I spent 25 hours stomping on Koopas and Goombas in Super Mario Bros. Wonder for Switch 2, and although its multiplayer minigames left me conflicted, I still had a wonderful time.
Amazon's Big Spring Sale is live, and I'm sharing all the top deals on TVs, appliances, smart home gadgets, and more, and how they stack up to Prime Day.
For the past several years, marketing strategy has reorganized itself around a simple premise. Third-party data is fading. Privacy expectations are rising. The solution, we are told, is first-party data.
Collect more of it. Centralize it. Build the customer view around it.
In many ways, the shift was necessary. Direct relationships with customers are more durable than rented audiences. Consent and transparency matter. Organizations that invested early in their own data ecosystems are better positioned today than those that relied entirely on external signals.
But the industry’s confidence in first-party data has grown so strong that it now obscures a more complicated reality.
Owning customer data does not automatically translate into understanding customers.
Most marketing leaders have sensed this tension already. Despite increasingly sophisticated technology stacks, many organizations still struggle with familiar questions. Which records represent active individuals? Which identities are stale or misattributed? How much of the customer view reflects current behavior versus historical assumptions?
These are not philosophical concerns. They surface in everyday operational decisions. Campaigns that reach fewer real customers than expected. Personalization efforts that plateau. Measurement models that appear precise but produce inconsistent outcomes.
The problem is not the absence of data. If anything, the opposite is true.
The problem is the assumption that the data sitting inside our systems still reflects reality.
When first-party data becomes historical data
One of the quiet characteristics of customer data is how quickly it shifts from present tense to past tense.
Most organizations gather identity information at moments of interaction. Account creation, purchases, subscriptions, service requests. These events create durable records that enter CRM systems, marketing platforms and data warehouses.
From that point forward, the records largely persist as they were captured.
What changes is the world around them.
Consumers rotate devices. Email addresses evolve from primary to secondary. People move, change jobs, create new accounts, abandon others. Behavioral patterns shift with new platforms, new habits, and new privacy controls.
The record still exists, but the certainty surrounding the identity begins to loosen.
Marketing teams encounter this reality in subtle ways. Lists that appear healthy but deliver diminishing engagement. Customer profiles that fragment across systems. Identity graphs that require constant reconciliation as signals drift out of alignment.
None of this means first-party data is wrong. It simply means it ages.
The moment of collection is precise. The months and years that follow are less so.
The distance between records and reality
The idea of a unified customer profile has become foundational to modern marketing infrastructure. Customer data platforms, identity graphs and advanced analytics environments all attempt to bring scattered signals together into a coherent picture.
When the signals align, the results can be powerful.
But the effectiveness of these systems depends heavily on the integrity of the identifiers entering them. Email addresses, login credentials, device associations and other identity anchors serve as the connective tissue between records.
When those anchors drift or degrade, the unified profile begins to lose clarity.
This is not a failure of the technology itself. Most identity platforms perform exactly as designed. They connect the signals available to them.
The challenge is that many of those signals were captured months or years earlier, during moments when the system had limited visibility into the broader identity context surrounding the individual.
As the digital environment evolves, the original record becomes one reference point among many.
Marketing leaders recognize this gap when their systems produce technically accurate profiles that still fail to explain current customer behavior. The database reflects what was known. The customer reflects what is happening now.
Closing that gap requires something more dynamic than stored attributes alone.
The value of activity signals
In recent years, some organizations have begun looking beyond the traditional boundaries of customer records and focusing more closely on signals that indicate whether an identity is still active within the broader digital ecosystem.
Activity signals provide a different kind of intelligence.
Instead of asking what information was collected about a customer in the past, they ask whether the identity attached to that information continues to exhibit real-world behavior today.
Is the email address still being used?
Does the identity appear in recent digital interactions?
Are the signals surrounding it consistent with genuine consumer activity?
These questions are becoming increasingly important for teams responsible for both growth and risk management.
For marketing, activity signals help clarify which audiences remain reachable and which identities have quietly gone dormant. For fraud teams, they help differentiate legitimate consumers from synthetic identities that appear valid on the surface but lack authentic behavioral patterns.
Both disciplines are ultimately trying to answer the same question.
Does this identity correspond to a real person who is active in the digital world right now?
Stored data alone rarely answers that question with confidence.
A more durable identity anchor
Among the many identifiers circulating through the digital ecosystem, one has proven particularly resilient over time.
Email.
For decades it served as both a communication channel and a persistent identity anchor. It appears in authentication systems, commerce transactions, subscriptions, customer service interactions and countless other digital touchpoints.
That ubiquity produces a secondary effect. Email addresses generate a continuous stream of activity signals that reflect how identities move through the online world.
When those signals are analyzed across large networks, they reveal patterns that extend far beyond a single company’s customer database.
They can indicate whether an identity is actively engaged in digital life or has fallen silent. They can highlight inconsistencies that suggest risk. They can surface connections that help reconcile fragmented customer views.
In other words, they transform a simple identifier into a dynamic indicator of identity health.
Organizations that understand this dynamic tend to treat email differently. It becomes less of a campaign endpoint and more of a reference point for understanding identity across channels.
Rethinking what it means to know the customer
Over the past decade, marketing technology has made extraordinary progress in storing and organizing customer data. Few organizations today lack the infrastructure to capture and analyze enormous volumes of information.
The next frontier is not accumulation. It is validation.
Knowing a customer increasingly depends on the ability to verify that the identities inside a database still correspond to real individuals with ongoing digital activity.
This shift changes how teams think about data quality.
Instead of focusing solely on completeness, forward-looking organizations pay closer attention to vitality. Which identities remain active. Which have quietly faded. Which exhibit patterns that suggest fraud or synthetic creation.
These distinctions influence everything from campaign reach to attribution accuracy to risk exposure.
When identity signals are strong, the rest of the marketing ecosystem performs more reliably. Personalization becomes more relevant. Measurement reflects real outcomes. Customer experiences align more closely with actual behavior.
When identity signals weaken, even the most advanced tools begin operating on uncertain ground.
Moving beyond the illusion
The industry’s embrace of first-party data was an important correction after years of dependence on opaque third-party sources.
But ownership alone does not guarantee clarity.
Customer records capture moments in time. The people behind them continue to evolve.
For organizations that want to truly understand their customers, the challenge is no longer simply collecting data. It is maintaining an accurate connection between stored identities and real-world activity.
That requires looking beyond the database itself and paying closer attention to the signals that reveal whether an identity remains alive in the digital ecosystem.
Companies that make that shift discover something important.
The most valuable customer data is not the information they collect once.
It is the intelligence that helps them keep that data connected to real people over time.
GAMDIAS, a global leader in high-performance gaming hardware, announces the ATLAS M5 Series, a new mid-tower case lineup designed for immersive performance and standout aesthetics. Featuring a panoramic showcase and three built-in NOTUS M1 ARGB PWM fans, the case delivers both visual impact and efficient cooling. Aligned with GAMDIAS' 2026 vision, "AUGMENTED IMMERSION," ATLAS M5 Series showcases the brand's dedication to immersive design and high-grade engineering. "ATLAS M5 Series reflects our commitment to gamers who expect both performance and aesthetics, our goal is to deliver a truly immersive gaming experience at an accessible price" said Stimson Wang, CEO of GAMDIAS. The lineup features the ATLAS M5 CG, distinguished by its seamless one-piece curved tempered glass panel. An embodiment of "Immersion" and a clear expression of GAMDIAS' vision for the year.
The ATLAS M5 Series is designed to present your entire build through a refined panoramic showcase. The ATLAS M5 CG elevates the presentation with a striking L-Shaped curved tempered glass panel, meanwhile the ATLAS M5 features seamless tempered glass panels on the front and side. This immersive design removes visual corner obstructions, delivering an uninterrupted view of the internal components.
High-end GPUs are hungrier than ever, and connector safety is a top priority. MSI's new MPG Ai TS Series PSU introduces GPU Safeguard+, a proactive protection for 12V-2x6 interfaces that stops hardware damage before it even starts.
Proactive Detection, Not Reactive Shutdown
Most PSUs only react after a crash. GPU Safeguard+ is different—it spots hidden issues in real-time to stop damage or melting before it happens. Say goodbye to sudden system crashes. With our "Save Buffer," you'll get instant alerts from a hardware buzzer and a software pop-up screen. This gives you plenty of time to save your work or exit your game safely. Keep your hardware safe and your progress secure.
Alongside "Arrow Lake Refresh," Intel released a new Binary Optimization Tool, available for Core Ultra 270K Plus and 250K Plus SKUs. However, since the tool essentially changes the way .exe applications run, scores on popular benchmarking applications may be deemed invalid. According to Primate Labs, the developer behind Geekbench, the use of Intel's binary optimization tool will result in a special flag on Geekbench scores. Reportedly, as the tool modifies the instruction sequence that the CPU exhibits, benchmark scores will deviate from the standard range. In a standardized benchmarking environment, this is a massive negative consequence, as the inner workings of the Binary Optimization Tool are unknown and resemble a black box that benchmark makers like Primate Labs have to deal with. To combat the use of this tool, Geekbench will now display the message "This benchmark result may be invalid due to binary modification tools that can run on this system" as a warning.
In TechPowerUp's own testing of the Binary Optimization Tool, we found that Intel's Binary Optimization Tool boosts Geekbench v6 single-core performance by 8.2%, while the multi-core score has risen by 7.8%, resulting in about an 8% average uplift in Geekbench testing. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 experience smaller uplifts, while some select titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider can see up to a 22% increase using the Binary Optimization Tool. In reality, Intel only supports 12 games for now, which will expand further as the company labs release more optimizations. For gamers, this is fantastic news as the performance uplift is essentially free without any drawbacks, but for benchmarks, it is a potential issue as it represents an execution mystery since no one outside Intel knows exactly how the tool runs and how the code paths get modified.
The decision stunned Disney executives, who just 30 minutes earlier had been meeting with OpenAI teams about Sora's future, according to a person familiar with the matter. "It was a big rug-pull," the person told Reuters, describing how the media giant learned of the shutdown moments before it became public.
If controlling the notorious Flipper Zero pen-testing and hacking tool using its native interface is too difficult, a new AI-powered companion app for Android, called V3SP3R, is ready to help you make the most of it.
Primate Labs call Geekbench results with Intel’s IBOT tool “invalid” Primate Labs, the company behind Geekbench, the popular cross-platform benchmarking tool, has responded to the release of Intel’s Core Ultra 200S PLUS series CPUs (see our review here). The company has stated that all Geekbench 6 results using Intel’s new CPU “may be invalid” due […]
GAMEMAX, a rising innovator in PC gaming hardware, today announced the MAX PB-Series 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply, a new lineup designed to deliver stable, efficient, and reliable power for modern gaming systems.
Engineered to meet the demands of today's hardware, the GAMEMAX MAX PB-Series is fully compliant with the latest Intel ATX 3.1 specification, supporting high transient power loads from next-generation GPUs while maintaining consistent performance. Built with premium internal components and a robust power design, the MAX PB-Series is positioned as a dependable and cost-effective solution for entry-level and mainstream PC builders.
Colorful Technology Company Limited, a leading brand in gaming PC components, gaming laptops, and Hi-fi audio products, proudly introduces the iGame Z890 ULTRA-S W and iGame Z890M ULTRA Z motherboards designed to support the latest Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus Series processors. Designed to meet the needs of modern gamers, creators, and PC enthusiasts, both the new iGame ULTRA Series motherboards feature a white color scheme designed to complement the our popular iGame ULTRA W Series graphics cards.
With high-speed memory support, robust power delivery, and user-centric features such as simplified building mechanisms and cleaner cable management approaches, the new iGame Z890 series aims to deliver a balance of performance, usability, and distinctive visual identity for today's high-performance PC builds.
Prowl automates competitor tracking for pricing, website changes, hiring, news, and social channels. It delivers clear weekly reports explaining what changed, why it matters, and how to respond, plus real-time email or Slack alerts for critical updates. Use dashboards for trend analysis, side-by-side comparisons, and sales battlecards. Get started free for two competitors with no setup required.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Monday that it was banning the import of new, foreign-made consumer routers, citing "unacceptable" risks to cyber and national security.
The action was designed to safeguard Americans and the underlying communications networks the country relies on, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a post on X. The development means that new models of
Lofree is no stranger to peculiar peripheral designs, with the brand having previously released devices like the Hypace wireless gaming mouse and the Lofree Flow 2, with all its ergonomic quirks. It seems as though Lofree's next release, the Hyzen keyboard, may be even more unique than even those examples. The Hyzen is a futuristic, but otherwise unassuming 65% keyboard made out of CNC-cut aluminium, but its design conceals a few nifty features and an entirely new switch design that supposedly combines the best of both mechanical and magnetic tech. The Hyzen will be a wireless keyboard with a gasket mount design, and Lofree claims that the 10,000 mAh battery can last up to 80 hours. It will launch on Kickstarter on April 23, but early bird reservations are available on the Lofree site ahead of the official launch. Kickstarter pricing plans include the tri-mode wireless version priced at $189 with a $299 claimed MSRP further down the line or a $169 wired version that will later retail for $279.
The Nexus switch is a hybrid mechanical switch, designed by Lofree in collaboration with Kailh, that features both a magnet in the stem for TMR functionality and metal contacts and pins for traditional mechanical operation. Lofree says that the new switch design, which it claims is the first of its kind, combines the tactile feedback of mechanical switches with the low latency, customizable actuation distance and analog features of TMR switches. Aside from the new switches, the keyboard also has a physical toggle that switches the number row to a function row, with the function indicated by a row of LEDs above the num row when the function row is active. The Hyzen also has a knob on the back edge for volume control and a switch to select between 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth, and wired operation. It will also be powered by a Nordic nRF54L series MCU and be capable of 8 kHz polling.
QR Dex lets you create, brand, and manage dynamic QR codes while tracking every scan with real-time analytics. You can customize codes with your logo and colors, choose from URL, Email, Phone, SMS, WhatsApp, and Wi-Fi types, and update destinations anytime without reprinting.
Collaborate with your team using folders and roles, view campaign performance across locations, and export reports. The platform secures data in transit and offers SSO for teams that need centralized control.
VaultIt helps parents preserve their children's artwork, photos, and quotes in a secure, organized space. Capture memories quickly, tag by child, date, or theme, and find milestones fast without paper clutter. Choose who sees what, keep everything private, and upgrade for unlimited memories, advanced tags, custom timelines, and HD media. Build a digital time capsule today and later turn it into beautiful printed albums.
Most nutrition apps start with a calorie target and work backward. NutritionGuide starts with the food you love — your cuisine preferences, health condition, and lifestyle — and builds a 7-day guide from there. There's no calorie counting or macro tracking. Balance is shown as food groups, not numbers. Every meal is swappable, and your guide regenerates every week.
The EVcourse app provides instant troubleshooting and expert explanations at the charger. Scan any station or electric car screen for AI-powered help, free to start on iOS.
OtterQuant delivers live market intelligence with AI-powered analysis and interactive data. You can track custom portfolios, generate instant financial reports with OtterBot, and chat to screen stocks using natural language. Explore a congressional trade tracker, daily Reddit sentiment, and full earnings call transcripts. View fast intraday charts, analyst targets, calendars, and news for thousands of US tickers. Use free core tools or upgrade for faster updates and higher AI limits.
We thought the recent sales events in Australia would be the last time we'd see any discounts on Apple tech. How wrong we were, as these savings of up to 40% prove.
For the past three years, every data center conversation has started and ended with GPUs. Training clusters and inference racks and accelerator roadmaps. If you worked in data center silicon and you were not talking about GPUs, people looked at you like you were lost.
According to Cerny, "FSR Redstone and the new PSSR have somewhat different implementations due to the underlying hardware, e.g. FSR Upscaling uses 8-bit floating point and PSSR uses 8-bit integer." He adds that "in practice, the same model is used, but it's trained on different data, e.g. if targeting a 2:1 fixed upscale then the training data used is just for that upscaling ratio - and that different training results in different parameters...not seeing too much difference in results, the various flavors in the updated FSR Upscaling really are rather close to the new PSSR." He also mentions that, on PC, because players are generally so much closer to their monitors than living room gamers are to their TVs, the goals of FSR and PSSR differ slightly.
Asha Sharma has faced her fair share of criticism since stepping into the role of CEO of Microsoft Gaming earlier in 2026, but she has repeatedly made statements that she would try to guide the company in what she calls a "return to Xbox," with a focus on in-house hardware. According to a new report by The Information, one of Sharma's first moves as CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be to introduce a new lower-price tier of Game Pass in order to attract new gamers to the service and to make the service inticing to a broader range of consumers.
There has been much said about OpenAI's Sora video app—both positive, about how the tech would make video creators and social media influencers obsolete, and negative, about how it would kill creativity and fill the internet with soulless slop—but it seems like neither side of that argument will ever get to find out if they were correct. In a recent post on X, OpenAI announced that it would be shutting down both the Sora app and API, suggesting a pivot away from video generation at OpenAI. A final date for the app and API closure has not yet been announced, but OpenAI says it will reveal more information soon.
Following the announcement, The Hollywood Reporter reported that a Disney spokesperson had confirmed that the media giant would be withdrawing a previously announced $1 billion investment into OpenAI's video generation model and product. Disney's statement reads: "As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere. We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators." The closure of Sora comes after backlash and legal action against OpenAI from a number of publishers, including Square Enix, Bandai Namco, and Nintendo over AI-generated videos created with some of their characters and other IPs.
Silicon is organized as a 10-chapter anthology, with each essay tackling a different facet of how a single element became the infrastructure of modern life. The opening chapter, "Teaching Sand to Think," by Dylan Patel and Jeff Koch, follows the process of turning inert silicon into machine intelligence, tracing how...
ManyLens lets you type a real-life dilemma and view structured perspectives side by side from philosophy, psychology, religion, and other traditions. It keeps each lens distinct, highlights common ground, and helps you reflect by saving insights over time. Use it to compare reasoning, spot convergences, and make decisions with context rather than one blended answer.
Reward your brain, feed your Dactyl, get stuff done! Taskadactyl is a gamified task app built for ADHD brains bored by other productivity tools. Your tasks don't get to win anymore. Your Dactyl eats first. Tasks become quests, completions trigger real rewards, with over 50 badges and game themes. Something unlocks at 3 referrals, with clues in the app.
