. The main draw over the Q5 HE 8K is that it condenses much of the same functionality as the full-size Q6 HE 8K into a small footprintβ408 mm long vs 446 mm on the Q6 HE 8Kβwhile only losing five keys and not compromising with a small zero key on the num pad. Unlike most 1800 layout keyboards, the Q5 HE 8K also has a programmable knob and a row of macro keys above the num pad. Like its brethren, the Q5 HE 8K is a wired-only keyboard, which has the side effect of bringing the front height down to 20.6 mm, and it has the same analog input features and 8 kHz polling rate as the other keyboards in the 8K series. The keyboard is also remappable and configurable in the Keychron Launcher web app, and it features all the usual analog keyboard trappings, like SOCD, DKS, Rapid Trigger, and controller emulation. It also has on-board macros with macro recording or manual programming functionality in Launcher, and it features Keychron's usual hardware OS selector switch alongside a hardware profile selector switch near the USB-C port.
imec, a global leader in nano-electronics and digital innovation, and Atlas Data Storage, a pioneer of production-scale DNA data storage, today announce a new strategic partnership to accelerate the development of digital data storage using synthetic DNA. The collaboration combines Atlas' ASIC design expertise and scalable DNA synthesis technology with imec's deep expertise in advanced chip development, fabrication, and integration. In addition to prototyping and strategic support, imec is investing in Atlas.
As data creation and storage accelerates in the AI age, magnetic media such as tape and hard disk drives face unavoidable limits in density, sustainability, cost, and long-term reliability. DNA data storage compresses vast datasets into tiny volumes while ensuring ultra-long durability with minimal energy and maintenance.
We reported that Apple's M5 Pro/Max series of SoCs is now incorporating an additional core tier alongside the usual configuration we have been seeing in the company's processors for years. The performance core has been renamed "Super Core," and Apple has introduced a middle-tier design called Performance Core, which is actually a new "M-Core," while the Efficiency Core remains the same. As the regular big P-Core has been renamed to Super-Core, Apple is updating its nomenclature even for the regular M5 SoC with the macOS Tahoe 26.3.1 update. In this update, Apple has renamed the bigger Performance core to Super-Core, meaning that the M5 SoC now has four super cores and six efficiency cores, whereas this was previously called a four performance-core and six efficiency-core design before the update.
This M5 SoC has no new "M-Cores" variants that sit between the super core and efficiency core, while the M5 Pro and M5 Max have six Super-Cores and 12 M-Cores. The M-Core is a 7-wide out-of-order execution CPU that has roughly 70% of the P-core performance with slightly lower power usage. Interestingly, the efficiency core is completely absent from the new M5 Pro/Max SoCs, resulting in a combination of performance and middle-class cores. This leaves only the regular M5 with the efficiency cores in its CPU package. This macOS software update is only meant for the M5-powered MacBook Pro, which has been shipping with older macOS versions without the Tahoe's v26.3.1 update. For the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro equipped with M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max SoCs, the operating system will likely already show the new naming out of the box, as Apple likely applied all OS updates before shipping. Below are screenshots courtesy of Andrew Cunningham from Ars Technica, showing the new nomenclature on the left, and old way on the right.
YouTube now hosts over 5 billion videos, with the equivalent of 500 hours of content uploaded every minute. Perhaps that's why YouTube is surpassing both Netflix and TV networks in total watch time. Certainly that's a lot of content to consume, and you won't always have a good (or any)...
According to noted tipster MEGAsizeGPU, the new GeForce RTX 5050 variant will feature three 3GB GDDR7 memory modules operating at 28Gbps, instead of the 20Gbps GDDR6 modules used in the original version. The updated configuration will provide a total of 9GB of VRAM across a 96-bit memory interface, delivering up...
Update (March 5): Major tech companies including Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Oracle, OpenAI, and xAI have now signed a voluntary "ratepayer protection pledge" at the White House, promising to cover the energy costs of their rapidly expanding AI data centers rather than passing those costs on to local electricity customers.
Lightning Assist accelerates your typing with instant text expansion, AI-powered commands, push-to-talk transcription, and smart hotkeys on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can create resources and terminal resources, assign custom hotkeys, and insert code snippets, templates, or commands in any app. Use AI Enhance to polish text and AI Speech to dictate in real time, all backed by enterprise-grade security. Set it up in minutes and reclaim hours every day.
Fraudsters are impersonating TechCrunch reporters and event leads, and reaching out to companies. Here's what we're doing about it, and what you can look out for.
Luma introduced Luma Agents, powered by its new βUnified Intelligenceβ models, designed to coordinate multiple AI systems and generate end-to-end creative work across text, images, video and audio.
Enterprise software was a major focus of zero-day activity during 2025, with security and networking devices, like firewalls, VPNs, and virtualization platforms among the most targeted by malicious hackers.
Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games' parent company, Take-Two Interactive, is also the owner of 2K, the massive publisher and developer behind several titles, though most notably the annual basketball series, NBA 2K. Today, Rockstar announced that it would be combining the two franchises, with players subscribed to GTA+, which grants special bonuses in-game Grand Theft Auto V, getting access to NBA 2K26 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles for a limited time starting next week. The latest installment in the annualized basketball franchise will be accessible to GTA+ subscribers on March 10, and the full game, on top [β¦]
NVIDIA's ambitions for China are glooming down with each day, as a new report indicates the AI giant is now looking to scale back H200 production in favour of ramping up Vera Rubin production. NVIDIA Plans to Shift H200 Production Towards Vera Rubin, as it Prefers 'Consistency' Over Revenue We have reported extensively on the NVIDIA-China saga in the past as well, and one of the more common trends in these stories is that both NVIDIA and China seem to be running in cycles, trying to catch each other. We'll discuss this aspect further ahead, but for now, according to [β¦]
The TCL 32X3A is a 31.5-inch 4K OLED monitor with dual-mode support enabling 1080p at 480 Hz for esports gaming. It features a "Matrix-Pure" true RGB subpixel layout for better text clarity, along with speakers integrated into its stand. On the other hand, the TCL 27P2A is a 1440p Mini-LED monitor that can boost to 1,040 Hz at likely 720p resolution.
China's most senior semiconductor executives issued a public call this week for a consolidated national effort to build a domestic alternative to Dutch lithography giant ASML.
Has OpenAIβs increasing independence from Microsoft and, by extension, Bing, become an overly dependent relationship with Google?
Our study comparing shopping query fan-outs (QFOs) in ChatGPT from both Google and Bing carousels appears to have provided at least a partial answer to that question. Letβs take a look at how this study was conceived and what we found.
Brief shopping fan-out background and technical explainer
In November 2025, a few researchers in the AI research space, including myself, detected a mysterious field in ChatGPTβs source code: id_to_token_map. But what that field revealed when decoded was even more intriguing.
This field is whatβs called base64 encoded, but when we decoded it, it revealed what looked to be Google Shopping parameters, such as productid, and offerid, but also language/locale parameters. Even more interesting? This field revealed a query used to look up that particular product.Β
To categorically prove this was indeed a Google Shopping link, we would have to be able to reconstruct the shopping URL solely from the extracted parameters.Β
Letβs look at an example of what this looks like using the ChatGPT product carousel for the prompt βbest smartphones under $500.β
If we decode the relevant field, we can recreate the Google Shopping link from the extracted parameters.
The big question was: Would this link correspond to the exact product in the ChatGPT product carousel? So we tried it:
It turns out that, in fact, yes it does!
But this decoding technique alone doesnβt answer any of these important questions:
Is this retrieval process uniform across diverse product categories?
Does ChatGPT select from a certain number of Google product positions?
Does ChatGPT favor higher Google Shopping product positions?
How common is this process at scale?
Was this just a fluke or, given a large enough dataset, could we match these products with any online retailer or even Bing Shopping results?
Using Peec AI data, the following study aimed to robustly prove once and for all that ChatGPT does indeed mainly source from Google Shopping.Β
To do this we analyzed more than 40,000 carousel products and 200,000 organic products from each Google and Bing. By comparing the similarity of the products, we got a very clear picture of what was really happening behind the scenes. Letβs dig into our findings.
Are shopping query fan-outs really that different from normal search query fan-outs?
To answer whether shopping query fan-outs are different from normal search query fan-outs, we analyzed 1.1M shopping query fan-outs from Peec AI data and compared them to the normal search query fan-outs for the same user prompt. We found that they are almost always different:
Shopping QFO unique to user prompt
99.70%
Shopping QFO unique to normal query search fan-out
98.31%
To dive deeper, we explored the average word counts of both of these query fan-out types by calendar week.Β
The chart below clearly shows that normal fan-outs are significantly longer β 12 vs. seven words. That makes sense since search query fan-outs are used to retrieve contextual information. This means they need to be long enough to retrieve web results that are specific to the user prompt. Vector search (or comparing embeddings) works best with more context.Β
Shopping fan-outs, on the other hand, typically target a specific shopping results page and therefore do not need to be as long. It appears the main goal is to retrieve products based on the shopping fan-out. Rather than compare chunks of text, the data in this study supports the hypothesis that ChatGPT relies heavily on Google organic shopping results to populate its carousel.
Further evidence of the distinct nature of the shopping fan-outs surfaces when we look at how many are used per prompt. On average, 2.4 search fan-outs are used per prompt vs. just 1.16 for shopping fan-outs. For reasons similar to above, retrieving more contextual information often requires more search fan-outs vs. simply retrieving products. To populate an eight product carousel in ChatGPT, it seems that, for the most part, one page of Google Shopping results is enough.
How similar are ChatGPT Carousel products to Google Shopping products?
To answer this question in the fairest possible way, we extracted around 5,000 ChatGPT carousels comprising 43,000 products from the Peec AI dataset. Prompts were chosen to be as diverse as possible (see Methodology for the creation process).
We then extracted the organic shopping pages and retrieved the top 40 organic products for both Google and Bing shopping results. Paid ads and sponsored products were excluded from the analysis.Β
We used a three-step matching algorithm (see Methodology for exact details) to attain a similarity score between the ChatGPT product title and the title found in organic shopping results. This is because not only is ChatGPT probabilistic, but so is, to a certain extent, Google Shopping. Product titles can be rewritten with or without certain product features and results are very sensitive to the exact proxy location where the results are retrieved.Β
We counted a product as matching if it reached a threshold of 0.8 or above, effectively, if it was the same brand and product name and exhibited a very high degree of similarity.
The results are summarized in the chart below.
Impressively, across 43,000 highly diverse ChatGPT carousel products, 45.8% were found to have an exact title match in the corresponding Google top 40 organic shopping products for that exact shopping fan-out.Β
For Bing, this exact match rate was just 0.48%.Β
If we simply look at the percentage of strong product matches across all eight ChatGPT carousel positions, over 83% were found in the Google top 40 products, but that number drops to just under 11% for products found on Bing. This is very strong evidence that ChatGPT sources its carousel products from organic Google Shopping results.
We also see a very high number of weak matches in Bing at over 62%. This implies that the top 40 returned products for each shopping fan-out differ significantly across Google and Bing. This makes sense as there are many 1000s of possible combinations of brand and product that can be surfaced in shopping results.Β
Even if Bing found around 11% of ChatGPT carousel products, how many of those products were only found by Bing? Across the 43,000 carousel products Bing only found 70 that were not found in Google Shopping, constituting just 0.16%. This means that in almost every case there was a match in Bing there was also a match in Google.Β
It seems unlikely, then, that ChatGPT is also sourcing products from Bing Shopping in the vast majority of cases.
How does the ChatGPT carousel position affect the match rate?
Here we explore the most common positions (mean and median shown) of Google shopping product positions for each ChatGPT carousel position:
For example, for the first carousel position we can see that the average Google Shopping position is around five. Note that we see a sloping trendline for the carousel positions that correspond to higher Google Shopping positions. This implies that ChatGPT sources top carousel products from higher Google Shopping positions.Β
Plotted another way, we can visualize the cumulative number of strong matches across organic Google Shopping positions. This chart allows us to see that 60% of the strong product matches are found in the top 10 Google shopping results alone.Β
Comparing the top 20 vs. positions 21-40, ChatGPTβs favoritism for higher positions becomes clear, with an overwhelming majority of matches (almost 84%) coming from the top 20:
Finally, we explored whether the prompt being branded vs. non-branded made a difference to the product matching results.
The results show a similar high level of product matching for both branded and non-branded prompts, with only slightly higher match rates for non-branded:
Summary of findings
This study analyzed over 43,000 ChatGPT carousel products across 10 industry verticals and compared them against 200,000+ organic shopping results from both Google and Bing. The findings painted a clear picture.
ChatGPT sources its carousel products from Google Shopping, not BingΒ
Over 83% of ChatGPT carousel products were found as strong matches in Googleβs top 40 organic shopping results. For Bing, that figure was just 11%, and of those, only 70 products across the entire dataset (0.16%) were found exclusively in Bing. In almost every case where Bing returned a match, Google had already returned the same product.
Product retrieval and contextual retrieval are separate processesΒ
The data strongly supports this. Shopping query fan-outs are distinct from normal search fan-outs 98.3% of the time. They are significantly shorter (seven vs. 12 words), and ChatGPT uses far fewer of them per prompt (1.16 vs. 2.4 words). This makes sense; populating a product carousel is a fundamentally different task from gathering contextual information to construct a written answer. One is about retrieving structured product listings from a shopping index while the other is meant to retrieve web pages rich enough in context for vector search and re-ranking to work effectively.
ChatGPT favors higher Google Shopping positionsΒ
The data shows a clear positional bias, with 60% of strong matches coming from the top 10 Google Shopping results and nearly 84% from the top 20. ChatGPT carousel position correlates with Google Shopping rank, meaning products that rank higher in Google Shopping are more likely to appear earlier in the ChatGPT carousel.
This points to systemic architectural behavior
Since these patterns hold across branded and non-branded prompts, and across all 10 verticals tested, this reinforces that this is a systematic architectural behavior rather than a category-specific or query-specific artifact.
What this means
For brands and retailers, the implication is straightforward: Your Google Shopping ranking strongly influences whether your products make it into ChatGPTβs carousel. These findings indicate that the selection set of carousel products in many cases is effectively the top 40 organic Google Shopping positions for the corresponding shopping fan-out query.
But while product ranking in Google Shopping plays a role, it doesnβt tell the full story. It is likely that other factors, such as overall product mentions and sentiment in the context sources retrieved, also factor into the final ChatGPT carousel selection and ranking.Β
Understanding the full picture in terms of how your products are perceived across relevant sources, as well as how you show up on Google Shopping, could be the key to understanding ChatGPT product carousels.
For the AI research community, this study provides robust, large-scale evidence that ChatGPTβs product carousel operates as an independent retrieval pipeline for the selection set of products, separate from the contextual web search that powers the written portion of its responses. It is possible, and even likely, that for the final selection and ranking of products, ChatGPT uses contextual clues such as product sentiment from the sources retrieved by the normal search fan-outs.
As always, this represents a snapshot of current behavior. OpenAI could change its retrieval sources or methods at any time, but this behavior has been consistent in our findings for at least the last four months.Β
Methodology
Objective
Measure how much product overlap there is between ChatGPT Shopping (via product carousels) and Google Shopping organic results for the same queries, across 10 industry verticals. This was contrasted to Bing shopping results as a control using an identical pipeline.
Specifically, the study evaluated:
How often ChatGPT recommends products that also appear in Google Shopping results
Where those overlapping products rank in each system
PromptSet creation
Prompts were created with the purpose of triggering ChatGPT carousels. To maximize diversity, a mixture of branded and non-branded prompts were used, as well as prompts that explicitly included a price and ones that did not.
Additionally, a diverse selection of verticals were chosen to make the findings more robust. These were: Apparel & Footwear, Baby & Kids, Beauty & Personal Care, Electronics, Home Improvement, Home & Kitchen, Office Supplies, Pet Supplies, Sports & Outdoors, Toys & Games.
Product matchingΒ
The product matching algorithm compared ChatGPT product titles against the top 40 Google Shopping titles using a three-stage cascade approach
The goal was to find the best match between a ChatGPT product title and the corresponding Google Shopping titles. A match was determined using a cascade of three stages:
Stage 1: Exact match
Method: Case-insensitive string equality after removing whitespace
Score: 1.0
Label: exact
Stage 2: Near-exact match
Method: Uses the Python SequenceMatcher ratio on lowercased strings
Trigger: Activated if the best ratio across all candidates is 0.95 or higher
Purpose: To catch minor, trivial differences like spacing, punctuation, or different types of dashes
Score: The SequenceMatcher ratio (rounded to three decimal places)
Label: near-exact
Stage 3: Hybrid match
Method: A weighted average combining character-level similarity and token (word) overlap
Components and Weights:
SequenceMatcher Ratio (Character Similarity): 40% weight.
Token Overlap (Word Inclusion): 60% weight (fraction of tokens in the shorter title found in the longer one)
Selection: The candidate with the highest hybrid score is chosen, regardless of a specific threshold
Score: Calculated as (0.4 * SequenceMatcher Ratio) + (0.6 * Token Overlap) (rounded to 3 decimal places)
Label: hybrid
This approach was set to be fairly conservative, and 0.8 was determined as a reasonable threshold for a product match as this often corresponds very closely to the same brand and product.Β
Real examples of matching thresholds from the data:
Match threshold
Description
ChatGPT product
Google Shopping
Differences observed
1.0
Exact string match, no differences
Hot Wheels RC 1:64 Mustang GTD
Hot Wheels RC 1:64 Mustang GTD
None
0.95
Near exact, minor differences such as hyphen, punctuation only
Nvidia reportedly targets βaround Computexβ launch for its 9GB RTX 5050 Benchlife.info claims to have confirmed yesterdayβs reports of Nvidiaβs planned RTX 5050 9GB graphics card, and has βconfirmedβ a release date for the GPU around Computex 2026. Nvidiaβs reportedly planning to upgrade its RTX 5050 graphics card to 3GB 28 Gbps GDDR7 memory modules, [β¦]
A routine Windows 11 update locked my Xbox Ally handheld in recovery mode, forcing a full cloud restore that took more than 12 hours. Highlighting just how uncertain I am about the next Xbox being a Windows PC.
NuPhy recently revealed the Aquarium keycap set in its custom nSA profile for low-profile mechanical keyboards, like the Air60 HE and Node series mechanical keyboards. Now, the brand has announced the latest iteration in its nSA keycap range, the Creative Engine design, which features a much more practical design than the Aquarium set. The NuPhy Creative Engine nSA keycap set is available on the NuPhy online store for $49.95 and includes 126 keys, providing a few alternative keycaps for some modifiers and navigation keys and supporting a little more than an average 100% keyboard. That said, the keycap set does not have proper extended compatibility for odd-ball layouts or even ISO, although you could probably make it work on a split space keyboard, thanks to the 2.25u and 2.75u enter and shift keys, thanks to the uniform height.
Much like the Aquarium keycap set, the Creative Engine keycap set is designed by BOHO and manufactured by KeyTok, a well-known OEM in the mechanical keyboard space. The Creative Engine keycap set is inspired by the UI of Adobe Illustrator, with three shades of gray for the main alphanumeric keycaps and bright yellow for the accent keycaps. The legend on the keycaps echoes the Illustrator theme, with each keycap featuring dye-sublimation printed iconography and lettering for built-in Illustrator keyboard shortcuts. The nSA profile features a 5.5 mm maximum height and a spherical topβthis simply means that the top curves in both the X and Y axes, unlike something like Cherry, which uses cylindrical tops that only curve in the X axis. NuPhy explicitly lists compatibility with its own Air, Kick, and Node series low-profile keycaps, but the keycaps should be compatible with any mechanical keyboard that uses MX-style switches and has a layout somewhere between 60% and 100% and uses a 6.25u space bar.
NVIDIA has reportedly halted production of its China-focused H200 "Hopper" GPU at TSMC's facilities, according to multiple reports. The company has built up an inventory of 250,000 H200 GPUs, which will be available in the Chinese market for select applications that do not compromise United States national security. After NVIDIA was granted export rights to China for its H200 accelerators, the company began stockpiling these GPUs to supply AI labs across China. However, China has also restricted what its domestic companies and AI labs can import, meaning that the import of H200 GPUs is still prohibited unless a company receives a letter of exemption from Beijing. This has resulted in NVIDIA using its TSMC N5 5 nm node capacity to create about 250,000 units, which are now stored in a warehouse awaiting export approval from the U.S. administration and import approval from Chinese customs for AI labs.
