Phinite is a cloud-agnostic platform to design, deploy, manage, observe, and scale multi-agent AI systems across the full lifecycle. It centralizes orchestration, integrations, and real-time supervision so teams can build reliable agent workflows, enforce guardrails, and ship to production faster. Developers connect channels and APIs, monitor performance, and audit activity from one control plane built for enterprise compliance.

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Tapni is a business card CRM that helps you turn real-life meetings into qualified leads. Share your profile with a tap or QR code, capture contacts via forms or an AI business card scanner, and auto-sync every lead to CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and many others.

Teams brand profiles, track analytics, and manage lead ownership from a central dashboard, while automated follow-ups keep deals moving and eliminate manual data entry.

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Fluenta is a startup-idea validator for solo founders and indie hackers who want to avoid shipping dead ideas. Unlike ChatGPT, which uses 18-month-old press releases, Fluenta scans over 200 live sources daily across six market signals: search demand, social pain, competition density, monetization, funding momentum, and urgency triggers. Each idea gets a 0-100 Launch Readiness Score with sourced data and a build, kill, or pivot verdict.

Explore more than 1,000 pre-scored ideas for free from sources including YC, a16z, McKinsey, and GitHub, or run an Idea X-Ray on your own concept for a detailed report in about 15 minutes. Plans start at $9/month with pay-as-you-go credits.

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Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers.
Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track.
As part of this shift, you'll see us begin to retire features that don't align with where we're headed. We will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console.

Columns unifies data connection, preparation, and visualization so teams turn messy files into clear, shareable insights. Use Flow to define transformations in plain language and keep everything in sync from input to output. With Drive, drop in CSVs, PDFs, or spreadsheets to automatically extract and structure data. With Graph, build brand-matched charts and dashboards you can embed or export, and schedule updates and alerts when metrics change.

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savvio turns any video, article, or document into clear notes, a visual map of ideas, and a step-by-step action plan you can follow. Drop in tutorials, lectures, or recordings and see summaries, connections, and checklists in seconds. Grow your plans as you learn, expand steps when you’re stuck, and keep everything organized in one place while you track progress.

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OpenAI officially launches self-serve ChatGPT ads with CPC bidding, conversion tracking, and expanded advertiser access through its new Ads Manager platform.

The post OpenAI Launches Self-Serve Ads Manager for ChatGPT appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

During her firm's fourth quarter earnings call, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su discussed the company's AI growth, the impact of agentic AI on her firm's business and competition in the AI CPU market. AMD's earnings call comes at a time when CPUs are believed to be playing a crucial role in the AI industry due the growth in agentic AI workloads. AMD's larger rival Intel saw its shares close 23% higher last month following its earnings report which saw a major profit beat and CEO Lip-Bu Tan explain the importance of CPUs in today's world. AMD CEO Discusses CPU Market […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amds-lisa-su-pushes-back-on-gpu-cannibalization-fears-calling-agentic-ais-cpu-surge-largely-additive-to-accelerator-demand/

Apple had gone all-in on AI at its WWDC 2024, promising a veritable suite of AI-powered capabilities that have yet to materialize even after two years. And now, the Cupertino-based tech giant is paying the price for over-promising and under-delivering on its much-hyped AI-powered Siri. Apple to pay $250 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that had accused it of running a false advertisement campaign by hyping up the yet-to-be-seen AI capabilities of its Siri voice assistant For the benefit of those who might not be aware, Apple had extensively touted a more personalized Siri at its WWDC 2024, promising […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-pays-quarter-of-a-billion-dollars-for-overpromising-and-underdelivering-on-ai-powered-siri/

Google is testing a cryptographic protocol for verifying bot traffic that could make unwanted crawlers easier to identify.

The post Google Is Testing New Bot Authorization Standard appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

The Federal Trade Commission and Media Matters agreed to a settlement and the lawsuit was dismissed this week.

The much-requested update will offer social media managers new options in terms of integrating messages into their workflows.

The company wants to showcase its value as a shopping destination with the new tagline, “Watch it. Love it. Want it.”

The company added 12 million more users, mainly from regions outside the U.S. and the EU, where the online discovery platform is gaining traction.

New tools include artificial intelligence-powered visual analysis systems that estimate a user’s age based on height and bone structure.

The feature will allow users to generate audio samples that replicate their own voices, offering new capabilities in digital audio.

AMD expects that overall PC and Gaming demand will decline in the second half of this year due to rising memory and component prices. RAMpocalypse Is The Primary Reason Why PC and Gaming Demand Will Decline In The Second Half of This Year, Says AMD In its Q1 2026 earnings, AMD's Client and Gaming segment saw a 23% increase in revenue versus the prior year, reaching $3.94 billion, while declining 9% versus the previous quarter. AMD states that its client side, which includes desktop and laptop segments, saw great traction through a strong portfolio of products, which includes its latest […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-warns-pc-gaming-demand-will-decline-in-h2-as-memory-prices-surge/

AMD's MI450 GPUs are now being sampled to customers, and there's already huge interest in the MI500 series within AI Inference data centers. Customers Are Lining Up To Deploy AMD's MI450 GPUs As Sampling Begins, Next-Gen MI500 Also Gains Traction In The "AI Inferencing" Segment During the Q1 2026 earnings call, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed that they have started sampling the first Instinct MI450 GPUs to "lead" customers, and the chips remain on track for deployments at various data centers in the Helios rack, which will see production shipments commence in the second half of this year. Several […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-sampling-mi450-gpus-engaged-with-customers-on-mi500-largest-ai-deployments-are-for-inference/

AMD has just announced its earnings for Q1 2026, posting a record revenue of $10.3 billion driven by strong demand for its EPYC CPUs & Instinct accelerators in the AI segment. AMD Delivers An Outstanding Q1 2026, Driven By Strong Sales of EPYC CPUs & Instinct Accelerators While Tackling Supply Constraints In The Agentic AI Era AMD's CEO outlined an "outstanding" first quarter for the company, with revenue of $10.3 billion, a 38% increase versus the previous year. This growth was driven mainly by strong demand in the data center and AI segments, which were up 7% year over year […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-doubles-server-cpu-forecast-to-120-billion-as-agentic-ai-rewrites-demand-ceo-says-epyc-verano-built-purely-for-ai/

Apple’s launch strategy for this year is going to be a little different, as the base iPhone 18 isn’t going to be a part of the lineup, with the company delaying the unveiling to early 2027. It turns out that the device’s absence from the September keynote is part of a bigger plan to maintain healthier margins during the DRAM shortage, at least that’s what a tipster wants you to believe. The base iPhone 17 is already the best-selling smartphone in the world, with Apple expected to dominate markets by keeping it around for longer With Apple previously claimed by Weibo […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/base-iphone-18-launch-delay-to-keep-iphone-17-around-for-higher-margins/

Global Reach Hub is a global platform of smart apps to sell, organize, automate, and scale businesses. It brings together an ecosystem of connected apps covering areas like payments, logistics, mobility, health, sales, and finance, operating in multiple countries and languages. You use, sell, and promote the apps from a single place, with trackable links and an affiliate program to monetize. The hub continuously grows, allowing new projects to be added without changing the structure while keeping everything integrated.

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Another day and another Apple Mac configuration appears to have been pulled, all in a bid to conserve precious memory resources for Apple's upcoming M5-based Mac Studio and Mac mini devices. Just days after pulling the base M4 Mac mini, Apple has narrowed the M3 Ultra Mac Studio configurator to the lone 96GB memory option First, Apple increased their lead times. And now, entire memory configurations for the Mac Studio and Mac mini devices are going offline. Just last week, Apple pulled the base variant of the Mac mini, which sported the M4 chip, 16GB RAM, 256GB of storage, and a […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-m3-ultra-mac-studio-only-available-in-the-96gb-memory-configuration-now-as-apple-hoards-memory-for-m5-based-macs/

Shortly after the new leadership cabinet for Xbox chief executive officer Asha Sharma was made public, Sharma took to her personal X (formerly Twitter) account to comment on the appointments but also to reveal another change regarding Xbox's direction. Microsoft's Copilot AI, which had been introduced into the gaming ecosystem as Gaming Copilot through the mobile Xbox app and the Xbox PC app, is seemingly something that no longer aligns with platform's direction. "Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers," Sharma began in her statement. "Today, we promoted […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/xbox-ends-gaming-copilot-development-consoles-mobile/

HitKeep is an open-source, privacy-first web analytics platform you can self-host or run in managed EU or US regions. It ships as a single auditable binary with zero external dependencies—no PostgreSQL, Redis, or ClickHouse—and stores data in embedded DuckDB.

Track conversions and multi-step funnels, compare periods, share read-only dashboards, and get scheduled email reports. Enforce data sovereignty with cookie-free tracking, zero telemetry, RBAC, and WebAuthn/TOTP 2FA, and export everything to Parquet, JSON, or CSV.