Built by an ADHD founder who got tired of being eaten alive and decided to build the predator instead.
TinyCashFlow is a manual cashflow tracker with an infinite timeline. Instead of just showing your past spending, it projects forward — scroll to any future date and see your exact balance, accounting for all your recurring transactions. Built around a spreadsheet-style interface, everything is on one screen. Edit inline, filter on the fly, and quick-sum any selection. It supports multiple currencies, crypto, and shows a running net worth column across all your accounts. No bank connections or sign-up are required. The free tier is genuinely useful, while premium adds cloud sync, mobile, and multi-sheet support. It works on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, and is fully offline first.
Open AI has announced that it's shutting down Sora, its popular AI video generation app and model that also powers Microsoft's Bing video generation service.
One of the reasons players loved the original Splitgate game was its fast-paced, highly kinetic gameplay that relied as much on positioning as it did gunplay and tactics. Despite its somewhat rough start to life, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, featured many of those same mechanics. In a recent video announcing Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2, Ian Proulx, CEO of 1047 Games, announced that "a small section of the team" has started working on a new movement shooter that takes inspiration from Titanfall and Call of Duty Black Ops 3. While he doesn't share much more beyond that, Proulx did ask the community for feedback on what players would like to see from a game like that and has published a form for play-testers to apply to test the new game. The fact that the studio is already recruiting play testers suggests that the game has been in development for a good while. The studio was also sure to follow up the announcement with a post on X clarifying that 1047 Games is not abandoning Splitgate: Arena Reloaded now that there's another game in the works.
Proulx says that part of the reason for pursuing a new game is that 1047 Games has always had the dream of being a multi-game studio, and the timing of the announcement suggests that a second project may have been partly motivated by the recent backlash against 1047 Games following the middling launch of Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. For its part, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2 will launch before the end of March and introduce a number of new features, many of them based on community feedback, including a more cohesive theme, a new battle pass and accompanying skins, three new maps, a new biome that's a twist on a biome from Splitgate 1, and a classic Splitgate 1 TDM gameplay starts, which have been heavily requested by the community. Season 2 will also reintroduce time trial races from Splitgate 1, replete with user-created maps with their own leaderboards. Players will also be able to buy all of the Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2 battle pass with the Splitcoin in-game premium currency instead of needing to spend real money aside from Splitcoin they may already have.
Not four months ago, we reported on Steam breaking 42 million concurrent players, but much like Crimson Desert's recent success, Valve's gaming platform doesn't seem to be slowing down, even during an unlikely time of year. According to SteamDB, Steam has once again broken its own record for concurrent players, reaching 42,318,602 players on Sunday, March 22, 2026, at 14:20 UTC. Steam's own statistics report a peak concurrent player count of 42,282,922 players, which is a little less than SteamDB reports, but still a record high.
Compared to February 2026, which itself was a slower month for the gaming giant, Steam saw an increase of over a million players at its peak. This doesn't necessarily mean all of those players were in-game—in fact, SteamDB reports that there were only 13,731,783 players in-game at the time of the new record. The new player count record was set on a Sunday, which tends to be Steam's busiest day of the week both for players on the platform and in-game. This new player-count record comes in spite of a recent spate of layoffs and studio closures, which have historically signalled a downturn in the gaming industry.
When you walk into someone's home, you can usually tell what matters to them. Some rooms show it in the colors on the wall. Others in the art they choose or the books left open on a side table. Increasingly, there is another kind of expression. It is not seen as much as it is felt. It is the presence of technology that does not draw attention to itself but transforms the room when you need it to.
This idea guided the creation of the newest generation of Denon Home wireless speakers. The Denon Home 200, 400 and 600 were designed not only to deliver exceptional sound, but to sit comfortably within the fabric of everyday life. Denon's engineering and design teams began with a simple question: What if a speaker could truly feel like part of the home?
Anthropic’s new auto mode for Claude Code lets AI execute tasks with fewer approvals, reflecting a broader shift toward more autonomous tools that balance speed with safety through built-in safeguards.
Advertisers will be able to include shoppable tiles and promotional overlays, which can help them reach the platform’s growing community of high-intent shoppers.
The platform is merging creator and advertising elements into a single space to facilitate collaboration opportunities and streamline affiliate marketing.
The popular sandbox MMO Albion Online is headed to Xbox Series X|S in April, and for the time being, it will be exclusive to Xbox in the console space.
Epic Games has just announced a round of layoffs in an effort to save costs following a downturn in engagement on Fortnite. A recent post to the Epic Games news page explains that "The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded," and Epic says that the layoffs are part of company-wide cost-cutting measures that aim to reduce expenses by over $500 million in order to stabilize the company's finances. These other cost-savings measures will affect contracting, marketing, and hiring at the company, and any staff affected by the layoffs will receive severance packages of at least four months of base pay—with that amount increasing depending on tenure at the company.
The Epic layoffs will affect 1,000 workers, and Epic seems to blame both industry-wide challenged and its reliance on Fortnite as its major cash cow for its financial troubles, with Epic CEO, Tim Sweeney emphasizing that "the layoffs aren't related to AI," and explaining that Epic wants "as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can." He also goes on to say that Epic has struggled to deliver "Fortnite magic with every season," and noting that the game is in its early stages of returning to mobile platforms, but that the goal going forward will be to focus on "fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events," while focusing on Fortnite's user-generated content and on upgrading from Unreal Engine 5 to Unreal Engine 6. The full statement regarding Epic's layoffs follows.
Microsoft and Nvidia are joining forces to accelerate the construction of nuclear power plants for power-hungry AI data centers. The partnership combines generative AI, digital twin simulation, and Nvidia's Omniverse platform to streamline the nuclear lifecycle from permitting through operations.
Anonymize360 protects sensitive data in AI chats by rewriting it on your device before it leaves and restoring it on return. It detects PII like names, addresses, SSNs, and medical or financial details, replaces them with tokens, and encrypts the originals locally with AES-256. The system runs on-device with a zero-knowledge design and works seamlessly with AI models. Enterprises gain privacy-by-default workflows and compliance support, while individuals can download and start with a free trial.
CrewBase connects seafarers and offshore professionals with verified maritime jobs using AI-powered matching, smart filters, and real-time alerts. It lets you search instantly, set auto-apply rules, and generate a polished CV, with seamless access on iOS, Android, and web. Employers post vacancies in minutes, search a growing verified talent pool, and manage applications with secure proxy email and desktop-optimized workflows, enabling fast, targeted maritime recruiting at scale.
With an overflowing war chest from its recent $5 billion raise, Databricks is buying startups and looking for more. It acquired Antimatter and SiftD.ai.
Google released its March 2026 spam update today at 3:20 p.m. It’s the second announced Google algorithm update of 2026, following the February 2026 Discover core update.
This is the first spam update of 2026.
Google’s most recent spam update was in August 2025.
Timing. This update may only “take a few days to complete,” Google said. On LinkedIn, Google added:
“This is a normal spam update, and it will roll out for all languages and locations. The rollout may take a few days to complete.”
Why we care. This is the second announced Google algorithm update of 2026. It’s unclear what spam this update targets, but if you see ranking or traffic changes in the next few days, it could be due to it.
“While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.
For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam.
Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.
In the case of a link spam update (an update that specifically deals with link spam), making changes might not generate an improvement. This is because when our systems remove the effects spammy links may have, any ranking benefit the links may have previously generated for your site is lost. Any potential ranking benefits generated by those links cannot be regained.”
Want your game to run natively on the next-gen Xbox console Project Helix? Microsoft says you should be developing for Xbox on PC" and Xbox Play Anywhere.
Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma is reportedly exploring bringing "lower-priced tiers" to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service in order to attract new customers.
PC pricing in Taiwan may see a significant increase next quarter, as ASUS Joint Technology Systems Division General Manager Yi-Hsiang Liao has announced a planned 30% price hike across the company's entire product line. He explains that the extremely high costs of DRAM and SSD storage, combined with a shortage of CPUs, are driving this increase. ASUS also claims that this issue is not limited to their company, as every Taiwanese PC maker will face similar challenges. Reportedly, ASUS did not comment on whether the price increase will affect overseas markets or remain exclusive to Taiwan. However, it seems likely that rising component costs in Taiwan will also impact Western markets, which have already experienced significant price increases in recent months.
UDN, Machine TranslatedYesterday, ASUS, in partnership with Qualcomm, held a press conference for its new Zenbook A16 laptop. During an interview, Liao Yi-hsiang, General Manager of ASUS United Technology Systems Business, revealed that ASUS has confirmed that PC prices in Taiwan will increase by 25% to 30% or more in the second quarter, with varying increases across different models.
AMD's RDNA 4m graphics might be the company's most mysterious GPU IP, as they are reportedly rebranding some of their RDNA 3.5 IP to fit INT8 data types and support FSR 4 technology. We previously reported that AMD designated the GFX1170 target for RDNA 4m. However, in the latest merge request for the LLVM compiler, AMD added two new software IDs: GFX1171 and GFX1172 GPUs. These targets are not true RDNA 4 GPUs, which belong to a GFX12 branch, but rather extensions of RDNA 3. What was thought to be RDNA 3.5 has now evolved into RDNA 4m, which will power AMD's Ryzen 500 "Medusa Point" series of APUs. With RDNA 3.5 / RDNA 4m expected to be used by AMD until 2029, it makes sense for AMD to adapt RDNA 3.5 into RDNA 4m with support for FSR 4 upscaling technology.
In contrast, "Medusa Halo" will utilize AMD's next-generation RDNA 5 / UDNA GPU microarchitecture. "Medusa Point" will introduce a desktop-exclusive RDNA 4 with the new RDNA 4m variant. Although we initially lack comparisons between the two, some instruction set extensions, such as WMMA and SWMMAC instructions, indicate support in the new "GFX1170" GPU, which should be associated with the GFX11 generation, also known as RDNA 3. Currently, this is believed to be an upgraded RDNA 3 with many RDNA 4 modules, enabling FSR 4 support even on the less powerful "Medusa Point" APU.
Sweeney also pointed to industry-wide changes including slower growth, weaker spending on games and consoles, tougher cost economics, and new forms of entertainment competing for gamers' attention as additional factors hurting their business.
As Boston Dynamics demonstrated years ago, "bullying" technology designed to mimic intelligent behaviors is nothing new. Memvid is now offering $800 to someone interested in putting modern AI models to the test – a "professional" yeller tasked with spending an entire day stressing popular chatbots.
English Grammar guides you to master tenses, conditionals, modal verbs, and more through interactive exercises with instant feedback. Choose multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank, see clear visual cues, and read detailed explanations for every answer. It covers A1 to C1 levels across 20 grammar categories, with hundreds of exercises and more in development. Practice anytime on any device to build confident, accurate English.
TeamPCP, the threat actor behind the recent compromises of Trivy and KICS, has now compromised a popular Python package named litellm, pushing two malicious versions containing a credential harvester, a Kubernetes lateral movement toolkit, and a persistent backdoor.
Multiple security vendors, including Endor Labs and JFrog, revealed that litellm versions 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 were published on March
A large-scale malvertising campaign active since January 2026 has been observed targeting U.S.-based individuals searching for tax-related documents to serve rogue installers for ConnectWise ScreenConnect that drop a tool named HwAudKiller to blind security programs using the bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) technique.
"The campaign abuses Google Ads to serve rogue ScreenConnect (
Reddit is rolling out new Dynamic Product Ad features, including a shoppable Collection Ads format and Shopify integration, the company announced today.
What’s new.
Collection Ads: A new Dynamic Product Ad format that pairs a lifestyle hero image with shoppable product tiles in one carousel, bridging discovery and purchase. Early adopters following best practices are seeing an 8% ROAS lift.
Community and Deal overlays: Reddit-native labels like “Redditors’ Top Pick” and automatic discount callouts surface social proof and pricing signals without extra work from you.
Shopify integration: Now in alpha, this simplifies catalog and pixel setup for new DPA advertisers, automatically matching products to the right users and context.
The numbers. Reddit DPA delivered an average 91% higher ROAS year over year in Q4 2025. Liquid I.V. reports DPA already accounts for 33% of its total platform revenue and outperforms its other conversion campaigns by 40%.
Why now. Reddit has seen a 40% year-over-year increase in shopping conversations. Also, 84% of shoppers say they feel more confident in purchases after researching products on Reddit.
Why we care. The new tools, especially the Shopify integration, lower the barrier to getting started with Dynamic Product Ads. Reddit might still be viewed by some as an undervalued paid media channel, but there’s an opportunity to get in before competition and costs rise.
Bottom line. Reddit is increasingly a serious performance channel for ecommerce, and these tools make it easier to get started. If you’re not yet running DPA on Reddit, the combination of undervalued inventory and improving ad formats makes this a good time to test.
Xbox Mode is beginning to roll out on PC, replacing the Xbox Fullscreen Experience, while console users in Alpha Skip Ahead can now view cloud save sync status in Game Cards.
Microsoft is rolling out a unified search experience for the new Outlook, allowing users to find contacts across directories and personal accounts with simple keywords.
The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a ban on all new Wi-Fi routers made outside the "land of the free." With a clear goal of eliminating external supply chain vulnerabilities, the FCC has been collaborating with the White House to prohibit the sale of foreign-made Wi-Fi routers in the domestic market. Reportedly, the FCC claims that having foreign Wi-Fi routers in American homes has been a significant loophole for other countries to exploit, as Wi-Fi routers are one of the most critical points of security in any home network. These devices have long been targets of foreign attacks, which have disrupted security and introduced supply chain risks by creating points of failure that the U.S. government cannot control or prevent. These routers were sold openly to telecommunication companies or purchased by consumers independently. Additionally, foreign routers have been implicated in cyberattacks targeting vital U.S. infrastructure, such as Volt, Flax, and Salt Typhoon.
Interestingly, this decision does not affect any routers that consumers have already purchased. "Consumers can continue to use any router they have already lawfully purchased or acquired," notes the FCC. Furthermore, the FCC will allow any previously approved router models to continue being sold and imported. Only new router models will need to undergo FCC approval, which is a separate procedure coordinated with the Department of War (DoW) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Both DoW and DHS grants of Conditional Approvals are honored by the FCC to ensure that devices receiving this approval can continue to be sold without posing a national threat.
Arm has made a significant move stepping into production silicon for the first time in its history with the launch of the Arm AGI CPU, a data center processor designed specifically for agentic AI workloads. For over three decades, Arm has been purely an IP licensing business. With the launch of its AGI CPU series, Arm made a fundamental shift in how the company positions itself in the market. The AGI CPU is built on a 3 nm process, packs up to 136 Neoverse V3 cores, runs at a 300 W TDP, and delivers 6 GB/s of memory bandwidth per core at under 100 ns latency. It supports up to 6 TB per chip and DDR5-8800 speeds. On the I/O side, the chip features 96 PCIe Gen 6 lanes along with CXL 3.0 and AMBA CHI (Coherent Hub Interface) links. Each core handles a dedicated program thread, which Arm says eliminates throttling and idle threads under sustained load.
Specifically important in the data center business, density figures are notable. Air-cooled systems can fit up to 8,160 cores per rack, while liquid-cooled systems push that above 45,000. Data centers are expected to need more than four times the current CPU capacity per gigawatt to keep up, and Arm is arguing that x86 architecture carries too much overhead and complexity for this new class of workload. Arm claims more than 2x performance per rack versus x86, adding that this can translate to potential savings of up to $10 billion per gigawatt of AI data center capacity.
Mozilla has officially launched Firefox 149.0, which is now available for download in the release channel. Firefox 149 introduces a number of bug fixes, many of which were announced in previous beta versions, but there are also a handful of new features that may significantly impact the user experience. Mozilla has taken a page out of Zen Browser's books with a new split mode for loading two webpages side-by-side in split view, introduced a free VPN and added a new "share" button to the toolbar. Firefox will also now automatically block website notifications and revoke malicious websites—as flagged by SafeBrowsing—by default.
Split view can be triggered by right-clicking a link and selecting the split tabs option or by selecting two tabs and clicking the split tabs button in the address bar. Firefox's free built-in VPN, which is directed at security-conscious users, allowing users to mask their location, hide their IP, and protect their data for free. The VPN will require a Mozilla account, there is a data cap of 50 GB per month, and the rollout is starting with France, Germany, the UK, and the US as of version 149's release. Firefox Labs also now features a tab notes feature, for which the developers are seeking feedback during this release. Firefox has also officially implemented hardware acceleration for PDFs, which means documents should load significantly faster. As usual, there is also a stack of under-the-hood changes to Firefox 149, like modern API implementations and a new TrustPanel, and you can check those out in the official update notes.
Responding to questions about Microsoft's refusal to address user complaints over the Windows 11 online account requirement, Scott Hanselman, VP of Developer Community, admitted that he dislikes the feature himself, adding that the company is "working on ."
The order effectively halts the entry of nearly all future Wi-Fi and wired routers, as the vast majority are produced abroad. Products that have already received FCC authorization can continue to be sold and imported, and existing consumer equipment remains unaffected. However, for router makers planning to release new products...
Ayaneo has suspended sales of its next-gen premium gaming handheld as the procurement costs for storage have slipped out of control. When it was first announced, prices were already high, but following the CNY break, vendor quotes had shot up many times, making it unfeasible to build the device. It's a temporary suspension, however, and existing sales will be honored.
Linkeezy is a compliant workflow tool that brings your LinkedIn inbox, saved posts, and feeds into one organized workspace. Instead of jumping between tabs and losing track of conversations or content, you can manage messages in a clean, Gmail-style view, organize saved posts into a searchable library, and follow focused feeds built around the people and topics that matter most.
Linkeezy runs through a web app and Chrome extension that retrieves your messages and content without storing them. It is designed to align with LinkedIn's terms of service, with no profile scraping, automation, or AI-generated interactions, so you stay in control while keeping your workflow efficient and focused.
An ongoing phishing campaign is targeting French-speaking corporate environments with fake resumes that lead to the deployment of cryptocurrency miners and information stealers.