Interestingly, the Financial Times and Reuters note that NVIDIA will now "reallocate" capacity from H200 production to the new "Rubin." However, these two GPU generations do not use the same manufacturing node or packaging technology. For "Hopper," NVIDIA uses TSMC's 5 nm node with CoWoS-S packaging, while "Rubin" uses a 3 nm node with CoWoS-L packaging. These reports likely refer to some conversion of manufacturing capacity involving either the node or packaging capacity that NVIDIA has secured. It is unlikely that the 5 nm semiconductor node can be converted into a 3 nm node without significant line remodeling and changes to manufacturing equipment. However, packaging can be adjusted more easily, which is likely what these reports are indicating.
Other World Computing (OWC), a trusted leader in high-performance storage, memory, connectivity, software, and accessories that empower creative and business professionals to maximize performance, enhance reliability, and streamline workflows, today announced storage and connectivity solutions for Apple's all new MacBook Neo.
It is always an exciting moment when Apple introduces a new Mac for the people who depend on these machines to get real work done," said Larry O'Connor, Founder and CEO of Other World Computing (OWC). "The MacBook Neo brings powerful capabilities into an incredibly portable form factor and much lower price, and that means professionals, students, and creators will want tools that travel just as easily and affordably while expanding what the system can do. With solutions like the OWC Travel Dock and our USB-C storage solutions, OWC makes it simple and affordable to connect more to the Neo and easily expand your storage so users can work anywhere without compromise."
MSI, a leading brand in gaming hardware, is thrilled to partner with Pearl Abyss, the acclaimed game developer and publisher, to offer PC gamers an exclusive reward.
Embark on a thrilling adventure in Crimson Desert with MSI's high-performance motherboards
From March 6th to April 6th, 2026, gamers who purchase select MSI X870E or B850 motherboards can claim a free Crimson Desert Steam code. Experience the stunning visuals and action-packed open world of Pywel, powered by the cutting-edge performance of MSI's latest hardware.
Iron is essential to biological function, and iron-based nanomaterials may become valuable tools in the long-term effort to develop cancer treatments. Researchers at Oregon State University have engineered a new "nanoagent" using an iron-based metal-organic framework (MOF) structure and demonstrated its ability to destroy cancerous cells in laboratory experiments.
The Department of Justice describes LeakBase as a clearinghouse for hacked databases. Alongside the "hundreds of millions" of account credentials, it offers credit and debit card numbers, banking details, and other personally identifiable information that can fuel account takeovers and fraud.
Routime is a cross-platform, local-first, real-time social media app with AI support for creating and sharing events, schedules, and routines. Currently in beta, we plan to add public schedules and groups in future updates.
A patent application in Japan reveals a range of fast aperture zoom lenses that Canon is exploring, covering full-frame, APS-C, and PowerShot. Here's what we might see
Browsing in VR just got cleaner and safer. AdGuard has launched two new extensions for the Meta Quest browser, bringing ad-blocking and VPN privacy to your headset. Hereβs how to install them.
The Ratepayer Protection Pledge has been signed by numerous hyperscalers and AI companies, and seeks to prevents American consumers footing the bill for increased energy demand due to data centers.
Utah lawmakers are a step closer to enforcing a new age verification law that NordVPN warns could "punish all VPN users globally." Here's everything you need to know about the controversial bill.
Adobeβs Lightroom Classic is a powerful tool to catalog, review and edit your shots, and the latest version adds more AI tools to it, from the highly useful to the somewhat questionable. Letβs check out whatβs new.
Called Automations, the new system gives users a way to automatically launch agents within their coding environment, triggered by a new addition to the codebase, a Slack message, or a simple timer.
Lawyers say Meta's marketing materials promised privacy and user control over sharing footage. But an investigation found that subcontractors are reviewing footage from customers' glasses.
Anthropic's $200 million contract with the Department of Defense broke down due to disagreements over giving the military unrestricted access to its AI.
InterPositive isn't trying to make AI actors or synthetic performances. Rather, the company has created a model that helps production teams work with footage from their own productions to help make edits in post-production.
After layoffs at Skate developer Full Circle just last week, the remainder of the team at EA's studio continues to work on updating the game with new content, the latest of which is Season 3: Fluid Flashback, which begins on March 10, 2026, and promises to bring skaters "back to skateboarding's first major era," which it describes as a time when "polyurethane wheels replaced clay and metal ones," and when the sport began to grow and evolve rapidly. That means elements of San Vansterdam will be taken back to the 1970s, "with vibrant colors and bold designs." Areas like Rolling [β¦]
This afternoon, independent Polish developer Reikon Games announced that RUINER 2 is in development for PC. As suggested by the title, it will be a sequel to 2017's twin-stick shooter, which was well-received by fans and critics. RUINER earned an 8 out of 10 score on Wccftech: RUINER is a no-brainer if you are interested in fast-paced action games that require real skill to truly perfect. However, RUINER 2 will be greatly expanded: it will support co-op gameplay and shift its genre to "cyberpunk action RPG". Marek Roefler, Game Director of the sequel at Reikon, said in a statement: We [β¦]
Epic Games is officially suing former contractor AdiraFNInfo, marking a significant escalation in the industry-wide hard stance against leakers. Following Activision's recent shutdown of a Call of Duty leaker, Epicβs legal action confirms that gaming companies have had enough of confidential IP and trade secrets being shared ahead of official announcements. As confirmed today with a message on X, Epic Games "took legal action against a former contractor who repeatedly leaked confidential partner IP and trade secrets that they received while working with Epic." The publisher absolutely does "not allow this and will continue to take action when Epic team [β¦]
Assassin's Creed Unity has received a 60 FPS patch today for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, which may have packed an undocumented bump to 4K resolution. While a previous-generation title, this update makes the 2014 classic relevant again for those wishing to experience the series' old, more straightforward gameplay formula. According to multiple online reports, today's Assassin's Creed Unity patch increases resolution up to 4K. While no one has made an actual pixel count, the game's PlayStation 5 update history mentions 4K resolution and 60 FPS gameplay. Some users, such as ResetERA's RayCharlizard, shared screenshots captured [β¦]
Yesterday, the official X (formerly Twitter) account for the United States White House published a video promoting its ongoing strikes on Iran, which contained footage and UI elements from Microsoft and Activision's popular shooter franchise, Call of Duty. The United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran this past weekend, which recent reports estimate have resulted in 1,230 casualties. Amidst the responses to the video, which began with Call of Duty footage followed by real-life footage of the strikes, Chance Glasco, one of the original founders of Infinity Ward and developer on Call of Duty said that the video was [β¦]
Take advantage of Bench, the ultimate resource for PC hardware enthusiasts, offering a large database of benchmarks for you to browse through. We detail how the tool works, and what we're doing to keep results up-to-date here.
For 20 years, the web has run on a simple trade: publish content that meets a personβs needs, rank in search, earn traffic, then monetize that traffic through products, services, affiliate referrals, or ads.
Zero-click answers and AI search are rewriting that relationship. The new question is whether AI will cite you as a source β and whether that visibility can turn into revenue.
To understand who gets included and who gets routed around, I ran over 200 AI visibility audits across 10 industries.
The pattern was consistent: Most sites are easy to parse, but hard to justify citing. And the industries that rely on discovery traffic the most are often the ones making themselves the hardest to access.
How the audit was conducted
I ran 201 audits using the same rubric and captured an overall AI visibility score, plus four subscores:Β
Freshness.
Structure.
Authority and evidence.
Extractability.
The dataset included 201 audits across 10 industries:
Coupons.
Affiliate reviews.
Travel booking.
Local directories.
Personal finance comparison.
Health information.
Legal directories.
Online courses.
Job boards.
Recipes.
Note that there was a page type skew β the sample is homepage-heavy (131 homepages, 13 articles, with the remainder a mix of pages). That matters because homepages tend to be marketing-heavy and evidence-light.
I also tracked access failures because βerrorβ results are part of the story. 38 of the 201 audits (18.9%) returned an error, meaning the agent was likely blocked or couldnβt reliably access the content.
An additional eight audits were technically processed but scored 0 due to missing subscores, consistent with partial extraction or app-style rendering that yields little accessible content.
When I summarized score distributions, I focused on the successfully processed audits (163 sites), so βcannot accessβ didnβt get mixed with βlow quality.β I treated error rate by industry as its own signal because it indicated whether AI systems could reliably use a site as a source.
The table below shows how the industries in the dataset performed in the audits.
Rank
Industry
Error rate
Median overall
Median authority
Median extractability
At risk
1
Travel booking and trip planning
33.3%
45.5
31.0
52.0
High
2
Job boards and career marketplaces
40.0%
64.0
44.0
74.0
High
3
Legal directories and lead gen
35.0%
63.0
44.0
74.0
High
4
Coupons and deals
20.0%
62.0
36.0
74.0
High
5
Local directories and lead gen
5.3%
64.0
38.0
74.0
Medium
6
Online courses and learning marketplaces
30.0%
67.5
46.5
80.0
Medium
7
Health info and symptom lookups
15.0%
69.0
52.0
80.0
Low
8
Personal finance comparison
5.0%
67.0
52.0
78.0
Low
9
Affiliate product reviews
0.0%
69.5
54.0
74.0
Low
10
Recipes and cooking content
5.0%
75.0
55.5
81.5
Low
What the audits actually revealed
The findings show that most websites arenβt built to be cited consistently. Here are the three numbers that matter.
Access is a bigger problem than most teams think
38 of 201 sites (18.9%) returned an error. In some categories, it was far worse: job boards (40%), legal directories (35%), travel booking (33%), and course marketplaces (30%). In those spaces, a third to nearly half of the market is effectively AI-dark by default.
Legal directories had the highest AI blocking of any industry.
Most sites are stuck in the middle
Across the 163 processed audits:
Average overall score: 61.6
Median overall score: 66
70.6% landed in βInconsistent visibilityβ (60 to 79)
Only 4.9% reached βStrong foundationβ (80 to 94)
0% hit βExceptionalβ (95 plus)
Translation: Most brands arenβt built to be reliably used and cited.
The gap is proof, not formatting
Median subscores across processed audits:
Structure: 92
Extractability: 74
Authority and evidence: 48
Freshness: 45
Most pages are easy to parse. Far fewer are easy to justify citing. Two repeated findings explain why:
βNo last modified header detectedβ showed up 114 times (machine-readable freshness is missing).
Citations or outbound references appeared only 13 times (machine-readable proof is rare).
That should change how you think about risk. More than losing traffic, the bigger threat is being removed from the consideration set.
Industries disappear for three reasons. You can think of them as three failure modes.
1. Access failure: AI canβt reliably reach your content
If agents canβt consistently access your content, the model has less to work with and will either route around you or fill in the gaps from other sources.
What access failure looks like:
Bot protections, rate limiting, or web application firewall (WAF) rules that treat agents as hostile.
App-style rendering where meaningful content never arrives in initial HTML.
Content gated behind prompts, popups, or scripts that donβt resolve cleanly.
Why this causes vanishing:
If AI systems canβt reliably extract, they canβt reliably cite.
The userβs intent still gets satisfied β it just gets satisfied by someone elseβs crawlable content or a native AI answer.
2. Trust failure: AI can read you, but canβt justify citing you
Trust failure is quieter. The agent can access your page, parse it, and summarize it, but the page doesnβt provide enough proof for the model to confidently cite it as a source.
This was the dominant pattern in the completed audits. In plain language: Your content is readable, but it isnβt defensible.
The clearest proof of this showed up when I compared page types:
Median authority score on article pages: 76
Median authority score on homepages: 45
A polished homepage isnβt proof. If you want to be cited for anything beyond your brand name, a typical homepage alone isnβt enough. Evidence usually lives in articles, explainers, data pages, policy pages, and methodology pages.
3. Utility failure: Even if youβre visible, the click may not happen
Utility failure is the most painful. You might get included. You might get cited. But if your value is only information, AI can compress it into an answer, and the user never needs to visit your site.
Visibility determines whether you appear in the conversation. Utility determines whether appearing turns into revenue.
A practical way to think about it:
If your page answers the question, AI can replace the page.
If your product or service completes the job, AI still needs you.
Access failure gets you excluded. Trust failure gets you skipped. Utility failure gets you summarized.
Why certain industries show up as vulnerable
Once access, trust, and utility get viewed together, the vulnerable industries stop looking random.
The categories that repeatedly showed high risk in my dataset share three traits:
Access is inconsistent (blocking and extraction problems).
The content is easy to compress into a single answer.
The business has no next step value once the answer is delivered.
Thatβs why travel booking, job boards, legal directories, and coupon sites clustered as the most exposed categories in this dataset.
The bigger takeaway? Your website can be built in a way that invites exclusion, even if your business is healthy.
Some industries will feel this harder than others. A site funded primarily by high-volume informational traffic is more exposed to zero-click behavior. But even in those categories, the path forward is to stop selling information alone.Β
The big mistake right now is treating AI search like a ranking update, when itβs an economic update. The audits made two things obvious:
Many industries are making themselves hard to access, which guarantees the model will route around them.
Even when the model can read a page, it often canβt justify citing it because proof is missing.
The threat is invisibility. You donβt win by hiding. You win by becoming cite-worthy and by building something the user still needs after the answer is delivered.
Trust plus utility is the new moat. Anything else is just playing from yesterdayβs playbook.
Cisco has disclosed that two more vulnerabilities affecting Catalyst SD-WAN Manager (formerly SD-WAN vManage) have come under active exploitation in the wild.
The vulnerabilities in question are listed below -
CVE-2026-20122 (CVSS score: 7.1) - An arbitrary file overwrite vulnerability that could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on the local file system.
Sony reportedly halts PC porting efforts for single-player PlayStation 5 games Recent years have seen Sony bring more and more of its classic PlayStation titles to PC, to the point that it created its PlayStation PC publishing unit in 2021 to support these efforts. Now, it looks like Sony has fallen out of love with [β¦]
Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), developer of Star Citizen, sat on a data breach for weeks before quietly revealing its scope to gamers. The outrage is justified, and some diehard Star Citizen fans might be ready to park their ship in a hangar for the last time.
CP156 is a ToughArmor series removable NVMe enclosure that fits into a standard external 3.5" drive bay. It allows two 7 mm U.2/U.3 NVMe SSDs to be mounted together on a single removable tray. Unlike traditional 2-bay designs where each SSD is removed separately, CP156 keeps both drives physically secured on the same tray. This ensures that:
Drive order remains fixed
Paired SSDs are never separated
No accidental swapping during handling or transport
For RAID configurations, mirrored datasets, or application-specific SSD pairs, maintaining correct drive sequence is critical. CP156 eliminates the risk of mix-ups during physical movement.
Wishfully Studios and Thunderful invite players to visit a stunning world and experience a heartfelt story of companionship in Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf, available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation 5 PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch for $19.99 / β¬19.99 / Β£16.99.
A Supporter Pack for the game is also available for PC and PlayStation 5, which includes a digital art book, the Novo Language Companion - a guide to the game's language - and, for PC, stunning wallpapers and backgrounds. A demo for the game launched today on Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch and remains available on PC, PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
Developer DALOAR and publisher Daedalic Entertainment are pleased to announce that the first-person horror adventure The Occultist will release on April 8, 2026. The Occultist is now also available for pre-order on PlayStation 5 and Xbox. More information can be found on the game's official website: https://www.theoccultist-game.com.
The episode explores how environmental details, distant sounds, and carefully used silence shape the experience of exploring the island. Instead of relying on jump scares or gore, the developers focus on sustained tension where atmosphere and player imagination gradually build fear throughout the journey.
System76 has refreshed its Launch mechanical keyboard lineup with a new Prism Black finish and doubleshot PBT shine-through keycaps, the latter being corrosion-resistant and keeping the RGB backlighting visible without washing it out. For the unfamiliar, System76 is based in Denver, Colorado, US, and is primarily known for its Linux-first laptops, desktops, and servers, plus the in-house Pop!_OS operating system. Both the Launch and Launch Heavy keyboards are milled from solid aluminium blocks and built around a custom open-source PCB. Switch swapping is tool-free thanks to Kailh MX hot-swap sockets, with Jade, Royal, Silent Pink, and Silent Brown variants available at purchase. The keyboards also feature per-key RGB and full N-key rollover. Firmware is QMK-based and fully open source, with layout and lighting customization handled through the System76 Keyboard Configurator app on Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Connectivity on both keyboards is wired, using a detachable USB connection, and System76 includes both USB-C to USB-C and USB-A to USB-C cables in the box. The compact Launch measures 308.3 mm x 135.1 mm x 30.6 mm, with an 84-key layout, and includes a four-port USB hub with two USB-C and two USB-A ports, all running at 10 Gbps. The Launch Heavy offers a 105-key layout, measures 394 mm x 135.1 mm x 30.3 mm, and comes with the same SuperSpeed four-port USB hub to match. The Launch starts at $285 and the Launch Heavy at $299.
In response to memory shortages, PC OEMs are exploring alternative manufacturers and suppliers for this increasingly scarce and valuable resource. Customers now need to make purchasing decisions within an hour or even prepay suppliers to secure DRAM. Recently, Lenovo has started using the Chinese memory supplier CXMT in some of its laptop models. Lenovo is officially rolling out its LPCAMM2 memory to mainstream laptops after introducing it with the ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 back in 2024. LPCAMM2 is a new memory standard that combines the performance of LPDDR5X with the upgradeability of a regular SODIMM. The ThinkBook 16+ is likely Lenovo's first consumer device to feature LPCAMM2, offering up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory, supported by an Intel Core Ultra X7 385H and its Arc B390 iGPU, using the first CXMT memory modules.
Late last year, CXMT introduced its DDR5-8000 and LPDDR5X-10667 memory modules at the 2025 China International Semiconductor Expo. This development has likely encouraged many OEMs to seek alternatives to traditional suppliers like SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, whose supply has been very limited outside AI accelerator workloads. Even Apple is reportedly considering partnerships with Chinese semiconductor manufacturers CXMT and YMTC for its upcoming iPhone 18 series and possibly other products like MacBooks and Mac computers. With suppliers such as Kioxia, Samsung, and SK hynix raising prices due to a significant industry shortage, Apple is experiencing pressure on its profit margins while maintaining the same MSRP for its products. To diversify its supply chain, Apple is reportedly looking into sourcing DRAM from CXMT and NAND Flash from YMTC to reduce its reliance on South Korean and Japanese suppliers.
Intel has quietly initiated open-source efforts to lay the groundwork for its next-generation Xe3P graphics within the Mesa OpenGL "Iris" and Vulkan "Anvil" drivers. According to a report from Phoronix, these efforts are not immediately focused on making the driver functional but rather on establishing code paths that can be developed for this graphics IP in the future. This means preliminary support is still a few weeks away, as additional work is needed behind the scenes. By the time Xe3P GPUs are released, open-source driver support should be ready.
We expect to see the first versions of Xe3P GPUs this year, as this IP will take on various forms. Some will be featured in the upcoming "Nova Lake" desktop processors for the consumer market, anticipated later this year. Early open-source enablement suggests "Nova Lake-P" processors will include Xe3P-LPG for integrated graphics. Additionally, "Nova Lake-P" processors will incorporate multiple new IPs like Xe3P-LPM for media processing, which handles decoding and encoding, and Xe3P-LPD for display output processing. Finally, the Xe3P IP will also be part of Intel's AI-focused "Crescent Island" inference GPU, which will feature 160 GB of onboard LPDDR5X. We are still awaiting performance claims for this Xe3P GPU, so we need to be patient a little longer.
Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Shontel Brown have called on the Government Accountability Office to examine whether modern computers and phones remain vulnerable to what was once known as TEMPEST surveillance.
Itβs not the most powerful Mac, but between iPhone Mirroring, macOS tools, and Appleβs ecosystem, the $599 MacBook Neo might be the perfect creative companion.