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Kit.Club is a skincare community and product discovery platform that helps you find routines and products that truly fit. Explore honest reviews, follow real routines, and browse curated Kits from people you'd actually ask. Search in your own words or let guided discovery narrow choices by concerns, ingredients, or goals. Track what’s trending, read editorials explaining ingredients and techniques, and share your own Kit to help others.

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GetHireToday is an AI-powered resume builder that beats ATS filters. Claude-powered AI rewrites weak bullets with real metrics, scores your resume against any job description, and exports clean ATS-safe PDFs. It's priced at $2/month, which is much less than Zety ($23.70) or Resume.io ($24.95). A free tier lets you build a full resume before you pay.

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Google is testing Web Bot Auth, an experimental protocol for verifying some AI agent requests with cryptographic signatures alongside existing checks.

The post Google Testing Web Bot Auth To Verify AI Agent Requests appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Micron’s 6600 ION SSD is the storage density king Micron has officially launched the “world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD”, their 245.76 TB 6600 ION. This datacenter SSD is designed for rack-scale deployments to support AI, cloud, enterprise, and hyperscale workloads. This drive allows an absurd amount of data to be stored on a single […]

The post Micron ships the world’s “highest capacity” SSD – 245TB 6600 ION appeared first on OC3D.

Fuse Games' highly anticipated sci-fi arcade racer Star Wars Galactic Racer is due to arrive on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox this coming October 6, 2026. That much we (officially) learned last week, and today NVIDIA revealed that it'll arrive this coming fall with support for NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation and NVIDIA Super Resolution. It'll also support DLSS Ray Reconstruction on PCs and laptops powered by NVIDIA's GeForce RTX graphics cards, and of course, players who are running NVIDIA's latest RTX 50 Series graphics cards will be able to take full advantage of NVIDIA's suite of graphical technologies. […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/star-wars-galactic-racer-nvidia-dlss-multi-frame-gen-super-resolution/

The wins in Apple’s column haven’t stopped increasing, and that’s terrible news for rivals as the latest data reveals that the iPhone maker is now the top manufacturer when comparing global smartphone revenue share for Q1 2026. In fact, the latest statistics show that Apple rules this segment with an iron fist, with its mobile devices accounting for 48 percent of the world’s revenue, with the remaining firms left to fight over breadcrumbs. The latest research reveals that the Average Selling Price (ASP) of Apple’s iPhones is $908, with a record 21 percent share in global shipments for Q1 2026 […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-iphone-top-global-revenue-share-for-q1-2026/

Every child has untapped potential. TUTOREM is the AI learning companion that finds it by generating endless adaptive questions across 11 subjects, learning from every answer, and adapting to exactly how your child thinks. It includes a parent dashboard, Focus Lock sessions, Kids Mode for ages 5-7, MAP test prep, and works offline. A free tier is included.

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A lawsuit alleges Google's AI Overview falsely identified musician Ashley MacIsaac as a sex offender. It seeks $1.5M in damages.

The post Google Sued Over False AI Overview About Musician appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

OpenAI is taking the next step in building its ChatGPT ads platform — introducing self-serve buying, CPC bidding and improved measurement to bring more advertisers into the ecosystem

What’s happening. Ads in ChatGPT are moving beyond a limited pilot, with new ways for businesses to buy and manage campaigns. Advertisers can now access inventory through agency and tech partners — or directly via a new beta Ads Manager rolling out in the U.S.

This marks a shift from a controlled test environment to a more scalable ad platform.

Why we care. Until now, access to ChatGPT ads has been restricted and expensive, limiting participation to large advertisers. These updates lower the barrier to entry, opening the door for SMBs, startups and a wider range of brands to test the channel.

At the same time, introducing CPC bidding brings ChatGPT closer to established performance platforms, allowing advertisers to optimise for actions — not just impressions.

Self-serve Ads Manager. The new Ads Manager gives advertisers direct control over campaigns, including budgeting, bidding, creative uploads and performance tracking.

While still in beta, it signals OpenAI’s intention to build a full-service ad platform — not just a partner-led ecosystem.

Between the lines. This is a familiar playbook. Platforms typically start with high-touch, partner-led campaigns before moving to self-serve tools that unlock scale. ChatGPT is now entering that second phase.

CPC bidding arrives. Previously, ChatGPT ads were sold on a CPM basis. The addition of CPC means advertisers can now align spend with user actions — a critical step for performance marketers.

Given the nature of ChatGPT queries — often exploratory, comparative and decision-driven — clicks could become a strong proxy for intent.

Measurement catches up. OpenAI is also rolling out pixel-based tracking and a Conversions API, allowing advertisers to measure actions like purchases, sign-ups and leads.

Importantly, this data is aggregated, with no access to individual conversations — reinforcing OpenAI’s emphasis on privacy.

Why this is a big deal. Measurement has been one of the biggest gaps in early ChatGPT ads. Without it, advertisers struggled to justify spend. These updates begin to close that gap and make optimisation more viable.

The ecosystem grows. OpenAI is also expanding its partner network, working with agencies like WPP and Publicis Groupe, as well as tech platforms such as Criteo and Adobe.

This allows advertisers to buy ChatGPT ads through tools and workflows they already use.

What to watch:

• How quickly self-serve adoption scales
• Whether CPC performance holds as competition increases
• How measurement evolves to match advertiser expectations

Bottom line. ChatGPT ads are moving from experiment to platform — and with self-serve tools, CPC bidding and better measurement, OpenAI is laying the groundwork for scale.

Earlier this year, Google announced Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a protocol to allow AI-agents to buy directly from search. This went live only in Google’s AI Mode interface in February. But now, it seems to be rolling out in the main Google Search results where there are retailers that support UCP.

What it looks like. Brodie Clark posted a screenshot, which I can replicate, of the UCP-powered “Buy” button in the product detail overlay within Google Search, specifically for the retailer Wayfair. Here is his screenshot:

Clicking the Buy button will connect your Google checkout account with Wayfair and make the purchase without having to go to the Wayfair website to checkout.

About UCP. UCP establishes a shared language between AI agents and commerce systems, removing the need for custom integrations across agents or platforms.

• UCP works with existing standards (e.g., Agent2Agent, Agent Payments Protocol, and Model Context Protocol).
• Google co-developed it with partners including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, and Target.
• More than 20 additional companies across retail and payments have already endorsed it.

Why we care. A lot of people are saying AI-agents are the future of the web, well, here is a clear sign of how agents can help retailers make money. While Wayfair did not get any traffic from Google for this query, and there is no click, 0 click-through rates from Google Search. There was an impression in Google Search that led to a purchase without any clicks to the web site.

This won’t necessarily stop all searchers for wanting to visit the site and learn more about the product before purchasing. Just like it doesn’t stop all buyers from going into a physical store to touch and feel the product before purchasing. But some may just click “Buy” and never visit your site.

Now that it is rolling out in the main search results, it is something to keep a closer eye on.

Valve plans to update Steam fans on their controller restock plans soon Valve’s Steam Controller went on sale yesterday, and as expected, it quickly sold out worldwide. Today, Valve has confirmed that it is “working on getting more stock”, and that it plans to give gamers an update and a restock timeline soon. Scalpers have […]

The post Valve confirms Steam Controller restock plans appeared first on OC3D.

ValveSteam Controller ran out faster than we anticipated, and we hate that not everyone who wanted one was able to get it. We're working on getting more in stock and will have an update on expected timeline soon.

A new report from CNBC reveals that Xbox chief executive officer Asha Sharma is bringing over more of her former CoreAI team to the Xbox side of Microsoft in an overhaul of Xbox's executive team with five new members in total, the fifth coming instead from Sharma's other previous home of Instacart. Part of the move also includes the dismissal of more of the old guard, as one moves to an advisory role, and the other leaves the company. Since Asha Sharma stepped into the role of chief executive officer of Xbox, the former CoreAI president has been establishing what […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/xbox-ceo-asha-sharma-adds-more-coreai-execs-shuffles-old-guard/

LG has showcased new OLED technologies at the SID Display Week 2026, but its 3rd-gen Tandem OLED was the main highlight of the show. LG Showcases 3rd Gen Tandem OLED That Targets Efficiency, and a 5K OLED Panel With 221 PPI The LG Display is expanding its OLED stack by introducing new monitors and new panel technologies. At SID Display Week 2026, held in Los Angeles, LG Display showcased the 3rd-generation Tandem OLED technology and a 5K RGB OLED monitor panel. The biggest highlight was the 3rd-gen Tandem OLED that brings meaningful improvements over previous OLED technologies. As per the […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/lg-introduces-third-gen-tandem-oled-panel-and-5k-oled-panel/