"The campaign uses highly obfuscated VBScript files disguised as resume/CV documents, delivered through phishing emails," Securonix researchers Shikha Sangwan, Akshay Gaikwad, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared
Surfshark has launched HeyPolo, a new location-sharing app that refuses to sell your data or track you 24/7. Here’s why it might be the ultimate privacy-friendly alternative to standard tracking apps.
Capcom won't abandon DLSS 5 in current and upcoming games, or the use of AI for development productivity, but promises it won't use AI for game content.
The Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Mirror Edition is now available to pre-order in the UK exclusively at Amazon, and as a huge fan of the game, I'm unable to resist.
Xbox portfolio and programs general manager Chris Charla has said Project Helix will be easier for developers to work with, but advises studios to prioritize developing their games for current gen and PC first.
AI search citations favor a small set of formats. Listicles, articles, and product pages drive over half of all mentions across major LLMs, according to new Wix Studio AI Search Lab research analyzing 75,000 AI answers and more than 1 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity.
The findings. Listicles led at 21.9% of citations, followed by articles (16.7%) and product pages (13.7%). Together, these three formats made up 52% of all AI citations.
Articles dominated informational queries, cited 2.7x more than other formats.
Listicles captured 40% of commercial-intent citations, nearly double any other type.
Why intent wins. Query intent — not industry or model — most strongly predicts which content gets cited. This pattern held across industries, from SaaS to health.
Informational queries skewed heavily toward articles (45.5%) and listicles (21.7%).
Commercial queries were led by listicles (40.9%).
Transactional and navigational queries favored product and category pages (around 40% combined).
Why we care. This research indicates that you want to map content types to user goals rather than just creating more content. Articles educate, listicles drive comparison, and product pages convert. Aligning content format with user intent could help you capture more AI citations and increase visibility.
Not all listicles perform equally. Third-party listicles accounted for 80.9% of citations in professional services, compared to 19.1% for self-promotional lists. That seems to indicate LLMs prefer neutral, editorial comparisons over brand-led rankings.
Model differences. All models favored listicles, but diverged after that.
ChatGPT leaned heavily into articles and informational content.
Google AI Mode showed the most balanced distribution.
Perplexity stood out, with 17% of citations coming from discussions like Reddit and forums.
Industry patterns. Content preferences shifted slightly by vertical:
SaaS and professional services over-indexed on listicles.
Health favored authoritative articles.
Ecommerce spread citations across listicles, articles, and category pages.
Home repair showed the most even distribution across formats.
A quiet but important policy update is coming to Google Shopping ads next month, requiring some merchants to verify their accounts before running ads featuring political content.
What’s changing. From April 16, merchants running Shopping ads with certain political content in nine countries will need to verify their Google Ads account as an election advertiser. Google will also outright prohibit some political Shopping ads in India.
The countries affected. Argentina, Australia, Chile, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Why we care. Shopping ads aren’t typically associated with political advertising — this update signals that Google is broadening its election integrity efforts beyond search and display into commerce formats. Merchants selling politically themed merchandise, campaign materials, or other related products in the affected countries need to act before the April 16 deadline.
What to do now.
Review the updated policy language to determine if your Shopping ads feature content that falls under the new restrictions
If affected, apply for election advertiser verification through Google Ads before April 16 to avoid disruption to your campaigns
The bottom line.This affects a narrow but specific set of merchants — but the consequences of missing the deadline could mean ads being disapproved or accounts being flagged. If you sell anything with a political angle in the listed countries, check your eligibility now.
Epic Games is laying off 1,000 employees as it struggles to maintain the "magic" and revenue growth of Fortnite amidst a $500 million budget shortfall.
Has humanity achieved the vaunted "AGI" AI benchmark? Jensen Huang thinks so. Microsoft has some specific clauses with OpenAI around these claims though ...
It was recently revealed that Nintendo is planning an updated Nintendo Switch 2 with a user-replaceable battery that is meant to comply with new EU rules on repairability. That device is reportedly not destined for the US, but Nintendo has also made a more recent change to the Switch 2 for the US market. Specifically, according to Bloomberg, Nintendo plans to cut production of the Switch 2 handheld by as much as 33% due to unexpectedly low US sales during the recent holiday period.
The new production guidelines will reportedly see Nintendo produce an estimated 4 million Switch 2 consoles during Q2, down from its initial 6 million-unit plan. Bloomberg's sources claim that Nintendo declined to increase production targets despite the successful launch of Pokémon Pokopia, instead opting to wait and see if recent releases for the platform will continue to perform well before producing more hardware. Part of the change could also be logistical in nature. Nintendo has previously acknowledged the increased memory and storage prices that have plagued the consumer electronics market of late, and the production cut is likely a move to reduce risk during a time when hardware is more expensive to produce.
Razer, the world's leading lifestyle brand for gamers, proudly announces the launch of the Razer Viper V4 Pro and Razer Gigantus V2 Pro. The latest evolution of esports gear by the #1 gaming mouse brand amongst pro-gamers - this new duo is engineered to give players an edge in today's most demanding competitive game titles.
The Viper V4 Pro takes one of the world's most trusted esports mice and makes it lighter, faster, and more precise, while the Gigantus V2 Pro reimagines Razer's flagship soft gaming mouse mat with five distinct speed ratings so players can choose the surface that locks in the way they play.
JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in standards development for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of JESD406-5D: LPDDR5/5X Serial Presence Detect (SPD) Contents standard, an update of the Revision C standard that adds support for calculating recovery time when switching operating modes. JESD406-5D is available for free download from the JEDEC website.
LPDDR5/5X memory devices are capable of supporting two sets of timing parameters: a full speed mode and a reduced speed mode that consumes less power. This feature allows for longer battery life for mobile devices which are a common application for LPDDR5/5X chips and modules and may also be leveraged by data centers as the use of LPDDR5/5X devices grows. The updated JESD406-5 standard documents key parameters for calculating the switching time between fast and low power modes, making the feature more efficient and allowing higher system performance.
"We are seeing that TSMC is hitting limits," Natarajan Ramachandran, director of product marketing in Broadcom's Physical Layer Products division, told reporters. He noted that a few years ago he would have described TSMC's capacity as effectively infinite. Now, however, capacity expansion plans extend through 2027, and while TSMC...
Nintendo is reportedly reducing the production of the Switch 2 by 33%, cutting output by 2 million units, due to lackluster sales during the holiday season of 2025.
SK hynix disclosed in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that it will purchase 11.9 trillion won ($7.9 billion) worth of EUV lithography equipment from ASML.
MyDreamGirlfriend is an AI-powered dating platform where users create customized AI companions with interactive conversations, voice messaging, and roleplaying features. Optimized for both mobile and desktop, it offers a freemium subscription model. Users can exchange voice notes and photos, unlocking content and deeper interactions with gems. Start free and upgrade for unlimited messages, multiple companions, and extras. All conversations are end-to-end encrypted for complete privacy.
LYNARA is a browser-based platform for precise multi-layer system design. It visualizes complex software landscapes in 3D and lets you structure user interface, services, and data layers for clarity. Use fast keyboard shortcuts to select, copy, paste, and navigate across layers, all without installation or a credit card.
A real-life story of abuse, power, and the fight for justice from the victim's perspective. Here's how to watch Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards for FREE.
Generative and agentic AI hype has convinced many organizations to invest big and jump headfirst into the latest advances of the technology without necessarily considering the big picture.
The powerful Fire TV Stick 4K Plus is Amazon's top-selling device, and it's on sale right now for a record-low price of just $24.99 - a deal so good that I'm adding it to my cart.
Launched in August 2025, Howdy features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from its partners, including Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Disney Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles.
AI citations in ChatGPT are far more concentrated than citation distributions in traditional search. Roughly 30 domains capture 67% of citations within a topic.
That’s according to Kevin Indig’s latest study, which also found that broad topical coverage, long-form pages, and cluster-based models outperform the old “one keyword, one page” approach.
The details. Citation visibility wasn’t evenly distributed. In product comparison topics, the top 10 domains accounted for 46% of citations; the top 30, 67%.
AI visibility was slightly less concentrated than classic organic search, but still highly centralized.
Indig’s conclusion: you’re effectively shut out unless you build enough authority to win one of a limited number of citation “seats.”
What changed. Ranking No. 1 in Google still matters, but it’s not enough. Of pages ranking No. 1, 43.2% were cited by ChatGPT — 3.5x more often than pages beyond the top 20.
ChatGPT retrieved far more pages than it cited. AirOps found that it retrieved ~6x as many pages as it cited, and 85% of the retrieved pages were never cited.
A third of the cited pages came from fan-out queries, and 95% of those had zero search volume.
Why we care. Publishing the “best answer” for one keyword isn’t enough. ChatGPT rewards domains that cover a topic from multiple angles, not pages optimized for isolated terms. And discovery often happens outside the keyword universe you track.
The patterns. Longer pages generally earned more citations, with variation by vertical. The biggest lift appeared between 5,000 to 10,000 characters. Pages above 20,000 characters averaged 10.18 citations vs. 2.39 for pages under 500.
This pattern broke in Finance, where shorter, denser pages often outperformed long guides. In Education, Crypto, and Product Analytics, longer pages continued to gain citation value with little drop-off.
58% of cited URLs were cited only once. Pages that recurred across prompts were usually category roundups, comparison pages, or broad guides answering multiple related questions.
On-page behavior. ChatGPT cited heavily from the upper part of a page. The 10% to 20% section performed best across all industries.
The bottom 10% earned just 2.4% to 4.4% of citations. Conclusions were largely ignored.
Finance had the steepest ramp, with 43.7% of citations in the first 30%.
Healthcare and HR Tech were flatter.
Education peaked later, around 30% to 40%.
About the data. Indig analyzed ~98,000 citation rows from ~1.2 million ChatGPT responses (Gauge), isolating seven verticals. The study used structural page parsing, positional mapping, and entity and sentiment analysis to identify which pages earned citations and where they come from.
A new creative feature has been spotted inside Google Ads Performance Max campaigns — and it could change how advertisers without video budgets approach animated display advertising.
What was found. Vice President of Search at JumpFly, Inc. Nikki Kuhlman spotted an option to generate animated video clips directly within PMax asset groups, using AI to enhance and animate a single source image.
How it works.
Upload a source image — a logo, a product shot, a property photo
AI generates several “enhanced” versions of that image
Each enhanced image produces two animated clips
Select up to five animated clips per asset group
Note: faces cannot be used in source images, though AI may generate people in enhanced versions
Early results from testing. A logo generated a spinning animation of the image element. A house with a sold sign produced a slow cinematic pan. Simple inputs, but the output quality appears usable for display advertising without any video production required.
Where the ads appear. Google hasn’t provided in-product documentation on placement, but early testing shows animated clips surfacing in Display ad previews when added to an asset group.
Why we care. Video assets continue to be a strong creative option on Paid Media — but producing video has always required time, budget, and resources many advertisers don’t have. This feature effectively removes that barrier — turning a single product photo or logo into animated display creative in seconds, at no additional production cost.
For advertisers who’ve been running PMax on static images alone, this could be a meaningful and easy win.
The bottom line. This feature is still unconfirmed by Google, but advertisers running PMax should check their asset groups now. If it’s available in your account, it’s worth testing — especially for campaigns that have been running on static images alone.
First seen. Kuhlman shared spotting this new feature on LinkedIn.
AI tools and visibility have dominated the SEO conversation in the past two years. But while discussions focus on these new technologies, most of the biggest SEO risks in 2026 will come from somewhere else: within your own organization.
Fragmented data, unclear ownership, outdated KPIs, and weak collaboration can quietly destroy even the best strategies. As SEO expands beyond the website and into AI-driven discovery, the role of the SEO team is becoming broader, more influential, and, paradoxically, harder to define.
Here are some of the risks your team should start thinking about now.
Relying too much on AI for everything
Many SEO teams now rely on AI for everything, from generating briefs to analyzing data. That’s often necessary. You can’t spend hours creating a brief when AI can produce something usable in minutes. But that’s also where the risk starts.
AI can generate content quickly, but “acceptable” won’t differentiate you. You still need a clear point of view — what story you’re telling and what unique angle you bring. Without that, your content becomes generic, predictable, and indistinguishable from competitors using the same tools.
The issue is simple: if you ask similar tools similar questions, you’ll get similar answers. And your competitors have access to the same tools.
Some companies try to stand out by training models on proprietary data. In reality, few teams do this at scale. Most prioritize speed over quality.
There’s also risk in using AI for analysis without understanding the data behind it. AI is fast, but it can misinterpret or hallucinate results.
I’ve seen this firsthand. An AI tool hallucinated part of a calculation during an urgent analysis, making every insight that followed incorrect. It only acknowledged the mistake after it was explicitly pointed out.
More broadly, AI excels at identifying patterns. But in SEO, competitive advantage rarely comes from following patterns. The most effective strategies don’t just mirror what everyone else is doing. Sometimes the best opportunity isn’t the obvious one.
AI is reshaping how SEO work gets done, how impact is measured, and whether it can be measured at all.
For years, SEO professionals have worked with incomplete datasets. We’ve never had a full view of the user journey. That’s one reason organic impact has often been underestimated. In the past, though, we could still piece together a reasonably clear picture — from ranking to click to conversion.
Today, that picture is far more fragmented. AI tools have changed how people research and discover products. Users now start in AI assistants – asking questions, comparing options, and building shortlists before ever visiting a website. By the time they land on your page, part of the decision-making process is already done.
The problem is we have zero visibility into that journey. If a user discovers your brand through an AI-generated answer, adds you to a shortlist, then later searches for you directly, the signals that influenced that decision are invisible. We only see the final step.
Microsoft Bing has introduced basic reporting for AI searches, but it’s limited. We still can’t see the prompts behind specific page visibility.
At the same time, SEO teams are still expected to prove impact. Some companies are adding questions to lead forms to understand how users discovered them. In theory, this adds signal. In practice, it depends on accurate self-reporting. I know how I fill out forms, so I question how reliable that data really is. Still, it’s a start.
Setting the wrong KPIs
Fragmented data creates another risk: focusing on the wrong KPIs. Stakeholders still ask about traffic. No matter how often SEO teams explain that its role has changed, traffic remains a default measure of success. For years, organic growth meant more sessions, users, and visits. That mindset hasn’t fully shifted.
At the same time, stakeholders are drawn to newer metrics — AI visibility, citations, and mentions. These aren’t inherently wrong, but they need to be used carefully.
Most tools measure AI visibility using a predefined set of queries. That’s where risk creeps in. Teams can become too focused on improving visibility scores, even if it means optimizing for prompts that look good in reports rather than those that matter to the business.
For example, appearing for “What is XYZ software?” isn’t the same as showing up for “Which XYZ software is best?” The first may drive visibility, but the second is much closer to a purchase decision.
To avoid this, visibility metrics need to be tied to business outcomes — a real challenge given the fragmented data problem.
Tracking AI visibility also opens another rabbit hole: debates over which prompts to track, how many to include, and why. This can quickly overcomplicate measurement, especially if teams lose sight of the goal. The objective isn’t to track every phrasing, but to understand the intent behind it. Trying to capture every variation is impossible.
SEO teams are expected to own AI visibility strategy much like they owned SEO strategy. But strategy is often treated as execution.
Even in the past, SEO was never fully independent. It relied on other teams — engineering to implement changes and content to create pages. The difference is that most of this work used to happen on the company’s own website.
That’s no longer true. Visibility in AI answers requires presence beyond your domain — Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and media mentions all play a role.
This significantly expands the scope of work. At the same time, many of these surfaces don’t have clear owners inside organizations. Even when they do, there’s a tendency to assume that if SEO owns the strategy, it should also own execution or at least be accountable for outcomes.
The opposite happens, too. If other teams own execution, they may take ownership of the entire strategy. In reality, neither model works well.
SEO teams can’t manage every platform that influences AI visibility. They don’t have the expertise to produce YouTube content or run PR campaigns. Their strength is knowing what works and helping optimize it. For example, advising on how a video should be structured to perform on YouTube.
Owning strategy also doesn’t mean deciding who owns execution. That’s a leadership responsibility. It requires visibility across teams and the authority to assign ownership. Otherwise, one team is left deciding how its peers should operate.
Even when companies recognize the importance of AI visibility, cross-team collaboration remains a challenge.
Roles and processes are often unclear. SEO teams may expect others to execute, while those teams assume it’s SEO’s responsibility. In other cases, teams don’t prioritize AI visibility because their KPIs focus elsewhere.
This is where leadership alignment becomes critical. If AI visibility is truly a strategic priority, it needs to be reflected in goals and KPIs across all relevant teams. When AI-related KPIs sit only with SEO, it creates an imbalance: one team is accountable for outcomes, while execution depends on many others.
Many teams are also unsure how to work with SEO. Some don’t involve SEO early enough. Others choose not to follow recommendations because they don’t agree with them.
SEO teams share responsibility here, too. They need to actively onboard other teams and clearly connect SEO efforts to broader business goals. It’s our job to show that lack of visibility means lost revenue.
I’ve seen cases where teams critical to AI visibility hadn’t even read the strategy document. In these situations, the issue isn’t one-sided. Teams need to understand what’s expected of them, and SEO needs to push for alignment and involve stakeholders early. Simply moving forward without that alignment doesn’t work.
SEO teams also don’t always explain the “why.” AI visibility can end up treated as a standalone SEO metric rather than a business driver. Even when there’s agreement on its importance, a lack of clear processes, shared goals, and training keeps collaboration inconsistent.
With rapid changes in search, SEO teams often spend more time on theory — reading, analyzing, building frameworks, and refining strategies — instead of making changes to the website.
That doesn’t mean teams should stop learning. Quite the opposite. But strategy without execution quickly loses value. In many organizations, SEO teams are expected to produce in-depth strategy documents meant to align teams and define priorities. In reality, many go unread outside the SEO team. They require significant effort but deliver little impact.
Part of the problem is that strategies are often too theoretical. They explain the why but miss the what. The value of a strategy isn’t the document, but the actions that follow. Other teams need to understand what to do and how to contribute.
AI is also accelerating how quickly search evolves. Waiting months to test ideas no longer works. A more practical approach is to understand the direction, implement changes, observe results, and iterate. Smaller experiments often lead to faster learning.