NVIDIA's CEO has talked about the 'agentic AI' inflection point at the Morgan Stanley conference, and he has called out OpenClaw as the "most important" software release of our times. NVIDIA's CEO Says that Agentic AI Has Brought Uses 1,000x Higher Tokens, Bringing In Immense Compute Demand Jensen has talked about AI being a "5-layer cake", and one of the more interesting layers that yields the most returns to hyperscalers and frontier labs is the applications layer. OpenClaw and AI agents are examples of how AI, when placed in a hyper-personalized environment, yields results that replicate human workloads. NVIDIA's CEO [β¦]
VR developer and publisher nDreams, the studio behind VR titles like Reach, Vendetta Forever, Synapse, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, and more, have just announced "a significant reduction in overall staffing levels," resulting in the closure of two of its internal studios, Near Light and Compass studios. Confirmed in a statement on the company's LinkedIn page, the layoffs will impact studios across nDreams' suite of teams as the company gets restructured to put nDreams Elevation at its core, though only the aforementioned Near Light and Compass will be shuttered. Between the studios, 78 developers are impacted by the closures. [β¦]
Apple has finally debuted its latest chronically hyped up budget offering, dubbed the MacBook Neo, replete with specs that barely qualify for 2016, let alone 2026. Of course, budget offerings almost always cut corners in some way or the other. But how do you justify two USB-C ports with wildly different characteristics and no way of knowing which is which until you actually plug in your peripheral? What about a heavily binned SoC, a hobbled trackpad, and pricing tiers that make an M3 MacBook Air appear like a godsend? Apple seems to have designed the MacBook Neo to specifically cater [β¦]
A company that prides itself on its stringent focus on detail can often make head-scratching blunders that youβd never expect it to. On this occasion, one eagle-eyed individual caught Apple comparing a 15-inch M1 MacBook Air, a product that has never existed in its lineup, to the M5, which currently powers the technology giantβs latest portable Mac. Fortunately, the technology giant rectified the mistake, but not before someone posted it on social media for millions to see. Larger 15-inch MacBook Air models were added to the lineup after the M2βs release To remind you, Appleβs M1, which launched back in [β¦]
To combat the current GPU shortages due to higher VRAM prices, NVIDIA is reportedly bringing back its popular RTX 30 series budget GPU. Five-Year-Old GPU to Return to Shelves; AIBs Will Reportedly Start Getting the GPUs Between March 10 and March 20 It's remarkable how we are going back to older hardware, but it's one of the only measures left for hardware manufacturers to maintain a steady supply and meet the demand. Turing architecture-based GPU, GeForce RTX 3060, is about to make a comeback, as we reported recently. RTX 3060 has been one of the most popular graphics cards in [β¦]
Today, California-based independent developer Ember Lab announced that Kena: Bridge of Spirits will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 this Spring. Kena: Bridge of Spirits first launched on PlayStation platforms and PC in September 2021 and went on to win several awards, including Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards 2021. On Wccftech, the game earned an 8 out of 10 score from reviewer Francesco De Meo, who wrote at the time: Despite featuring a very familiar experience inspired by The Legend of Zelda series, Kena: Bridge of Spirits manages to stand out from the competition [β¦]
After celebrating its sixth anniversary last month, NVIDIA has prepared another large lineup of PC games for the GeForce NOW cloud platform in March. Throughout the month, NVIDIA is planning to add fifteen games to the library, starting with the following eight this week: The most interesting new releases are landing later this month, though, with Crimson Desert from Pearl Abyss leading the pack. The game will support NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution for GeForce NOW users with the Premium tier and also NVIDIA DLSS Multi Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction for GeForce NOW users with the Ultimate tier. Weirdly enough, [β¦]
The "upgraded" GeForce RTX 5050 is expected to arrive in June this year at the Computex event. NVIDIA Will Reportedly Debut its 9 GB RTX 5050 GPU at Computex; Same GPU, but Newer GDDR7 Memory With an Additional Gigabyte of VRAM Instead of increasing the VRAM to 12 GB, NVIDIA is straight up reducing RTX 5050's memory bus width to offer 9 GB VRAM capacity. The original version comes with 8 GB GDDR6 memory and is the only RTX 50 series GPU in the series to run on previous-gen GDDR memory. That said, with the new GPU planned for launch, [β¦]
China just released the latest draft of its five-year plan, which mentions it goal of building a more robust "response mechanism" to supply chain threats and focusing on enhancing its "competitive advantages in rare earths."
Superpollutants have been responsible for close to half of planetary warming, and without action theyβll continue to warm the planet rapidly in the decades to come.Thatββ¦
How content is structured in an article or blog post might not seem controversial. But, apparently, Google doesnβt want you to create bite-sized chunks of content simply to please LLMs. Called βchunking,β this technique helps get your content noticed by AI models and reflects how readers actually engage with online content.
Chunking may make content more retrievable or citable in AI search, but ultimately, it improves the flow of content and makes concepts easier for people to understand. Letβs talk about how chunking works and when to use it.
What is chunking?
Chunking is the practice of organizing text into distinct, self-contained units of meaning. When content is chunked, information is segmented so each paragraph focuses on a single idea and contains everything the reader needs to understand the basics of that idea simply and quickly.Β
Someone should be able to read a single paragraph and grasp the concept without having to hunt for context in the surrounding words.Β
Does chunking help AI or people?
The recent criticism from Google suggests that the practice of chunking over-optimizes content, specifically so that it will show up in AI answers. The idea that people are writing specifically for AI assumes that whatβs good for AI is somehow bad for human readers.
But really, chunking helps communicate ideas for both readers and search retrieval systems. When content is chunked, it doesnβt dumb down or artificially fragment ideas. It organizes information to match how people actually read online content, making articles easier to scan.Β
Chunking also helps AI systems because they operate at the passage level rather than the page level. For example, when a system needs to identify an answer for βhow to measure keyword cannibalization,β a heading that says exactly that, followed by a focused paragraph, would create a clear match.
In contrast, when an answer to that same question is buried in a dense paragraph covering three other topics, that information gets diluted. The AI might see relevant keywords, but if the text meanders between ideas, it will have a lower confidence that the passage definitively answers the query.
Clear structure creates clear meaning.
Chunking helps both readers to scan content and AI systems to accurately identify what your content says.Β
When writing from scratch, integrate chunking into your process from the start.
However, it may not be worth your time to edit existing content solely to chunk it. You may find that some articles already follow chunking principles, even if they werenβt explicitly planned to do so. Others may be out of date or poorly structured, requiring more substantial rewrites.
If you want to chunk existing content, prioritize pieces that:
Receive significant traffic but have high bounce rates or low engagement.
Rank well, but arenβt being cited.
Cover complex topics where readers need to find specific information quickly.
Serve bottom-of-funnel audiences making decisions based on specific details.
Skip chunking edits for content that:
Already performs well and receives AI citations.
Is scheduled for comprehensive rewrites in the near future.
Covers topics where narrative flow matters more than information retrieval.
If you have content that is impactful because it creates an emotional arc, chunking or breaking it down into discrete chunks could hurt the piece. If your content succeeds by carrying readers through a journey rather than letting them jump to an answer, preserve that flow.
For example:
Thought leadership that builds to a provocative conclusion.
Opinion essays that require context before the thesis lands.
A chunk in a piece of content should be long enough to explain one thought. This often results in shorter paragraphs β the defining feature is a singular focus, not the word count.Β
These focused paragraphs sit under clear headings. The heading tells the reader what to expect, and the chunks beneath it deliver on that expectation.Β
Build chunking into your content outline
To include chunking in your writing, the most effective approach is to integrate it from the start.Β
Define for yourself or other writers which ideas or concepts in a given topic constitute a chunk, focusing on paragraphs and heading descriptions.
If using content briefs, make it clear in your outlines that each H2 or H3 should cover one complete concept and the content under that heading should fully explain the concept.Β
How to edit existing content into chunks
Focus your efforts on high-value pages first when editing existing content. Prioritize pages that receive traffic but struggle with engagement or pages that rank well but arenβt being cited.
Evaluate your heading structure: Do your H2s and H3s clearly say the information that each section contains? If not, rework the overall structure of an article first, to include the main points of the topic. Add paragraph chunks for any new subheadings.
Look for paragraphs that contain multiple ideas and break them apart: Each paragraph should stand on its own as a complete thought without depending on other ideas.Β
Edit the article to delete any extra information: Make the paragraphs concise. Focus only on relevant information for each chunk.
To chunk or not to chunk?
Donβt let Google convince you that chunking is a hack. Chunking makes content work better for everyone and everything β from readers scanning for specific information to AI systems matching queries to answers.Β
Youβve probably heard developers talk about the DOM. Maybe youβve even inspected it in DevTools or seen it referenced in Google Search Console.
But what, exactly, is it? And why should SEOs care? Letβs take a look at what it is, why itβs important, and how to best optimize it.
What is the DOM?
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a browserβs live, in-memory representation of your webpage. It acts as the interface that allows programs like JavaScript to interact with your content.
The DOM is organized as a hierarchical tree, similar to a family tree:
The document: This is the root of the tree.
Elements: HTML tags like <body>, <p>, and <a> become branches (or βnodesβ).
Relationships: Elements have parents, children, and siblings.
This hierarchy is critical because it allows the browser (and search engines) to understand the relationship between different parts of your content. For example, proper hierarchical order lets your browser understand that a specific paragraph belongs to a specific heading.
How to inspect the DOM
The DOM itself is actually a JavaScript object structure stored in memory, but browsers show it to you as markup that looks very much like HTML.
You can see this HTML representation of the DOM by right-clicking on a page and selecting Inspect > Elements. This is called the Elements panel. Iβve outlined it in the red box below:Β
In the Elements panel inside DevTools, you can:
Expand and collapse nodes to explore the structure.
Search for specific elements using Ctrl+F on a PC or Cmd+F on Mac within the Elements panel.
See which elements have been added or modified by JavaScript (they often flash briefly when changed).
Note that DevTools doesnβt necessarily show you what Googlebot sees. Iβll circle back to what that means later in this article.
To understand why the DOM often looks different from your HTML file, you first need to understand how the browser creates it. That begins with your browser building the DOM tree.Β
Building the DOM tree
When your browser requests a page, the server sends back an HTML file. The browser reads this response line by line and translates it into βtokensβ (tags like <html>, <body>, <div>).
These tokens are then converted into distinct βnodes,β which serve as the building blocks of the page. The browser links these nodes together in a parent-child hierarchy to form the tree structure.
You can visualize the process like this:
Itβs important to know that the browser simultaneously creates a tree-like structure for CSS, known as the CSS Object Model (CSSOM), which allows JavaScript to read and modify CSS dynamically. However, for SEO, the CSSOM matters far less than the DOM.
JavaScript execution
JavaScript often executes while the tree is still being built. If the browser encounters a <script> tag (without defer or async attributes, which allow for the script to load asynchronously), it pauses construction, runs the script, and then finishes building the tree.
During this execution, scripts can modify the DOM by injecting new content, removing nodes, or changing links. This is why the HTML you see in View Source often looks different from what you see in the Elements panel.
Hereβs an example of what I mean. Each time I click the button below, it adds a new paragraph element to the DOM, updating what the user sees.
Your HTML is the starting point, a blueprint, if you will, but the DOM is what the browser builds from that blueprint.
Once the DOM is created, it can change dynamically without ever touching the underlying HTML file.
Modern search engines, such as Google, render pages using a headless browser (Chromium). This means that they evaluate the DOM rather than just the HTML response.
When Googlebot crawls a page, it first parses the HTML, then uses the Web Rendering Service to execute JavaScript and take a DOM snapshot for indexing.
The process looks like this:
However, there are important limitations to understand and keep in mind for your website:
Googlebot doesnβt interact like a human. While it builds the DOM, it doesnβt click, type, or trigger hover events, so content that appears only after user interaction may not be seen.
Other crawlers may not render JavaScript at all. Unlike Google, some search engines and AI crawlers only process the initial HTML response, making JavaScript-dependent content invisible.
Looking ahead to a world thatβs becoming more AI-dependent, AI agents will increasingly need to interact with websites to complete tasks for users, not just crawl for indexing.
These agents will need to navigate your DOM, click elements, fill forms, and extract information to complete their tasks, making a well-structured, accessible DOM even more critical than ever.
Verifying what Google actually sees
The URL inspection tool in Google Search Console shows how Google renders your pageβs DOM, also known in SEO terms as the βrendered HTML,β and highlights any issues Googlebot might have encountered.Β
This tool is crucial because it reveals the version of the page Google indexes, not just what your browser renders. If Google canβt see it, it canβt index it, which could impact your SEO efforts.
In GSC, you can access this by clicking URL inspection, entering a URL, and selecting View Crawled Page.
The panel below, marked in red, displays Googlebotβs version of the rendered HTML.
If you donβt have access to the property, you can also use Googleβs Rich Results Test, which lets you do the same thing for any webpage.
The shadow DOM is a web standard that allows developers to encapsulate parts of the DOM. Think of it as a separate, isolated DOM tree attached to an element, hidden from the main DOM.
The shadow tree starts with a shadow root, and elements attach to it the same way they do in the light (normal) DOM. It looks like this:
Why does this exist? Itβs primarily used to keep styles, scripts, and markup self-contained. Styles defined here cannot bleed out to the rest of the page, and vice versa. For example, a chat widget or feedback form might use shadow DOM to ensure its appearance isnβt affected by the host siteβs styles.
Iβve added a shadow DOM to our sample page below to show what it looks like in practice. Thereβs a new div in the HTML file, and JavaScript then adds a div with text inside it.
When rendering pages, Googlebot flattens both shadow DOM and light DOM and treats shadow DOM the same as other DOM content once rendered.
As you can see below, I put this pageβs URL into Googleβs Rich Results Test to view the rendered HTML, and you can see the paragraph text is visible.
Technical best practices for DOM optimization
Follow these practices to ensure search engines can crawl, render, and index your content effectively.
Load important content in the DOM by default
Your most important content must be in the DOM and appear without user interaction. This is imperative for proper indexing. Remember, Googlebot renders the initial state of your page but doesnβt click, type, or hover on elements.
Content that is added to the DOM only after these interactions may not be visible to crawlers. One caveat is that accordions and tabs are fine as long as the content already exists in the DOM.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the paragraph text is visible in the Elements panel even when the accordion tab has not been opened or clicked.
Use proper <a> tags for links
As we all know, links are fundamental to SEO. Search engines look for standard <a> tags with href attributes to discover new URLs. To ensure they discover your links, ensure the DOM shows real links. Otherwise, you risk crawl dead ends.
You should also avoid using JavaScript click handlers (e.g., <button onclick="...">) for navigation, as crawlers generally wonβt execute them.
Like this:Β
Use semantic HTML structure
Use heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) in logical hierarchy and wrap content in semantic elements like <article>, <section>, and <nav> that correctly describe the siteβs content. Search engines use this structure to understand pages.
A common issue with page builders is making DOMs full of nested <div> elements without semantic meaning. This does little to help search engines understand your page and sets up problems for you or future devs trying to maintain the code on your site.
Ensure to maintain the same semantic standards youβd follow in static HTML.
Hereβs a snippet of semantic HTML as an example:
Keep the DOM lean, ideally under ~ 1,500 nodes, and avoid excessive nesting. Remove unnecessary wrapper elements to reduce style recalculation, layout, and paint costs.
Hereβs an example from web.dev of excessive nesting and an unnecessarily deep DOM:
A workable understanding of the DOM can help you not only diagnose SEO issues, but also effectively communicate with developers and others on your team.
We know that the DOM impacts Core Web Vitals, crawlability, and indexing. As AI agents increasingly interact with websites, DOM optimization becomes more critical. Itβs important to master these fundamentals now to stay ahead of evolving search and AI technologies.
Some weeks in cybersecurity feel routine. This one doesnβt.
Several new developments surfaced over the past few days, showing how quickly the threat landscape keeps shifting. Researchers uncovered fresh activity, security teams shared new findings, and a few unexpected moves from major tech companies also drew attention.
Together, these updates offer a useful snapshot of what is happening
Most organizations assume encrypted data is safe.
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This tacticβknown as βharvest now, decrypt laterββmeans sensitive data transmitted today could become
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Meta will allow rival AI chatbot providers to offer their services on WhatsApp for a fee, which ranges from β¬0.0490 to β¬0.1323 per "non-template message," depending on the country.
On thisΒ episode of Build Mode,Β David ParkΒ joinsΒ Isabelle Johannessen to discuss how he and his team are intentionally iterating, fundraising, and scaling Narada.
Remedy Entertainment has already kicked off the marketing campaign for Control RESONANT in earnest. Following the announcement at The Game Awards 2025, the Finnish studio shared the first gameplay trailer during February's State of Play showcase. This week, they've continued to reveal more footage and information about the game. Yesterday, we reported that Remedy has promised a base minimum of 60 frames per second on all platforms, and that the combat gameplay shown demonstrated fast-paced melee-focused action akin to Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. Now, YouTuber Hidden Machine reports that Remedy confirmed Jesse Faden will not be playable at all [β¦]
Appleβs updated MacBook ProΒ lineup with M5 Pro and M5 MaxΒ options is available to pre-order, but not every customer wanting a portable Mac will keep track of the companyβs announcements, as some of them had already placed an order for some M4 MaxΒ versions just days before the unveiling. While we can picture their shock when Apple announced its new chipsets, whatβs an even bigger surprise is that the company outright canceled those M4 Max MacBook Pro orders, only to update them with M5 Max variants. Now thatβs top-tier customer service. One lucky customer who placed an order for the M4 MacBook [β¦]
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The lack of storage capacity on the Nintendo Switch 2 and increasing game sizes are forcing some Switch 2 owners to reconsider shopping for game titles, especially as microSD Express Card prices skyrocket due to the global memory and storage chip shortage.
OpenAI is building its own code repository, prompted by a rise in GitHub outages and disruptions that left its engineers unable to work for hours at a time.
Today weβre opening the Google AI Center Berlin. This new space will serve as a hub for leading AI researchers and developers from Google DeepMind, Google Research and Gβ¦
Thereβs a growing problem in SEO and content marketing that doesnβt get talked about enough: everything is starting to sound the same. The same phrasing and structure, the same bland tone, the same safe language, the same robotic rhythm.
The web is filling up with perfectly optimized content that no one actually enjoys reading. And thatβs the real risk. Not that AI will replace SEOs, Google will penalize AI content, or automation will destroy search.
The real danger is that brands lose their voice, their personality, and their identity in the name of efficiency.
AI should make your SEO better, not blander. Faster, not flatter. Scalable, not soulless.
Hereβs how to use AI without turning your brand into beige wallpaper β and without losing what makes it worth ranking in the first place.
AI works best when it supports strategy
AI doesnβt replace a marketing plan, positioning model, or clear brand direction. It supports them. In the same way that tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, and Screaming Frog help you understand whatβs happening, AI helps you work more efficiently and supports thinking.
If your SEO strategy is simply, βWe use AI,β you donβt have a strategy. You have a software subscription. Without a clear understanding of your audience, what they care about, the problems theyβre trying to solve, how they speak, what tone they respond to, and what your brand stands for, AI will just produce generic content at scale.
AI is genuinely good at certain parts of SEO, particularly areas that rely on scale, structure, and data processing. These include:
Analyzing large data sets.
Grouping keywords by intent.
Spotting patterns in SERPs.
Identifying content gaps.
Mapping topics.
Supporting internal linking.
Handling repetitive technical tasks.
This is where AI earns its place. It handles repetitive manual work, speeds up research, reduces basic human error, and helps teams operate more consistently at scale. None of that is threatening. Itβs simply practical.
Used properly, AI removes friction from SEO work and gives teams more space to focus on strategy and decision-making. The problems begin when people expect AI to execute SEO work it isnβt built for, treating it as a shortcut rather than a support system. When used this way, the output inevitably falls short of expectations.
AI struggles with the parts of marketing that build trust. Emotional intelligence, cultural awareness, tone, humor, empathy, and genuine understanding are difficult for it to replicate. It doesnβt truly grasp brand positioning, long-term thinking, or commercial judgment, and it canβt make ethical decisions in any meaningful way.
It can copy patterns, but it doesnβt understand meaning. It can recreate tone, but it doesnβt feel it. It can build structure, but it doesnβt create identity.
Thatβs why so much AI content feels fine but ultimately forgettable. It does the job, ticks the boxes, answers the question, follows SEO rules, and hits the word count. But it doesnβt create a connection that turns traffic into trust, and trust into customers.
The biggest risk with AI in SEO isnβt penalties or algorithm changes. Itβs gradual brand dilution. Over time, content becomes more neutral, more generic, and less distinctive.
Visibility may stay the same, but identity weakens. Traffic grows, but loyalty doesnβt. Performance looks healthy, but trust doesnβt compound.