NVIDIA CEO has said that China should not have access to its most advanced AI chips, such as Blackwell or Rubin. Blackwell or Rubin AI Chips are a no-go for China, but NVIDIA's CEO Wants US Firms To Continue To Compete In Global Markets The US AI policy shift towards China has been ongoing since NVIDIA's Hopper generation of chips. Export controls restricted NVIDIA from selling its bleeding-edge chips to Chinese firms & this ban has extended into the Blackwell generation. Reaffirming the US-first policy, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has stated that the company's most advanced AI chips, Blackwell and […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-draws-a-hard-line-on-china-no-blackwell-no-rubin/

Apple is still a fair distance away from unveiling the 2027-launching iPhone 20. Yet, the iPhone has been the focus of supply chain leaks for quite some time, which is hardly a surprise given the quantum of change that Apple is reportedly bringing to the proverbial table. Now, a well-known tipster has tried to wholly demystify the iPhone 20 by pairing feature leaks with plausible speculation. Apple iPhone 20 to sport an all-glass look, replete with solid-state buttons, a quad-curved display, and hefty use of under-display tech, and topped off with a massive battery The Weibo-based tipster Instant Digital has […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-iphone-20-tipped-to-pack-a-6000mah-battery-with-reverse-wireless-charging-dwarfing-every-iphone-apple-has-ever-shipped/

IO Interactive's James Bond licensed game, 007 First Light, is now just three weeks away from its debut. As we got closer to the launch, the developers started revealing new details; now, YouTuber JorRaptor has reported that Gameplay Director Andreas Krogh confirmed the game's average length is around 20 hours. That's without counting the Tactical Simulator mode (inspired by HITMAN's escalations), which will repurpose main story locations with added difficulty, restrictions, and online leaderboards, with new missions added post-launch. Notably, all cosmetic outfits (including pre-order and special edition ones) are restricted to the Tactical Simulator and cannot be worn in the main campaign, where Bond's wardrobe […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/007-first-light-20-hours-no-new-game-plus-hitman-escalation-mode/

Quantware is building the world's most powerful Quantum processor, and Intel is one of the investors behind it and the company's KiloFab project. Quantware's VIO-4K Quantum Processor Can Drive 10,000 Qubits, 100x More Than Today's State-of-the-Art Quantum Computers Quantware has raised $176 million to build the world's fastest and largest quantum processor to date, the VIO-4K. The company will also be building KiloFab, the largest dedicated quantum open architecture fab, as it anticipates strong customer demand, boosting its production capacity by 20x. In the announcement, Quantware secured new investors, including Intel Capital, In-Q-Tel, and ETF Partners, which are in addition […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-invests-in-company-that-is-building-the-worlds-most-powerful-quantum-processor/

Exemplar provides a web and API-based hub for SRE and Day 2 operations by centralizing uptime monitoring, incident management, and self-service automation. It integrates directly with major cloud and productivity platforms to consolidate engineering workflows under a freemium model. It supports cross-platform integrations including AWS, GitHub, Linear, JIRA, and Grafana, and provides built-in SRE tools such as status pages, SSL tracking, and vendor monitoring. The platform offers flexible access through web, MCP, and API platforms.

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Woop solves one thing: Search Results. Analyze your website, competitors, and keywords to target what makes your product stand out. It generates actionable insights and executes them.

It has six features: Woop AI Chat, your SEO strategist on call; Deep SEO Analysis with every metric in one view; Site Architecture Map to expose what's invisible; AI Blog Generator structured for Google and readers; Keyword Intelligence to find gaps before your rivals do; and 1-Click Publishing to go live quickly.

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Renowide is a marketplace for trained AI agents. There are many AI agents now, and anyone can build one. But most are not helpful if they aren't trained enough or on the right data. So we made a place where developers list agents they have actually trained and earn 85% every time one gets hired. Businesses can hire them and stay compliant with laws like data residency and audit trails. Set a budget, approve proposed actions, and the agent runs 24/7. You can also embed an agent on your site or use one API key to access 200+ agents and 36 MCP tools. Currently, there are 200+ agents listed, 65 active hires, and free credits for early testers.

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AI workers for freight broker operations

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Google is rolling out new tools to help advertisers better understand performance across increasingly complex customer journeys.

What’s happening. As AI continues to transform campaigns, creatives and targeting, Google is introducing updates focused on data integration, experimentation and media mix modelling — all aimed at helping marketers turn fragmented signals into actionable insights.

Why we care. Automation has made it easier to run campaigns, but harder to understand what’s actually working. These updates make it easier to connect data, prove what’s actually driving results, and make smarter budget decisions across channels. As AI handles more of the execution, having strong measurement in place becomes the key differentiator for performance and growth.

Data is the starting point. Google is expanding its Data Manager to give advertisers a clearer view of how their data flows across platforms like BigQuery, HubSpot and Shopify.

A new map-based interface will help marketers visualise connections between data sources and identify gaps in tracking or configuration. At the same time, updates to the Google tag aim to simplify setup, allowing advertisers to upgrade existing tags without additional coding.

The goal: make it easier to unify signals and improve data quality — which directly impacts campaign performance.

Between the lines. Google is acknowledging a long-standing issue — advertisers struggle more with data setup and integration than with campaign execution itself.

By simplifying tagging and data flows, Google is trying to remove one of the biggest blockers to effective AI adoption.

Proving what actually works. Google is also introducing Meridian GeoX, a new geo-experimentation tool designed to measure incremental impact across regions.

Built on an open-source framework, GeoX feeds into Google’s broader Marketing Mix Model, Meridian, giving advertisers a more defensible way to validate performance — especially when presenting results to finance teams.

This signals a shift toward causal measurement, not just correlation.

Why it matters. As privacy changes reduce visibility and attribution becomes more complex, marketers are under pressure to prove impact. Tools like GeoX aim to provide that “ground truth” — something many attribution models struggle to deliver.

Simplifying media mix modelling. To address the complexity of Marketing Mix Models (MMMs), Google is launching Meridian Studio — a Google Cloud-powered platform that helps teams build, customise and scale models more easily.

The focus is on operationalising MMMs, making them less resource-intensive and more accessible for enterprise teams managing large datasets.

What to watch:

• Whether advertisers adopt MMMs more widely with simplified tools
• How effective GeoX is in proving incremental impact
• If improved data visibility translates into better campaign performance

Bottom line. Google is making a strategic shift: in an AI-driven world, better measurement — not just better automation — will determine who wins.

Say goodbye to Windows 11’s unwanted MSN feed Microsoft has announced that it is finally getting rid of Windows 11’s MSN News widget feed. With new Windows Insider builds, the MSN News Widget is gone. Better still, the Widget feed will only open when clicked, preventing it from opening on mere mouse hover. Yes, accidental […]

The post Microsoft is finally axing Windows 11’s MSN feed from widgets appeared first on OC3D.

Yesterday, Valve launched its Steam Controller (2026), the follow-up to its 2015 predecessor and an improvement based on the years of learning Valve took from developing that first controller, to the Steam Deck, and now this latest gamepad. The launch went about as well as you would hope if you're Valve. The 'Buy Now' button went live on Steam, the gamepad shot up to the top of the best-selling charts, and it sold out within minutes. The unfortunate part of that last bit was that it seems Valve wasn't fully prepared for a complete sell-out of the device. In an […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/valve-steam-controllers-stock-update/

After Season 2 of the best-selling game in 2025 was delayed, causing a great deal of strife within the game's community, EA and Battlefield Studios aren't allowing for the same gap between Season 2 and Season 3 of Battlefield 6. The new season will arrive next week on May 12, 2026, and the studios just debuted our first look at the new season and a tease at what will be the largest map in the game when it arrives with the return of the Railway to Golmud. Season 2 arrived back on February 17, making it a more reasonable 12-week […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/battlefield-6-season-3-gameplay-trailer-debut/

The growth in agentic AI software will lead to high demand for CPUs in the AI era, believes investment bank UBS. In an investment note, the bank explains that agentic AI increases the workload for processors. It adds that this workload typically favors firms that offer chips with higher cores and are able to cater to power efficiency. As a result, UBS outlines that in the era of agentic AI workloads, chips from Arm and then AMD are slated to benefit the most, with Intel also benefiting as the total addressable market (TAM) grows. Agentic AI Workloads To Favor CPUs […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/arm-and-amd-poised-to-eat-intels-lunch-in-agentic-ai-era-analyst-warns-as-core-counts-could-jump-5x-per-gpu/

Although an official announcement has yet to be made, leaks from multiple reliable sources have made it clear that the PlayStation 6 will launch alongside a handheld system that should be more than capable of running current and next-generation games. However, much like the Xbox Series S did with the Xbox Series X and possibly the entirety of the current console generation, there is the real possibility this portable system could hold back the home console, especially with mandatory support. According to known leaker Moore's Law is Dead, who first leaked the specs for Sony's next-generation systems, the chances of […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/playstation-6-wont-be-limited-by-handheld-xbox-series-s-fashion/