When SEO succeeds, SEO disappears
SEO has always been a consulting function. Success depends on collaboration with teams like engineering, content, and product. Today, that dynamic is more visible than ever. In many cases, SEO teams don’t execute directly. Their role is to enable others.
In mature organizations, this works well. Collaboration is strong, and credit is shared. SEO’s consulting role is recognized without forcing the team to own areas outside its expertise. In less mature environments, it can lead to SEO being undervalued or seen as unnecessary.
AI adds another layer. It can generate keyword ideas, outlines, and optimization suggestions, making SEO look deceptively simple, much like writing content. AI lowers the barrier to entry, but it doesn’t replace expertise. Without that expertise, teams produce work that’s technically correct but average.
It’s a familiar pattern: copy-pasting a Screaming Frog SEO Spider error list into a task doesn’t demonstrate real understanding. This creates a paradox. The more SEO becomes a company-wide capability, the more the SEO team risks becoming invisible.
SEO teams won’t fail in 2026 because of a lack of knowledge. They’ll fail if they can’t turn that knowledge into action, influence, and business impact.
The challenge is no longer just optimizing pages. It’s building processes, partnerships, and measurement models that reflect how visibility works today.
Success also depends on leadership support. Many of the biggest risks are structural — fragmented data, unclear ownership, weak collaboration, outdated KPIs, and the gap between strategy and execution.
AI visibility expands beyond the website and into the broader organization. That doesn’t make SEO less important, but it does make it harder to define, measure, and defend.
The companies that succeed will stop treating SEO as a traffic function and start treating it as a business capability that drives visibility, discovery, and growth.
Apple is preparing to introduce sponsored listings in Apple Maps, marking a significant expansion of its advertising business beyond the App Store.
How it will work. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the system will function similarly to Google Maps — allowing retailers and brands to bid for ad slots against search queries. Sponsored businesses will appear in Maps search results, much like sponsored apps already appear in App Store searches.
The timeline. An announcement could come as early as this month, with ads beginning to appear inside Maps as early as this summer across iPhone, other Apple devices, and the web version.
Why Apple is doing this. Advertising is a growing and high-margin revenue stream for Apple’s services business. Maps — with its massive built-in user base across Apple devices — is a natural next step, particularly as location-based advertising continues to grow.
Why we care. Apple Maps has a massive built-in user base across iPhone and Apple devices, and users searching within Maps are expressing clear, high-intent signals — they’re actively looking for somewhere to go or something to buy. This opens up a brand new location-based advertising channel that previously didn’t exist on Apple’s platform, giving local businesses and retailers a way to reach those users at exactly the right moment.
Advertisers already running Google Maps or local search campaigns should pay close attention, as this could quickly become a significant complementary channel.
The privacy angle. True to Apple’s form, a user’s location and the ads they see and interact with in Maps are not associated with their Apple Account. Personal data stays on the user’s device, is not collected or stored by Apple, and is not shared with third parties.
How to access it. Businesses will be able to access a fully automated experience for creating ads through Apple Business in a few simple steps. Current Apple Ads advertisers and agencies will also have the option to book ads through their existing Apple Ads experience, which will offer additional customization options.
What you need to do now. When Apple Business becomes available in April, businesses will need to first claim their location on Maps apple before ads become available this summer — so the time to get set up is now, not when the auction opens.
The bottom line.Apple Maps ads should open up a high-intent, location-based channel that hasn’t existed before on Apple’s platform. Advertisers running local or retail campaigns should claim their Maps listing now and start planning budgets for a summer launch. Early entrants in a new ad auction typically benefit from lower competition before the market matures.
Microsoft added query-to-page mapping to its AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, letting you connect AI grounding queries directly to cited URLs.
Why we care. The original dashboard showed queries and pages separately, limiting optimization. Now you can tie specific AI-triggering queries to the exact cited pages, so you can prioritize updates based on real AI-driven demand — not guesses.
The details. The new Grounding Query–Page Mapping feature links two existing views in the AI Performance dashboard:
Click a grounding query to see which pages are cited
Click a page to see which grounding queries drive its citations
Mapping is many-to-many: one query can map to multiple pages, and vice versa
The entity home is the single page that anchors how algorithms, bots, and people understand your brand. It’s usually your About page, and it does far more than most teams realize.
It’s where algorithms resolve your identity, where bots map your footprint, and where humans verify trust before they convert. In one test, improving that page alone lifted conversions by 6% for visitors who reached it. The reason is simple: the human and the algorithm are doing the same job — checking claims, validating evidence, and deciding whether to trust you.
For years, this was overlooked. Most SEOs focused on rankings and traffic while underinvesting in the page that defines what their brand actually is. That’s no longer sustainable. The entity home is the foundation of how your brand is interpreted across search, AI, and what comes next.
What the entity home isn’t
Before going further, here are four misreadings worth pre-empting.
Not a ranking trick
Getting the entity home right doesn’t produce a traffic spike next Tuesday. It builds the confidence prior that compounds through every gate of the pipeline over time.
Not just schema
Schema markup helps the algorithm read what is already there. It isn’t a substitute for the claims, the evidence links, and the consistent positioning that schema describes. Schema without substance is a well-formatted, empty declaration.
Not always the About page
For most companies, it is, and for most individuals, it is a page on someone else’s website. The right URL to use carries the clearest identity statement, the strongest internal link prominence from the rest of the site, and the most stable long-term address (something people often don’t think about).
Not enough without corroboration
The entity home is where you declare your claims. Independent third-party sources confirm and corroborate your claims. The algorithm will only cross the confidence threshold when what you say matches what the weight of evidence supports.
Three audiences, one anchor — and most brands are ignoring two of them
The entity home serves three simultaneously, through three completely different mechanisms. Most brands haven’t yet given them enough thought.
Bots use the entity home when mapping the digital footprint. They use it to establish what entity they are dealing with and how to interpret every corroborative source they find.
Algorithms anchor their identity resolution against it, checking confidence at every relevant gate against whatever baseline this page set.
Humans reach for it when they want to see a resource that feels authoritative precisely because it is structured to inform rather than to sell.
So, the entity home webpage is vital to all three audiences — bots, algorithms, and humans: it sets the tone for the bot in DSCRI, the algorithms in ARGDW, and for the person who converts.
The entity home is just one page, and that isn’t enough
The entity home anchors everything: the canonical URL where the algorithm initializes its model of the brand, where bots orient themselves, and where humans arrive to verify their instinct. One page, doing one critical job. But one page declares. It doesn’t educate.
The entity home website educates. Every facet of the brand structured across pages that give the algorithm a complete picture of:
Who this entity is.
What it does.
Who it works alongside.
What it has produced.
Where independent sources confirm what the brand claims about itself.
The difference between the two is the difference between introducing yourself and making your case.
Search built the web around a single assumption — the human acts. The engine organized, the website presented, and the human chose. That model shaped 30 years of architecture decisions because the website’s job was to win the human’s attention and trust once the engine had delivered them to you.
But assistive engines broke that assumption. They took on the evaluation work the human used to do: reading, comparing, synthesizing, and recommending. The human still makes the final call, but the website needs to have made its case to the algorithm before the human ever arrives.
The audience that matters first has shifted, and a website that speaks only to humans is already losing the conversation that determines whether those humans show up at all.
Agents go one step further. The agent researches, decides, and acts. The human receives the outcome. The website that wins in an agentic environment isn’t the one with the most compelling hero section — it’s the one the agent can read, trust, and act on without inferring anything.
All three modes co-exist, and all three always will.
Search serves the window shopper.
Assistive engines serve the human who wants a recommendation without doing the research.
Agents serve the task that can be delegated entirely.
What shifts over the next three years isn’t which mode exists — it’s which mode does the most work, and what your website needs to do to win each one.
This is where I’ll plant a flag, and you can disagree. All three jobs need attention right now — the percentages below describe where the main focus of your effort sits, not permission to ignore the others.
The work on assistive and agential is already overdue. The speed of change will probably make these figures look dated in a few months.
2026: Search 60%, Assistive 35%, Agential 5%
Search still drives most conversions. But the 35% on assistive isn’t optional, it’s late. The brands that started two years ago are already compounding.
2027: Search 35%, Assistive 50%, Agential 15%
Assistive engines will be handling enough upstream evaluation that discovery and correct interpretation become the primary battle. Search remains significant. Agential execution is arriving.
2028: Search 20%, Assistive 45%, Agential 35%
Agents execute. The algorithm’s confidence in your brand determines whether you’re in the consideration set before any human is involved. Search and assistive don’t disappear — they become the infrastructure the agential layer runs on.
The entity home website anchors all three eras. What changes is who it speaks to first, and what that conversation needs to contain.
Each cluster in that diagram declares something: these satellite pages, grouped this way, belong to this entity and describe one specific dimension of what it is.
/social names the platforms the brand controls.
/peers places the entity in its professional network.
/companies closes the relationship loop between person and organization.
The grouping carries meaning — an algorithm that reads the structure learns something the individual pages couldn’t tell it separately.
The entity home website has three jobs
Search, assistive, and agential engines co-exist, which means the entity home website runs three distinct jobs simultaneously.
The search job is the one 30 years of practice has refined, and it doesn’t change: get the bots through the DSCRI infrastructure gates cleanly, so the ranking engine delivers the right humans to you, and your content draws them through the funnel with clarity, credibility, and a path to conversion.
The assistive job is the one most brands are ignoring, and where the competitive gap is opening fastest: educate the algorithms. Your entity home website structures your brand’s story so algorithms understand it without guessing, and your content wins the competitive phase (ARGDW) with the highest possible confidence intact. Every explicit link from your entity home website to a satellite property declares a graph edge, carrying higher confidence through the pipeline than any connection the algorithm has to infer for itself.
Hardest to prepare for, and already arriving: brief the agents. Agentic engines don’t read your website the way a human reads a marketing page — they read it the way an instructed system reads a briefing document, scanning for structured, unambiguous, machine-interpretable facts. Don’t make the machine use imagination it doesn’t have.
Entity pillar pages solve the identity problem keyword cornerstones were never built for
SEO has always known what to do with a topic: build an authoritative page around it, link it well, and earn rankings. That architecture works because the ranking engine evaluates content.
What it can’t do is tell the algorithm who the entity behind that content is, what relationships it has built, what it has demonstrated over time, or why it should be trusted to recommend rather than merely rank.
An entity has facets, and facets aren’t the same thing as topics. A person isn’t “SEO consultant” plus “technical SEO” plus “keynote speaker”: those are keyword clusters, useful for ranking, useless for identity.
What the algorithm actually resolves identity against is the network of dimensions that define what this entity is — the companies it belongs to, the peers it works alongside, the publications it has appeared in, the expertise it has demonstrated over years, the events it speaks at, and the work it has produced.
An entity pillar page is the authoritative page on your own property for one of those dimensions.
The /expertise page establishes demonstrated knowledge in a specific domain, not as a content topic, but as an identity declaration.
The /peers page places the entity in a professional network the algorithm already trusts.
The /companies page closes the loop between person and organization.
The /press page links to independent coverage that corroborates the entity’s claims, giving the algorithm something to cross-reference rather than take on faith.
These pages aren’t traffic pages in the traditional sense, and that framing matters: SEOs who measure them against keyword rankings will consistently underinvest in them because the return doesn’t show up in rank tracking. The return shows up in what AI assistive engines say about your brand when your prospects ask.
Keyword cornerstone pages and entity pillar pages serve different audiences, and your website needs both
The keyword cornerstone page and the entity pillar page aren’t competing strategies: they’re parallel architectures serving different audiences, which means your website needs both, and the question is how to build them so they compound each other’s value rather than compete for the same resource.
The coincidence between them is real and worth engineering deliberately. The expertise page that ranks for “technical SEO audit” can also function as the entity pillar page that declares this entity’s demonstrated knowledge in that domain if it’s built with that second function in mind:
Explicit entity statements.
Schema that names the relationships rather than just the topic.
Links to corroborating third-party sources stable enough to persist across years.
A URL structure that commits to the identity dimension rather than the keyword cluster.
When those two requirements align, one page does both jobs, which is a good thing.
When they diverge: when the page that captures search traffic can’t easily carry the identity declaration without sacrificing one function for the other, you face an architectural choice, and making that choice consciously rather than defaulting to the keyword model is the skill the transition requires.
The percentages already told you the weighting: Both layers are required starting today
Earlier in this article, the 2026/2027/2028 split put search at 60%, then 35%, then 20% of focus. What those numbers don’t say, but what the logic demands, is that the other percentage — the assistive and agential share — needs your website to feed them right now. Don’t wait until the balance shifts.
Keyword cornerstone pages feed the search share. Entity Pillar Pages feed the assistive and agential share.
If you build the Entity Pillar Pages in 2027 when assistive engines truly dominate, you’ll be building into a window that has already closed for the brands that started in 2025, because the algorithm’s model of your entity solidifies around whatever you gave it during the period it was actively learning.
The percentages describe where the demonstrable value sits at each stage. Your investment needs to precede the moment your boss sees the results, not follow it.
Both architectures are required today; the balance shifts, but the requirement for both never goes away.
Building for machines and humans simultaneously is cheaper than building for each separately
The risk brands hear when they encounter the machine-optimization argument is a false trade-off: build for machines at the expense of humans, strip the warmth from the copy, replace narrative with structured data fields, and turn the About page into a schema exercise. You can absolutely avoid the trade-off in practice because the best practices are more complementary than they might appear.
Clear entity statements that help the algorithm resolve your identity also help the human visitor understand immediately who they’re dealing with. Explicit links to corroborating third-party sources that build algorithmic confidence also give the human prospect the independent validation they’re quietly looking for. Schema markup that declares relationships for machine consumption gives structured clarity that human scanners doing final due diligence actually appreciate.
For me, this is the reframe that makes the whole project manageable: my approach to the entity home website is your current marketing, restructured to serve three audiences simultaneously, not a technical infrastructure project running alongside it. One investment that has three returns, and (when done right), the requirements pull in the same direction more often than they pull apart.
The funnel is moving inside the assistant.
When an assistive engine names your brand, summarizes it, and links to it in response to a user query, a conversion event has happened that you don’t see in your Analytics dashboard, and the human who arrives at your website has already been half-sold by the algorithm before they clicked. Traffic will decline as more of that evaluation work moves upstream, and the brands that measure only what arrives at the site will systematically underestimate both the value they’re generating and the gaps in their strategy.
Start measuring where your brand appears in assistive engine responses, how consistently it appears, and what the algorithm says about you when it does.
Getting the entity home right requires definition, proof, and a sustained corroboration campaign
Start with the entity home page itself: choose the single URL that functions as the canonical anchor for your brand’s identity and commit to it. Don’t discover it by asking an AI engine what it thinks your entity home is, because the engine will tell you what it has already learned, and that might be your website homepage, Wikipedia, a press profile, or a LinkedIn page you half-filled in five years ago. You choose it, then you verify the algorithm has learned the lesson you are giving it. You are the adult in the room.
Five criteria determine that choice, in order of weight:
The most explicit identity statement on the property.
The strongest internal link prominence from the rest of the site.
The best-structured schema markup with a stable @id.
The clearest outbound links to corroborating third-party sources.
The most stable long-term URL.
If your About page doesn’t hit all five, it isn’t doing the job the algorithm requires.
Invest in your About page. Strengthen it with a clear entity statement, schema with a proper @id, verified links to Wikipedia and Wikidata where they exist, every accurate sameAs declaration you can support, and the claims that define your brand’s positioning.
That single page is the anchor.
The entity home website is the education hub built around it: every entity pillar page you build — /expertise, /peers, /companies, /press — extends the identity declaration outward, giving the algorithm more dimensions to resolve against and more facets to cross-reference with independent sources. Each of those pages does for one identity dimension what the About page does for the whole: declares something specific, verifiable, and machine-readable about who this entity is.
The practical work on the entity home website side is the same audit applied at scale: for each entity pillar page, ask whether it declares a clear facet, links to corroborating evidence, and carries schema that names the relationship rather than just the topic. The pages that answer yes to all three are doing both jobs simultaneously — identity infrastructure and keyword architecture. The ones that don’t need a decision: extend them, or build the pillar function its own dedicated page.
If you’re unsure how much influence you actually have over what AI communicates about you, the answer is more than most people assume — and the channels that give you the most leverage are exactly the ones entity pillar pages are built to activate.
Then force the corroboration loop across the whole footprint: drive independent third-party sources to reference, link to, and echo the claims the entity home makes and the facets the pillar pages declare across enough independent contexts that the algorithm’s confidence crosses from hedged claim to corroborated fact.
That crossing doesn’t happen on a deadline and can’t be engineered in a sprint. The corroboration loop is the curriculum, slow by design, compounding with every cycle, never truly finished. It is the work, and it rewards the brands that start it today over the ones that plan to start it when the percentages shift.
This is the sixth piece in my AI authority series.
In an increasingly automated environment, paid search performance is constrained by a simple reality: Algorithms can only optimize toward the signals they’re given. Improving those signals remains the most reliable way to improve results.
That sounds straightforward, but in practice, many people are still optimizing around signals that don’t reflect real business outcomes.
Let’s dive into how algorithms function, how you can influence them, and where some people fail.
How bidding algorithms actually work
Modern bidding systems are often described as “black boxes,” suggesting they operate mysteriously. But that description isn’t helpful.
At a high level, bidding algorithms are large-scale pattern recognition systems.
Early automated bidding used simple statistical methods, including rules-based logic and regression models. Over time, these evolved into more advanced machine learning approaches using decision trees and ensemble models.
Eventually, these became large-scale learning systems capable of processing thousands of contextual and historical inputs. The technology has developed significantly, but the goal has stayed remarkably consistent.
Today’s systems evaluate signals such as query intent, device, location, time, historical performance, and user behavior, updating predictions continuously and adjusting bids in near-real time.
Despite this complexity, the underlying mechanisms haven’t changed:
Bidding algorithms identify patterns tied to a desired outcome, estimate that outcome’s probability and expected value for each auction, and adjust bids accordingly. They don’t understand business context or strategy — they infer success from feedback. This distinction matters.
When the feedback loop is weak, noisy, or misaligned with real business value, even advanced algorithms will efficiently optimize toward the wrong objective. Better technology doesn’t compensate for poor inputs.