AI should handle structure, humans should handle soul
Effectively using AI in SEO requires role clarity. Let AI handle the structure and scale, but keep meaning firmly in human hands.Β
AI is well-suited to researching, analyzing, clustering, outlining, drafting frameworks, data processing, repetitive optimizing, and detecting patterns. These are process-driven tasks where automation adds real value.
However, everything that defines the brand and the relationship with the audience β voice, tone, storytelling, personality, trust building, emotional connection, commercial messaging, ethical judgment, and real audience understanding β should remain a human endeavor.
AI can help you build faster, but it shouldnβt decide what youβre building. It supports the process, but the design still belongs to you.
If you donβt define your brand voice, AI will default to something neutral and generic. That doesnβt happen because the technology is broken. It happens because you havenβt given it anything clear to work with.Β
Before using AI for content, clarify:
Who youβre speaking to.
How you speak.
The language you use and avoid.
The tone you adopt.
The personality you want to project.
The values you stand for.
The boundaries you wonβt cross.
Many people assume better prompts can fix weak content. But prompts, no matter how detailed, donβt replace thinking, brand clarity, audience understanding, or positioning.
You can write the most detailed prompt in the world, but if your brand identity is fuzzy, the output will still be fuzzy. AI amplifies whatever you input, whether thatβs clarity or chaos. Thereβs no middle ground.
Practical ways to use AI without losing your voice
Hereβs what works in the real world and not just in tool demos.
Use AI for research: Let it gather data, insights, SERP patterns, questions, clusters, topics, and gaps. Then write the content yourself or heavily edit it.
Use AI to create frameworks: Outlines, structures, and content maps are perfect AI jobs.Β
Train AI on your tone: Feed it examples of your writing, content, emails, site copy, and brand language. But still treat outputs as drafts and not finals.
Human edit everything: Your job is to brand edit. Does this sound like us? Would we say this? Would our customers recognize this voice? Does this feel human?
Protect your commercial pages: Blogs are one thing, but core service pages, product pages, and brand pages should always be human-led. These pages define your business identity.
Use AI to scale consistency, not sameness: Consistency is brand clarity. Sameness is brand death.
Google doesnβt care whether content is AI-generated. It evaluates whether the content is useful, helpful, original, trustworthy, and valuable.
Low-quality human content gets punished. Low-quality AI content gets punished. High-quality content wins, regardless of who or what created it.
The myth that βAI content gets penalizedβ misses the point. What actually gets penalized is bad content, and AI simply makes it easier to produce bad content faster.
The brands that will lead SEO over the next few years wonβt be the ones with the biggest AI tech stacks. Theyβll be the ones that combine human strategy with AI efficiency, clear positioning with scalable systems, and strong brand voice with intelligent automation. Theyβll use AI to move faster, but not to think for them.
Brands with clarity and identity will strengthen their position. Brands without them will simply become louder without standing out.
Every once in a while, a product launch doubles as a marketing masterclass. Recently, Selena Gomezβs Rare Beauty released a new fragrance, and it wasnβt just the scent that captured attention. It was the bottle. Designed with accessibility in mind, the easy-to-use packaging quickly became the story, sparking conversations and praise from accessibility advocates and consumers alike.
The takeaway for marketers is hard to miss. An inclusive design decision became the campaign itself, delivering more cultural impact than any ad spend could buy. And the lesson for marketers is equally clear: accessibility drives loyalty, enhances brand reputation, ensures compliance, and acts as a measurable growth driver.
Accessibility as a campaign strategy
Rare Beautyβs commitment to accessibility wasnβt a one-off. From packaging to pricing to its ongoing mental health advocacy, the brand has consistently embedded inclusivity into its DNA. That authenticity matters. Consumers can tell the difference between a stunt and a strategy, and they reward brands that lead with values.
And Rare Beauty isnβt alone. Across industries, leading brands are increasingly surfacing accessibility as a differentiator, not a footnote. Apple has consistently highlighted accessibility features as part of its core product storytelling, positioning them as innovation rather than accommodation. Microsoft has done the same by showcasing inclusive design in mainstream campaigns, including adaptive gaming products that reframed accessibility as a driver of creativity and connection. In fashion and retail, brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Unilever have brought adaptive design into the spotlight, integrating accessibility into product launches and brand identity rather than siloing it as a niche offering.
According to studies from Edelman and McKinsey, 73% of Gen Z choose to buy from brands they believe in, and 70% say they try to purchase products from companies they consider ethical. These arenβt fringe preferences, theyβre mainstream expectations that can redefine how marketers approach building trust and growth with their audiences.
The $18 trillion market marketers overlook
More than 1.3 billion people globally live with a disability, and together with their friends and family, they control over $18 trillion in spending power, according to the Return on Disability Group. For marketers, this isnβt just about compliance. Itβs about growth, reputation, and building genuine trust in one of the worldβs largest and most passionate consumer groups. That passion translates to powerful advocacy.Β
In discussions with AudioEyeβs A11iance Team, a group of individuals with disabilities who regularly share feedback on real-world accessibility experiences, one member stated, βIf I find a website that works and works very well for me, I will always recommend it to friends and family because I want people to have the same experience that I have.β
As another A11iance Team member, Maxwell Ivey, put it, βThe cheapest form of advertising is word of mouth, and people with disabilities can have some of the loudest voices when we find people willing to make the effort. Because itβs that sincere effort over time that really counts with us.β
When accessibility becomes part of the customer experience, it creates something money canβt buy: trust and loyalty that scale through advocacy. But the opposite is also true. In a survey of assistive technology users, 54% said they donβt feel eCommerce companies care about earning their business.
Most brands are still competing for the same oversaturated demographics while overlooking this opportunity hiding in plain sight. In doing so, theyβre leaving loyalty, advocacy, and revenue on the table.
Hereβs where many brands stumble: accessibility usually stops at the shelf. Marketers invest heavily in packaging, store displays and product design, while digital experiences, the first and often primary touchpoint for customers, lag behind.
As accessibility-led design continues to earn attention, loyalty and earned media, the gap between physical product innovation and digital experience has become harder to ignore.
AudioEyeβs 2025 Digital Accessibility Index found an average of 297 accessibility issues per web page detectable by automation alone. Each one represents friction in the customer journey, a conversion lost, or a compliance risk under frameworks like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the European Accessibility Act (EAA).
Just as no campaign would launch without a brand review or legal check, no digital touchpoint should go live without an accessibility review.
Four moves marketing leaders can make
Too often, accessibility is treated as a risk to manage instead of an advantage to leverage. The marketers who win will be the ones who flip that script. Here are four actions to start with.
1. Make accessibility your campaign hook
Donβt hide it, lead with it. Brands like Rare Beauty have proved that inclusive design is the story. Build campaigns where accessibility isnβt a footnote but the differentiator that captures attention and loyalty.
2. Bake it into your brand system
Accessibility shouldnβt sit off to the side. Make Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) alignment part of your brand guidelines, right alongside typography, logos and tone of voice. When accessibility is codified, it becomes second nature across every campaign.
3. Use data as your proof point
Marketers are storytellers, and numbers seal the story. Track accessibility improvements such as fewer user-reported barriers, higher accessibility scores and fixes like improved alt text, color contrast or form usability. Connect those metrics to existing business outcomes like conversion, reach, and sentiment to show how accessibility drives ROI, not just compliance.
4. Protect accessibility like brand safety
Just as youβd never risk brand safety in ad placements, donβt risk it in your digital touchpoints. Every update, seasonal campaign, or product drop should be monitored for accessibility. Trust and reputation are too valuable to leave exposed.
The Competitive Advantage
Rare Beautyβs fragrance launch proved something powerful: when you lead with accessibility, the story writes itself. The loyalty builds authentically, and the momentum flows naturally.
But hereβs the opportunity: most brands still donβt get it. Theyβre treating accessibility as a compliance checkbox instead of the growth strategy it really is.
For marketers, thatβs the wake-up call. Accessibility builds loyalty. It enhances brand reputation. It keeps your brand compliant. And it drives measurable growth across marketing efforts.
Rare Beauty showed how accessibility can capture attention at the shelf. The next opportunity is making sure it carries through online. Because when every touchpoint welcomes everyone, every campaign maximizes its impact.
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Zscaler ThreatLabz, which observed the activity in January 2026, is tracking the cluster under the name Dust Specter. The attacks, which manifest in the form of two different
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Like many of the wrestlers the franchise lets you play as, the WWE 2K games have been on top of the world, down and out, and everything in between. Last year's WWE 2K25 was not a career high point as the game focused heavily on The Island, a new online hub in the vein of NBA 2K's The City, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Thankfully, as I described in my hands-on impressions, WWE 2K26 seems to be spreading the love a bit more with new features. Does WWE 2K26 light a fire under the franchise? Or is it [β¦]
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Organizations typically roll out multi-factor authentication (MFA) and assume stolen passwords are no longer enough to access systems. In Windows environments, that assumption is often wrong. Attackers still compromise networks every day using valid credentials. The issue is not MFA itself, but coverage.Β
Enforced through an identity provider (IdP) such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, or
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Russian cyber campaign that has targeted Ukrainian entities with two previously undocumented malware families named BadPaw and MeowMeow.
"The attack chain initiates with a phishing email containing a link to a ZIP archive. Once extracted, an initial HTA file displays a lure document written in Ukrainian concerning border crossing appeals
Capcom releases its first PC patch for Resident Evil Requiem Capcom has officially released its first PC patch/update for Resident Evil Requiem. This update includes stability fixes that make the game less likely to freeze or crash on certain hardware configurations. Additionally, this update also adds performance optimisation for RTX 40 and RTX 5o series [β¦]
Ubisoft confirms that more than three Assassinβs Creed games are in development Itβs official, Ubisoft has confirmed that Assassinβs Creed Black Flag Resynced is real. Ubisoftβs worst-kept secret is finally official. The Assassinβs Creed series is finally returning to the seven seas. For now, Ubisoft has only released the following statement and the artwork below. [β¦]
Yesterday, Apple announced its newest low-cost MacBook Neo, starting at $599 in the United States, or about $499 for education and students. Some online criticism emerged regarding Apple's decision to offer a laptop with only 8 GB of RAM in 2026, with no options for higher RAM capacity. However, this 8 GB of RAM is a design choice Apple made at TSMC's packaging facilities for the A18 Pro chip. Inside the MacBook Neo, Apple decided to reuse the iPhone 16 Pro's chip, which comes from TSMC with 8 GB of LPDDR5X memory. This memory is attached directly above the A18 Pro SoC using Integrated Fan-Out Package on Package (InFO-PoP), creating a 3D wafer-level fan-out package. This package is designed to hold memory directly above the SoC die, resulting in a smaller PCB design without the LPDDR5X module taking up over 100 mmΒ² of PCB area.
Therefore, Apple's MacBook Neo configurations are limited to what the A18 Pro SoC is originally packaged with. These are 8 GB LPDDR5X modules that are shipped directly to TSMC for integration into the InFO-PoP package, which is later shipped back to Apple for integration into these new MacBook Neo laptops. While offering 8 GB laptops in modern times might seem controversial, the design choices behind the SoC and the goal of keeping unit costs low are what limit Apple from providing more memory capacity. Finally, these SoCs use Unix-based macOS, which is optimized for good memory management at this capacity, ensuring that users can still have a satisfactory experience.
The X account included the words "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue" in the post. The video starts with a player activating a CoD: MW3 MGB (Mass Guided Bombs) killstreak. It's basically the game's secret nuke β which is somewhat concerning given its use here β activated by achieving...
WWE 2K26 takes one step forward and two steps back by infusing the series' best wrestling game to date with obnoxious monetization and a scaled-back MyRise campaign.
Following months of leaks and rumors, Ubisoft has officially confirmed the existence of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced with the first piece of the remake's concept art.
All the ways to watch India vs England live streams online β including for FREE β for this 2026 T20 World Cup semi-final clash at Wankhede Stadium.
Today, Bloomberg reports an indirect threat for the Nintendo Switch 2 console coming from the ongoing memory storage crisis. As you probably are already aware of if you're a regular Wccftech reader, the global rush to build artificial intelligence hardware has brought major increases in the price of NAND flash memory: NAND contract prices are forecast to surge by up to 90% in this quarter compared with the previous three-month period, when prices had already spiked by over 30%. This is an issue for the Nintendo Switch 2 because of its limited storage. The hybrid console only has 256GB of [β¦]
Appleβs low-cost iPhone launch strategy lived on with the arrival of the iPhone 16e, with the company making the required efforts to announce the iPhone 17eΒ just a year later. Naturally, to save up on production costs as much as possible and in light of the DRAM shortage, there isnβt expected to be much of a cosmetic difference, but you might be interested in whatβs underneath the hood. Hereβs everything you need to know about the iPhone 17eβs launch, features, and specifications. Design and display Unfortunately, those looking forward to the Dynamic Island change on the iPhone 17e will be disappointed, [β¦]
Nvidia addresses overclocking concerns and other issues with their latest GeForce Hotfix Nvidia has officially released its GeForce Hotfix 595.76 driver, a new driver version that addresses GPU overclocking issues and other problems raised by Nvidiaβs GeForce 595.71 driver. With their GeForce 595.71 driver, overclockers found that their GPUs suddenly became unstable. Voltages were capped, [β¦]
At MWC 2026, Fibocom unveiled its new 5G SoC Dongle solution series, designed with an all-in-one SoC architecture that integrates high-performance 5G communication, an intelligent operating system, and flexible eSIM/vSIM services. This solution aims to deliver a cost-efficient and scalable 5G terminal option for the global mobile broadband market.
SoC Integration: Redefining 5G Terminal Efficiency
The highlight of Fibocom's 5G SoC Dongle lies in its high-performance SoC-based architecture, offering advantages in performance, cost, intelligent interaction, and application flexibility.
Performance Leap: Equipped with an octa-core CPU (up to 2.3 GHz) and Adreno 613 GPU, the dongle delivers exceptional data processing power alongside ultra-fast 5G connectivity.
Cost Efficiency: The SoC's high level of integration minimizes peripheral components and optimizes hardware design. This not only improves production yield but also significantly reduces development and material costs, providing strong pricing competitiveness for operators and enterprise customers.
Capcom Co., Ltd. today announced that worldwide sales of Resident Evil Requiem, released on February 27, 2026, surpassed 5 million units.
Resident Evil Requiem is the latest installment in the Resident Evil series, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. The title successfully elevated the essence of survival horror by heightening the interplay between intense fear and exhilarating action. Resident Evil Requiem was developed using RE ENGINE, Capcom's proprietary game engine, which allowed the company to deliver visuals in photorealistic detail, including the characters' skin, teary eyes, and flowing hair, as well as the translucency of light. In addition, the title offers a new game experience for a broad fanbase through multiple difficulty settings that accommodate everyone from newcomers to experienced players, as well as allowing players to switch between first-person and third-person perspectives in real-time to suit each player's individual play styles.
TrendForce's latest research on smartphone panels reveals that shortages and rising memory pricesβone of the most costly components in smartphonesβare reshaping brand shipment strategies for 2026 and weakening panel demand.
Global smartphone panel shipments are projected to reach 2.14 billion units in 2026, down 7.3% YoY from 2.31 billion units in 2025. This marks the end of the growth cycle that began in 2023 and the market's first annual decline in several years.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, a mid-range GPU now two generations old, is reportedly returning to NVIDIA's supply this month. According to Chinese Board Channels, NVIDIA is planning a mid-March restock of the "Ampere" GPU, aligning with earlier rumors that suggested a Q1 2026 revival. Interestingly, it is unclear which version of the RTX 3060 will be reintroducedβwhether it will be the original 12 GB model with a 192-bit wide memory bus or the newer 8 GB variant with a 128-bit bus. NVIDIA's decision to bring back this older SKU is puzzling, especially considering it is two generations old and comes amid memory supply chain shortages. However, this older SKU uses GDDR6 memory, which might be more readily available as the newer GDDR7 is being used by modern "Blackwell" GPUs and the upcoming "Rubin CPX" accelerators.
Why NVIDIA has chosen the RTX 3060 instead of a newer model like the RTX 4060 remains uncertain. Speculatively, it could be due to the fact that the RTX 4060 is based on the same NVIDIA 4N foundry node at TSMC as the current RTX 5060, while the RTX 3060, along with the rest of the GeForce "Ampere" generation, is built on the Samsung 8N (8 nm DUV) foundry node. Additionally, Board Channels note that GeForce RTX 3060 models from various brands will start arriving soon, which means NVIDIA's add-in card partners are doing much of the heavy lifting to bring back this SKU, with NVIDIA only supplying the GPU die and memory as an installation kit. AICs could start marketing this GPU again or just quietly add it to their websites. We are waiting a few more days to see how the re-launch unfolds and which SKUs we end up getting. Finally, the most important factor for considering this GPU when modern alternatives exist is the pricing, which will dictate its sales.
Antec Inc., a global leader in high-performance computer components and accessories, proudly announces the launch of the Antec 900, a next-generation full-tower chassis engineered for Edge AI workloads, professional workstations, and high-end gaming systems. Designed for demanding computing environments, the Antec 900 provides a scalable platform for AI development, engineering, content creation, and 8K-capable gaming.
The Antec 900 supports ATX, E-ATX, SSI-CEB, and SSI-EEB motherboards, including AMD Threadripper systems, and is also compatible with back-connect motherboards for cleaner cable management and improved airflow. The spacious interior accommodates multi-GPU and accelerator configurations such as NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada series GPUs. With support for graphics cards up to 495 mm in length and 160 mm in thickness, the chassis is built for the latest generation of high-performance hardware.
Conduit AI answers missed calls with a natural voice, captures caller details and job specifics, and emails you a qualified lead within seconds. It connects to your existing number via call forwarding and provides 24/7 coverage for after-hours, weekends, and overflow. You can use the client dashboard to track calls, conversion rates, and revenue recovered. Train the agent for your industry, prioritize emergencies, and scale during surges so you can call back quickly and close more deals.
Tycoon 2FA, one of the prominent phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkits that allowed cybercriminals to stage adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) credential harvesting attacks at scale, was dismantled by a coalition of law enforcement agencies and security companies.
The subscription-based phishing kit, which first emerged in August 2023, was described by Europol as one of the largest phishing
A joint law enforcement operation has dismantled LeakBase, one of the world's largest online forums for cybercriminals to buy and sell stolen data and cybercrime tools.
The LeakBase forum, per the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), had over 142,000 members and more than 215,000 messages between members as of December 2025. Those attempting to access the forum's website ("leakbase[.]la") are now
All the ways to watch Crufts 2026 live streams for free from anywhere, as Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre hosts the worldβs greatest celebration of dogs.
DTC Skills offers production-ready AI skills and agents built for eCommerce operators. Each skill connects to your Brand Brain, the Commerce Intelligence System, ensuring that product pages, emails, ads, and support content match your voice and drive revenue. It runs on Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf, and integrates with Shopify, Klaviyo, Meta Ads, and Google Ads.
You can browse, install, and ship real work quickly, or choose managed agents for hands-off execution. Creators can list skills and sell them to DTC operators.
Batch52 helps small-batch makers sell online without relying on marketplaces. You can launch a mobile-ready shop on your own subdomain, list products with photos, and accept payments through credit cards, Venmo, Zelle, or PayPal. Track orders and payments at a glance with automatic confirmations. Use Batch Days to run pre-order drops with capacity limits and pickup windows that automatically close on sellout. You keep your own Stripe account, can export customers anytime, and pay no commissions.
FerretForge is a universal development platform for building, scanning, and shipping AI agent skills that work across Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and more platforms. It scores security and intelligence, flags prompt injection and credential leaks, and converts skills between formats with fidelity checks. Use the editor, AI Coach, and Academy to author, improve, and share reusable skills. Connect via MCP server, CLI, REST API, or VS Code to automate workflows, track history, and collaborate with projects and version control.
Googleβs Pixel A-series has historically provided great value for money β but with the Pixel 10a almost identical to its predecessor, a discounted Pixel 9a is the clear choice.
Google removed its JavaScript accessibility guidance from help documents, saying the advice is outdated and noting it has rendered JavaScript for years.
Hundreds of employees at Google and OpenAI have signed a public letter urging their companies to set firm boundaries on how AI can be used by the military
A new study suggests AI models frequently escalate to nuclear threats in simulated conflicts, likely mirroring the strategic thinking and war game scenarios that dominate their training data.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that his company's investments in OpenAI and Anthropic will likely be its last β but his explanation may not tell the whole story.