NVIDIA has expanded its RTX & AI feature set with more capabilities provided to developers for integration within their latest apps, including games. NVIDIA Bets Big on Its "AI PC" Ecosystem With RTX GPUs, Provides Devs With New & Improved Tool Sets The NVIDIA RTX and AI PC technologies are one of the industry's most advanced tool sets offered to developers. These tools make integration of the latest features and capabilities in apps & games easier than ever. Today, NVIDIA has announced more integrations that help developers create next-gen experiences. Last month, NVIDIA rolled out its DLSS 4.5 SDK, allowing […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-gives-devs-more-tools-to-integrate-rtx-ai-features/

Xbox has unveiled the first batch of Xbox Game Pass games that'll hit the service in May 2026, with two of 2026's biggest releases set to arrive on day one for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. Those games are, of course,Forza Horizon 6 and Subnautica 2, as one of the most anticipated first-party Xbox Game Studios' game releases and the most wishlisted game on Steam pair up on the same subscription service. They aren't the only two games entering the service in the first half of May, of course. An additional seven games are joining the service, with five out of […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/xbox-game-pass-games-may-2026-forza-horizon-6-subnautica-2/

Micron has just released the highest capacity and commercially available SSD to date, its 6600 ION, with a capacity of 245 TB. You Can Practically Fit Anything You Want on Micron's 245 TB "6600 ION" SSD, but These Still Aren't Enough For Data Centers Press Release: Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), today announced it is now shipping the 245TB capacity Micron 6600 ION SSD, the world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD. The drive marks a major step forward in rack-scale storage density for data centers and is designed to support AI, cloud, enterprise, and hyperscale workloads, including next-generation AI data lakes […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/micron-6600-ion-ssd-the-worlds-highest-storage-capacity-245-tb/

Funcom has released a massive free update for Conan Exiles players with Conan Exiles Enhanced, a new update that overhauls the game and brings it to Unreal Engine 5. Announced last month, the update introduces UE5's Lumen Global Illumination lighting system, nanite geometry, virtual shadow maps, and an improved terrain for a significant visual overhaul. It's an update that is meant to celebrate the popular survival game as it nears its eight-year anniversary on May 8, 2026, though it's not a celebration for all of the 15 million+ players who've stepped into the Exiled Lands and the Isle of Siptah […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/conan-exiles-enhanced-massive-ue5-overhaul-out-now-for-free-on-steam/

007 First Light is launching on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S later this month, but Nintendo Switch 2 users will have to wait a little longer to experience James Bond's new gaming adventure. While the lack of a solid release window beyond a generic Summer has some worried the game has only been delayed to be canceled, IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak confirmed this won't be the case. “It’s running on the Switch 2. We just want to make sure it’s good as it can be. I don’t want to hear it wasn’t a good version,” Abrak said […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/007-first-light-won-t-pull-borderlands-4-switch-2/

Intel has placed a massive order at Taiwanese manufacturers to secure advanced packaging equipment, which will be used for its EMIB plans. Intel Bets Big on EMIB, As The Company Has Placed A Huge Order To Secure Advanced Packaging Equipment From Taiwan EMIB, the advanced packaging solution and alternative to TSMC's CoWoS, has been making headlines for some time now. The packaging technology is gaining lots of momentum as potential customers line up to utilize the tech for their upcoming chips, mainly for AI purposes. This demand has now led Intel to go after Taiwanese manufacturers to secure the equipment […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-places-huge-advanced-packaging-equipment-order-signaling-huge-emib-interest/

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Initial reports from SimilarWeb indicate ChatGPT ads are outperforming traditional benchmarks on engagement — but with limited inventory and small-scale tests, it’s too early to call this a long-term trend.

What’s happening. According to early analysis, ads appearing in ChatGPT conversations are generating strong click-through rates vs Display and Podcast channels, likely driven by high-intent user queries and the native way ads are integrated into responses.

Unlike traditional search ads, these placements appear directly within conversational answers, making them feel more contextual and less disruptive.

Why we care . If these early CTRs hold at scale, ChatGPT could become a serious performance channel — especially for advertisers looking to reach users at the moment of intent.

But there’s a catch: inventory is still limited, and early performance often looks better before wider rollout introduces more competition and variability.

Between the lines. High CTRs don’t necessarily mean high performance. Conversion quality, cost efficiency and scalability will ultimately determine whether ChatGPT ads can compete with established platforms like Google Ads.

There’s also the novelty factor — users may be more likely to engage simply because the format is new.

Zoom in. Some categories are already showing stronger signals than others.

Mother’s Day-related prompts are far more likely to trigger ads—about three times more than average—because they signal strong purchase intent, with brands like Etsy, Nordstrom and flower retailers already showing strong visibility.

What to watch:

• Whether CTRs hold as inventory expands
• How conversion rates compare to search and social
• If pricing models evolve beyond early testing phases

Bottom line. ChatGPT ads are off to a strong start on engagement — but until scale, cost and conversion data catch up, advertisers should treat this as a promising test channel, not a proven one.

Dig deeper. Advertising in AI: Insights from Real User Behavior

The AI engine pipeline has 10 gates between your content and a recommendation: 

• Discovered. 
• Selected. 
• Crawled. 
• Rendered. 
• Indexed. 
• Annotated. 
• Recruited. 
• Grounded. 
• Displayed.
• Won. 

Confidence at each gate multiplies, which means your worst gate sets your ceiling, and a single near-zero anywhere in the chain drags the whole result down with it.

That dynamic leads to a simple rule. The “Straight C” principle: in any multiplicative system, the weakest stage sets the ceiling for the entire system, and the highest-leverage fix is always the near-zero, not the near-perfect.

Brent D. Payne nailed it in Sydney in 2019: “better to be a straight C student than three As and an F.” Gary Illyes had been sketching out Google’s multiplicative ranking model, and I scribbled the lot from memory on split beer mats while everyone else went to the bar for another round. The principle stuck with me even though the beer mats didn’t.

Applied to the 10-gate pipeline, the principle makes the work order obvious: find your F grades, fix them first, then find your D grades, and only then worry about pushing your other gates from C to B to A. Below, I’ll walk you through how to identify the weak gates and prioritize them by scope.

The pipeline runs in two phases with different logic

Phase 1 (discovered through indexed) is infrastructure- and bot-centric. It’s mostly pass or fail: either the system has your content, or it doesn’t. The fixes are technical and well-documented: sitemaps, structured data, rendering, and quality signals.

Phase 2 (annotated through won) is competitive and algorithm-centric. Your content is measured against every alternative the system has for the user’s needs.

Passing all five gates in Phase 1 means the system has your content in stock. Winning Phase 2 end to end means the system chooses you over your competition.

Each stall pattern points to its fix

Fix what’s weak. In DSCRI, the fixes are mechanical, and success is relatively easy to measure. 

In ARGDW, the fixes are less obvious, more indirect, and the cause-and-effect relationship is harder to demonstrate. That’s why so many brands and practitioners focus too much on mechanical fixes and not enough on competitive ones.

Each of the 10 gates is a place where the pipeline can stall. These are some suggestions, absolutely not exhaustive: use the strategies you already know, too.

Reading the table: Across the rows, infrastructure fixes (Gates 1 to 5) are specific, technical, and often binary, while competitive fixes (Gates 6 to 9) point at larger bodies of work (graph presence, proof connection, and framing gap closure) that are strategic rather than technical. 

Down the columns, your direct leverage drops as ownership drops:

• On first-party, you can fix anything.
• On second-party, you control content but not infrastructure.
• On third-party, your only real moves are outreach and the links you point at the property. 

The further into the pipeline the stall sits, and the further from the entity home website it sits, the more the fix becomes about positioning rather than engineering. 

You can buy your way through DSCRI. You have to earn your way through ARGD. Won is its own case. By the time the algorithm reaches won, it has either understood your brand narrative or it hasn’t. 

If it has, it respects your titles, your descriptions, and your framing, and the click or citation lands the way you wanted. If it hasn’t understood you fully, it rewrites you, and the rewrite won’t be your framing. Assuming your copywriting is top-notch, that’ll lose clients you should have won.

Educating the algorithm on the brand narrative is the work that decides which of those two outcomes you get, and the work happens across your digital footprint, over time (ongoing), and at every gate.

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Work outside-in, because most of what you need already exists

The pipeline runs at three scopes simultaneously — per item, sitewide, and web wide. Every gate operates at all three. You can’t work on them simultaneously, which means the order you pick is the single biggest decision in the project, and most brands pick the wrong one because they’re watching their competitors instead of the structure.

Here’s a simple fact most brands miss: most of what you need is already in place. 

• You already have claims (you own a website, you’ve published positioning, you’ve explained who you are and what you do). 
• You already have proof (clients have written testimonials, journalists have covered you, partners have referenced you, conferences have programmed you). 