Paid search algorithms observe a vast range of signals, many of which are inferred by the platform and not directly controllable by you. These include user intent signals, behavioral patterns, and competitive dynamics.
While many signals sit outside of our control, there’s still a meaningful set of levers you control that shape how algorithms learn. These include:
The consistency and stability of changes made over time.
These inputs shape how the algorithm explores and learns. They help define the environment in which optimization occurs. But they don’t, by themselves, define what success looks like. That role is played by conversion data.
When performance plateaus, the first instinct is to blame structure, budgets, or creative. In reality, the biggest lever you have available usually sits elsewhere: conversion data.
In most accounts, conversion data is the most influential signal you control. It defines the outcome the algorithm is trained to pursue and directly informs prediction models, bid calculations, and learning feedback loops.
When conversion setups are misaligned, overly broad, duplicated, or noisy, platforms still optimize efficiently, just not toward outcomes the business actually values. This is why, at times, you can show improving platform metrics while your commercial performance stagnates or deteriorates.
A common mistake is focusing on increasing conversion volume rather than improving conversion quality. Volume accelerates learning, but if the signal is weak, faster learning just means faster optimization toward a suboptimal goal.
In practice, refining what counts as a conversion often delivers greater performance gains than structural or tactical changes elsewhere in the account.
Aligning conversion signals with real business KPIs
Before any optimization begins, define what success genuinely means for your business. Paid search platforms don’t have intrinsic knowledge of your revenue quality, profitability, or downstream value. They only see what is explicitly passed back to them.
Misalignment typically appears in predictable forms:
Revenue is used as the primary signal when margins vary significantly.
Lead submissions are optimized without regard to lead quality or sales outcomes.
Short-term efficiency metrics are prioritized over long-term value.
In each case, the algorithm is doing exactly what it has been instructed to do. The issue isn’t optimization accuracy, but goal definition. If an increase in a given conversion wouldn’t be seen as a win by the business, it shouldn’t be the primary signal used for optimization.
Strengthening conversion signals with richer, more resilient data
Conversion quality is determined by how confidently the platform can identify and interpret a tracked event.
Browser-based tracking alone is increasingly incomplete due to privacy controls, attribution gaps, and fragmented user journeys. As a result, ad platforms rely on a combination of browser-side and server-side data to improve matching and attribution. This means that, for you, this isn’t just a measurement problem, as it directly affects how confidently platforms can learn from conversions.
Stronger conversion signals are typically characterized by multiple reinforcing parameters, including:
First-party identifiers, such as hashed personal data passed via enhanced conversion frameworks.
Click identifiers that connect conversions back to ad interactions.
Transaction or event IDs that prevent duplication.
Accurate conversion values.
Session- and network-level attributes that improve attribution confidence.
When a conversion can be recognized through multiple mechanisms, platforms can match it more reliably and use it in learning models with greater confidence. This improves reporting accuracy and bidding performance by reducing feedback loop uncertainty.
Selecting the right conversion goal isn’t a binary decision. It involves balancing several competing factors:
Volume: Higher volumes support faster learning.
Value accuracy: Closer alignment with business outcomes improves decision quality.
Stability: Highly variable values can introduce noise.
Latency: Delayed feedback slows learning and increases uncertainty.
Higher-volume, faster conversions often sit further away from true commercial outcomes, while lower-volume, high-quality conversions may better reflect business value but risk data sparsity. The most effective setups acknowledge these trade-offs rather than attempting to eliminate them entirely.
In many cases, the optimal solution involves using proxy or layered conversion goals that strike a balance between learning speed and value accuracy.
Practical examples of selecting and strengthening conversion goals
Ecommerce optimization based on gross margin, not revenue
For ecommerce, optimizing toward order value assumes all revenue is equal. In reality, product margins often vary widely. When revenue alone is used as the optimization signal, algorithms may prioritize high-value — but low-margin — products.
A more effective approach is to optimize for gross margin by passing margin-adjusted conversion values via server-side tracking or offline conversion imports. This allows bidding systems to prioritize your business’s profitability rather than top-line revenue, without exposing sensitive cost data client-side.
Lead generation with long conversion latency
In lead gen models where final outcomes occur weeks or months after the initial click, form submissions alone can provide you with weak signals. They are fast and high-volume, but poorly correlated with revenue.
Introducing lead scoring improves signal quality. Leads can be assigned proxy values based on known attributes and early indicators of quality, such as company size, role seniority, or engagement depth. These values can then be passed back to the platform via CRM integrations or server-side tracking, enabling value-based optimization even when final outcomes are delayed.
Optimizing toward predicted lifetime value
If you’re focused on lifetime value (LTV), there are two viable approaches:
Where LTV can be reliably predicted within a short window after conversion, predicted values can be imported and used directly for optimization.
If early prediction isn’t feasible for you, lead scoring or early behavioral proxies can be used instead.
In both cases, your objective is the same: provide the algorithm with timely, value-weighted signals that correlate strongly with long-term revenue, rather than waiting for delayed outcomes that are too sparse to support learning.
Modern bidding systems are powerful pattern recognition engines, but their effectiveness is constrained by the signals they receive.
The biggest performance gains rarely come from constant restructuring or tactical tests. They come from improving the clarity, quality, and commercial relevance of your conversion data.
Conversion signals are the most influential inputs you control, and misaligned or low-quality setups will limit performance regardless of how advanced the algorithm becomes.
Regularly audit your conversion definitions and ask a simple question: “Would you genuinely celebrate an increase in this outcome?” If the answer isn’t clear, the signal likely needs refinement.
Improving conversion goals, strengthening signal quality, and balancing volume, accuracy, and latency aren’t optional. They’re among the highest-impact ways to improve paid search performance.
Windows 11 could soon be freed of mandatory Microsoft accounts Last week, Microsoft made it clear that it plans to significantly improve Windows 11 in 2026. While Microsoft’s list of planned improvements was impressive, it was missing one thing that would immediately be loved by Windows 11 users. That’s the removal of Microsoft accounts from […]
Ayaneo, a well-known handheld gaming PC maker, has suspended its preorders for the Next 2 gaming handheld PC due to what the company describes as unsustainable pricing of its materials, making manufacturing and sales impossible. In an update on its Indiegogo page for the Next 2 device, Ayaneo states that the cost of storage has been higher than the company anticipated, surpassing an already inflated price quote. However, after the Chinese New Year, suppliers began providing quotes that exceeded every reasonable level, making Ayaneo's original lowest price of $1,999 for a device with an AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 processor, 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory, and 1 TB of SSD storage unfeasible. While the company offered more expensive variants with up to a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 SoC, 128 GB of RAM, and 2 TB of storage, even a price tag of $4,299 was insufficient to offset the losses from the costly components. The expensive RAM, very expensive NAND Flash, and AMD SoCs meant Ayaneo would be selling these handheld PCs at a massive loss.
This is where the advantage of larger OEMs comes into play, as they can secure slightly better contracts with memory and storage manufacturers, allowing them to get memory pricing into a somewhat decent range and even absorb losses until they can no longer sell their new PCs. Smaller makers like Ayaneo are not in such a position, and the company was forced to stop offering the Next 2 handheld for sale.
Chuwi recently made news for all the wrong reasons, with Notebookcheck finding that the CoreBook Plus and CoreBook X laptops shipped with older, significantly worse, CPUs than the spec sheet claimed. Previously, AMD issued a statement on the matter, washing its hands of the incident and placing the blame squarely—and seemingly fairly—on Chuwi's head. Now, Chuwi itself has stepped up to the plate and issued a response regarding the false CPU advertising.
In a recent blog post, Chuwi blames a production error for the CoreBook X and CoreBook Plus CPU mix-up, stating that a "limited number" of the laptops were assembled with the incorrect CPUs. It goes on to say that affected users should contact Chuwi to request a refund by sending an e-mail to service@chuwi.com or by going through the original purchase channel. Chuwi notes that any returned and refunded devices will need to be in the "original condition with all accessories included," which may be impossible in some cases. The brand has also set a deadline of May 31, 2026, for returns, which is a little over two months from the date of the announcement.
NVIDIA has released GeForce 595.97 WHQL, a minor bug-fix update with no new Game Ready titles this time. The driver is part of the R595 branch, which has had a fair number of issues. The 595.59 release was pulled entirely back in February after users reported fan detection failures and clock instability, and 595.79 followed shortly after to address a separate batch of issues. This latest release addresses three remaining issues: texture corruption in Halo Infinite on R595 drivers, stability issues in HITMAN World of Assassination when NVIDIA Smooth Motion is enabled, and crashes triggered when enabling DLSS Frame Generation while Instant Replay is active. Known issues still present include missing terrain in some areas of Enshrouded and occasional stutter in Arknights: Endfield. No general bugs are listed as fixed this time.
Phison Electronics, a global leader in NAND flash controllers and storage solutions, today announced its expansion of Pascari portfolio offerings across the European Union (EU), to be showcased at CloudFest 2026 from March 24-26, 2026 in booth G25. The company's reinforced commitment to the region comes with expanded partner engagement, distribution alignment and regional investment.
Global memory supply shortages are increasingly impacting cloud service providers (CSPs), hyperscalers and OEM server manufacturers across the EU as organizations prepare for new AI-driven revenue streams. In response, data center architects and IT leads are solving system challenges from the supply strain by addressing the infrastructure stack level, with particular focus on high-performance storage.
Today, at HP Imagine 2026, HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) announced its next evolution of high-performance gaming with the new HyperX OMEN MAX 45L, HyperX OMEN 35L, expanded OMEN AI game support, and new OMEN Gaming Hub capabilities. Together, these innovations combine advanced hardware, intelligent optimization, and creative tools to elevate how gamers play, compete, and create. The lineup brings HyperX's vision for the future of play to life across hardware and software, enhancing both player and machine capability to unlock greater potential. From elite desktop power and modular expandability to AI-driven optimization, HyperX continues to deliver high-end gaming experiences that are more adaptable, more personal, and more capable.
"At HP, we put gamers first in everything we build," said Josephine Tan, Senior Vice President and Division President of Personal Systems Gaming Solutions at HP Inc. "With the new HyperX OMEN desktops, OMEN AI, and OMEN Gaming Hub experiences, we're bringing together powerful hardware and intelligent software to deliver more performance, simpler optimization, greater control, and more fun."
Today, at HP Imagine 2026, HP Inc. announced a new generation of HP Z Workstations, and AI solutions to give people world-class high-performance compute, while also helping IT organizations modernize their infrastructure for a hybrid future. Across industries, power users such as engineers, architects, product designers, AI developers, and professional creators are facing unprecedented pressure as workflows grow more complex and performance demands accelerate. At the same time, IT leaders must balance these needs against cost, security, and manageability. HP's latest Z portfolio addresses both challenges and delivers uncompromising performance, future‑proof design, and solutions that help customers deploy the right compute in the right place at the right time.
"Technology and high-performance workflows are evolving faster than ever," said Jim Nottingham, SVP and Division President, Advanced Compute Solutions. "HP Z workstations are built to equip the best and brightest professionals with the tools they need for specialized workflows and AI at the edge, while giving IT decision makers the ability to scale performance responsibly."
Microsoft is renaming its Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) to the simpler "Xbox mode" to make the feature more appealing to a broader audience. Announced at this March's GDC 2026 conference, Microsoft confirmed that Xbox FSE is gradually being rebranded as Xbox mode, branded with a lower-case "m". This mode has been shown to enhance performance and reduce RAM usage, making it attractive to handheld console gamers and enthusiasts who plan to use it on their PCs to boost performance by minimizing background task load. In CPU-intensive games, this mode can provide a few extra frames per second and overall lower RAM usage, resulting in a smoother experience. According to the ASUS ROG Ally Life account on X, this feature has started rolling out to the Xbox Insider program with application version 2604.1000.30.0.
We have already observed that Xbox FSE, now called Xbox mode, enhances performance by using less system RAM than the standard Windows 11 desktop mode, as confirmed by MSI. Recently, Microsoft introduced this feature to regular Windows PCs, allowing them to play games using Xbox mode. MSI has confirmed that its handhelds running Windows 11 can significantly benefit from this feature. In standard Windows 11 desktop mode, the system uses 8.6 GB of RAM. However, with Xbox mode enabled, RAM usage drops to 7.8 GB, a 9.3% reduction. MSI describes this as a 5% difference based on the total system capacity of 16 GB, rather than the difference between the two usage figures. This reduction in background usage is what Microsoft is aiming for on a larger scale with the regular Windows 11 operating system, promising a smoother user experience and lower RAM usage. Xbox mode demonstrates that this is possible.
According to a Bloomberg report, Nintendo will slash production of the Switch 2 this quarter from the originally planned six million units down to four million, a 30% drop. The reduced production is expected to continue into April.
The messaging marks a sharper, more public pivot than the firm has made in years. "We started adding hardware-based support for DirectX to our GPUs with our last generation, D-Series," the company said in the video. "Below you can see it in action, running on real silicon, handling complex DirectX...
The Atlas 350 is using the Ascend 950PR chip, but it looks like a cut-down version with less compute. Translation overhead aside, previous reports and announcements have already revealed the full specs of this silicon, such as 128 GB of HBM and up to 2 PFLOPS of FP4 compute, but the Atlas 350 is being reported just a smidge below those numbers.
LazyScreenshots is a Mac screenshot tool for builders that captures a region and auto-pastes it into your AI assistant with a single keystroke. It has many features like quick overlays, burst mode, and pixel measurements that keep you focused while sending screenshots back and forth with your AI agent or any other app.
Collaboration is critical to creators' success, but most AI creative tools are poor at collaboration. Buzbee AI pairs creators with a personalized Scout bee, a real-time voice-powered companion who helps ideate, script, and produce videos from the first spark to the final polish. Scout learns from your channel data and video content, applying proprietary storytelling intelligence to make better videos faster and scale your business.
No more prompt engineering one output at a time. You can create with Scout coordinating all your creative tasks across a swarm of worker bees to help you make better videos in minutes instead of days.
Snapchat says both experienced and new developers can use the new "AI Clips" Lens format to turn a single prompt into a published Lens in minutes without the need for external tools.
The high bar Blizzard has set itself has given us more "stuff" to do in WoW than ever, but there's a variety of quality issues that are compounding into frustration.
Dell is offering a special 29% discount on the Dell Tower Plus desktop PC, a deceptively simple yet highly powerful rig suited to a wide range of productivity tasks and easily upgradeable for AAA gaming.
The Razer BlackShark V2 Pro is an outstanding gaming headset for PC we'd recommend any time it's on sale, and that time is now, as it's currently 36% off for a limited time.
Starting today, two new CPU water blocks from Thermal Grizzly are available: the AM5 Mycro Pro RGB and the Intel 1851 Mycro Pro RGB. The coolers consist of a nickel-plated copper base plate, a cooler plate made of tempered acrylic glass, an acrylic jet plate for flow optimization, and a cover made of anodized aluminium. The inlet and outlet ports with G1/4-inch threads are each located in the acrylic glass. A filter in the form of a fine-mesh screen is located at the inlet port. The design of the cooler is identical to that of the Mycro Direct-Die coolers.
Fine-mesh filter at the inlet port
Nickel-plated copper cold plate with ultra-high-performance microfins (0.2 mm)
Metal housing with RGB-illuminated viewing window and internal layout
Inlet and outlet ports with standard G1/4" threads
BenQ, a global leader in interactive display and collaboration technology, today introduced the BenQ Board RP05, its most advanced and powerful AI-ready interactive display to date. Building on the success of the award-winning RP04, the RP05 features a next-generation AI-enabled architecture, faster processing performance, and an expanded software ecosystem, delivering smart, simple, and secure collaboration designed for the future of learning and modern work environments.
Powered by Android 15 and an industry-leading AI architecture featuring a 10 TOPS NPU (Neural Processing Unit), the RP05 is future-compatible, delivering lower latency, reduced lag, and improved processing speed. Schools and organizations can confidently upgrade to new AI capabilities as they are adopted by their teams. The board integrates practical AI tools directly into everyday workflows, streamlining instruction, ideation, and documentation in real time.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which assigns age ratings to video games in the US, recently informed The Game Business that it has no plans to give higher ratings to titles with microtransactions, loot boxes, and other online features. Germany's ratings board began the practice in 2023, with other...
Update (March 25): A New Mexico jury has delivered one of the first major rulings in the growing wave of social media addiction lawsuits, finding Meta liable for misleading the public about platform safety and exposing children to harm. After a nearly seven-week trial, jurors concluded the company violated state...
In a pair of recent statements, developer Pearl Abyss explained that recently discovered AI-generated placeholder art in Crimson Desert accidentally ended up in the final game. The company also promised to optimize the title for Intel Arc graphics soon, reversing its stance on the architecture.
U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) told Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that he should suspend all active export licenses to China for Nvidia AI chips, saying that Nvidia's most advanced AI GPUs are being diverted into the country despite Jensen Huang's assurances.
The Pentagon intends to designate Palantir's Maven Smart System as an official program of record, locking in multi-year funding for the AI-enabled targeting platform.
Grab this impressive Hoto NEX O1 Pro mini electric screwdriver set with 25 bits with its AutoCare 4-in-1 air duster and vacuum cleaner in a combo Amazon deal for under $100.
Intel’s new Core Ultra 5 250K Plus establishes a new baseline for performance in the $200 CPU category. After running it through an extensive suite of benchmarks across games and applications, our testing shows it can match the competition, at worst, and far exceed other options at best.
Lace Lithography raised $40 million in Series A funding on Monday to develop a chipmaking tool that uses a helium atom beam instead of light to pattern silicon wafers.
A trio of US defense, autonomy, and directed energy industry leaders have created the Leonidas Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV) to address the threat of drone swarms.
Budget portable PCs specialist Chuwi has released an official apology to customers who received devices that didn’t match up to expected specifications.
This Alienware Area-51 gaming PC is one of the most powerful pre-built rigs you can buy. It's on sale with a $1,200 discount, fitted with an RTX 5090, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, all for only $4,449.99, with an RTX 5080 variant even cheaper.
VentureLens is an AI-powered pitch deck analysis tool that helps founders and investors evaluate startup decks in seconds. Simply upload a pitch deck and receive a structured, investor-style report highlighting strengths, weaknesses, risks, and opportunities, just like a VC would. Designed for speed and clarity, VentureLens turns hours of manual review into a 60-second workflow.