Google has announced a notable shift in how Chrome updates will roll out. Starting September 2026, the Chromium-based browser will move to a two-week release cycle. In practice, that means a new major Chrome version every 14 days, though Google notes that early-stage builds and experimental channels will follow slightly different rules.
VeritasLinks is a unified platform for AI perception intelligence and Generative Engine Optimization. It maps your digital footprint across forums, social platforms, reviews, and web sources to reveal how AI systems and real buyers categorize and recommend your brand. You will be benchmarked against competitors.
Use built-in tools to close visibility gaps quickly. These include AI focus groups, blog and FAQ generators, landing pages, video scripts, and promotional videos. You can track a Visibility Score, receive actionable steps, and deploy assets that improve trust, search visibility, and conversions.
The potential rollout would be available to companies with at least 50 employees, with the move suggesting that a paid business plan is on the horizon.
Issues at a local data center in Ashburn, Virginia, led to more timeouts, errors and latency issues β and user speculation about government interference.
Nvidiaβs upgrading its RTX 5050 in the strangest way possible Rumour has it that Nvidia plans to upgrade its RTX 5050 graphics card with a new memory configuration, giving gamers 9GB of GDDR7 memory across a downgraded memory bus. By shifting from 2GB GDDR6 memory chips to fewer, but faster, 3GB GDDR7 memory chips, Nvidia [β¦]
Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS), a premier chip and silicon IP provider making data faster and safer, today announced the industry's leading HBM4E Memory Controller IP, extending its market leadership in HBM IP. This new solution delivers breakthrough performance with advanced reliability features enabling designers to address the demanding memory bandwidth requirements of next-generation AI accelerators and graphics processing units (GPUs).
"Given the insatiable bandwidth demands of AI, it's imperative for the memory ecosystem to continue aggressively advancing memory performance," said Simon Blake-Wilson, SVP and general manager of Silicon IP, at Rambus. "As a leading silicon IP provider for AI applications, we are bringing the industry's leading HBM4E Controller IP solution to the market as a key enabler for breakthrough performance in next-generation AI processors and accelerators."
Reviews of the Pixel 10a describe it as a minor update over last year's model, with mostly cosmetic changes and similar hardware. Despite the limited changes, critics say it remains one of the best budget Android phones thanks to its reliable performance, strong cameras, and competitive $500 price point.
LovenWork connects ambitious professionals in two modes: Work and Love. Use Work Mode to find co-founders, freelancers, and mentors, matched by skills, goals, and work style. Switch to Love Mode to meet partners aligned on values, lifestyle, and chemistry. The algorithm pairs complementary minds, and professional verification via work email, LinkedIn, or portfolio keeps the community authentic. Toggle anytime as your intentions change and pursue both career growth and meaningful relationships.
Rambus has announced the development of its fastest HBM controller yet, based on the HBM4E standard, offering up to 16 Gbps transfer speeds per pin. Ready For Next-Gen AI Data Center Superchips, Rambus Intros HBM4E Memory Controller As expected, Rambus has developed the world's fastest HBM4E memory controller, offering a 60% boost over its HBM4 controller with up to 16 Gbps pin speeds (vs 10 Gbps on HBM4) and up to 4.1 TB/s of total bandwidth per module (vs 2.56 GB/s on HBM4). The HBM4E standard will be utilized by NVIDIA's Rubin Ultra GPUs and AMD's MI500 series accelerators. Press [β¦]
Google plans to defend HTTPS certificates against quantum attacks using compact verification methods that preserve browser performance and system compatibility.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's Season 2 Reloaded update goes live March 11, introducing new features like Glitch bosses to Endgame, new maps and modes for multiplayer, and a Nuketown variant for BO7's Zombies mode.
Bungie's new extraction shooter Marathon has the potential to be a massive hit, and you can get the FPS for less thanks to these deals on codes for it.
NVIDIA has rolled out GeForce Hotfix Display Driver version 595.76, based on the recently released 595.71 WHQL Game Ready driver. The update specifically targets a GPU voltage cap issue affecting overclocked graphics cards, which prevented them from boosting to expected frequency levels. The voltage limitation surfaced shortly after the March 3 release of the 595.71 WHQL driver, which itself was meant to resolve problems introduced by the earlier 595.59 build. Users with RTX 50-series "Blackwell" GPUs reported reduced boost clocks and performance degradation under load, with observed core voltages sitting lower than on prior drivers. The new 595.76 hotfix restores proper voltage behavior when overclocking is applied.
Beyond the voltage fix, the hotfix addresses several game-related issues. In Resident Evil Requiem, it resolves white glowing artifacts that appeared when Subsurface Scattering was enabled and improves path tracing performance. It also fixes launch crashes in Star Citizen and corrects intermittent application crashes or driver timeouts when playing multi-key DRM content in browsers on HDCP 1.x monitors. As with all NVIDIA hotfix releases, version 595.76 is a beta, optional driver distributed through the company's Customer Care support site. It undergoes a shortened QA cycle and will be pulled once its fixes are rolled into the next official WHQL-certified release. Users seeking maximum stability may prefer to wait for that broader driver update.
An Assassin's Creed Black Flag Remake has been rumored for years at this point, with the most recent rumors claiming a 2026 launch date, but now, the new Assassin's Creed Head of Content, Jean Guedon, has confirmed in a recent brand update blog post that Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is in development. While the game's existence is now confirmed, no launch date or window has been attached yet, and Ubisoft indicated in the blog post that it is but one of several AC projects "in various stages of development."
As the title of the blog post "Assassin's Creed Into 2026" indicates, Guesdon also gives us an idea of what to expect from the franchise for 2026 onwards, aside from Black Flag. Namely, he says that the next Assassin's Creed game slated for launch is Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe, which looks to have recently received a combat rework deep into its development cycle. Hexe is confirmed to be a narrative-driven, darker twist on the franchise, and Ubisoft will "be quiet for a little longer," ahead of release, but it looks to be the closest to launch. Assassin's Creed Invictus is the name of the PVP multiplayer Assassin's Creed game that Guedon has also confirmed to be in development alongside Codename Jade, which is an open-world mobile game that will seemingly take place in China and was originally rumored for a 2023 launch.
PulseKit turns your key metrics into widgets across your Apple devices. Instead of opening dashboards to check if something changed, the numbers you care about stay visible on your Home Screen. It works with tools like Product Hunt, LinkedIn, Discord, DeFiLlama, and more integrations are on the way. Itβs not a dashboard replacement; itβs the layer before the dashboard.
Appleβs A18 Pro from 2024 utilizes TSMCβs InFO-POP (Integrated Fan-Out Package on Package) technology, meaning that the DRAM sits on top of the die as part of the silicon. The technology giant re-purposed the same SoC and incorporated it into the MacBook Neo, which is why the latter is limited to 8GB of RAM. For those genuinely interested in upgrading to the $599 portable Mac but are discouraged because of the inadequate memory, the way the A18 Pro has been designed prevents this upgrade. While it was still possible for Apple to introduce more memory, it would be at a [β¦]
Build a Rocket Boy, the studio co-founded by Mark Gerhard and Leslie Benzies, the latter of which was a long-time producer at Rockstar who worked on several Grand Theft Auto titles, has announced another round of mass layoffs after its debut project, MindsEye, was one of 2025's catastrophic disasters. In a statement posted to the studio's LinkedIn page, Gerhard calls the layoffs "a deeply painful decision," and that "letting colleagues go is never something any leader wants to do, and I know the impact this will have on individuals, families, and our wider community." That said, in the face of [β¦]
EA and Respawn are trying to bring the hammer down hard on cheaters in Apex Legends by making some changes in how it'll respond to players caught using devices like Strikepacks, Cronus, and XIM. If you are caught using any of those devices or devices like them, you will be permanently banned from Apex Legends. Moreover, Respawn has said that it "will not entertain appeals for leniency on accounts confirmed cheating." So if Respawn confirms that you've been cheating, you will have no recourse for getting back into the game, and just creating a new account will simply just restart [β¦]
Google has dropped its commission, charging a 20% service fee and an optional 5% to use its billing services. It will also offer a new process for third-party app stores.
DoesΒ aΒ consumer hardwareΒ company need to get on theΒ VC treadmill toΒ succeed?Β Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later,Β PopSocketsΒ has proven thatΒ the bootstrapped, low-dilution path moreΒ viableΒ than the industry gives it credit for.Β The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professorβs determination.Β Watch as founder and former CEO [β¦]
Last week, we were lucky enough to catch up with WWE Superstar and NXT Champion Joe Hendry to learn all about what it's like being a headline act of an official WWE 2K video game.
On Monday, AMD announced its latest Ryzen AI 400 Series and Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series desktop processors, based on the "Gorgon Point" silicon and powered by the "Zen 5" core configuration. This generation follows the Ryzen 8000G series, known as "Phoenix Point." However, it has been revealed that the Ryzen AI 400 series reduces the number of usable PCIe lanes compared to the previous Ryzen 8000G generation. The new top SKU offers 16 native PCIe 4.0 lanes, but only 12 are available to the rest of the system. Four of these PCIe lanes are used for the chipset link that connects the AM5 socket to the motherboard chipset, leaving fewer lanes for the end-user. Lower-tier chips may provide as few as 10 usable lanes, which is insufficient to run a discrete GPU at its full 16x lanes in the PCIe 4.0 connector on the AM5 motherboard. When a user installs an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD, only eight lanes remain available for a discrete graphics card, meaning the GPU will operate in x8 mode instead of x16.
Interestingly, AMD hasn't fully utilized the "Gorgon Point" silicon in the desktop Ryzen AI 400G series. For example, the top modelβRyzen AI 7 450Gβis configured with four "Zen 5" cores and four "Zen 5c" cores, making up an eight-core configuration. The fully unlocked "Gorgon Point" silicon in laptops has 12 cores in total, with four "Zen 5" and eight "Zen 5c" cores. This is a similar configuration to "Strix Point," but adapted for mobile. It's also worth noting AMD's approach with the iGPU. The top 450G processor model only comes with 8 iGPU compute units, which is half the CUs physically available on the silicon. Most other processor models in the series come with just 4 CUs.
NVIDIA is reportedly planning a second RTX 5050 variant with 9 GB of memory instead of the standard 8 GB, according to leaker MEGAsizeGPU who has a decent track record on NVIDIA leaks. Unlike the existing RTX 5050, which uses 8 GB of 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus for 320 GB/s of bandwidth, the new model is said to adopt 3 GB GDDR7 modules. The updated configuration would total 9 GB across a 96-bit memory bus. While the narrower bus reduces interface width, the move to 28 Gbps GDDR7 would raise total memory bandwidth to 336 GB/s, a roughly 5% increase, alongside a 12.5% boost in VRAM capacity. Core specifications are expected to remain unchanged. The card would continue to use the GB207 GPU, based on the Blackwell architecture, with 2560 CUDA cores and a 130 W TDP. No changes to clock speeds or core counts have been mentioned.
The report also claims NVIDIA is preparing adjustments higher up the stack. A revised GeForce RTX 5060 may transition to the larger GB205 die, currently used in the RTX 5070, in a cut-down configuration. That would reportedly reduce the GPU from 6144 CUDA cores and a 192-bit bus to 3840 cores and a 128-bit interface. Such a move would require board partners to adopt new PCBs compatible with GB205 and standard 8-pin power connectors. According to the leak, these changes are tied to supply constraints affecting lower-tier RTX 50-series GPUs, including the RTX 5050 and RTX 5060. The GeForce RTX 5060 12 GB, which appeared in earlier roadmaps, is now reportedly canceled.
Multiple laptop listings from both Lenovo and Asus now show an RTX 5070 mobile GPU packing 12GB of GDDR7. The whole thing started when a leaker known as Huang514613 spotted Lenovo's upcoming Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition listing the card with 12GB.
The decision reportedly follows a series of service outages that have disrupted developer workflows on GitHub in recent months. Those incidents are believed to have prompted OpenAI engineering teams to explore greater control over their own development infrastructure.
Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has come out on top once again in his dispute with how platform holders dictate the relationship that developers have with their users. After starting disputes with both Apple and Google years ago, which initially took popular Epic Games titles like Fortnite off Android and iOS mobile platforms, Epic and Sweeney's dispute with Google has finally come to a close. To be clear, Fortnite has already made its return to iOS and Android when Epic was finally able to launch a mobile version of the Epic Games Store worldwide back in 2024 (though Australians had [β¦]
Intel's CFO, David Zinsner, took the stage at the Morgan Stanley conference, and based on his comments on the foundry front, Team Blue looks a lot more confident about division breakeven. Intel's 18A-P & 14A Will Prove to Be Effective Solutions For External Customers; Packaging To Bring 'Billions' In Revenue Under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, Intel has been entering the foundry market at a time when the AI frenzy significantly drives customer demand. One of the more significant achievements under Tan was the successful ramp-up of Panther Lake, and according to Zinsner, 18A has delivered on expectations, with yield rates improving [β¦]
The latest NVIDIA GPU driver has reportedly mitigated the performance issues users were facing on the latest Resident Evil title. NVIDIA's Sean Pelletier Confirms Game Ready Driver 595.71 Fixed Performance Issues in Resident Evil Requiem, but Users Will Need to Reboot NVIDIA Game Ready Driver 591.86, which was released at the end of January, reportedly caused trouble for gamers with the latest Resident Evil instalment. Many users on social media reported that they were seeing a significant performance impact in Resident Evil Requiem with the Driver 591.86, mostly involving GeForce RTX 40 series cards. Some users were reporting significant FPS [β¦]
Google is rolling out an update to AI Mode for recipe results that it hopes will make recipe bloggers happy. Googleβs Robby Stein said on X, βWeβve heard feedback on recipe results in AI Mode, and weβre making updates to better connect people with recipe creators on the web.β
The changes aim to make it easier to click over to recipe sites, though I am not 100% certain yet whether the recipe summaries turnΒ recipes into AI slop.
βStarting today, when you search for meal ideas like βeasy dinners for two,β you can tap on the dish to see links to relevant recipe sites, plus a short overview of the dish to help with inspiration,β Stein added.
What it looks like. Here is a video of it in action:
More recipe details too. Google is also adding more information to the recipe results including cook time. Google said its βtesters have found useful for deciding on a recipe.β
βWe know thereβs more work to be done on this, so stay tuned for future updates,β Robby Stein added.
Why we care. Recipe bloggers, well, content creators in general, have not been happy with how traffic from Googleβs AI experiences did not send as much traffic as the traditional search results. Here we see Google trying to make changes to encourage more searchers to click from those AI experiences to the bloggers website.
Authorities say LeakBase was "one of the worldβs largest online forums for cybercriminals," and maintained an archive of hacked databases containing hundreds of millions of passwords.
Apple unveils its new MacBook Neo, and prices start at Β£599 Apple has officially unveiled its new MacBook Neo, an all-new laptop design that aims to deliver an affordable entry point into the Mac ecosystem. With prices starting at Β£599/$599. This new MacBook features an aluminium enclosure, a 13-inch Liquid Retina display (2408Γ1504), and up [β¦]
Malwarebytes has published findings of a new type of malware that uses a fake Google Account security alert to steal data and compromise entire networks. Here's what you need to know (and how to remove it).
Lamptron has added silver colorways to its HC060 and HM049 hardware monitors, two compact displays built for real-time system monitoring inside or alongside a PC. The bigger of the two is the HC060, a 6-inch LCD running at 1024 x 768 and 60 Hz. It connects over HDMI and Micro USB, draws power via USB, and ties into AIDA64 for live system data, however, it can also handle photos, video, or light gaming if you want to use it that way. The unit measures 148.5 x 8.5 x 70 mm with a visible screen area of 133 x 74.5 mm and an 80Β° viewing angle. It can sit on a desk or be mounted inside a chassis, and supports custom skins from Lamptron or your own.
The HM049 is the smaller option at 4.9 inches, with a 960 x 320 panel at 60 Hz. Same connectivity and AIDA64 support, same skin customization, just in a more compact 148.5 x 42.5 x 66 mm body with a 111Γ37.5 mm display area and matching 80Β° viewing angle. Both models are available through the Lamptron AliExpress store and regional resellers across Europe, North America, and Asia. The HC060 starts at β¬149.90 and the HM049 at β¬79.90.
Following months of speculation and leaks, the Cupertino giant has officially introduced the MacBook Neo. Representing perhaps the most ambitious display of synergy within Apple's hardware stack yet, the laptop aims to prove that a processor originally designed for a flagship iPhone can handle macOS's basic functionality.
KnowIQ captures departing employees' critical knowledge through one structured interview and produces three outputs: an action list for managers, a reference document for the team, and a scorecard for leadership. Managers create the interview, the leaver answers seven targeted questions, and AI generates specific, actionable documents in under a minute.
This tool helps surface undocumented systems, plan handovers, and protect continuity so your team isn't starting from zero after someone leaves.
Ubisoft has provided a major update on what's coming next in the Assassin's Creed franchise as we near the one-year anniversary of its last major release, Assassin's Creed Shadows. Firstly, we can finally stop calling the Assassin's Creed Black Flag Remake a 'rumoured' game, because Ubisoft has finally officially confirmed the remake to be on its way and that it is indeed titled 'Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced,' which was the title that leaked in December 2025. In a blog post on the official Ubisoft website titled 'Assassin's Creed: Into 2026,' recently named head of AC content, Jean Guesdon, appears [β¦]
Cyprus-based game developer Mundfish has just unveiled the fourth and final Atomic Heart DLC. Titled Blood on Crystal, it will be released on April 16 for all platforms (PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series S and X). According to the studio, Atomic Heart fans will experience the "thrilling, high-stakes" conclusion of the first game's narrative in this DLC, in which protagonist P-3 and their comrades must venture deeper than ever before into Facility 3826 to battle CHAR-les and make a final attempt to save humanity from total annihilation. Here's an overview provided by Mundfish: Mundfish also [β¦]
Intel's board chair, Frank Yeary, is retiring from his current position, according to the latest announcement, and the industry has responded with mixed reactions. Intel Shifts From a Finance-Centric to an Engineering-First Board Chair, Aligning With Lip-Bu's Ideologies Intel underwent a massive administrative shift back in 2025, mainly driven by the departure of former CEO Pat Gelsinger, under stringent conditions. Team Blue has always focused on advanced chip manufacturing, and, through the '5N4Y' ideology developed under Gelsinger, Intel made significant investments in its foundry division. However, Intel's efforts didn't deliver much shareholder value, mainly because there weren't significant breakthroughs from [β¦]
Apple has finally unveiled its much-anticipated MacBook Neo, bringing a 13-inch Liquid Retina display with a 2,408 x 1,506 resolution and 500 nits brightness, uniform bezels, Touch ID, dual-firing speakers that support Spatial Audio, a 1080p front camera, a brightly colored aluminum frame, and color-matching keyboard to the proverbial table. However, to price the MacBook Neo at a very attractive $599, Apple has had to make a lot of compromises along the way, with some that were, frankly speaking, quite unavoidable. The litany of compromises that Apple has had to make to launch the MacBook Neo at a price point [β¦]
NVIDIA is preparing a new variant of its GeForce RTX 5050 graphics card, which will feature 9 GB of memory capacity. NVIDIA Working On A Second GeForce RTX 5050 Graphics Card Featuring 1 GB of Extra memory The report comes from MEGAsizeGPU who has a solid track record when it comes to NVIDIA-related GPU SKU leaks. As per the new information, NVIDIA is preparing a second GeForce RTX 5050 GPU, which would offer extra memory capacity. The new product will be named the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050, but unlike the existing model, which packs 8 GB of GDDR7 memory, the [β¦]
In a little more than two months, we'll be able to jump into IO Interactive's latest major game, 007 First Light. The storied Hitman developer taking on a James Bond story felt like a match made in heaven when it was first revealed all the way back in 2020. As we wait to find out if we were right about IO and James Bond being as good as peanut butter and chocolate, IO Interactive has just released a new deep-dive into the game, with the studio focusing in on its version of Bond and the cast of classic 007 characters. [β¦]
A new job listing for a Senior Anti-Cheat Engineer has revealed that EA is working on bringing its Javelin anti-cheat software to Arm-based devices. The timing aligns nicely with the purported launch of Nvidia's N1/N1X SoCs that are also Arm-based. The role also involves future development for Linux/Proton.
The Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike is innovative and excellent for competitive players of every age. Its high price will put it out of reach for many players, but if youβre older or looking for a mechanical advantage, itβs definitely worth considering.
New semiconductor fabs and data centers are fueling Taiwan's growing power demand, with the island expected to require more than 5GW of new electricity sources and power infrastructure to keep up.
NotebookLM is introducing Cinematic Video Overviews, a major update to its AI-powered video creation capabilities. This new feature moves beyond narrated slides in Videoβ¦
Google is investigating a disruption affecting Google Ad Manager, according to an update posted on the Google Ads Status Dashboard.
The incident began at 13:49 UTC on March 4. By 13:54 UTC, Google said it was reviewing reports that some users could access Ad Manager but werenβt seeing the most up-to-date data.
Whatβs happening. The issue appears to impact reporting consistency. Specifically, Ad Exchange match rate and Ad Exchange request values are not aligning between Ad Managerβs interactive reports and the legacy reporting query tool (now deprecated).
Why we care. Reporting discrepancies in Google Ad Manager can directly impact how you evaluate performance and optimize campaigns. If Ad Exchange match rates and request data donβt align across reporting tools, it becomes harder to trust the numbers driving pacing, forecasting and revenue decisions.
What it means. Users can still log into Ad Manager, but reporting discrepancies may affect data accuracy β at least temporarily. Thereβs no indication yet of a full outage, but for publishers and advertisers relying on real-time reporting, mismatched metrics could complicate performance monitoring and optimization decisions.
Whatβs next. Google says itβs actively investigating and will provide further updates. In the meantime, affected users are advised to monitor the status dashboard and contact support if theyβre experiencing issues not listed there.
Google introduced a new availability value in Google Merchant Center β built specifically for vehicle sellers who donβt carry every model on the lot. The new attribute, βbuild to order,β lets dealers flag vehicles that arenβt physically in inventory but can be customized and ordered by customers.
What needs to change. Sellers must update two areas: their structured data (set availability to BuildToOrder) and their Merchant Center feed (set availability to build to order). Consistency between structured data and feed submissions is critical to avoid disapprovals.
Instruction on when to use the availabilityΒ [availability]Β attribute in GMCΒ
Why we care. Until now, sellers had limited ways to signal that a vehicle wasnβt available for immediate pickup. The new value better reflects how many modern automakers operate β especially direct-to-consumer brands like Tesla and Rivian, where buyers configure features before production. For dealers offering factory orders or custom builds, this means clearer expectations for shoppers β and cleaner data for Google.
The fine print Vehicles marked βbuild to orderβ must have the condition attribute set to βnew.β If a listing is marked βused,β it will be disapproved β Google considers build-to-order vehicles to be newly configured, not pre-owned.
Bottom line If you sell customizable or factory-order vehicles, this update gives you a more accurate way to reflect availability β but only if your feed, structured data and condition fields are properly aligned.
First spotted. This update was shared by Google Shopping specialist Emmanuel Flossie, where he shared how to implement this update on his blog.
PPC platforms are asset-hungry. What began as simple text ads and keyword bidding has evolved into an AI-driven ecosystem.
Tools inside Google Ads can now remove backgrounds, generate lifestyle scenes, and even create synthetic humans in minutes. But just because the technology allows it doesnβt mean every brand should use it.
That shift forces PPC advertisers to confront difficult questions:
Are you willing to trade efficiency for authenticity?
How far up the stack should your brand let AI operate?
If clients knew exactly where and how you were using AI, would they trust you, or would they question you?
A brand integrity hierarchy offers a way to navigate those decisions β a four-level framework that helps determine how much AI manipulation your brand, industry, and audience can tolerate.
Why PPC needs its own AI ethics framework
Generic AI ethics guidelines donβt account for the operational realities of paid search. PPC isnβt a brand storytelling channel. Itβs a high-volume, high-velocity system that demands constant image production across dozens of audiences, formats, and placements.
You must generate fresh lifestyle imagery at a pace traditional creative workflows canβt sustain.
At the same time, Google and Bing enforce strict policies around accurate product representation, especially in Merchant Center, where even minor visual inaccuracies can trigger disapprovals or account risk.
Layer on top of that the platform pressure. Google Ads added Nano Banana Pro, turning Asset Studio into an AI co-creation environment. Performance Max actively pushes you toward AI-generated backgrounds, variations, and lifestyle images to improve performance. Demand Gen and Merchant Center also now have capabilities to change product images at scale.
Most brands canβt afford the photoshoots required to keep up with this demand, yet the volume and placement of images across channels make them unavoidable if you want to compete.
This combination of policy risk, creative pressure, and platform-promoted tools is unique to PPC β which is exactly why the industry needs its own AI ethics framework.
PPC context: This level is fully compliant with Google and Microsoftβs βaccurate representationβ policies. Merchant Center explicitly permits technical edits that donβt alter the product itself. This is the safest zone for regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, legal services, and brands with strict authenticity standards.
Client talk-track: βWeβre using AI to make your reality look its best on every screen size. We arenβt changing what the product is, only how itβs displayed.β
Risk assessment: Zero brand risk. Zero policy risk. Maximum consumer trust.
I think about Level 1 the same way I think about working with a graphic designer in Photoshop. Youβre not changing the product, the setting, or the truth β youβre simply cleaning up what already exists.
This level is about technical refinement, not creative invention. Itβs the equivalent of adjusting lighting, removing dust, fixing a crooked crop, or correcting color balance. Nothing about the image becomes βuntrue.β Youβre enhancing reality, not altering it.
Level 2 β The inner ring (low risk): Contextual narrative
Definition: AI-generated environment, not AI-generated product.
Permitted activities:
Generative backgrounds (e.g., placing a watch on a mountain backdrop).
Removing visual distractions (e.g., power lines, litter, unrelated objects).
Seasonal or thematic settings (e.g., holiday scenes, office environments).
Generic commodity generation (e.g., coffee beans, grain, raw materials, not branded products).
Google Ads context: Performance Maxβs AI background generation is designed for this level. Google allows contextual enhancement as long as the product remains unchanged. This approach is useful for scaling creative variations without expensive location shoots or studio rentals.
Risks:
Cultural mismatch. AI-generated settings may not reflect the target audienceβs reality.
Unrealistic or off-brand environments.
Requires human review for brand consistency.
Client talk-track: βWeβre using AI to build a world for your product to live in. The product the customer receives is identical to the one in the ad.β
Level 2 sits in an odd psychological space. The manipulations themselves are still low-risk. Youβre creating scenes, composites, or enhanced environments the same way a graphic designer would in Photoshop.
Brands have been doing this manually for decades. But the moment AI performs the same task, something shifts. To customers, and even to some advertisers, the exact same edit can feel more artificial simply because an algorithm did it instead of a human.
That perception gap matters.
Even when the output is identical, AI-assisted scene creation can trigger a sense of βthis looks fakeβ that traditional Photoshop work never did. Itβs irrational, but itβs real and worth acknowledging at this second tier. The actual risk is still low, but the emotional risk is higher than Level 1.
Level 3 β The outer ring (high risk): Subject augmentation
Definition: Altering the βheroβ β the product or the person.
Activities:
Beautification filters on models.
Slimming or reshaping human subjects.
Altering food textures to appear more appealing.
Removing βimperfectionsβ from products.
Making products appear more premium than they are.
PPC industry context: The platforms prohibit misleading or manipulated product imagery. Merchant Center disapprovals often occur at this level. High sensitivity exists in beauty, apparel, food, and health categories, where consumer expectations are tied directly to visual accuracy.
Recent consumer trust studies show that users feel deceived when they discover product images have been significantly altered. This is a policy concern, more so a brand reputation issue.
Half of U.S. adults (51%) believe AI-generated and edited content needs better labeling, CNET reports. One in five (21%) believe AI content should be prohibited on social media with no exceptions.
Risks:
High PR risk (e.g., press call-out moments).
High policy risk (e.g., disapprovals, account suspension).
High consumer trust risk (e.g., returns, negative reviews).
Client talk-track: βThis is where we risk the βpress call-out.β If we remove a modelβs birthmark or make a burger look like a 3D render, we arenβt optimizing β weβre fabricating.β
Risk assessment: High brand risk. High policy risk. Potential for long-term damage to consumer trust.
Level 3 moves into territory where the image no longer reflects the real person or product. And yes, brands have been doing this in Photoshop for years, and theyβve been called out for it just as long. Thereβs precedent, and thereβs backlash.
What changes at Level 3 is scale. AI lets you make edits instantly, repeatedly, and across entire product catalogs or campaigns. The ethical risk isnβt new, but the volume and speed at which AI enables these distortions make the consequences far bigger. A single questionable Photoshop edit is one thing. Hundreds of AI-altered images pushed across every channel is something else entirely.
This is where the risk stops being theoretical and starts becoming reputational β and where paid search teams need a clarified stance.
Level 4 β The edge (critical risk): Full fabrication
Definition: Synthetic humans, synthetic products, or fully AI-generated scenes.
Activities:
AI-generated models.
Virtual influencers.
Products that donβt exist.
Entirely fabricated lifestyle scenes with no real-world basis.
PPC context: Synthetic humans are allowed in some formats with proper disclosure, but Merchant Center prohibits listing products that donβt exist. There is a high risk of disapproval for βinaccurate representation.β This level may be acceptable for creative testing or conceptual campaigns, but itβs dangerous as a primary brand identity.
Legal precedents regarding copyright protection for non-human-authored creative works remain murky. Using fully synthetic assets may cause challenges if ownership disputes arise or if synthetic models are mistaken for real individuals without proper disclosure.
Risks:
Maximum brand risk.
Maximum policy risk.
Maximum consumer trust risk.
Potential long-term damage to βtrust equity.β
Client talk-track: βThis is for high-speed testing or fringe creative. If we use this for our main brand identity, we must be prepared for the βinauthenticβ label.β
Risk assessment: Critical brand risk. Critical policy risk. Use with extreme caution and full disclosure.
Level 4 is where AI stops enhancing reality and starts inventing it. The image becomes a construction. While I havenβt personally worked with brands operating at this tier, itβs absolutely where the industry could be headed, and it deserves serious consideration.
Fully fabricated imagery can mislead customers, violate platform policies, and erode trust at scale. When AI creates people, products, or environments from scratch, the line between creative expression and consumer deception becomes razor-thin. The reputational fallout from getting this wrong is far greater than anything in Levels 1 through 3.
This is the highest-risk tier because it asks a fundamental question: Are you still advertising your product or an AI-generated fiction of it?
Brand alignment: Defining your North Star
Not every brand should operate at the same level of the brand integrity scale. Your acceptable AI usage depends on four factors.
1. Define your non-negotiables
Every brand must choose its acceptable level(s) on the scale and document it in a brand AI manifesto for PPC.
Examples:
Dove (authenticity-driven beauty brand): Level 1 only.
Tech-forward DTC brand: Levels 2-3 acceptable with clear disclosure.
Ecommerce aggregator: Levels 1-2 for product listings, Level 3 for lifestyle content.
Action: Create a PPC brand AI manifesto in collaboration with creative, legal, and executive leadership.
2. The press test vs. the policy test
Two critical questions should guide every AI decision:
Policy test: βWill the platform approve this?β
Press test: βWould we be proud if The Verge covered this?β
The press test is the real guardrail. Googleβs policies change. Public perception is permanent.
3. Human-in-the-loop protocol
Every AI-assisted asset must be checked for:
Material deception: Does this misrepresent the product or service?
Identity erasure: Does this erase diversity or cultural authenticity?
Cultural hallucinations: Does this AI-generated scene reflect reality or stereotype?
Product accuracy: Does the ad show what the customer will actually receive?
Automated AI generation should never bypass human review, especially in regulated verticals.
4. Align with your customer base
Different audiences have different tolerances for AI manipulation:
Gen Z: Values βperfectly imperfectβ authenticity. Responds negatively to over-polished imagery.
B2B: Prioritizes clarity and utility. AI-generated backgrounds are acceptable. Synthetic humans less so.
Retail: Authenticity directly impacts conversion rates. Product accuracy is non-negotiable.
Operationalizing the brand integrity circle inside PPC ads
Creative workflow
Implement a pre-flight checklist for AI-generated assets:
Identify the level: Core, inner ring, outer ring, or edge
Apply the press test: Would we defend this publicly?
Check for bias: Does this asset represent your audience accurately?
Verify product accuracy: Is this what the customer will receive?
Document disclosure: If synthetic humans are used, is this disclosed?
Media workflowΒ
Safe placements for AI-generated assets
Performance Max (with contextual backgrounds).
Demand Gen (lifestyle scenes).
YouTube thumbnails (conceptual creative).
Unsafe placements
Merchant Center product images (Level 1 only).
Regulated verticals (finance, healthcare, legal).
Sensitive categories (beauty, weight loss, medical devices).
Legal workflow
Legal teams should:
Review synthetic human usage for disclosure compliance.
Validate product accuracy claims.
Approve the brand AI manifesto.
Maintain documentation for regulatory audits.
Industry standards and emerging frameworks, such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), are establishing transparency protocols for AI-generated media. Monitor these developments and align your practices accordingly.
What the PPC community thinks
Some PPC professionals are already experimenting with the tools discussed in this framework.
Ameet Khabra, owner of Hop Skip Media, tested Nano Banana when it first appeared inside the Google Ads interface. She found the tool useful for ideation and quick edits, but noted that strong results often required highly specific prompts.
That level of prompt detail may be realistic for experienced advertisers, but itβs less likely for many SMBs experimenting with AI-generated assets.
βI think itβs a great tool to use for ideation and potentially quick edits,β Khabra said. βBut I would still have a graphic designer creating the final product.β
Even when AI imagery is available, some advertisers remain skeptical of how it appears to audiences.
Julie Friedman Bacchini, owner of Neptune Moon, says AI-generated images often look noticeably artificial.
βI donβt like AI images because they look like AI and thatβs off-putting to me,β Bacchini said. βIt can be hard to avoid. Even when youβre trying to use stock photos, there are so many AI images on those sites too.β
To understand how people outside the industry view these changes, I also polled the community on Threads.
The sentiment was strikingly consistent: while the industry focuses on efficiency, the public is increasingly wary of fantasy versus reality.
One commenter wrote:
βFalse advertising. That seems like a pretty big concern. As a consumer, I actually would like to see the real thing Iβd be buying.β
Another described the issue more bluntly:
βBait and switch. Fantasy versus reality. Falsehood versus the truth.β
AI isnβt inherently deceptive. Nor is it inherently transparent. Itβs a tool. Like all tools, its ethical impact depends on how itβs used. As PPC experts with access to these technologies and advisory roles with brands, we need a clear point of view to guide these decisions.
The brand integrity scale outlined above provides a structured approach to AI use in PPC, helping you navigate the tension between automation and authenticity. By defining your brandβs position on this spectrum today, you ensure tomorrowβs campaigns are remembered for their resonance.
Adopt ethical AI standards β define your brand AI manifesto, implement the press test, and ensure every AI-generated asset passes human review before it reaches your audience. Your brandβs integrity depends on it.
Google has removed the βdesign for accessibilityβ section from within the Understand the JavaScript SEO basics documentation. Google said this was removed because the information was βout of date and not as helpful as it used to be.β
The old text said that using JavaScript for page content βmay be hard for Google to see.β But Google now says that has not been true for many years, thus why Google removed the section.
The old section. The old section read:
βDesign for accessibility: Create pages for users, not just search engines. When youβre designing your site, think about the needs of your users, including those who may not be using a JavaScript-capable browser (for example, people who use screen readers or less advanced mobile devices). One of the easiest ways to test your siteβs accessibility is to preview it in your browser with JavaScript turned off, or to view it in a text-only browser such as Lynx. Viewing a site as text-only can also help you identify other content which may be hard for Google to see, such as text embedded in images.β
βThe information was out of date and not as helpful as it used to be. Google Search has been rendering JavaScript for multiple years now, so using JavaScript to load content is not βmaking it harder for Google Searchβ.β
βMost assistive technologies are able to work with JavaScript now as well.β
Why we care. While Google Search can handle JavaScript super well, it is still important for you to double check what Google Search sees by using the URL inspection tool within Google Search Console.
Keep in mind, Google can handle JavaScript very well, Microsoft Bing likely can as well. But many of the new AI engines might not be able to render JavaScript as well as Google or Bing.
Google is communicating that starting April 1st, Customer Match uploads through the Google Ads API will stop working for certain users, in a message sent to API developers.
Specifically, developers who havenβt uploaded Customer Match data in the past 180 days using their developer token will no longer be able to do so via the Ads API.
Whatβs changing. If you fall into that inactive bucket, any attempt to upload Customer Match lists through the Google Ads API after April 1 will fail. Instead, Google wants you to move those workflows to the Data Manager API. The change applies only to Customer Match uploads β all other campaign management and reporting tasks should continue as normal in the Google Ads API.
Why Google says itβs doing this. Google positions the Data Manager API as a more modern, unified data ingestion solution across its platforms, with stronger security protocols. It also includes features not available in the Ads API, such as confidential matching and enhanced encryption β signaling a push to centralize and better secure audience data handling.
Why we care. If you or your developers havenβt touched Customer Match uploads in the last six months, this could catch you off guard. After April 1, 2026, the old workflow simply wonβt work β and errors will replace uploads.
The takeaway. Check whether your developer token has been used for Customer Match recently and plan a migration to the Data Manager API now, before Google flips the switch.
First spotted. This announcement was shared by Paid Search specialist Arpan Banerjee who shared the message he got from Google on LinkedIn.
Cybersecurity researchers have warned of a surge in retaliatory hacktivist activity following the U.S.-Israel coordinated military campaign against Iran, codenamed Epic Fury and Roaring Lion.
"The hacktivist threat in the Middle East is highly lopsided, with two groups, Keymous+ and DieNet, driving nearly 70% of all attack activity between February 28 and March 2," Radware said in a Tuesday
The MacBook Neo arrives as a budget-laptop-busting portable that starts at just $599 / AU$899 ($499 / AU$749 for the education market) and rewrites the rules for a budget laptop.
NordVPNβs Call Protection feature now warns Android users across Europe, the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, and Australia about potential scam calls before they pick up
Autonomous ErgoChair Pro has all the comfort features I look for in a high-end ergonomic chair, including adjustable headrest, armrests and lumbar support.
Want to tap into the energy of 1,100+ startup founders, investors, and tech leaders descending on Boston for the Founder Summit 2026 on June 9? Host your own Side Event during βFounder Summit Week,β happening June 4-10!
Panmnesia, an AI infrastructure link solution provider, today announced the signing of a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SK Telecom, South Korea's largest telco and a leading AI company. The agreement, signed at MWC26 in Barcelona, aims to jointly develop a CXL-based next-generation AI data center architecture.
As large-scale AI services continue to expand, data centers are investing heavily in massive deployments of high-performance GPUs, resulting in astronomical costs. Recognizing the need for sustainable scalability, SK Telecom and Panmnesia are focusing beyond simple GPU expansion to technologies that enable more efficient utilization of existing computing resources. Through this collaboration, the two companies aim to simultaneously improve cost efficiency and performance by innovating data center interconnect architecture based on Compute Express Link (CXL) technology.
Morefine has announced the N1 NAS, a tower-style NAS solution that packs the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 8845HS, up to 96 GB of DDR5-5600 ECC memory, dual 10 GbE ports, and built-in PCIe expansion. Pricing starts at $759 for a barebones version, but 32 GB of memory bumps that up to $1,209, while the 64 GB and 96 GB versions come in at $1,569 and $1,929. The Morefine N1 has three M.2 slots for up to 12 TB of SSD storage alongside four hot-swap 3.5-inch HDD bays accessible via the top of the case for an additional 120 TB. The aluminium case itself measured 218 Γ 193 Γ 372 mm, making it considerably smaller than many ITX systems but not quite as svelte as a traditional mini PC, like the recently announced Minisforum MS-A2.
The N1 also comes with a built-in 800 W PSU with 400 W dedicated to the GPU power budget, making it adequate for something like an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, although the included PSU power connectors are not specified. Internal space for the dGPU is limited to 330 mm Γ 66 mm, too, so SFF GPUs will be the way to go. The port selection is also fairly decent for an SFF PC, packing dual USB 2.0, 1Γ USB4 port, 1Γ USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1Γ USB 3.2 Gen 1, a full size SD card reader, 1Γ HDMI 2.0, and dual 10 GbE RJ 45 ports. It also has a small 3-inch full color touch screen on the front of the case for displaying things like system information.