The two layers exist, they’re just not connected. Joining the dots between existing claims and existing proof is the biggest single piece of leverage available to almost any brand. 

Almost nobody is doing it systematically because they’re too busy creating new content from scratch. When I say “join the dots,” that means both bi-directional linking and framing (which I covered in “The framing gap: Why AI can’t position your brand”).

That insight reorders the work. The right sequence is outside-in, and it lines up with claim, prove, and frame at the scope level.

Sitewide first

Get your claims structurally consistent at scale. Templates make it easy for bots to digest your site only if they’re consistent. Get the templates right, and the content taken as a whole reads clearly. 

Make sure the categorization is logical, the schema is uniform, the internal linking pattern is predictable, and the HTML5 is built to help bots perform chunking that produces high-confidence, well-bounded representations of every part of every page. 

Get the templates wrong, and the algorithms annotate everything with low confidence because the chunking was bad, the categorization was illogical, and the structural signals contradicted each other. That’s a sitewide weakness that the content carries through. This is cascading confidence at scope level.

Content is the input, context is what the templates supply, and confidence is what the system produces when context is consistent enough to make sense of the content. Start at the site level because that’s where the cascade either begins clean or collapses before it starts.

Dig deeper: The funnel flip: Why AI forces a bottom-up acquisition strategy

Web-wide second

Connect the dots to the existing proof. Once your owned property is making consistent, machine-legible claims, the second- and third-party footprint is where those claims get corroborated. 

The work here is mostly auditing, not creating: independent journalists who’ve already covered you, client testimonials sitting on client domains, conference programs that name you, partner mentions, and third-party reviews that already exist. 

This is the prove layer, and the leverage is enormous because your competitors are mostly not doing it. They’re watching each other’s websites while the independent layer that actually decides who AI recommends sits unattended on the open web. So, update what you can, and insert bi-directional links strategically to “connect the dots physically.”

Per item last

Frame the connection between claim and proof. Once sitewide claims are clean and web-wide proof is surfaced, it’s time to bring it all together in individual items. 

Per-item work builds the relational bridge between specific claims and the evidence. It’s up to you to provide the interpretive frame that tells the algorithms how to read the connection and closes the framing gap one page at a time. 

Framing only earns its full return once the two layers underneath are solid, because the frame is the connection between things that already exist, and there’s nothing to connect if the claim is incoherent or the proof hasn’t been surfaced.

Fix the earliest broken gate first, or the fix downstream does nothing

The pipeline is sequential. Each gate’s output is the next gate’s input. 

First job: get content flowing through every gate without an absolute fail at any point. If discovery is broken, improving your annotation does nothing because your content never reaches annotation. 

The rule is simple: find your earliest failing gate, fix it, then re-measure everything downstream on the improved signal. Fixing gates out of order wastes budget because the bottleneck hasn’t moved. I filed a patent for the technical implementation of this principle, but the principle itself doesn’t need the patent — it’s how any sequential system works.

Once nothing is absolutely failing, start fixing the weakest gates one by one, from weakest to strongest, to maximize the effect of each fix on the signal that flows through everything downstream. 

If rendering drops 50% of your useful content, every downstream gate inherits the damage, no matter how strong your competitive positioning is. Push that up to 100%, and you’ve doubled the signal for everything that follows.

Below are potential stalls at each gate (single page) with examples of fixes.

Reading the table: gate-by-gate example issues at item level. I provide some suggested solutions for each. You’ll see that many of the fixes are actions you’d take at sitewide or web-wide scope, which is the point. 

Scope determines whether the fix touches one URL or thousands, but the underlying mechanism at each gate is identical. Per-item work is where the fixes get specific, but the patterns repeat.

The authoritative entity advantage compounds across the competitive gates

One strategy will improve your grade at almost every gate in the AI engine pipeline: entity optimization. 

When your brand entity is fuzzy across the three graphs (document, concept, and entity), actively optimizing the entity identity improves clarity, focus, and confidence at almost every gate.

But the advantage you’ll gain isn’t uniform: at the infrastructure gates it does little, but from annotation onward, it will make a huge competitive difference.

Here’s the authoritative entity advantage at each pipeline gate.

Reading the table: entity advantage is zero or marginal at Gates 1 to 5 (infrastructure), then carries the heaviest load through Gates 6 to 9 (the competitive phase). At won, it’s the mechanism that decides whether the algorithm respects your brand narrative or rewrites it.

This is the most underrated insight in the whole diagnostic. Optimizing any single gate gives you one gate’s worth of improvement. Optimizing the entity gives you compounding improvement across all five gates from annotated through won, which is why entity-led optimization outperforms page-led or keyword-led optimization in AI search.

The authoritative entity advantage names that compounding effect, and it’s the structural reason brands whose entities remain fuzzy pay a confidence tax at every competitive gate.

Before you create anything new, audit what you already have

Once you know which gate is failing, the first question to ask yourself isn’t “what do I need to create?” It’s “what do I already have that would fix this?” 

The content on your website already makes most of the claims you need, but they are not presented clearly and consistently. Then, all brands have more existing proof than they’re fully leveraging.

Look at things like conference programs, client case studies, trade publications, podcasts, social media, reviews, and third-party mentions. There might be a lot that you have never explicitly connected back to your brand.

Audit-first beats create-first on every metric that matters. Audit-first is cheap and fast. Create-first is expensive and slow.

The diagnostic tells you which gate needs the work, the audit tells you what you already own that could do the work, and the audit also tells you where the genuine gaps are, so when you do create something new, you’re filling a gap the diagnostic identified rather than guessing.

That principle drives the temporal triad: ROPI, ROI, ROFI.

The temporal triad turns the diagnostic into a working plan: ROPI, ROI, and ROFI

• Return on past investment (ROPI) is the audit-first work itself: linking existing claims on your website to existing proof scattered across your digital footprint so the assets you’ve already paid for start paying you back. It’s the cheapest, fastest, and almost always the highest-leverage move available, because the asset has already been built and you’re paying only for the connection.
• Return on investment (ROI) is the present-tense work: expanding on content that’s already live, filling the gaps the audit reveals, and creating new pieces in the short term to support what you’re doing today. This is the layer most brands jump to first, and it’s the most expensive of the three when run in isolation, because new creation without ROPI underneath means you’re paying full price to build assets that are already partially in place.
• Return on future investment (ROFI) is the planning layer, and it’s where brand strategy and pipeline strategy converge. If you have a clear sense of where the business is going (which categories you’ll own in three years, which positioning you’ll claim, which framings you’ll need supporting evidence for), you can plant seeds today that won’t serve you this quarter but will be load-bearing in 12 or 24 months.

At my company, we plant seeds constantly: claims and framings published now that aren’t doing visible work today but will be the corroborated proof we’ll need when the next phase of our long-term strategy rolls out. The brand that runs ROFI consistently is shaping the frame against which competitors will be measured in the future.

Because you’re educating and training the algorithms, ROFI actually influences the criteria by which the market will judge you in your favor.

Three time horizons for your content (wherever it lives online): ROPI extracts value from what you’ve already built, ROI improves the present, and ROFI engineers the future.

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The same diagnostic works across every AI engine

The 10 gates describe what search engines, assistive engines, and assistive agents actually do, in order, every time they decide whether to recommend you. 

Crawl, index, rank was the right model for a 1998 search engine. It hasn’t been the right model for a long time. The brands that are still optimizing for three steps when the systems run on 10 are optimizing for a model that the engines don’t use.

This isn’t my framework. It’s the engines’ framework.

The engines don’t care what you find easy to measure, fun to do, or impressive at the next conference. They care whether your content survives all 10 gates with high confidence at each, and they reward the brands that build for the gates with citations, recommendations, and the actions that follow.

So treat and run it like a system. Fix your F grades first and your D grades next. Work outside-in because that’s where the leverage already lives, and watch the rest compound on top of work you’ve barely had to pay for. 

Follow the system, and AI search pays you back, year on year, engine after engine, long past the lifespan of any acronym fashion.

Valve’s Steam Controller has been targeted by Scalpers Valve’s Steam Controller was released yesterday, and it didn’t take long for it to sell out worldwide. To the surprise of no one, the controller has started popping up on eBay, with sellers trying to take advantage of Valve’s limited stock of its new PC-optimised gamepad. Scaplers […]

The post Scalpers target Valve’s Steam Controller – Sells out in minutes appeared first on OC3D.

Apex Legends’ Overclocked update includes performance fixes for AMD’s Ryzen X3D CPUs Respawn Entertainment has confirmed that fast CPUs are causing stutters in Apex Legends, with AMD’s Ryzen X3D CPUs particularly prone to this issue. With the game’s newly released “Overclocked” update, improvements have been made to Apex Legends’ physics calculations to prevent these issues […]

The post Apex Legends patched because AMD Ryzen X3D CPUs were fast enough to break the game appeared first on OC3D.