Built with privacy in mind, VentureLens ensures your data stays secure while delivering actionable insights you can actually use. Whether you're a founder refining your pitch or an investor screening opportunities, VentureLens helps you make smarter, faster decisions with confidence.
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new set of malicious npm packages that are designed to steal cryptocurrency wallets and sensitive data.
The activity is being tracked by ReversingLabs as the Ghost campaign. The list of identified packages, all published by a user named mikilanjillo, is below -
react-performance-suite
react-state-optimizer-core
react-fast-utilsa
ai-fast-auto-trader
On February 25, 2026, Gartner published its inaugural Market Guide for Guardian Agents, marking an important milestone for this emerging category. For those unfamiliar with the various Gartner report types, “a Market Guide defines a market and explains what clients can expect it to do in the short term. With the focus on early, more chaotic markets, a Market Guide does not rate or position
Broadcasters and streamers say smart TVs are becoming 'gatekeepers', and want the EU to act to make sure certain services don't get preferential treatment
Paramount has confirmed the release date for Dutton Ranch — and not only is it much earlier than expected, but it could suggest a huge Taylor Sheridan show crossover.
The prepaid carrier Visible Wireless is offering new customers a free iPhone 17e via rebate when you pick one up on the excellent Visible Pro Plus plan.
PS5 and PS5 Pro console architect Mark Cerny has revealed that Sony’s updated PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) AI upscaling technology is faster than the original.
Website migrations have a well-earned reputation for going wrong, with even well-planned migrations leading to rankings slipping, traffic dropping, or tracking breaking. But most migration problems come from small oversights rather than complex technical failures.
You can reduce your risk with a staged approach. The checks you complete during staging, on launch day, and in the first few weeks after go-live often determine whether a migration stabilizes quickly or becomes a long recovery project.
Before launch: Catch issues on staging
Most migration problems should be found and fixed on the staging site. If issues reach the live site, recovery is slower and more uncertain. Set yourself up for success with the following tips:
Keep the staging site private (even from crawlers)
One common mistake is leaving the staging site publicly indexable. When Google crawls a staging environment, duplicate content can sometimes end up in search results. Rankings can fluctuate, and unfinished pages may end up indexed.
Make sure you have blocked crawlers from staging site or protected it with a password so it remains invisible to search engines until the live launch.
It’s not just crawlers, either. I’ve seen this happen with ecommerce sites.
Customers found the staging site, tried to place orders, and the process didn’t work. This confused customer service teams, frustrated buyers, and created avoidable pressure internally.
You want a baseline to help you identify real problems rather than reacting to normal short-term movement.
Record organic sessions, rankings, top landing pages, indexed pages, conversions, and site speed before transitioning to the new site to define the “normal” you will compare the new site to.
Identify priority pages
Focus on pages that drive traffic, revenue, or attract links. These pages need extra care during redirect mapping, content review, and testing.
Pay extra attention to internal links, redirects, and URL rules for these pages.
Templates control titles, headings, metadata, canonical tags, structured data, copy, and media. If templates break, problems repeat across hundreds of pages.
Check that:
Titles and headings are present and accurate.
Canonical tags use full URLs and point to live pages.
Structured data has transferred correctly.
Copy, images, and internal links are intact.
This step protects more than rankings. It ensures the site still meets user needs and supports conversions.
Make sure canonical tags use full URLs and point to live pages, as explained in Google’s guide on canonical URLs. This simple step can prevent bigger headaches later.
Be intentional about URL changes
Unnecessary URL changes are a common source of hidden damage. Changes made for design or CMS convenience often introduce risk without a clear benefit.
Typical issues include:
Adding or removing trailing slashes without a clear rule.
Changing folder structures without reason.
Inconsistent use of uppercase and lowercase URLs.
One of the most common causes of duplicate URLs during migrations is inconsistent handling of trailing slashes. URLs with and without a trailing slash are treated as different URLs. Allowing both to resolve can create duplicate content, dilute signals, and complicate crawling.
It doesn’t usually matter which version you choose, as long as the rule is consistent across the site. During a migration, avoid unintentionally switching between formats without a clear plan and proper redirects in place.
The same goes for folder structures and capitalization. Don’t change what you don’t need to, and be consistent wherever possible.
In one migration where we were brought in to rescue a site after go-live, every URL gained a trailing slash. Canonical tags only contained paths rather than full URLs, and internal links relied on redirects instead of pointing directly to final URLs. None of the changes were necessary, yet together they slowed crawling, caused confusion, and delayed recovery.
Map redirects and compile existing ones
Redirect mapping is one of the highest-risk areas of any migration. Existing redirects should be pulled from the CMS, CDN, Google Search Console, analytics platforms, and backlink tools so nothing is missed. Every legacy URL needs a clear, intentional destination.
If pages are removed, redirect to the closest relevant alternative. If no equivalent exists, return a 404 or 410. Avoid sending everything to the homepage or top-level categories.
Aleyda Solis’ guide to SEO for web migrations provides a strong framework for this stage.
Decide what to remove and what to create
Migrations are often seen as a good time to refresh all the content on a site. This can be done if all the stakeholders align, but it should be done methodically.
Remove outdated content carefully. Where gaps exist in the new structure, plan new pages in advance and make sure they are ready to go live when the new site is. This planning avoids lost coverage or weak redirect decisions later.
Verify Search Console access and settings
Ensure the site can be verified after launch and that any international or country settings are correct.
Align stakeholders early
Pre-launch is also about people. Developers, designers, SEO, and analytics teams need clarity on responsibilities and deadlines. Many migration issues happen through missed handovers rather than a lack of skill.
In my experience, most migration failures are preventable before launch, when fixes are safer and faster.
I worked on one migration where SEO was brought after launch. The site launched with broken internal links, missing redirects for high-traffic pages, and inconsistent URL rules. Organic traffic dropped by almost 40% within two weeks, and several priority pages disappeared from search results. All of these issues were visible on the staging site but weren’t reviewed before launch.
Make the case for SEO to be part of the planning process. It saves time, money, and headaches.
Launch day: Verify everything works on the live site
Launch day is where preparation meets reality, and all teams, including SEO, developers, designers, and analytics, see the results of their planning. What worked on staging must now work on the live site. Even small oversights can immediately affect rankings, traffic, conversions, user experience, and reporting.
Calm, thorough verification ensures the migration pays off and prevents small errors from becoming lasting issues. Use this list as a starting point:
Test redirects at scale
Spot-checking isn’t enough. Every mapped URL should redirect once and resolve cleanly. Avoid redirect chains and loops. They slow down crawling and delay signal consolidation.
In another migration we were called in to fix, only the top 50 pages had correct redirects. Thousands of other URLs redirected to the homepage. Rankings dipped, and recovery took months longer than expected.
Crawl the live site
Run a full crawl as soon as the site is live. Compare results with the staging crawl to identify differences.
Look for:
Broken links.
Redirected internal links.
Missing pages.
Server errors.
Check internal links and navigation
Menus, breadcrumbs, and in-content links should point directly to live URLs. Leaving internal links to rely on redirects increases load and risk.
Verify on-page SEO and content
Canonicals or hreflang pointing to staging URLs are a common launch issue. Confirm titles, headings, canonical tags, hreflang, copy, and media all reference the live site.
GA4, paid media tags, and social pixels should already be in place before launch. This ensures tracking fires correctly, conversions are measured accurately, and historical data remains intact when the live site goes public. Remember, the staging site should be blocked from crawling or be protected behind a password to prevent test traffic from polluting reporting.
In one migration, we were asked to review after launch. The domain stayed the same, but a new GA4 property was created during the redesign. Historical data remained in the original property, while new data was collected in the new one, making post-launch comparisons difficult.
Keeping the same GA4 property preserves reporting continuity, supports confident decision-making, and avoids unnecessary uncertainty at a critical point in the migration.
Check robots.txt and index controls
Ensure pages meant to be indexed are accessible and that noindex tags are only used where intended. If you use services like Cloudflare, it’s also important to check that your robots.txt and content signals are configured correctly.
For example, Cloudflare’s default setting may block AI training access while allowing search indexing. If this isn’t adjusted intentionally, AI models might pull content from third-party sources rather than your site, affecting how your brand is represented in generative AI outputs.
Check Core Web Vitals and page performance. A redesigned site can still load heavier assets than expected. Launch day is about verification, not assumption.
After launch: Monitor and stabilize performance
Even the best-planned migrations can reveal surprises once search engines and real users interact with the site. Small errors that didn’t appear on staging can impact rankings, traffic, and conversions.
Calm, structured monitoring in the days and weeks after launch ensures problems are caught quickly before they affect performance or user experience. Here’s what to keep an eye on.
Monitor Search Console closely: Watch for crawl errors, indexing issues, and unexpected exclusions. Patterns matter more than isolated URLs.
Check indexed pages: Expect some movement, but sustained drops can point to redirect or crawl problems.
Track rankings and traffic against benchmarks: Compare performance against your baseline rather than reacting to day-to-day changes.
Confirm redirects still receive traffic: Old URLs can attract users and bots for months. Ensure they continue to resolve correctly.
Recheck site speed under real traffic: Performance can shift once the site is under load.
Audit for follow-up improvements: Once stability returns, review internal linking gaps, missing metadata, and content that did not migrate cleanly. Calm monitoring and clear data prevent small issues from becoming lasting damage.
Even well-managed migrations can see short-term movement. Rankings may fluctuate, and traffic may dip before stabilizing.
If redirects are clean, content is intact, and crawl access is clear, recovery usually follows within weeks rather than months. Ongoing losses usually point to structural issues rather than algorithm changes.
Knowing when to wait and when to act comes from experience. You don’t want to react too quickly or too late. Keep a careful eye on your analytics, and you’ll develop the expertise over time.
Website migrations succeed when they are planned, tested, and monitored at every stage. A clear focus on pre-launch, launch day, and post-launch checks protects visibility, performance, and confidence across teams.
When SEO is involved early, and checks are clearly owned, migrations stop feeling like crisis events and become managed change.
Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary is now playable on the MacBook Neo using Crossover, achieving around 50 FPS with performance settings, showcasing Apple silicon’s growing capability for gaming.
In a CNN interview in which he was asked about Apple's upcoming 50th anniversary and how the company has shaped the tech industry, Wozniak was asked what excites and scares him about AI.
As reported by Smithsonian Magazine, Heller's interest in water treatment began close to home in Warrington, Virginia, after she read a local newspaper story about contamination in her neighborhood's drinking water. Tests had found high levels of PFAS and microplastics, and officials made clear that no government money would be...
Amazon Web Services has confirmed that its Bahrain site has been disrupted due to the ongoing conflict. It's been said that drone activity is causing the service interruption, and that the company is requesting its clients to migrate their workloads to other regions.
Cybersecurity has changed fast. Roles are more specialized, and tooling is more advanced. On paper, this should make organizations more secure. But in practice, many teams struggle with the same basic problems they faced years ago: unclear risk priorities, misaligned tooling decisions, and difficulty explaining security issues in terms the business understands.
These challenges do not
Two more GitHub Actions workflows have become the latest to be compromised by credential-stealing malware by a threat actor known as TeamPCP, the cloud-native cybercriminal operation also behind the Trivy supply chain attack.
The workflows, both maintained by the supply chain security company Checkmarx, are listed below -
checkmarx/ast-github-action
checkmarx/kics-github-action
Cloud security
Will STALKER 2’s first DLC be unveiled this week? On Thursday, March 26th, Microsoft will be hosting its 2026 Xbox Partner Preview, where GSC Game World plans to deliver an “update on STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobly. This event is likely to host the unveiling of the first story DLC for STALKER 2, and could […]
PC updates have boosted Borderlands 4’s PC performance by 20% since launch Gearbox has confirmed that its upcoming March 26th (1.5) update for Borderlands 4 will deliver new performance optimisations to the looter-shooter. Since launch, Gearbox claims to have boosted Borderlands 4’s PC performance by 20% across a range of hardware configurations, and their work […]
OpenAI’s IPO faces risks from its reliance on Microsoft, Musk’s lawsuits, and soaring compute costs, raising investor concerns about its $730B valuation.
SilverStone today announced the FARA 314, a microATX tower case that offers a unique combination of a classic layout with legacy storage options, yet room for contemporary high-end graphics cards. The case features a layout resembling microATX towers from 20 years ago, with the PSU bay located above the motherboard tray. It features a modular drive-cage that includes two 5.25-inch bays, three 3.5-inch bays, and one 2.5-inch bay. In addition, there is a 2.5-inch mount along the motherboard tray, and a 3.5-inch mount along the bottom panel.
Ventilation options in the SilverStone FARA 314 include a 120 mm front intake, and a 120 mm rear exhaust. The only radiator mounting option is a 120 mm along the rear exhaust. The motherboard tray serves up room for graphics cards up to 35.4 cm in length, and CPU coolers up to 15.6 cm in height. The company recommends PSUs no longer than 14 cm to pair with this case for adequate cable mounting clearance. Front panel connectivity includes a 20 Gbps-capable USB 3.2 type-C, two USB 3.2 type-A, and a 4-pole headset jack. Measuring 181 mm x 360 mm x 410 mm (WxHxD), the case dry-weighs 4 kg, and is made mainly of SECC steel. The company didn't reveal pricing.
Microsoft has quietly removed a registry hack workaround that enabled faster NVMe SSD speeds by activating a native NVMe software stack. Late last year, Microsoft gradually introduced native NVMe SSD support in Windows Server 2025 as an opt-in feature. This was significant news for Windows Server users who had been dealing with non-native NVMe SSD processing, which was emulated through a series of commands. For instance, Windows converted NVMe drive commands into SCSI commands, resulting in processing latency and overhead, which slowed down read/write speeds in typically high-performing storage configurations. With native NVMe support, the entire stack and I/O processing have been redesigned to achieve optimal SSD performance, running at native speeds.
Within the Windows enthusiast community, there were a series of registry hacks that allowed the system to run native NVMe processing through various unofficial OS modifications. Below is the old method, which Microsoft has now blocked. Perhaps the reason for blocking this hack is that Microsoft is preparing to launch native NVMe SSD processing with the upcoming Windows 11 25H2 update for everyone and the 26H2 update for Windows-on-Arm devices. For now Windows 11 doesn't support the native NVMe SSD processing, and instead relies on the older drive commands conversion into SCSI.
Intel's Core Ultra 5 250K Plus fixes what the 200 series got wrong, delivering blistering productivity performance and competitive gaming at $200, making it one of Intel's most compelling budget CPUs yet.
The FCC says that it will no longer certify foreign-made routers, effectively making them illegal to sell in the U.S., unless the manufacturer can secure a "Conditional Approval" from the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security.
The Trump administration is targeting $4 trillion Pax Silica investment for semiconductors. It’s not currently clear how the Trump administration arrived at the $4 trillion figure, or how it will ultimately materialize.
Microsoft and Samsung investigated a widely reported issue with Galaxy Book 4 devices and said the Galaxy Connect app was the culprit. These laptops were losing access to the C: drive and, initially, people thought it had something to do with Windows Update. Microsoft has posted recovery steps for those that were affected.
A thermal pad with a vapor chamber on top might be the TIM your next phone's SoC will use. Xerendipity's new products are meant to keep your phone cooler without sacrificing thickness or cost.
Prio is an AI personal agent that manages email, calendar, tasks, notes, and scheduling through a single chat. It reads and drafts emails, protects focus time, auto-schedules tasks, and flags priorities so you review and approve before it executes. Use morning briefings, voice notes, and smart rules to delegate work, coordinate calendars, and track follow-ups. Prio connects with Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Notion, and more, and supports MCP-based custom integrations
Chativ is an AI support agent for small businesses that learns directly from your website to answer customer questions 24/7. Paste your URL and it crawls products, policies, and FAQs, then goes live on your site with a single script tag. It escalates complex chats to email or Slack with full context, captures leads, and offers chat history and resolution metrics in a simple dashboard. Schedule re-crawls as content changes and connect ticketing tools like Zendesk or Freshdesk, with no per-message fees.
G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd, the world's leading brand of performance overclock memory, announces that its existing - and new - DDR5 memory kits have gained Intel Extreme Memory Profile (Intel XMP) 3.0 overclock readiness to support the new Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus Series processors and compatible Intel Z890 chipset motherboards. With support across overclocked specification DDR5 U-DIMM (Unbuffered DIMM) and CU-DIMM (Clocked Unbuffered DIMM) memory kits, Intel XMP 3.0 support provides an easy method to achieve memory overclock performance by enabling the profile in the motherboard BIOS.
As a part of this recognition, G.SKILL may now proudly display the official Intel XMP Identifier Logo, a distinction reserved for memory products that have obtained official Intel XMP certification. This helps identify officially supported DDR5 memory kits, so end users can be confident their hardware combination is validated to reach up to the overclocked memory specification.
Team Group Inc. today announced its participation in Japan IT Week, taking place from April 8 to 10 at Tokyo Big Sight. Under the theme of "Military," the exhibit highlights rugged solutions tailored for defense, security, and military computing applications. The showcase will feature high-reliability DRAM and NAND flash storage solutions with wide-temperature support, as well as data protection technologies that meet stringent military-grade requirements, demonstrating Team Group's strong R&D capabilities in industrial storage and data security. Among the highlights is the Team Group INDUSTRIAL P250Q-M80 M.2 PCIe SSD, featuring a one-click data destruction function that delivers intuitive and irreversible data protection for highly sensitive environments. Team Group welcomes industry partners and visitors to West Hall 4, Booth W25-26, to explore its latest innovations in industrial-grade storage.
The Team Group INDUSTRIAL P250Q-M80 One-Click Data Destruction SSD is designed for high-security environments, including defense and AI edge applications. It features a patented independent destruction circuit that enables dual-mode data destruction function, allowing instant logical erase or physical damage. Furthermore, a built-in power-resume destruction mechanism for harsh conditions ensures the data destruction continues even during unexpected outages, achieving zero data residue upon power restoration. The P250Q also integrates LED indicators and anti-misoperation design, enhancing usability and safety. It has earned the 2025 COMPUTEX Best Choice Award in the Cybersecurity category and the 2026 Taiwan Excellence Award, underscoring Team Group's leadership and innovation in high-security storage solutions.