While the base Apple M5 chip retains a conventional single-die design, the M5 Pro and M5 Max move to Apple's new Fusion architecture. The approach relies on advanced packaging to combine two dies into a single SoC, integrating the CPU, GPU, media engine, unified memory controller, neural engine, and Thunderbolt...
For a limited time, you can pick up a lifetime license for Office 2024 Home & Business on PC or Mac for $89. That's down from the previous deal price of $149, and well below Microsoft's standard retail pricing. It's a one-time purchase that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and...
For a company whose legacy was built on console hits, the balance of power has shifted dramatically. Stronger sales through Valve's Steam marketplace and access to a vast global PC audience have made the platform central to Capcom's growth strategy.
ProtonVPN delivers secure, encrypted browsing with one of the most generous free plans in the VPN space. Built by the privacy-focused team behind Proton Mail, it offers unlimited data, a strict no-logs policy, and open-source apps across major platforms.
Privas AI adds a private conversation space to your website. Visitors can ask questions anonymously, understand your product, and decide before they talk to sales.
Instead of forcing users to click contact forms or WhatsApp buttons, your site can answer real questions in real time. Responses come from your actual website content, not generic AI, and you can step in when needed. Conversations stay private and are never used to train public models. Currently in guided private beta.
After having been in development for a very long time, Crimson Desert is almost upon us. Up until now, however, developer Pearl Abyss has only shown the game on PC, raising concerns over the console versions of the game and making more than a few suspect the developer was actually hiding console footage in a tragic repeat of the Cyberpunk 2077 situation back in 2022, forcing PR representatives to address the matter outright. Following the confirmation that Pearl Abyss is not hiding Crimson Desert console footage, details on the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro versions have been shared online, [β¦]
Apple didnβt add any kind of MagSafe charging on the MacBook Neo, meaning that the companyβs affordable 13-inch notebook only ships with two USB-C ports for topping up the battery and data transfer. Unfortunately, the $599 starting price will bring some compromises, with one of them being that the two ports wonβt deliver the same bandwidth. In short, if you want the fastest speeds when moving heaps of files, youβll have to avoid one of these ports. Fortunately, the MacBook Neo can be charged with both USB-C ports, itβs just one of them that will operate at a slower bandwidth [β¦]
Cyberpunk 2077 really did a number on how players look at major upcoming games. Yes, it's now an incredibly successful RPG, but its launch is an event that no one will soon forget, and CD Projekt RED's blatant misdirection regarding how the game ran on last-gen consoles has made players incredibly weary of any big game that doesn't put console gameplay footage front and center, and now, Crimson Desert, one of the most anticipated titles of 2026, seems to be feeling the ripple effects from that launch. To be clear, we have seen footage of Crimson Desert running on consoles, [β¦]
Although it was widely known that Remedy Entertainment has been working on the second entry in the Control series for a while, the reveal of Control Resonant was still quite a surprise for fans of the Finnish studio. Right from its very first showing during last year's The Game Awards show, it was clear how the second entry in the series would be a very different game from its predecessor, closer to a character action game than to the third-person shooter formula seen in Jesse Faden's venture into the Oldest House. The first few looks at Control Resonant's gameplay gave [β¦]
The rumors were consistent on the claims that the MacBook NeoΒ would ship with the A18 Pro, and now that Apple is officially done announcing its most affordable portable Mac ever, our curiosity compelled us to find out what shortcuts the company took on the internal hardware side of things. Sure enough, we found one major difference between the SoC running in the latest release and the one powering the previous-generation iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. A18 Pro running in the MacBook Neo features a 5-core CPU, one less than the iPhone 16 Proβs silicon Where the iPhone [β¦]
Now that Samsung has demonstrated its competence with the new Exynos 2600 chip, which has bested Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip in various benchmarks, especially the ones related to natural language understanding, object detection, and image classification, all the while maintaining an enviable thermal footprint, the South Korean behemoth is finally doubling down on its native silicon, with the sampling of the next-gen Exynos 2700 chip already underway. Samsung is already fabricating production samples for its next-gen Exynos 2700 chip, following the completion of the design process in late 2025 According to a South Korean publication, Samsung has [β¦]
Google has long been considered the gold standard for ad spend compared to social platforms. But scale doesnβt equal immunity. Click fraud remains a persistent risk, and the safety of your budget depends entirely on where your ads are running.
While Google Ads offers immense reach, its campaigns arenβt created equal. Some are significantly more exposed to malicious activity than others. To protect your margins, you must understand what constitutes click fraud, where it originates, and how to shield your campaigns.
What are invalid clicks?
Invalid clicks are interactions that lack legitimate consumer intent. Because they arenβt driven by real human interest, they skew performance data and drain budgets without any possibility of conversion. These clicks generally originate from four primary sources:
Botnets: Networks of hijacked devices controlled by a βbotmaster.β They generate massive volumes of automated traffic that mimic human behavior to inflate metrics or carry out DDoS attacks.
Click farms: Large groups of low-paid workers or automated scripts tasked with manually clicking ads. They create an illusion of high engagement, misleading brands into believing a campaign is more effective than it truly is.
Ad injection and malware: Malicious software that βinjectsβ unauthorized ads into websites or forcibly redirects users. This hijacks legitimate revenue and erodes consumer trust.
Pixel stuffing and ad stacking: βInvisibleβ fraud in which ads are served but never seen. Pixel stuffing compresses an ad into a single 1Γ1 invisible pixel, while ad stacking layers multiple ads on top of each other in a single slot. You pay for thousands of impressions that have zero chance of being viewed.
The average invalid click rate across Google Ads is 11.4%, a recent study by Fraud Blocker found. The figure is climbing.
That upward trend becomes clearer over time. In 2010, the average invalid click rate sat at 5.9%. By 2024, that number jumped to 12.3%. This doubling of fraud is likely driven by the increased sophistication of AI-powered bots and malware that can more effectively bypass basic security filters.
Invalid click rates fluctuate based on your campaign setup. Three key factors typically drive these numbers:
Industry competition: High CPC industries like legal services, insurance, and real estate are primary targets. Competitors or bots may intentionally target these campaigns to exhaust your daily budget.
Targeting parameters: Overly broad keywords or targeting regions known for high botnet activity can inadvertently invite βjunkβ traffic.
Refinement tools: Negative keywords and audience exclusions act as a shield, reducing the frequency of unintentional clicks.
Campaign hierarchy: Which are the biggest violators?
Not all Google Ads inventory carries the same level of risk. Hereβs how campaign types stack up from highest to lowest exposure.
The biggest risk: Google Video Partners
Video Partners show the highest levels of invalid traffic since they reach beyond YouTube to Googleβs network of third-party sites.
Many of these sites offer zero control, racking up views from bots or βmutedβ placements in tiny windows where real people never see them.
Display campaigns: Highly vulnerable
Display ads are often plagued by low-quality βmade-for-adsβ or AI-built sites.
In some cases, more than half of the clicks on a specific site can be invalid.
While major publishers are safer, the risk across the wider network is uneven and requires constant monitoring.
Shopping and Demand Gen: The automation tax
These campaigns face less malicious fraud from price-checking tools, scrapers, and automated bots.
While not always intended to deplete your budget, these clicks still drain spend and skew optimization data, which is particularly damaging for low-margin businesses.
Performance Max: Hidden exposure
While PMax scales inventory across all Google properties, it spreads risk across the entire ecosystem.
Because itβs difficult to see exactly where traffic originates, even a low percentage of invalid clicks can result in significant wasted spend.
Search: The safest bet
Traditional Search campaigns remain the most secure.
Itβs much harder for bots to accurately mimic a human searching for a specific solution.
However, in high CPC industries, even a 2% fraud rate can be financially painful.
How to mitigate the risks
Across the diverse range of industries my clients serve, Iβve identified specific patterns in how fraud manifests across different sectors. As a result, the best prescription is proactive. Address these vulnerabilities by shifting from broad, automated settings to a more refined, high-intent strategy.
The following table highlights the specific patterns we monitor to lower invalid click rates:
Factor
Higher risk (Aggressive)
Lower risk (Strict)
Location
Global or βPresence or Interestβ
βPresence Onlyβ (User is physically there)
Keywords
Broad match / Generic terms
Exact match / Long-tail phrases
Networks
Including βSearch Partnersβ and βDisplayβ
Google Search Network only
Exclusions
No negative keywords or placement lists
Robust negative lists and app exclusions
Scheduling
24/7 (Bots often spike at night)
Custom schedules aligned with business hours
Here are proactive steps you can take to reduce your exposure to fraud.
Audit placement data: Regularly review where your ads appear. Immediately exclude low-quality apps or sites that show high click-through rates but zero conversions.
Limit AI Max overreliance: Automation is powerful, but set and forget is a recipe for wasted spend. Maintain manual guardrails on your automated campaigns.
Review refunds: Google does issue refunds for detected fraud, but subtle cases often slip through. Compare your internal lead data against Googleβs click data to find discrepancies.
Google is far from a uniform entity. Itβs a diverse ecosystem of distinct environments where risk levels can vary by as much as 400%.
Prioritizing high-quality traffic results in superior data integrity, more precise optimization, and reduced acquisition costs. In todayβs market, the strategic structure of your campaigns is just as vital to your success as the size of your budget.
One of the most profitable Google Ads targeting tactics is retargeting: showing ads to people who are already familiar with your business. But if you still think that βretargetingβ means a Display campaign chasing users around the web with banner ads, youβre missing out on how βYour data segmentsβ actually function today.
Letβs explore how you can leverage your proprietary audience data in new ways, and what mistakes to avoid in 2026 and beyond.
What are βYour data segmentsβ in Google Ads?
Retargeting means showing ads to people who are already familiar with your business. Google uses the euphemistic name βYour data segmentsβ to refer to all the retargeting lists in your account.
What types of retargeting can you do in Google Ads?
A variety of different retargeting methods are available in Google Ads. They mirror what youβll find on other ad platforms like Meta, LinkedIn, or TikTok. I find it helpful to group them into four categories:
Website Visitors: This is the standard one β people who have visited your website. You collect this data using Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics.
App Users: If you have a mobile app, you can pull data from Firebase or other third-party analytics tools into Google Ads for retargeting.
Customer Match: This is the βholy grailβ of retargeting. You take your businessβs first-party data (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.) and upload it directly to Google Ads, so that Google can find those same users across its platforms.
Content Engagers: People who have interacted with your content on Google-owned properties. Examples include a segment of users who have watched your YouTube videos, or a segment of users who have clicked through to your site from search results (this is called the Google Engaged Audience, which we explored in another article).
Should you upload βyour data segmentsβ if youβre not planning to do retargeting?
Many practitioners overlook this detail: your data segments arenβt just about ad targeting.
Even if you donβt have a single retargeting campaign running, the mere existence of these lists in your account provides a vital signal for Smart Bidding and Optimized Targeting.
For example, when you upload a customer list, youβre telling Google, βThese are the people who actually buy from me.β Even if you never add that list to your audience signal in Performance Max, Google will still use it to understand likely converters and adjust bidding/targeting accordingly.
Similarly, letβs say you only run Search and Shopping campaigns, and you use Target ROAS bidding. When Google is trying to set the right bid for the right user at the right time, their presence (or lack thereof) on a βyour data segmentβ list is one of many signals incorporated into that bidding calculation.
How can you use retargeting lists in Google Ads?
Different campaign types handle audience data differently. Itβs important to know the distinction so you can plan your targeting strategy accordingly.
Search, Shopping, Display: In these campaigns, you have three options with Your data segments: Targeting, Observation, Exclusion.
Targeting means your ads will only show if the user is a member of your data segment
Observation allows you to see your campaign data segmented by list, without narrowing your reach
Exclusion means your ads will only show if the user is NOT a member of your data segments.
Performance Max and App Campaigns: In these AI-powered campaigns, you can include Your data segments as part of your audience signal. Performance Max recently added the ability to exclude Your data segments as well.
Demand Gen: In Demand Gen, you can Target and Exclude Your data segments, but there is no βObservationβ option.
If youβre new to retargeting, I find Demand Gen the best place to start. Itβs built for visual storytelling and works well with the Google Engaged Audience or basic website visitor lists.
If you have some experience with retargeting campaigns, you might want to try New Customer Acquisition or Customer Retention mode in PMax or Shopping, as these are powered by Your data segments.
Whatβs the biggest retargeting mistake to avoid?
Over-segmenting. I know it can be tempting to create 50 different lists: βPeople who visited the cart on a Tuesday,β or βPeople who looked at three pages but didnβt click the βAboutβ section.β
Unless youβre spending six figures or more every month, this level of granularity doesnβt help, and may actually hurt your campaigns. Googleβs AI needs data density to learn. When you slice your audience into tiny slivers, you donβt have enough βmatched recordsβ for the system to optimize.
Upload your unique data to Google Ads, keep your strategy simple, and let the bidding algorithms do the heavy lifting in driving returning customers for you.
This article is part of our ongoing Search Engine Land series, Everything you need to know about Google Ads in less than 3 minutes. In each edition, Jyll highlights a different Google Ads feature, and what you need to know to get the best results from it β all in a quick 3-minute read.
The iPad Air M4 is officially available to preorder today, and Apple has an incredible trade-in offer that can save you up to $670 on the brand-new tablet.
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We spoke with Fujifilm's General Manager for Imaging Solutions in the UK, Theo Georghiades, about making cameras fun again and which compact cameras make business sense
A father is suing Google and Alphabet, alleging its Gemini chatbot reinforced his sonβs delusional belief it was his AI wife and coached him toward suicide and a planned airport attack.
Microsoft isnβt launching Windows 12 this year; they would be foolish to try it A new report from PC World says Microsoft plans to release Windows 12 this year. This new OS will reportedly feature a modular βCorePCβ architecture and require NPU hardware for its deep AI integrations. Since then, Windows Central has rubbished this [β¦]
MacBook Neo is official. It's $599, with an efficient A18 Pro SoC that offers M1-level performance in an affordable package that prioritizes style above all else.
Microsoft recently shared details about its latest DirectX update, containing the official launch of a Shader Execution Reordering (SER) feature. In early tests, SER is boosting framerates in ray and path tracing by up to 90%.
Other World Computing (OWC), a trusted leader in high-performance storage, memory, connectivity, software, and accessories that empower creative and business professionals to maximize performance, enhance reliability, and streamline workflows, today announced its unmatched roster of storage, connectivity, and expansion solutions for the newly announced Apple MacBook Pro with all new M5 Pro and M5 Max and MacBook Air with M5, as well as the Apple iPad Air, powered by M4 and Studio Display and all-new Studio Display XDR.
Apple today unveiled MacBook Neo, an all-new laptop that delivers the magic of the Mac at a breakthrough price, making it even more accessible to millions of people around the world. MacBook Neo starts with a beautiful Apple design, featuring a durable aluminium enclosure in an array of gorgeous colorsβblush, indigo, silver, and a fresh new citrus. Its stunning 13-inch Liquid Retina display brings websites, photos, videos, and apps to life with high resolution and brightness, and support for 1 billion colors. Powered by A18 Pro, MacBook Neo can fly through everyday tasks, from browsing the web and streaming content, to editing photos, exploring creative hobbies, or using AI capabilities across apps. In fact, it's up to 50 percent faster for everyday tasks like web browsing, and up to 3x faster when running on-device AI workloads like applying advanced effects to photos, compared to the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5. Providing up to 16 hours of battery life, MacBook Neo allows users to go all day on a single charge.
A 1080p FaceTime HD camera and dual mics make it easy to look and sound great, and the dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio deliver crisp, immersive sound. MacBook Neo also features Apple's renowned Magic Keyboard for comfortable and precise typing, and a large Multi-Touch trackpad with support for intuitive gestures, enabling smooth and precise control. Completing the MacBook Neo experience is macOS Tahoe, with powerful built-in apps like Messages, Pages, Calendar, and Safari; seamless integration with iPhone; Apple Intelligence; as well as broad compatibility with third-party apps. And starting at just $599 and $499 for education, MacBook Neo is Apple's most affordable laptop ever, providing an unprecedented combination of quality and value. MacBook Neo is available to pre-order starting today, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.
Asustor has rounded out its AS72 rackmount NAS lineup with the AS7224RDX Lockerstor 24R Pro Gen 2, adding a 24-bay option to sit alongside the existing 12-bay AS7212RDX and 16-bay AS7216RDX models that launched back in August 2025. The new model supports drives up to 32 TB, giving it a raw internal capacity of 768 TB. It can be expanded to 36 bays with the AX7012R expansion unit, at which point it can pass the 1 PB internal capacity. The AS72 family runs on an AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 7745 (8 cores, up to 5.3 GHz) and comes with 16 GB of DDR5-4800 ECC memory, upgradeable to 192 GB. Networking covers dual 10 GbE and dual 1 GbE out of the box, with PCIe Gen 5 x8 and x4 slots available for 25/40/50 GbE NICs or SAS cards if you need more. Asustor quotes SMB multichannel speeds of up to 2,309 MB/s read and 1,886 MB/s write over 10 GbE in RAID 5.
The rest of the feature set is what you'd expect at this level: RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60, hot-swap bays, a hardware encryption engine, M.2 PCIe Gen 5 SSD support, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, and dual redundant 550 W 80 Plus Platinum PSUs. No pricing has been announced.
When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S26 Ultra last week, the company said during a press briefing that one of the upgrades it had over its predecessor was a display with 10-bit color depth β as opposed to the 8-bit display used in the S25 Ultra.
Tork governs every tool call your AI agents make. It sits between agents and external systems as an MCP gateway and policy engine, enforcing allowlists, blocking dangerous flags, and routing high-risk actions to human reviewers. You can detect and redact over 50 PII types, pause agents with a kill switch, and generate cryptographic, tamper-evident audit receipts. Integrate with LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, OpenAI, and MCP using SDKs for major languages to add governance without rewrites.
After Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier initially pointed to PlayStation, "backing away from putting their traditional single-player games on PC" on a podcast, he's now published a longer report, which digs a bit deeper into the situation. Essentially, it seems Sony has decided to pivot its strategy of putting its more traditional single-player games on PC, shifting back to keeping them as PlayStation console exclusives. Now, both Ghost of Yotei and Saros won't make the jump to PC as a result. That means PC players who loved Returnal or Ghost of Tsushima on PC will have to buy a PS5 if [β¦]
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The most affordable notebook has been added to Appleβs lineup today, and it is called the MacBook Neo. After years of rumors, the Cupertino firm is coming to chip away at the market share of its competitors with a highly affordable offering that comes in four attractive paint jobs and is fueled by the previous-generation A18 Pro chipset. Here are more details you'll love to check out. The $599 price of the MacBook Neo is expected to undercut the competition The affordable portable Mac sports a 13-inch Liquid Retina display with a 2,408 x 1,506 resolution and 500 nits brightness. [β¦]
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Lately, Iβve been spending most of my day inside Cursor running Claude Code. Iβm not a developer. I run a digital marketing agency. But Claude Code within Cursor has become the fastest way for me to handle many tasks I want to do, including pulling and analyzing data from Google Search Console, GA4, and Google Ads.
The setup takes about an hour. After that, you can ask things like βwhich keywords am I paying for that I already rank for organically?β and get an answer in seconds instead of spending an afternoon with spreadsheets. (I wouldnβt have been the one spending an afternoon with spreadsheets anyway, but now nobody has to.)
Hereβs the step-by-step process I developed while analyzing data for our agency clients. If this looks too technical, paste the URL of this article into Claude and ask it to walk you through it step by step.
What youβre building
What you end up with is a project directory where Claude Code has access to Python scripts that pull live data from your Google APIs. You fetch the data, it lands in JSON files, and then you just talk to it.
No dashboards to build. No Looker Studio templates to maintain. Youβre basically giving Claude Code the same data your team would look at, and letting it do the cross-referencing.
seo-project/
βββ config.json # Client details + API property IDs
βββ fetchers/
β βββ fetch_gsc.py # Google Search Console
β βββ fetch_ga4.py # Google Analytics 4
β βββ fetch_ads.py # Google Ads search terms
β βββ fetch_ai_visibility.py # AI Search data
βββ data/
β βββ gsc/ # Query + page performance
β βββ ga4/ # Traffic by channel, top pages
β βββ ads/ # Search terms, spend, conversions
β βββ ai-visibility/ # AI citation data
βββ reports/ # Generated analysis
Everything runs through a Google Cloud service account. One service account covers both GSC and GA4, which is nice. Google Ads needs its own OAuth setup, which is less nice but manageable.