Guerrilla Games' upcoming multiplayer spin-off of its mainline open-world Horizon series, Horizon Hunters Gathering, is set to have its second closed beta playtest later this month, from May 22-25, 2026. The closed playtest adds two new characters for players to try out, a new story mission from the game's narrative, a new region to explore, and an increased challenge with more difficult missions and changes to one of its core game modes. The game's first closed playtest, which, just like this upcoming one, you'll need an invite to participate in, took place at the cross between February and March of […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/horizon-hunters-gathering-closed-beta-playtest-may-2026/

Teamgroup has released its latest Elite DDR5 memory modules featuring high speeds of up to 8000 MT/s, which are ready for next-gen platforms. Next-Gen Platforms Will Support Some Crazy High-Speed DDR5 Memory & Teamgroup Is Ready With Its Elite Series Offering Up To 8000 MT/s Transfer Rates Press Release: Global memory leader Team Group Inc. continues to advance product performance with the introduction of new high-frequency specifications for its ELITE PLUS DDR5 and ELITE DDR5 desktop memory modules. Both products deliver speeds of up to 8000 MT/s and operate at 1.1V with CL56-56-56-128 timings, fully compliant with JEDEC standards. Designed […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/teamgroup-elite-ddr5-8000-mtps-1-1v-jedec-compliant-speed-mainstream-memory/

Intel has accelerated its PC roadmap, with several chips including Nova Lake, Razor Lake, Titan Lake & Moon Lake on track to tackle AMD. Intel To Offer Four PC CPU Families In The Next Two Years As It Positions Its Lineup To Compete Aggressively Against AMD, Apple & Qualcomm Chipzilla is going aggressive not only on the Foundry front, but also in its PC business as it remains on track to offer four diverse chip families in the next two years. This shows heightened confidence at Intel as its PC platform execution not just accelerates, but also gets back on […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-pc-platform-roadmap-on-track-to-tackle-amd-nova-lake-razor-lake-titan-lake-moon-lake-cpus/

The AI boom has resulted in TSMC battling to increase its manufacturing capacity for clients to fulfill 3nm chip orders, leaving a massive opportunity for Samsung to capitalize on. However, even though the Korean giant has made strides in bringing its 2nm GAA technology to U.S. soil in the form of its Taylor plant, its reliability in manufacturing higher volume at stable yields remains in question. While there have been talks of Samsung becoming a viable alternative to TSMC, companies like Tesla and Qualcomm are only considering a dual-sourcing strategy because they now have a backup option to a foundry that […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/samsung-yet-to-prove-is-reliability-against-tsmc-only-seen-as-a-backup-option/

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Google previews Meridian GeoX, Meridian Studio, Data Manager updates, and visual Google tag setup ahead of Google Marketing Live.

The post Google Previews Meridian GeoX, Data Manager Measurement Updates appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Google is trying a new method of bot authentication named Web Bot Auth. Google posted a new help document that explains that Web Bot Auth is a “new cryptographic protocol that helps websites to validate that bots are authentic.”

The goal of Web Bot Auth is to help you automate the process of authenticating which AI Agent bots are authentic and which are fraud.

Limited test. Google said the search compan is “testing the protocol with some AI agents hosted on Google infrastructure.” Not all Google user agents are using Web Bot Auth and Google is not yet signing every request of agents using the protocol.

Thus Google recommends that in addition to Web Bot Auth you continue relying on IP addresses, reverse DNS, and user-agent strings as Google gradually rolls out signed traffic.

What is Web Bot Auth. Google defined Web Bot Auth as “Web Bot Auth is an experimental cryptographic protocol used to authenticate requests sent by bots. Instead of relying solely on self-reported headers and IP addresses, Web Bot Auth allows agents to cryptographically sign their requests.”

Web Bot Auth can bring the following benefits according to Google:

• Future-proofing: Help establish a web where agent providers and websites can build mutual trust and make informed access decisions.
• Cryptographic certainty: Move beyond easily spoofed headers to a verified identity and decouple agent identity from IP addresses.
• Better observability: Gain clearer insights into how agents interact with your content.

Why we care. As AI Agents become more and more common across the web, managing which Agents can access your site and web pages may become more and more of a challenge. This new method of authentication may help you allow authentic AI Agents and block the inauthentic AI Agents.

Again, this is an “experimental” feature right now, so keep track of its progress.

One of the major reasons PPC practitioners hold onto syntax-oriented keyword strategies is the disconnect between “query intent” and “conversion intent.” For years, you’ve likely relied on keywords to show you understand what your customers want and to prequalify traffic using syntax-oriented signals.

As user behavior shifts to more conversational queries and AI becomes an increasingly relevant part of the user journey, the distinction between these two intents becomes even more critical to understand and act on.

Here, we’ll define query and conversion intent and explore strategies to apply them effectively. This isn’t prescriptive. You should make decisions based on what will serve your business well. However, it provides a framework for analyzing your data and optimizing for the right humans.

Disclosure: I’m a Microsoft employee, and I’ll be sharing some examples that pull from Microsoft tooling. However, most of the strategies reflect platform-agnostic approaches.

What are query and conversion intents?

Query intent is the underlying need driving the text put into a search function. This search function can be on a SERP (search engine results page), video/social/gaming/email/site search bar, or AI surface.

Conversion intent is the human need to achieve some outcome, understood through stated and inferred data points. These range from text entered in various search experiences, content consumed, and tracked actions taken.

Different examples of query and conversion intent will have higher or lower rates of confidence based on how explicit text is, as well as patterns in content consumed.

For example, if I search “Microsoft ads login,” both query and conversion intent are clear — I want to log in. It’s easy to match ads and organic content to that query. Videos shown in any video query would have to do with logging in, and emails would be focused around login information.

Google SERP

Bing’s SERP

YouTube results

The query “Microsoft ads” is more nebulous, as such, needs to draw from other signals like previously engaged content and search history. While I might get a login page, I’d likely also see blog/sales content, third-party advice on Microsoft ads, and potentially competitor info trying to capitalize on the general nature of the query.

Google SERP

Bing SERP

YouTube results

Let’s look at a non-branded example as well. “Purple hair dye” has a clear transactional intent. While the user might not have a brand in mind, they know they want a specific color. 

We don’t know if the user is looking for a semi-permanent or permanent color. We also don’t know the user’s pronouns, so matching them to a specific demographic to entice a purchase is a gamble. 

Google SERP

Bing SERP

YouTube results

In the query “purple hair dye for long wavy hair,” the transactional intent is maintained. However, the query focuses more on the core needs of the person behind the text. Long, wavy hair means there needs to be enough dye to cover long hair.

Additionally, while some men have long wavy hair, the person behind the query is more likely to identify as female. 

Wavy hair has a different composition than straight or curly hair, so products specifically for wavy hair will be more relevant than those without hair type identifiers.

Google SERP

Bing SERP

YouTube results

In all of these examples, there was clear conversion intent. The human behind the query clearly wanted to achieve something. However, if we relied only on the text (i.e., query intent), we might miss a meaningful opportunity to connect with customers. 

This is why close variants (which have been available on both Google and Microsoft for ~10 years) represent a useful way to unshackle ourselves from syntax alone.

Additionally, by limiting our understanding of queries to SERPs, we ignore critical insights from where our customers connect, work, and play. Microsoft’s internal data from March 2024 shows that brands that use both Audience ads (display, native, and video) and Search see a 6x conversion rate. Part of this is brand recognition, and the power of brand media buys influencing performance.

Yet there’s also the pragmatic piece that some marketers refuse to engage with video and social. By being where your competitors refuse to be, you can shape and capture desire while they fight over a shrinking share of voice.

How to optimize for each intent

Once you understand the difference between query and conversion intent, you can begin mapping out the actions needed to capitalize on both.

Conversion intent is much easier to understand than query intent. This is why AI systems typically run queries in the background to understand human input and get at the conversion intent behind the query. 

To succeed at shaping queries and capturing conversions, it’s critical to understand the input points for humans and the AI systems that will be serving them results.

Let’s revisit the “purple hair dye for long wavy hair” query:

Copilot surfaces how it arrived at the output by looking up information and finding the best matches. This is similar to the SEO concept of E-E-A-T.

Yet you’ll notice that the results for my personal Copilot are different than the traditional SERP (chiefly that ads aren’t the dominant result — ads serve at the bottom of clearly transactional conversations after organic listings).

This is where the “Details” function comes into play and can help you know where to focus content, feed, and messaging functions:

This product is pretty flat on price, save for some deep summer dips. If I’m desperate for color, I might buy now, or I might wait for what seems like a regular summer sale. I’m also getting insights into why this product is wonderful (hair conditioning, cruelty-free, vibrant, and customizable color, etc.).

These are things I’ve shown interest in through past purchases, conversations with Copilot, and other signals it has access to.