Frank is an AI product decision partner that helps PMs and founders move from gut feel to grounded conviction. Capture ideas in one place, gather evidence from user feedback and metrics, and compare options with pairwise decisions that reveal your tacit knowledge. Frank summarizes your evidence as a second opinion, then records what you chose and why so you can learn from outcomes. It sharpens judgment without scoring scales or roadmapping overhead.
A 26-year-old Russian citizen has been sentenced in the U.S. to 6.75 years (81 months) in prison for his role in assisting major cybercrime groups, including the Yanluowang ransomware crew, in conducting numerous attacks against U.S. companies and other organizations.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), Aleksei Olegovich Volkov facilitated dozens of ransomware attacks across the
Citrix has released security updates to address two vulnerabilities in NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway, including a critical flaw that could be exploited to leak sensitive data from the application.
The vulnerabilities are listed below -
CVE-2026-3055 (CVSS score: 9.3) - Insufficient input validation leading to memory overread
CVE-2026-4368 (CVSS score: 7.7) - Race condition leading to user
It's no secret that Borderlands 4 launched with some serious performance issues, but 2K and Gearbox have long promised performance updates and fixes to improve stability and the overall gaming experience in the latest installment in the looter-shooter franchise. In a new update, 2K Games has walked through a number of changes that have been implemented and shown off some of the performance improvements that have been made in Borderlands 4 since the game's launch. Gearbox and 2K tested the game's v 1.5 update compared to the v 1.0.2 launch version across a number of in-game quality settings and with hardware configurations representing the minimum and recommended specs, as well as a typical high-end gaming rig, and found significant improvements in both average, 1% low, and 0.1% low FPS. The blog post detailing the testing and results claims around 20% performance improvement when comparing the launch version of Borderlands 4 to the March update, but things become more interesting when you look at how performance changed depending on the hardware and resolution.
The biggest changes noted in the test results were seen in the native resolution with no DLSS, with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 and Intel Core i7-9700K gaining around 43% FPS at 1080p Low, while the RTX 3080 and i7-12700K gained 26% at 1440p native and high graphics presets. Lastly, the NVIDIA RTX 4080 paired with an Intel Core i7-13700K went from 54.96 FPS to 78.43 FPS at 1440p native with very high graphics settings. The performance improvements with DLSS upscaling were less impressive, at between 17 and 35%, although that's still a notable improvement, especially on the low-end, where frame rates jump from 53 to 67 FPS. 1% and 0.1% lows are up across the board, with some tests seeing 0.1% lows get nearly a 100% improvement, which will make the game feel significantly smoother. The Borderlands development team attributes the performance uplift to general efficiency improvements as well as refinements to the Shader PSO process (Pipeline State Objects). The developers also worked on reducing polygon counts for effects and optimizing features like effects, physics, cloth simulations, and Unreal Engine 5's Virtual Shadow Maps, all of which helped reduce CPU and GPU usage during gameplay.
OnChain360 is a crypto research platform for independent traders who want to see what's moving the market. It tracks over 14,000 cryptocurrencies across 130 blockchains, monitoring large wallet movements, token unlocks, funding rates, and regulatory filings in real time. Each asset has a risk score based on market structure, exchange flows, and vesting schedules. Scan any wallet across multiple chains, audit token contracts for red flags, and set custom alerts. The regulatory module pulls SEC, CFTC, and FCA filings and summarizes them in plain language. Portfolio tracking, correlation analysis, and a leverage calculator complete the toolkit.
StackOverlap analyzes your marketing technology stack to uncover overlapping capabilities and quantify wasted spend. Its three-pass AI engine profiles each tool's architecture and delivery from a curated real-time database, detects genuine redundancies, uses your business context for unique insights, and self-critiques to improve accuracy.
You get a shareable consolidation report with an executive summary, realistic cost estimates, a three-phase roadmap, and tool-by-tool recommendations. Start free to see the top three overlaps, then upgrade for an in-depth custom forensic audit built for leadership.
After a whistleblower alleged that the startup fabricated audit evidence, its prominent Series A investor removed an article detailing why it led the deal.
Brianni is encrypted cloud storage with programmable conditional delivery. Store photos, documents, passwords, and messages in a zero-knowledge vault with client-side encryption. Package content for anyone and choose when it unlocks using dates, milestones, recurring schedules, triggers, or AND/OR logic. Recipients verify by email and decrypt in the browser without an account or app. Access your vault on the web, iOS, and Android.
Shareables lets you turn data from Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, Excel, and more into embeddable widgets or full microsites in minutes. Pick a template, map your columns, and customize search, filters, and design without code. Data syncs automatically, and you can embed on any site or publish to a custom domain with SSL.
Shareables includes SEO-friendly pages, password protection, payments via Stripe or PayPal, analytics, and custom CSS/JS, so you can build directories, blogs, catalogs, job boards, and dashboards fast.
In a separate conversation, he struck a different note, chastising engineers who underuse AI tools and warning he would be "deeply alarmed" if they were not spending enough on the very systems he had just suggested were already intelligent. The tension between those remarks – one heralding the dawn of...
VeriBite helps you see through food marketing by scanning ingredients in seconds and grading products with a 0-100 Food Intelligence Score. Its Food Truth Radar flags seed oils, ultra-processed additives, and misleading claims, while Kosmo AI learns your habits to suggest cleaner swaps and adaptive coaching. The Impact Dashboard tracks score trends, clean meal streaks, body system impact, and ingredient exposure so you can make smarter choices every day.
Blockstats streamlines crypto tax reporting by automating real-time cost basis calculations and providing minute-by-minute historical pricing. It aggregates wallets, centralized exchanges, and DeFi across 500+ integrations, labels transactions with AI, and shows portfolio performance and unrealized gains for accurate, audit-ready reporting.
CPA firms use Blockstats for bulk reconciliation and standardized reports, while traders save time and reduce overpayments through tax optimization and effortless tracking.
Flighting is a performance-based golf platform that turns your game into progress and rewards. Log rounds, sync your official USGA GHIN handicap, and take on weekly challenges and milestones to climb leaderboards. As you improve, you unlock exclusive Flighting apparel, gear, and member-only pricing you can't get anywhere else. Compete against your club, your flight tier, and your friends, all backed by verified results.
Podcast: Daniel and Zac break down Microsoft's big announcement about Windows 11 and how the company is moving to address its biggest issues this year.
When news broke about Ubisoft's recent layoffs at Red Storm, which saw 105 people lose their jobs and resulted in the studio being relegated to a support studio for other development outfits and for Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine, it was unclear whether any games would be affected by the layoffs and transition. Now, it has been revealed by Insider Gaming that Red Storm was working on 10 games at the time, including five new games: the next Ghost Recon game (Project OVR internally), a turn-based tactics game reminiscent of XCOM, Tom Clancy's The Division 3, Beyond Good and Evil 2, and a new unannounced project that was very early in the development stages. It's unclear what the studio's role in these new games was, or what their future holds, but Ubisoft has not yet announced any game cancellations or even acknowledged the changes at Red Storm.
Crimson Desert has had an eventful launch, rife with backlash over the use of generative AI, a lack of Intel Arc GPU support, and somewhat mixed reviews painting a different story to the game's player count. Regardless of all the aforementioned issues that Pearl Abyss faced surrounding the launch of Crimson Desert, the game had an objectively strong launch weekend, topping 230,000 concurrent Steam players on launch day and reaching a peak of 248,530 concurrent players on Steam just three days later.
A stronger indicator of the game's success, though, especially a game with strong loot and exploration mechanics, is its player retention after the initial launch, and here, too, Crimson Desert seems to be keeping pace. On Monday, March 23, following the game's launch weekend, Crimson Desert managed a 205,834-player peak, according to SteamDB. Crimson Desert also maintained strong positioning on the Steam sales, where it currently occupies second place for revenue generated, following the seemingly unbeatable Counter-Strike 2. Of course, data on player retention on console platforms may be a different story altogether, but that data is not publicly available.
ExtraBrain is an AI meeting assistant that records your screen, transcribes conversations in real time, detects topics, and generates smart follow-up questions to deepen understanding. It runs invisibly during calls and screen shares, keeping your workflow private.
Use it for meetings and interviews on macOS today, with Windows and Linux coming soon. Capture screenshots, manage sessions, and get concise insights as you speak, with automatic updates delivering the latest features.
Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra admitted Grammarly can 'do much better' when asked about the Experts Review feature, which appeared to offer writing advice from living experts without their permission.
When asked whether he was still "salty" about about being shown the door at Uber, alongside co-founder Travis Kalanick, Michael didn't equivocate. "I'll never forget that, nor forgive," he said.
One of the biggest pain points for Windows 11 users in recent years is Microsoft's insistence to log into an online account to access Windows 11. Seemingly as part of the Windows team's recent initiative to address community feedback, Microsoft may be moving towards a Windows 11 that no longer requires that online account login at the initial setup. While no official plans have been confirmed, Scott Hanselman, a Microsoft Partner Product Manager and VP of Developer Community, recently hinted at the change in a post on X. This announcement comes after Microsoft revealed plans to improve Windows 11 memory management and the overall user experience.
"Ya I hate that. Working on it," reads Hanselman's response to a comment on a post asking about removing the login requirement on Windows 11. While it's unclear what exactly "working on it" means—it could mean he's actively working on the code to remove the login requirement, or that he's working on convincing higher-ups to commit to the change. Either way, in a recent blog post Microsoft announced that it would be making changes to Windows 11 in the name of delivering a quality user experience, such as returning the ability to move the task bar and removing much of the recent flood of Copilot integrations from certain apps. Microsoft removed the known mechanisms to bypass the online account sign-in requirements in October 2025, citing issues that arose because users would accidentally skip setup screens when using those methods, "causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use."
Earlier this month, BYD revealed that its latest Flash Chargers can deliver up to 1,500 kilowatts – roughly four times the power of the "hyper-fast" 350-kW systems common in the US. In tests, select BYD batteries charged from 10% to 70% in about five minutes and from 10% to 97%...
The platform is merging creator and advertising elements into a single space in order to facilitate collaboration opportunities and streamline affiliate marketing.
Nintendo’s Switch 2 is much more successful than its predecessor was According to the analyst Mat Piscatella, the Nintendo Switch 2 has had an incredibly strong year. With a strong first-party lineup, which includes upgraded Switch 1 and newly released exclusives, the Switch 2 has been hugely successful. In the US, the Switch 2 has […]
Sea of Thieves gained significant attention after streamer TheBurntPeanut brought in 42,000 viewers, but issues like being DDoS'd prevented it from continuing, limiting its potential impact.
Imagination Technologies has demonstrated 3DMark Fire Strike running on its D-Series GPU using the DirectX 11 API. While this might seem like a minor achievement, it is a significant milestone for the company. Imagination Technologies aims to make its entire GPU IP family compatible with the Windows ecosystem and support Windows gaming seamlessly. Since DirectX is the most influential graphics API, the company is focused on achieving full DirectX 11 support, which has now been successfully implemented on D-Series GPUs based on the PowerVR architecture. For those unfamiliar, the PowerVR GPU architecture was initially used in Apple SoCs, which later evolved into a fully custom Apple solution. This GPU architecture is one of the most influential, alongside AMD's GCN and NVIDIA's CUDA.
3DMark Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark, so getting it to run on the D-Series is a promising indication that the GPU IP can handle real desktop-style workloads and gaming, rather than just lightweight or embedded graphics tasks. Imagination has described DXD as its first D-Series product with hardware-based DirectX 11 Feature Level 11_0 support. The company aims to demonstrate that its GPUs can manage demanding DirectX workloads in actual silicon. Imagination states that DXD is designed for desktop graphics and cloud gaming, supporting DirectX 11, DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.4, OpenGL 4.6, and OpenCL 3.0. This gives it a much broader software target compared to older mobile-first GPU designs. Imagination also offers E-Series GPU IP, which includes DirectX 12 Feature Level 11_0 support. This suggests that we might see more DirectX 12 enablement once most of the DirectX 11 functionality is complete.
Part of the driving force behind game preservation is that it allows gamers and researchers to go back and experience games throughout history, but technology like DLSS 5 may make that complicated, as Appleby explains: "If these new AI technologies become essential for making and playing games, it has the potential to not only add another layer of potential copyright complexity but bring into question what version of a game should be preserved. Do we preserve both DLSS off and on? Is the DLSS 5 version consistent amongst players and if not, what version represents the collective experience?"
JARU IDE is a development environment for creating and deploying ESP32 projects on Windows. It provides a code editor with autocompletion, a project explorer, visual debugging with breakpoints and step-by-step execution, and tools for one-click flashing and serial monitoring. It includes sprite and image editors and the JARU language with clean syntax, classes, closures, and a garbage collector. It also offers built-in modules for GPIO, WiFi, MQTT, I2C, display sprites, and JSON, plus a GPIO simulator for hardware testing.
Hay is customer service AI that takes action, not just gives answers. It plugs into Shopify, Zendesk, Stripe, and more to process refunds, track orders, and update records automatically. It handles tasks that usually bury support teams before they reach a human. You can set it up in plain language using the support materials you already have.
Pricing is a flat monthly fee with resolutions bundled in, not a dollar per interaction on top of everything else. The code is source-available, hosted in the EU, and there's a 30-day free trial with no credit card needed.
Apple set the week of June 8 for its World Wide Developers Conference, and we're expecting big things in AI, as well as significant updates to every major Apple platform.
Leaked "DarkSword" exploits published to GitHub allow hackers and cybercriminals to target iPhone users running old versions of iOS with spyware, according to cybersecurity researchers.
Europol recently unveiled "Operation Alice," a major effort to dismantle a large network of fraudulent websites hidden within the dark web. The investigation began in 2021 and initially focused on a platform named Alice with Violence CP. In the end, the operation took down one of the largest dark web...
While Microsoft rethinks where they've failed with Windows 11, many users rely on tools like Open Shell, Start11, StartAllBack, and ExplorerPatcher to take back control of the UI. Open Shell remains a free favorite with a customizable Windows 7-style menu, while Start11 and StartAllBack offer more polished tweaks for modern systems. ExplorerPatcher rounds things out as another powerful free option.
Microsoft has blocked the registry trick that allowed Windows 11 users to enable a native NVMe driver on their PCs. However, third-party tools can still help with a workaround.
In a new podcast appearance, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang struck a more conciliatory tone concerning DLSS 5, saying he's 'empathetic" to concerns about the feature producing "AI slop."
AMD has impressive plans in the data center realm for 2026 and 2027 that could further impress its position on the market for CPUs and AI GPUs with products like its Helios platform and Instinct MI500 AI accelerators.
Following Nvidia's GTC 2026 keynote, where CEO Jensen Huang laid out the company's Vera Rubin architecture and the Groq 3 LPU acquisition, Nvidia's Ian Buck sat down with press for a Q&A session.
Zonscope compares prices across Amazon’s European stores to help you buy for less. Enter a product name or paste an Amazon link, and it scans France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, Belgium, and Sweden in real time, then ranks countries by total cost including shipping.
Zonscope links you straight to Amazon for final purchase, so you can use your existing account. It highlights top deals and best sellers, explains taxes and customs for cross-border orders, and helps you avoid overpaying with clear, side-by-side pricing.
LearnClash is a competitive quiz duel app where you pick any topic and battle 1v1. Choose from thousands of subjects, from quantum physics to pop culture, and face questions matched to your skill level. An ELO rating system tracks your progress across eight tiers from Iron to Phoenix, so every match feels balanced. Built-in spaced repetition turns every duel into lasting knowledge. Challenge friends directly or get matched with rivals worldwide. Climb leaderboards, unlock rewards, and complete daily quests. Premium unlocks unlimited duels and exclusive features starting at $2.99/week.
The North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview campaign, also tracked as WaterPlum, have been attributed to a malware family tracked as StoatWaffle that's distributed via malicious Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) projects.
The use of VS Code "tasks.json" to distribute malware is a relatively new tactic adopted by the threat actor since December 2025, with the attacks
Birdfy branches out from bird feeder cameras with its Bird Bath Pro camera. With dual solar-powered cameras and a fountain, it's a decent foil for a feeder camera, but there are a few quirks for Birdfy to iron out.
Apple will host its next Worldwide Developers Conference the week of June 8. The company is expected to announce major updates to Siri with advanced AI capabilities.
LG Display claims up to 48% battery life increase with its Oxide LCD laptop displays LG Display has started mass-producing LCD laptop displays with its Oxide 1Hz technology, offering users refresh rates of 1-120Hz and up to a 48% increase in system battery life. This new laptop display tech can intelligently detect the system’s usage […]
The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is one of the best gaming processors you can currently upgrade your rig with to optimize your favorite game's performance, and it's enjoying its lowest discount yet for a limited time.
More and more game studios are leaning into generative AI as a solution to speed up their game development workflows, with some using the tech in early development—as was supposedly the case with Crimson Desert recently—while others openly use generative AI for final game content. Capcom recently revealed in an investor briefing that it falls into the former camp, not the latter, claiming that the studio uses generative AI for in-game content, but that is experimenting with the tech in order to find ways to use it in a variety of fields in order to speed up game development.
"Our company will not implement the materials generated by our AI into game content. However, we plan to actively utilize this technology to improve efficiency and productivity in the game development process. Therefore, we are currently exploring ways to use it in various areas, such as graphics, sound, and programming." This is the same approach we have seen a handful of game developers use. Take-Two Interactive's CEO, for instance, recently mentioned that the company was "already seeing instances where generative AI tools are driving costs and time efficiencies," despite being adamant that no generative AI was being used in the creation of its game content. Capcom's approach seems to be similar to that of Sandbox Interactive and Pearl Abyss, both of which used AI-generated in-game assets during early development with the intention of replacing those assets before the game's release, albeit with varying degrees of success.
Speaking to Digital Foundry about Project Amethyst, Mark Cerny confirmed that Sony is developing AI-powered frame generation for PlayStation, but noted that no new releases are planned this year. He also declined to reveal whether the feature will be rolled out to the PS5 and PS5 Pro or be exclusive...