Service account (for GSC + GA4)
Create a project in Google Cloud Console.
Enable the Search Console API and Google Analytics Data API.
Create a service account under IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.
Download the JSON key file.
Add the service account email as a user in your GSC property (read access is enough).
Add it as a Viewer in your GA4 property.
The service account email looks like your-project@your-project-id.iam.gserviceaccount.com. Youβll add this email address to each clientβs GSC and GA4 properties, same way youβd add any team member.
For agencies: one service account works across all clients. Add it to each property, update a config file with the property IDs, and youβre set.
Google Ads authentication
Google Ads is different. You need:
A developer token from the Google Ads API Center (under Tools & Settings > Setup > API Center).
OAuth 2.0 credentials from Google Cloud (not the service account, a separate OAuth client).
A one-time browser authentication to generate a refresh token.
The developer token requires an application. For agency use, describe it as βautomated reporting for marketing clients.β Approval usually takes 24-48 hours.
If youβre using a Manager Account (MCC), one developer token and one refresh token cover all sub-accounts. You just change the customer ID per client.
If you donβt have API access or MCC, maybe itβs a new client and youβre still getting set up, you can skip the API entirely. Download 90 days of keyword and search terms data as CSVs from the Google Ads UI, drop them in your data directory, and Claude Code will work with those just as well. Thatβs how we handle clients who arenβt in our MCC yet.
Install the Python dependencies
All the examples below assume youβre working in the terminal on a Mac or Linux machine. If youβre on Windows, the easiest path is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
Each fetcher is a short Python script that authenticates, pulls data, and saves JSON. I didnβt write these from scratch. I described what I wanted to Claude Code and it wrote them.
One thing that genuinely surprised me: I never had to read the API documentation. Not for GSC, GA4, or Google Ads.Β
Iβd say something like βI want to pull the top 1,000 queries from Search Console for the last 90 days,β and Claude Code would figure out the authentication, endpoints, and query parameters. It already knows these APIs. You just tell it what data you want.
Google Ads uses something called Google Ads Query Language (GAQL). If youβve ever written a SQL query, this will look familiar. If you havenβt, donβt worry, Claude Code will write it for you:
from google.ads.googleads.client import GoogleAdsClient
client = GoogleAdsClient.load_from_storage("google-ads.yaml")
ga_service = client.get_service("GoogleAdsService")
query = """
SELECT
search_term_view.search_term,
metrics.impressions,
metrics.clicks,
metrics.cost_micros,
metrics.conversions
FROM search_term_view
WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS
ORDER BY metrics.impressions DESC
"""
response = ga_service.search(customer_id="1234567890", query=query)
This pulls the same data as the Search Terms report youβd download from the Google Ads UI: impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, match type, campaign, and ad group.
So now youβve got JSON files from GSC, GA4, and Ads sitting in your project directory. Claude Code can read all of them at once and answer questions that would normally mean a lot of tab-switching and VLOOKUP work.
The paid-organic gap analysis
The single most valuable question Iβve found:
βCompare the GSC query data against the Google Ads search terms. Find keywords where weβre paying for clicks but already have strong organic positions. Also, find keywords where weβre spending on ads with zero organic visibility. Those are content gaps.β
When I ran this for a higher education client, it identified:
2,742 search terms with wasted ad spend (impressions, zero clicks).
351 opportunities to reduce paid spend on terms where organic was already strong.
33 high-performing organic queries that paid could amplify.
41 content gaps where paid was the only presence (no organic).
That analysis took about 90 seconds. The equivalent manual process (downloading CSVs from GSC and Ads, VLOOKUPing across them, categorizing the overlaps) takes most of an afternoon.
Other questions worth asking
Once you have GSC + GA4 + Ads data loaded:
βWhich pages get the most impressions in GSC but have low CTR? Whatβs the traffic from GA4 for those same pages?β (identifies meta description/title opportunities)
βWhat are the top 20 organic queries by impression that weβre not running ads against?β (paid amplification candidates)
βGroup the GSC queries by topic cluster and show me which clusters have the most impressions but lowest average position.β (content investment priorities)
βWhich pages in GA4 have high bounce rates but strong GSC positions? Those might need content improvement.β
Claude Code isnβt doing anything a human couldnβt do with spreadsheets. Itβs doing it in seconds, and you can follow up with another question without rebuilding the whole analysis from scratch.
Step 5: Add AI visibility tracking
Traditional SERP positions arenβt the whole picture anymore. Between Googleβs AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, you need to know whether AI systems are citing your content.Β
This is especially true in verticals like higher education, where prospective students increasingly start their research in AI search tools.
If you have a tracking platform
Tools like Scrunch, Semrushβs AI Visibility toolkit, or Otterly.ai will track your brandβs presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Copilot.Β
Export the data as CSV or JSON and drop it in your data directory. Claude Code can then cross-reference AI citations against your GSC and Ads data.
When I did this for our own site, we discovered two blog posts competing for the same AI citations on GEO-related queries.
One had 12 times as many Copilot citations as the other, despite both targeting similar intent. That led to a consolidation decision we wouldnβt have made based solely on traditional rank data. This kind of AI search cannibalization is something most SEO teams arenβt yet checking for.
If you donβt have a tracking platform
You donβt need an enterprise tool to start. There are several APIs that let you pull AI search data directly, and the costs are lower than youβd think.
DataForSEO AI Overview API: The most accessible option. Pay-as-you-go at about $0.01 per query, with a $50 minimum deposit. You send a keyword, and it returns the full AI Overview content from Google SERPs, including which URLs are cited. It also has a separate LLM Mentions API that tracks how LLMs reference brands across platforms.
# DataForSEO AI Overview β simplified example
payload = [{
"keyword": "best higher education marketing agencies",
"location_code": 2840, # US
"language_code": "en"
}]
response = requests.post(
"https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/serp/google/ai_overview/live/advanced",
headers=auth_headers,
json=payload
)
# Returns: AI Overview text, cited URLs, references
SerpApi: Starts at $75/month for 5,000 searches. Returns structured JSON for the full Google SERP, including AI Overviews. Good documentation, Python client library, and a free tier for testing.
SearchAPI.io: Similar to SerpApi, starts at $40/month. Also offers a separate Google AI Mode API that captures AI-generated answers with citations.
Bright Data SERP API: Pay-as-you-go starting around $1.80 per 1,000 requests. Set brd_ai_overview=2 to increase the likelihood of capturing AI Overviews. Also has an MCP server if you want tighter agent integration.
Bing Webmaster Tools: Free, and the only first-party AI citation data available from any major platform right now. Shows how often your content appears as a source in Copilot and Bing AI responses, with page-level data and the βgrounding queriesβ that triggered citations. No API yet (Microsoft says itβs on the backlog), but you can export CSVs.
DIY: Direct LLM API Calls: The cheapest approach for small-scale monitoring. Write a Python script that sends a consistent set of prompts to the OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity APIs, then parses responses for brand mentions. Perplexityβs Sonar API is especially useful here because it includes web citations in responses, and citation tokens are free. Total cost: under $20/month for a modest prompt library.
The general pattern: Pick one SERP API for Google AI Overview data, use Bing Webmaster Tools (itβs free), and supplement with direct LLM API calls or a dedicated tracker if budget allows.
The workflow in practice
So what does this actually look like on a Tuesday morning?
Setup: Once per client, ~15 minutes
Add service account email to clientβs GSC and GA4
Get their Google Ads customer ID (or export search terms if theyβre not in the MCC)
Create a config.json with property IDs
Monthly data pull: ~5 minutes
python3 run_fetch.py --sources gsc,ga4,ads
Analysis (as needed): Open Claude Code in the project directory and ask questions. The data is right there.
Output: Claude Code generates a markdown report. When I need something client-facing, I push it to Google Docs using a separate tool I built called google-docs-forge. It converts markdown into a properly formatted Google Doc, so the output doesnβt look like it came from a terminal.
The whole process takes about 35 minutes for a new client: setup, fetch, analysis. Monthly refreshes take about 20 minutes, including analysis time. Compare that to the manual alternative of downloading CSVs from three different platforms, cross-referencing in spreadsheets, and writing up findings.
What this doesnβt replace
I donβt want to oversell this. Claude Code is reading your data and finding patterns across sources faster than you can manually. Itβs not telling you what to do about those patterns. You still need someone who understands the clientβs business, their competitive situation, and what theyβre actually trying to accomplish. The tool finds the interesting data. The strategist decides what to do with it.
You also need to verify what it gives you. LLMs can hallucinate, and that includes data analysis. Iβve seen Claude Code confidently report a number that didnβt match the JSON file. Itβs rare, but it happens.Β
Treat the output like youβd treat work from a new analyst: trust but verify, especially before anything goes to a client. Spot-check the numbers against the source data. If something looks too clean or too dramatic, go look at the raw file.
It also doesnβt replace your existing platforms. If you need historical trend data, automated alerts, or a client-facing dashboard, you still want a Semrush or an Ahrefs. What this gives you is the ability to ask ad hoc questions across multiple data sources, which none of those platforms does well on their own.
And the GEO/AI visibility tracking space is still immature. The data from AI citation tools is directionally useful. Wind sock, not GPS. Google doesnβt publish AI Overview or AI Mode citation data through any official API, so every third-party tool is approximating. Bingβs Copilot data is the most reliable because itβs first-party, but it only covers the Microsoft ecosystem.
Start with GSC only. Itβs the easiest API to connect (service account, read-only access, free). Fetch your queries and pages for the last 90 days. Ask Claude Code to group queries by topic, identify page-2 ranking opportunities, and find pages with high impressions but low CTR.
Add GA4 second. Same service account. Now you can ask cross-source questions: βWhich pages rank well in GSC but have high bounce rates in GA4?β
Add Google Ads when youβre ready. The OAuth setup is more involved, but the paid-organic gap analysis alone justifies the effort.
Layer in AI visibility last. Start with Bing Webmaster Tools (free) and one SERP API for AI Overview data.
Each layer builds on the last. You donβt need all four to get value. The GSC + GA4 combination alone surfaces insights that take hours to find manually.
Chrome 146 has introduced an early preview of WebMCP behind a flag. WebMCP (Web Model Context Protocol) is a proposed web standard that exposes structured tools on websites, showing AI agents exactly what actions they can take and how to execute them.
Hereβs some context around what that actually means.
The internet was originally built for humans. We designed buttons, dropdowns, and forms for people to read, understand, and use. But now thereβs a new type of user emerging: AI agents. Soon, theyβll be able to complete registrations, buy tickets, and take any action needed to complete a goal on a website.
Right now, AI agents face a major challenge. They must crawl websites and reverse-engineer how everything works. For example, to book a flight, an agent needs to identify the right input fields, guess the correct data format, and hope nothing breaks in the process. Itβs inefficient.
The WebMCP standard will solve this issue by exposing the structure of these tools so AI agents can understand and perform better.
A deeper understanding of WebMCP
Letβs say you need to book a flight.
Without WebMCP: An AI agent would crawl the page looking for a button that would say something like βBook a Flightβ or βSearch Flights.β The agent reads the screen, guesses which fields need what information, and hopes the form accepts its input.
With WebMCP: Instead of thinking βI need to find a βBook a Flightβ button,β the agent thinks βI need to call the bookFlight() function with clear parameters (date, origin/destination, passengers) and receive a structured result. The agent doesnβt search for visual elements. It calls a function, just like developers do when working with APIs.
How WebMCP works
WebMCP provides JavaScript APIs and HTML form annotations so AI agents know exactly how to interact with the pageβs tools. It works using basically three steps:
Discovery: What tools does this page support? Checkout, BookFlight, searchProducts.
JSON Schemas: The exact definitions of what inputs are expected and what outputs come back.
State: Tools can be registered and unregistered based on the current page state. For example, a checkout tool only appears when items are in the cart, or a bookFlight tool becomes available after a user selects dates. This ensures agents only see relevant actions for the current situation.
Your website exposes a list of actions, each one describing what it does, what inputs it accepts, what outputs it returns, and what permissions it requires.
AI agents are quickly becoming part of our daily workflows. Soon we wonβt book our own flights, fill out forms, or publish content β weβll ask an AI to do it for us.
But right now, AI agents struggle to interact with websites reliably. They currently use two imperfect approaches:
Automation (fragile and unreliable): In this approach, the AI agent reads the screen, clicks buttons, and types into fields, just like a human would. However, websites are constantly updated. Button colors change. Field names change. Classes change. A/B tests create different versions of the same page. What worked yesterday may not work today.
APIs (limited availability): APIs provide a direct, structured way for agents to interact with websites. The problem is that most websites donβt have public APIs, and those that do are often missing key features or data thatβs available through the user interface.
WebMCP: The missing middle ground
WebMCP fills the gap between those two approaches. It lets websites expose actions in a way that matches how the web actually works. Think of it as making your existing web interface readable by AI agents β without the fragility of UI automation or the overhead of maintaining a separate API.
The growth opportunity
Just as websites optimized for search engines in the 2000s, WebMCP represents the next evolution: optimization for AI agents. Early adopters who implement WebMCP could gain a competitive advantage as AI-powered search and commerce become mainstream.
But this isnβt just about SEO anymore. Itβs about seizing a broader growth opportunity. SEO, AEO (AI engine optimization), and agentic optimization are all knowledge areas with one common goal: improving revenue. WebMCP opens the door to being not just discoverable, but directly actionable by the agents your future customers will use.
Real-world examples
To make this more concrete, here are some scenarios where WebMCP changes the game:
B2B scenarios
Quote and proposal requests: Industrial suppliers expose a request_quote tool. A buyerβs agent can submit identical RFQs across multiple vendors without adapting to each siteβs unique form.
Vendor qualification filtering: Service providers expose a search_capabilities tool. Before making contact, a procurement agent can query multiple vendors to filter for specific certifications or geographic coverage.
Freight and logistics rate shopping: Carriers expose get_shipping_rate and schedule_pickup tools. A logistics agent can query multiple carriers and book the best option without navigating unique quoting interfaces.
Commercial insurance quoting: Insurance carriers expose request_policy_quote tools. A brokerβs agent can submit the same business information across multiple carriers to compare coverage options without re-entering details on each insurerβs portal.
Wholesale and distribution ordering: Distributors expose check_inventory and get_volume_pricing tools. A purchasing agent can query stock levels and pricing across multiple distributors and place an order with whichever offers the best combination of availability and price.
B2C scenarios
Multi-retailer price comparison: Retailers expose search_products and check_price tools. A consumerβs agent can query multiple stores, compare options, and add items to the cart at whichever retailer offers the best deal β all in seconds.
Restaurant discovery and booking: Restaurants expose browse_menu and reserve_table tools. An agent can find availability and search menus across multiple restaurants before booking a table at the best match for your preferences.
Local service provider quoting: Service businesses expose check_availability and request_quote tools. If you need a plumber or electrician, for example, an agent can collect quotes from multiple providers without you having to fill out intake forms on each companyβs website.
Travel planning across providers: Airlines, hotels, and car rentals expose search_availability and book_reservation tools. An agent can query multiple providers directly and assemble a complete itinerary without an aggregator like Expedia or Kayak.
Real estate search and tour scheduling: Listing sites expose search_properties and schedule_showing tools. A buyerβs agent can search across different platforms and book property tours without navigating unique forms.
WebMCP gives developers two ways to make their websites agent-ready:
Imperative API
Declarative API
The Imperative API
The Imperative API lets developers define tools programmatically through a new browser interface called navigator.modelContext. You register a tool by giving it a name, a description, an input schema, and an execute function.
Hereβs a simplified example of an ecommerce product search tool:
The agent sees the tool, understands what it does, knows what input it needs, and can call it directly.
Developers can register tools one at a time with registerTool(), replace the full set with provideContext() (useful when your appβs state changes significantly), or remove them with unregisterTool() and clearContext().
The Declarative API
The Declarative API transforms standard HTML forms into agent-compatible tools by adding a few HTML attributes.
Hereβs a simplified example of a restaurant reservation form:
By adding toolname and tooldescription to a form, the browser automatically translates its fields into a structured schema that AI agents can interpret. When an agent calls the tool, the browser populates the fields and, if toolautosubmit is set, it submits the form automatically.
The big takeaway: Existing websites with standard HTML forms can become agent-compatible with minimal code changes.
Implementation best practices from Googleβs documentation
Use specific action verbs: Name tools based on what they actually do. Use create-event if the tool immediately creates an event. Use start-event-creation-process if it redirects the user to a UI form. Clear naming helps agents choose the right tool for the task.
Accept raw user input: Donβt ask the agent to perform calculations or transformations. If a user says β11:00 to 15:00,β the tool should accept those strings, not require the agent to convert them to minutes from midnight.
Validate in code, not just in schema: Schema constraints provide guidance, but theyβre not foolproof. When validation fails, return descriptive error messages so the agent can self-correct and retry.
Keep tools atomic and composable: Each tool should do one specific thing. Avoid creating overlapping tools with subtle differences. Let the agent handle the workflow logic.
Return after the UI updates: When a tool completes an action, make sure the UI reflects that change before returning. Agents often verify success by checking the updated interface, then use that information to plan their next step.
How to try WebMCP today
WebMCP is currently available as an early preview behind a feature flag in Chrome 146. Itβs not production-ready yet, but developers and curious teams can already experiment with it.
Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://flags/#enable-webmcp-testing
Find the βWebMCP for testingβ flag and set it to βEnabledβ
Relaunch Chrome to apply the changes
Once the flag is enabled, you can install the Model Context Tool Inspector Extension to see WebMCP in action. The extension lets you inspect registered tools on any page, execute them manually with custom parameters, or test them with an AI agent using Gemini API support. Google also has a live travel demo where you can see the full flow, from discovering tools to invoking them with natural language.
What all this means going forward
In the same way that mobile-first design changed how we build websites, agent-ready design could define the next generation of web applications.
That said, WebMCP is still in early preview. The final version will likely change. The Chrome team is actively discussing rolling back parts of what theyβve been building with the embedded LLM API (like summarization and other features). So what weβre seeing now is a starting point, not the finished product.
WebMCP is simply the next chapter in AI optimization. While aiming for discoverability and citation is still essential, WebMCP opens up a new opportunity for brands β making entire web experiences and functionality accessible to AI agents. Itβs not just about being found or cited. Itβs about being usable by the next generation of web users.
Start experimenting with WebMCP, but donβt bet your roadmap on it yet. The standard is evolving, and early adopters will have an advantage, but only if they stay flexible as the standard matures.
The websites that win in an agent-driven web will be those that make it easy for AI to complete tasks, not just find information.
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The document has 9 items posted in it right now including:
Frequent crawling is a good sign! Google wrote,
βIf weβre crawling your site a lot, itβs an indication your pages have fresh or highly relevant content that people want to find, and that our systems are recognizing that demand. Online shopping is a great example: we crawl ecommerce sites often so that our results will display retailersβ most up-to-date prices, promotions, and inventory status.β
Other items. Here is the full list, but make sure to check out the help document to read it all. None of it is new but it is a helpful refresher:
What is crawling? In short, crawling is how Google βseesβ the web
We have many crawlers; they each have important jobs
We perform repeat crawls to find the latest updates and to provide the freshest search results
Frequent crawling is a good sign!
Googleβs crawling has grown over time as pages have become more complex
We optimize crawling automatically
Google crawlers never go into paywall or subscription content without permission
Site owners have control over what gets crawled, and how
Our standard crawlers always respect websitesβ choices about how their content is accessed and used
Why we care. Crawling is a fundamental requirement for SEO and being found in Google Search and other Google surfaces. This help document might help you quickly understand how Google crawling works and what you can aim to do to improve your siteβs crawlability.
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Renowned Call of Duty leaker The Ghost of Hope has revealed on X that Activision has legally forced them to stop leaking information about the franchise, likely through a C&D (Cease and Desist) letter. Activision has legally demanded that I stop leaking and disseminating confidential information related to Call of Duty/Activision and I am complying with their demands. Still gonna stick around and chat about Official Call of Duty info and anything not related to leaks/confidential information. Cheers for these past few years. Even the official Call of Duty X account commented on the news. When a COD creator mused [β¦]
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