Brands that want to optimize for query intent need to make sure the following are in good order:

• Feed/landing page clarity
  • It should be incredibly easy to map what the product/service is to the query. While there is value in some 1:1 matching of language, it’s much more important that the core offering be understood as aligned with what the human is looking for.
  • For example, DUI and DWI are technically two different charges and have geo implications. However, DUI tends to be the universal legal charge and service.
• Images adding context
  • Visual content is critical to engage humans. However, if the image isn’t clear or is duplicative of another service/product page, you might confuse the user and the machine attempting to understand and position you for queries. This is why it’s critical to add alt text (even on paid landing pages) for images and videos.
  • A good way to test whether your visuals are serving you well is to put the landing page into a PMax campaign creator. If you see the images and they match the correct service text, you’ve done a good job.
• Invest time in understanding how humans and AI are querying
  • Free tools like Google Trends, Microsoft Clarity, and Bing Webmaster offer insights into search trends, citations, grounding queries, and which AI systems and humans are successfully engaging with your content.

Conversion intent is more straightforward, though debatably harder because it requires more creative and critical thinking: 

• Matching messages to personas
  • The reason one person says yes to you might be completely different from the reason someone else does. Locking in conversion intent includes being mindful of how you’re selling yourself. If you ignore what matters to your customers in reviews, intake from customer success or sales, and other signals, you risk selling yourself badly and losing the customer.
  • This is where AI-powered creative and audience mapping can be helpful, since platforms have access to more insights than a brand does during the auction.
• Honor the impulse nature of visual content
  • Someone coming to you from a display spot or short video is very different than someone coming from a text-laden SERP. They were inspired to act and need frictionless paths to conversion.
  • One-click checkout (including solutions like Copilot Checkout) ensures humans don’t need to think to do business with you.

Ultimately, both query and conversion intent need brand and performance marketing to be successful, and it’s critical to understand how the success metrics manifest.

The converging roles of brand and performance

For a long time, brand and performance marketing were treated as separate motions, with separate owners, budgets, and success metrics. 

• Brand was about reach, recall, and long-term connection. 
• Performance was about efficiency, conversion rate, and immediate return. 

That separation made sense when channels, measurement, and user journeys were cleaner than they are today. It’s much harder to maintain in an environment where AI systems infer intent continuously and across surfaces. 

A user doesn’t experience brand and performance as separate. They experience confidence, familiarity, relevance, and ease. Those signals are created over time through exposure, engagement, and trust, and they often determine whether conversion intent ever materializes, regardless of how “high intent” a query might appear on its own.

From a metrics perspective, this convergence is clear. Brand-oriented activity influences performance outcomes even when it isn’t the final touch. Exposure to display, native, or video doesn’t always produce an immediate click, but it changes how humans and systems interpret future behavior. 

When someone later performs a search, engages with an AI assistant, or compares options on a marketplace, prior brand interactions act as accelerators. They reduce hesitation, shorten decision cycles, and increase the likelihood that a conversion signal will be credited downstream.

From a strategy standpoint, this means brand work should no longer be evaluated solely on isolated upper-funnel KPIs, and Performance work can’t be evaluated purely on last-click efficiency. 

Audience-based formats, contextual placements, and visual storytelling directly shape conversion intent by shaping preferences and expectations before a query even occurs. Search and shopping formats then serve as capture mechanisms, translating that latent intent into action.

This is particularly relevant in AI-assisted experiences, where systems synthesize multiple inputs before presenting options or recommendations. Content, feeds, reviews, images, and historical engagement all influence how brands are represented and when they appear.

In these environments, strong brand signals don’t compete with performance outcomes. They enable them by making the brand easier to understand, trust, and choose.

Brand and performance don’t need to use the same tactics, but they must be planned together. Measurement frameworks should account for assistive value, not just final interactions.

Creative strategies should recognize that inspiration and conversion often happen at different moments. Optimization should focus less on forcing intent into rigid buckets and more on supporting the full decision journey.

When we recognize that query intent and conversion intent are related but not identical, the convergence of brand and performance becomes less a philosophical debate and more an operational necessity.

Success comes from designing systems that reflect how humans actually decide, not just how they type.

Key takeaways

• Query intent describes what is said; conversion intent reflects what the human needs to accomplish. They overlap, but they aren’t interchangeable.
• Brand activity shapes conversion intent long before a query is expressed and influences how future interactions are interpreted.
• Performance outcomes improve when Brand signals reduce friction, uncertainty, and choice overload.
• AI-driven experiences amplify this convergence by relying on cumulative signals rather than single actions.
• Sustainable optimization requires aligning brand and performance strategies, metrics, and expectations around the same human outcomes.

In February 2025, the world watched as a small group of humanoid robots took the stage at the CCTV Chinese New Year show for the very first time. It was a charming performance, even if the steps were shaky and the movements were mostly limited to the arms.

Just one year later, at the Spring Festival Gala, the shaky steps were gone and the humanoid robots were able to actually run and do standing somersaults and full kung fu routines with swords and nunchaku. The message was clear: in just one year, we have witnessed a decade’s worth of advancement.

The 10-year leap in technology is real and not limited to robotics. Which raises a critical question for every digital marketer eyeing the world’s largest web population: How has search in China progressed in recent years?

A parallel in the Chinese search landscape

The answer is that we’re witnessing the first, calculated tremors of a massive shift. AI models have not yet replaced traditional search. The evolution isn’t happening through a single “big bang,” but through a constant, iterative pulse. 

New LLM models are surfacing every few months, each more specialized than the last. Chinese tech giants are increasingly open-sourcing their models, and even industry leaders are hedging their bets. Baidu, for example, is integrating DeepSeek into its search experience, even as its own Ernie (Wenxin) model remains a formidable powerhouse.

Let’s look at how users actually search in China today — and what this nuanced shift from links to reasoning means for your 2026 SEO strategy.

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The great narrative fallacy: Is web search dead in China?

In many marketing circles, a specific narrative has been repeated so often it has become an article of faith: “Traditional search on Baidu is dead — and has been for years. Websites are obsolete. In China, everything is WeChat.”

This narrative is almost always driven by service providers whose business models depend on WeChat, Douyin, Weibo, or Xiaohongshu marketing. To them, the “open web” is a ghost town. But is this actually true?

The social supremacy argument

There’s a grain of truth in the hype. The Chinese web is a mobile-first multiverse. Users access and explore the web through super-apps:

• RedNote (Xiaohongshu / Little Red Book): This is the de facto engine for lifestyle research and travel planning.
• Pinduoduo and Douyin: These are the juggernauts of social commerce and impulse buying.
• WeChat: The absolute center of daily life, where everything from a quick message to a utility bill payment via QR code happens.

In this environment, social media isn’t just a channel. It’s the air people breathe. For B2C brands, social ads can — and often do — exceed website-driven sales by orders of magnitude.

The B2B reality check

For those of us working with B2B companies that need real visibility in China, the “Baidu is dead” narrative falls apart the moment you look at the analytics. Clients who invest in Baidu SEO and Baidu search engine advertising (SEA) continue to see a steady, high-volume stream of real human visitors — in many cases generating more qualified leads and higher conversion rates than their counterparts in the UK or Germany.

Why? Because when a B2B procurement officer or a technical engineer needs a specific industrial solution, they don’t just scroll until they find it on a social media feed. They search for a verified, authoritative source. In other words, they look for a website.

Is the social media narrative a lie? No. But ignoring a channel that — at least in the B2B sector — remains more effective in China than in many search-first Western countries is simply bad business. The goal isn’t to choose one over the other; it’s to understand how they coexist. 

And just as we’ve settled the debate between web marketing versus app marketing, a new challenger — the LLM — has entered the battleground to disrupt both.

Mapping the 2026 landscape: Intent-based specialization

To a Google-first marketer, the idea of searching anywhere but a search engine feels like a detour. In China, it’s the standard operating procedure. Users don’t just “Google it.” Instead, they choose the tool that fits the intent.

As a Baidu specialist living and working in China, I see this daily. While I might be optimizing a B2B landing page for Baidu, my wife is likely on Pinduoduo, finding household deals, or on Xiaohongshu, planning our next weekend trip. 

The “everything app” exists, but the “right app” always wins the click.

1. Traditional web search: The authority tier

Despite the “death of the web” narrative, traditional web search remains the primary battleground for B2B and high-authority research. If a user needs a technical whitepaper, a government regulation, or a verified corporate headquarters, they go here.

• Baidu: Still the mobile heavyweight, with a ~70% mobile market share. Its structural advantage is massive: The Baidu app is installed on over 724 million monthly active devices (as of early 2026). It has evolved into an AI-first portal, but for SEOs, it remains the place where the open web lives and breathes.
• Microsoft Bing: The professional’s sanctuary. It has claimed a massive chunk of desktop search for those seeking a cleaner, international, or technical experience.
• Haosou (360 Search): The enterprise default, often pre-installed on corporate PCs and known for its security focus.
• Sogou: Deeply integrated with WeChat, it’s the bridge between the walled garden and the web.
• Google: Yes, Google. Despite the firewall, a significant population of tech-savvy professionals and researchers use it via VPN for global technical data and academic resources.

2. Social discovery: The inspiration tier

This is where search becomes discovery. Users don’t always have a keyword, but they do have an interest. In this context, SEO is about social indexing: ensuring your brand appears when a user looks for proof and not just products.

• WeChat (Weixin): The internal search for official brand news and private traffic.
• Xiaohongshu (RED): The ultimate product-discovery engine. If you aren’t on RED, you don’t exist in the lifestyle or luxury sectors.
• Douyin: Visual, video-first search. Users search Douyin to see how something works.
• Kuaishou: The powerhouse for lower-tier cities and raw, authentic grassroots content.
• Weibo: Real-time search — what is happening right now in the public eye.
• Bilibili: Long-form video search for deep dives, tutorials, and Gen Z subcultures.

3. Ecommerce: The transactional tier

In the West, users often start on Google and end on Amazon. In China, the journey frequently starts and ends in the same place.

• Taobao / Tmall: The grand bazaar. If you want variety and brand stores, this is the first stop.
• JD.com: The Amazon of China for logistics and high-end electronics.
• Pinduoduo: The favorite for daily essentials and group-buy deals. Its search logic is entirely driven by value for money.
• Douyin Mall: The rising star of “impulse search,” merging entertainment with immediate checkout.
• Xianyu (Goofish): The go-to for the thriving second-hand market and hobbyist niches.

4. Generative AI (LLMs): The reasoning tier

This is the newest layer of the map — the “thinking” search. These AI models don’t just produce lists of links. They are assistants that synthesize the web for the user.

• Doubao (ByteDance): Currently the most popular consumer AI assistant, used for casual, conversational queries.
• DeepSeek (Domestic): The choice for developers and those in need of “deep thinking” logic. It’s the engine currently getting tested inside WeChat’s search bar.
• Kimi (Moonshot AI): The king of long-context. Users use Kimi to search through 50-page PDFs or complex financial reports.
• Qwen (Alibaba): Powerfully integrated into the Alibaba ecosystem for business and coding tasks.
• Tencent Yuanbao: The “AI brain” for WeChat content.
• Wen Xiaoyan (Baidu): The AI-facing evolution of Baidu search.

5. Hyper-local and logistics: The utility tier

For the physical world, search is about “now” and “near me.”

• Meituan / Dianping: If you’re hungry or want to see a movie, you don’t use Baidu. You use Dianping for reviews and Meituan for transactions.
• Amap (Gaode) / Baidu Maps: The “search engines of the real world.” SEO on these platforms is purely about point-of-interest (POI) optimization.
• Ctrip (Trip.com) / Railway 12306: The specialized gates for the massive domestic travel market.

From mapping to maneuvering: The Baidu specialist’s edge

Baidu SEO isn’t dead; your website just isn’t the sole focus of web search anymore.

The ‘walled garden’ SERP: A decade of distraction

If you’re a Google-centric SEO, there are some notable differences when working with Baidu:

• The ad-heavy layout: It isn’t uncommon to see ads claiming the top, middle, and bottom of a Baidu search engine results page (SERP), occupying nearly 50% of the visible real estate.
• The Baidu monopoly: The most coveted organic positions are almost always reserved for Baidu’s own properties. Baidu Baike (the encyclopedia), Baidu Zhidao (the Q&A hub), and Baijiahao (the news/blogging arm) are the permanent residents of Page 1.
• The portal giants: High-authority giants like Zhihu (China’s Quora), Bilibili, and Sohu take up whatever space is left.

Riding the Chinese SERP dragon

In this environment, ranking a corporate homepage for a high-volume keyword is a fool’s errand. Instead, we’ve mastered the art of the “long-tail dragon.”

In the West, we talk about the long tail of search as a small, niche opportunity. In China, with its linguistic complexity and massive user base, the long tail is a winding, multi-layered beast that is often more lucrative than the head terms. 

And we don’t just rank a website; we piggyback on the authority of the platforms Baidu already trusts. If you can’t beat Baidu Baike, you become the verified entry inside it.

Interestingly, it is these very platforms — the ones we’ve been using to bypass the “blue link problem” — that have now become the primary focus of the next generation of search.

What is changing in Baidu SEO?

In China, there is no brand loyalty toward particular AI models, as Westerners have toward platforms like ChatGPT and Claude.

The AI-switching reality

Chinese users are restless. They don’t stick with one model. They switch — sometimes because a hyped model hits a downtime wall, and sometimes because a new model claims the throne of the “most intelligent AI.” In this cycle of competition and user preference, an SEO can’t just focus on the “big sources.”

If you’re following the Western playbook, you’re likely chasing Reddit, Quora, and YouTube as your “sources of truth” for AI training. But in China, that focus is dangerously narrow. To win the reasoning battle, you must understand the investor-source connection.

Brainstorming the wisdom platforms

If you want to train AIs to see your brand in China, you have to look at the platforms they were built on:

• Tencent is invested in Sogou. In 2021, Tencent fully privatized Sogou. This means Sogou Baike is no longer just a Baidu alternative — it is now a core training set for Tencent’s Yuanbao. If you ignore Sogou Baike, you’re invisible to the AI search bar inside WeChat.
• Bytedance owns Baike.com. Bytedance bought Baike.com (formerly Hudong Baike) specifically to fuel its search ambitions. If you want to get cited by Doubao, your content needs to be mirrored here and not just on Baidu.
• The neutral giants: Keep an eye on Zhihu. Because both Tencent and Baidu are heavy investors in Zhihu, it remains one of the few neutral high-authority sources that almost every Chinese LLM uses for opinionated or expert reasoning.

The new SEO commandment

We’re no longer just optimizing for a search engine. We’re optimizing for a data pedigree.

If your client is B2B, you might still prioritize the Baidu ecosystem. But if your client is in ecommerce and you aren’t feeding the Qwen engine via Alibaba’s ecosystem, or the Doubao engine via Baike.com, you’re limiting your visibility across key AI systems.

The 2026 China SEO/GEO blueprint: From keywords to semantic saturation

If you’re waiting for a “DeepSeek optimization checklist” or a “Doubao ranking guide,” you’ve already missed the point. Because users switch models as often as they switch takeout apps, you can’t afford to be “Baidu-only” or “WeChat-centric.”

Here is what’s actually working for SEO in China in 2026:

Optimize for citations and not just clicks

While SEO in the West is focused on generative engine optimization (GEO), in China, it’s all about fact density. 

• The logic: When Kimi or DeepSeek performs a reasoning query, the AI looks for verifiable facts.
• The tactic: Stop writing marketing fluff. Start using the inverted pyramid writing style. Lead with a direct, data-backed answer in your first paragraph. Use hard statistics, expert quotes, and structured lists. If a model can’t extract a fact from your content in 200 milliseconds, it might hallucinate a competitor’s data instead.

Build an entity moat across wisdom platforms

As we brainstormed earlier, every AI has a “parent” with a preferred data source. But since models are now open-sourcing their weights and distilling each other’s intelligence, your brand must achieve entity consistency.

• The goal: Your brand name, headquarters, and core product claims must be identical across Baidu Baike (Baidu), Sogou Baike (Tencent), and Baike.com (ByteDance).
• The result: When these models cross-check their reasoning, they find a consensus. In 2026, consensus is the new authority.

Leverage information gain

Chinese AI models have a well-observed recency bias — they prefer sources that are roughly 25% fresher than traditional search results.

• The tactic: Don’t just regurgitate what’s already on Zhihu. Provide a “unique data slice.” If everyone says “The best time to post on Douyin is 6 PM,” and you publish a case study proving “11 AM is better for B2B industrial leads,” the AI will cite you as the “nuanced exception.” That citation is worth more than ten #1 rankings.

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The era of the entity architect

We’ve come a long way from the shaky steps of the 2025 CCTV Gala.

In 2026, China’s search ecosystem is no longer a directory of links. It’s a living, reasoning entity.

For the Western search specialist, the lesson is clear: The “super app” was a distraction. The real story is the fragmentation of intent.

My wife still goes to Pinduoduo for the best price. My colleagues still go to Bing for technical sanctuary. And the “I, Robot” enthusiasts of 2026 are using a rotating door of LLMs to find their answers.

As a Baidu specialist, my job has shifted from “ranking a website” to “architecting an entity.” We no longer build for the bot; we build for the source. If you’re the undeniable source of truth across the platforms that shape China’s information ecosystem, it doesn’t matter which model delivers the answer.

You’ll be the one they’re cheering for.

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