LG introduces the world's first mass-produced LCD laptop display that can wind down to 1 Hz to save power, similar to high-end smartphone LTPO displays.
A YouTuber has given a 2012-era Lenovo ThinkPad X230 a "visually noticeable upgrade" by swapping out its TN panel for an IPS replacement that cost just $25.
InsideSync brings your calendar, tasks, health, personal finances, and goals into one place so your life finally feels in sync. It's not just a tracker; it helps you make better decisions and takes action for you. The Balance Score gives you a clear view of your productivity, wealth, and wellbeing, so you can see what needs attention and what to improve. Every metric is personalised to what matters to you. Sylia, your AI companion, understands your mood, sleep, steps, focus, and spending, then schedules meetings, blocks deep work, and nudges you at the right moments. By seeing the full picture, InsideSync helps you stay on track, feel more in control, and move faster towards your goals.
Our TV expert said, 'If pressed to choose a single TV that fits every viewing need, I would select the LG C5 OLED,' and the 65-inch model is $1,300 off at Best Buy right now.
MSI’s Cubi NUC 1MG mini desktop delivers smooth performance for everyday work, multitasking, and media tasks, and it’s down to a great price right now.
A French naval officer’s workout session accidentally became a security incident thanks to Strava — here's how to manage your privacy settings to avoid a similar fate.
Amazon's March Madness sale is live as we approach the Sweet Sixteen, and I'm rounding up 13 deals I personally recommend on highly rated TVs and soundbars.
Gas is one of the largest expenses for delivery drivers. With prices continuing to surge, DoorDash is offering a lifeline to Dashers with a new relief program.
The EU’s top antitrust enforcer signaled a decision on whether Google is violating the Digital Markets Act is imminent, without committing to a timeline.
What she said. “It will come,” Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told Dow Jones Newswires, adding the cases are complex and the commission is committed to decisions based on evidence and fair procedure.
The pressure is mounting. Eighteen lobby and civil society groups wrote to Ribera this month demanding clear remedies and a fine large enough to make non-compliance unprofitable.
The groups warned the commission’s credibility is on the line, noting Google controls over 90% of the EU search market.
“Every day without a decision is a day that European businesses are systematically disadvantaged,” the letter said.
Why we care. A ruling against Google under the Digital Markets Act could force major changes to how it operates search in Europe — potentially reshaping how ads are served, ranked, and priced in one of the world’s largest markets. If remedies include structural changes to search or ad tech, it could affect campaign performance, targeting, and competition dynamics across the board. If you have European audiences, watch this closely — the outcome could ripple through Google’s global ad ecosystem.
Meanwhile, this week. Ribera is in California meeting Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Amazon’s Andy Jassy before heading to Washington, D.C., for talks with the acting head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
The big picture. Google isn’t the only one in the crosshairs. The commission has additional open probes into how Google powers AI Overviews and ranks news publishers, and is separately investigating Meta over restrictions on rival chatbots using WhatsApp’s business software.
Bottom line.The EU has been slow to act on Google, but pressure is clearly building. When the decision lands, it could set a significant precedent for how the Digital Markets Act is enforced.
With AI, you can generate dozens (if not hundreds) of articles in hours and publish at scale. But publishing is the easy part. What happens after they go live is what matters.
Together with the research team at SE Ranking, we ran a 16-month experiment to track how well AI-generated content performed on brand-new domains with zero authority.
As you will see, the results are hard to call a success.
Here’s the full story behind our experiment.
Methodology
The goal was simple: test how far AI content — with no human editing, rewriting, or enhancement — could go in search.
How quickly would it get indexed? Could it rank for relevant queries? Most importantly, could it drive traffic?
We started by purchasing 20 new domains with no backlinks, domain authority, brand recognition, or search history.
Each domain focused on a different niche, covering topics such as:
Arts & Entertainment
Business & Services
Community & Society
Computers & Technology
Ecommerce & Shopping
Finance & Accounting
Food & Drink
Games & Accessories
Health & Medicine
Industry & Engineering
Hobbies & Interests
Home & Garden
Jobs & Career
Law & Government
Lifestyle & Well-being
Pets & Animals
Science & Education
Sports & Fitness
Travel & Tourism
Vehicles & Boats
For each niche, we gathered 100 informational “how-to” keywords—long-tail terms with lower competition.
Each site received 100 AI-generated articles, totaling 2,000 pieces across the experiment.
After publishing, we added the sites to Google Search Console and submitted sitemaps.
From that point on, we left the sites untouched to observe performance over time.
Timeline & key results
Month 1: indexing and early visibility
About 71% of new AI-generated pages were indexed within the first 36 days. They generated over 122,000 impressions and 244 clicks. Even at this early stage, 80% of sites ranked for at least 100 keywords each.
Months 2–3: growth continues
Cumulative impressions grew to over 526,000, with 782 clicks. Content continued to perform well without backlinks, promotion, internal linking, or additional SEO tactics.
Months 3–6: ranking collapse
By about three months, only 3% of pages remained in the top 100. Early relevance helped pages get indexed and briefly appear in search, but without authority, uniqueness, or E-E-A-T signals, rankings dropped sharply. Google still indexed the pages, but users rarely saw them.
Month 16: long-term stagnation
After over a year, visibility remained low across most sites. Impressions and clicks were minimal, and no site showed meaningful recovery. After the August 2025 Google spam update, pages ranking in the top 100 rose to 20% — up from 3% at six months.
Month 1: indexing and early visibility
Just over a month after publication (36 days), the first results came in — and they were stronger than expected for brand-new sites.
Of 2,000 articles, 70.95% were indexed (1,419 pages). For zero-authority domains, that’s notable, as getting new sites fully indexed is often a challenge. This shows Google is still willing to crawl and index AI-generated content in most cases.
Some sites performed particularly well. Eleven of the 20 domains had all 100 pages indexed.
Most were in broad, evergreen niches like Food & Drink, Home & Garden, Jobs & Career, and Lifestyle & Well-being.
More competitive or specialized areas, like Ecommerce & Shopping, saw slower indexation, likely due to stricter evaluation.
Along with indexation came early visibility. During this first month, the sites collectively generated:
122,102 impressions
244 clicks
Several niches stood out generating more than 10,000 impressions in the first month alone.
Hobbies & Interests: 17,425 impressions
Business & Services: 17,311 impressions
Travel & Tourism: 13,598 impressions
Lifestyle & Well-being: 13,072 impressions
Law & Government: 11,794 impressions
Games & Accessories: 11,083 impressions
Vehicles & Boats: 10,677 impressions
In terms of keyword coverage, many sites performed surprisingly well within the first month. Eight sites ranked for more than 1,000 keywords, while another eight ranked for 100 to 1,000.
Even at this early stage, 80% of sites with fully AI-generated content appeared in search for hundreds or thousands of queries.
Notably, over 28% of ranking URLs were already in the top 100. Within the first month, many pages reached positions where searchers could see them.
Overall, these results show AI-generated content can gain traction quickly—even without backlinks, editorial input, or additional SEO work. In the short term, content alone was enough to get indexed and appear in search.
Months 2–3: growth continues
This early visibility wasn’t short-lived. Over the following weeks, impressions and clicks kept growing as Google Search discovered and tested pages.
By about two and a half months after publication, cumulative results across all sites had grown:
Impressions: 122,102 to 526,624
Clicks: 244 to 782
Keyword coverage also expanded:
12 sites ranked for 1,000+ keywords (up from 8 in the first month).
The remaining 8 sites ranked for 100–1,000 keywords.
This pattern is typical for new sites. When Google finds fresh content that matches real queries, it tests that content across results. Pages appear for related queries as Google evaluates their helpfulness.
That’s what happened here. Even without backlinks, internal linking, or SEO improvements, the content gained exposure because it targeted low-competition queries and followed basic SEO structure.
At this stage, it could look like a strong case for large-scale AI content. The sites were new, the content fully AI-generated, and impressions kept rising.
But the growth didn’t last.
Month 3-6: the ranking collapse
Around Feb. 3, 2025, roughly three months after publication, the experiment hit a turning point.
Only 3% of pages remained in the top 100, down from 28% in the first month.
In practical terms, the content remained indexed but rarely appeared where users could see it.
Early relevance can help pages get indexed and appear in search results for a time. Without stronger signals — authority, E-E-A-T, unique insights — those rankings are hard to sustain.
By the six-month mark, Google Search Console showed the following cumulative totals across all sites:
Impressions: 526,624 to 706,328
Clicks: 782 to 1,062
At first glance, these numbers suggest continued growth. But that’s not what happened.
Most activity occurred early. In the first 2.5 months, the sites generated roughly 70% to 75% of total impressions and clicks. Over the next 3.5 months, growth slowed sharply, adding only 25% to 30%.
Month 16: the long-term picture
The experiment ran for over a year to see if rankings would recover.
For the most part, they didn’t.
After the drop around the three-month mark, visibility remained extremely low for the rest of the experiment.
There were a few brief fluctuations. The most notable came in late August 2025.
Starting in August, 50% of sites (10 out of 20) saw a two-week spike in impressions. This closely aligned with the rollout of the Google August 2025 spam update, which began Aug. 26.
However, the boost didn’t lead to a sustained recovery.
Among the sites that saw a short-term lift:
Six quickly lost visibility and returned to prior lows
Four maintained slightly improved performance, similar to early post-publication levels
Following the update, pages ranking in the top 100 rose to 20% — up from 3% at six months. This remained below the 28% seen in the first month, but the August 2025 spam update appeared to have improved some rankings.
In total, 66.9% of pages were still indexed, up slightly from 61.45% at six months.
The following sites had some of the lowest numbers of indexed pages:
Finance domain (9 of 100)
Health domain (14 of 100)
This is likely due to their YMYL nature, where Google applies stricter quality and trust standards.
By month 16, cumulative results across all sites were:
Impressions: 706,328 to 1,092,079
Clicks: 1,062 to 1,381
Most impressions still came from the early growth phase, before rankings dropped.
Why SEO visibility didn’t last
The most obvious explanation is that the content didn’t meet Google’s quality standards — and understandably so.
The 2,000 articles lacked many signals Google uses to assess quality and trust:
Authority. No backlinks or external validation. Without these, new domains struggle to compete with established sites.
Expertise and credibility. No authors, credentials, or real-world expertise — especially critical in finance, health, and law.
Content differentiation. Much of the content resembled what already exists. Without unique insights, pages struggle to stand out.
Site structure. No internal linking, topical organization, or clear hierarchy to help Google understand page relationships.
Google can identify AI-generated patterns. Without authority, uniqueness, or supporting signals, early visibility declines.
Bonus insight: how new AI content supports existing pages
In early March 2026, we ran a follow-up experiment, adding new AI-generated content to eight tracked sites.
As of March 13, not all new content has been indexed. However, sites with new content already show a noticeable increase in search impressions.
Interestingly, this lift comes primarily from older posts, not the newly published ones.
For example:
Business-focused website (from 458 impressions in February 2026 to 7,750 impressions in March 2026) – 17x increase.
Law-focused website (from 19 impressions in February 2026 to 356 impressions in March 2026) – 19x increase.
Science-focused website (from 34 impressions in February 2026 to 633 impressions in March 2026) – 19x increase.
This experiment shows that publishing new content—even fully AI-generated—can lift traffic to older pages that had been stagnant for months. Fresh content may signal to Google that the site is active and up to date, giving the site a temporary boost.
However, these are early results and don’t guarantee lasting gains in rankings or traffic.
Key takeaway: AI can speed up content creation, but not replace SEO
The results of this 16-month experiment don’t mean AI content is useless. They show AI alone isn’t enough to drive lasting impact.
Early traffic and impressions may look promising, but without a clear SEO strategy and human guidance, those gains will likely fade within a few months.
AMD launches its improved FSR SDK with FSR 4.1 upscaling and Ray Regeneration version 1.1 AMD has officially released its FSR SDK 2.2, adding support for its newest versions of FSR ML Upscaling and Ray Regeneration. With this update, FSR 4 is upgraded to FSR 4.1, and Ray Regeneration 1.0 is updated to 1.1, enabling […]
Inspired by the epic world of Dragon's Dogma, GameSir proudly announces the launch of the GameSir G7 Pro Dragon's Dogma 2 Edition-a next-generation controller crafted for warriors seeking precision, power, and platform versatility. Designed for the Arisen, this special edition combines pro-grade performance with exclusive thematic styling, delivering an immersive gameplay experience across Xbox, PC, and Android. The GameSir G7 Pro Dragon's Dogma 2 Edition is available for $89.99/£99.99 from the GameSir website. It also expected to be available on Amazon at a later date.
Refined from the celebrated G7 lineage-G7, G7 SE, and G7 HE-the Dragon's Dogma 2 Edition retains the G7 Pro's elite hardware while showcasing a design worthy of Gransys. Equipped with tri-mode connectivity, Hall Effect analog triggers, GameSir Mag-Res TMR sticks, and a swappable magnetic faceplate, this edition merges mythic aesthetics with cutting-edge engineering.
Square Enix previously revealed that it would be leaning into generative AI tech for coding and bug fixing, aiming to rely on the tech for as much as 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027. It seems as though the game publisher is experimenting with AI in a much more public way, according to a new report by The Sankei Shimbun. The Japanese publication reports that Square Enix announced a new AI integration into the Japan-exclusive Dragon Quest X MMORPG, which will take the form of a ball of slime—appropriately named Chatty Slimey—in order to help players feel less lonely and guide them through the start of the game.
The AI chatbot will receive text input, combined with the context of the player's on-screen content as context, and will respond with a generated voice when called upon. There will also be instances where the chatbot will appear without being summoned, like when the player beats a particularly difficult enemy or obtains a rare item—presumably this will help players learn about the game's systems and loot. Square Enix says that, despite Dragon Quest X's large player base, the game has a particularly steep learning curve, which can be a barrier to entry for new players, which is why it was chosen for the AI chatbot. It's unclear if similar tech will be introduced in other games at the time of writing, but given the studio's previous interest in AI, it seems likely that this test, which is currently seeking beta testers, will inform future implementations.
AMD has released its official FSR Software Development Kit version 2.2, which includes the latest set of FSR technologies. This release features FSR Upscaling 4.1 and Ray Regeneration 1.1, showcased late last week as part of the Adrenalin Edition 26.3.1 WHQL driver. The updated FSR "Redstone" SDK v2.2 introduces a much improved FSR 4.1 upscaling technology for the RDNA 4 family of graphics cards. The transition from FSR 4.0 to FSR 4.1 demonstrates that the latest version provides much finer details of game scenery, especially when objects are in motion. In the Crimson Desert game demo, grass moved by the wind appears much more detailed with FSR 4.1 compared to FSR 4.0, which previously applied a somewhat blurry effect to the grass. This improvement brings the visuals closer to native rendering.
Additionally, AMD has included Ray Regeneration 1.1 in the FSR SDK 2.2. AMD's FSR Ray Regeneration processes the noisy output that ray tracing naturally produces and cleans it up in real time, resulting in noticeably sharper and more polished visuals without requiring developers to overhaul their existing pipelines. With the update to version 1.1, it delivers much better and deeper shadows, immersive lighting, and more. You can check out the images below for comparison. The latest SDK also includes AMD FSR Frame Generation 4.0.0 in its vanilla version, as well as AMD FSR Radiance Caching 0.9.0, which is now in technical preview.
The proposed law, known as the Blocking Anticompetitive Self-Preferencing by Entrenched Dominant Platforms, or the BASED Act, was introduced by California state senator Scott Wiener. It seeks to restrict tactics that allow large platforms to favor their own products and block emerging rivals. In an unusual twist for a policymaker...
Our full reviews of the new Intel CPUs are coming this week, but early ones already point to a meaningful refinement of the Arrow Lake lineup, with improved efficiency, higher core counts, and stronger overall value. Most agree the chips are capable all-rounders, particularly at their aggressive $199 and $299 price points.
The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D has dropped to its lowest price yet, now around the $420 mark, making one of the fastest gaming CPUs even more compelling. Built around AMD's 3D V-Cache technology, it continues to deliver exceptional gaming performance and strong efficiency, standing out in a crowded market.
The effort is being led by Windows chief Pavan Davuluri, who has publicly acknowledged the extent of user frustration with Windows 11. In a recent company blog post, he said the Windows team had spent months analyzing user feedback to identify what he described as "the voice of people who...
The UK’s Imagination Technologies is teasing its roadmap to 'bring high‑performance, scalable, PowerVR graphics to desktop, workstation, and cloud environments.'
Industry Social is a social network for B2B SaaS companies to connect with each other. We believe genuine connections, not algorithms for outreach or engagement, are how companies should collaborate.
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Littlebird is building an AI that reads your screen in real time to capture context, answer questions, and automate tasks, without relying on screenshots.
Grab will acquire Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan for $600 million, expanding beyond Southeast Asia and setting up a closer challenge to Uber Eats in a tightly contested market.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) equated the DOD's decision to label Anthropic a "supply-chain risk" as retaliation, arguing that the Pentagon could simply have terminated its contract with the AI lab.
Hackers working for Iran’s government are using Telegram in hacking operations that use malware to target dissidents, opposition groups, and journalists who oppose its regime, according to the FBI.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is stepping down as board chair of Helion. His departure comes as reports that the two companies are negotiating a deal that would see Helion sell 12.5% of its power output to OpenAI.
A quiet but important change is coming to the Google Ads API that will affect how advertisers and developers create Lookalike user lists, especially for Demand Gen campaigns.
What’s changing. Google will enforce a uniqueness check on Lookalike user lists, blocking duplicate lists with the same seed lists, expansion level, and country targeting. Attempts to create a duplicate will return an API error after April 30.
Why we care. If you use automated scripts or third-party tools to generate audience lists, an unhandled error could quietly break your campaign workflows if you don’t update integrations in time.
What you need to do.
Audit existing Lookalike lists and reuse ones that already match your intended configuration rather than creating new ones
Update your API error handling to catch the new DUPLICATE_LOOKALIKE error code in v24 and above, or RESOURCE_ALREADY_EXISTS in earlier versions
Bottom line. This is a housekeeping change to keep Google’s systems stable, but the April 30 deadline is firm. If you manage campaigns programmatically, treat this as a technical to-do before the end of April.
OpenAI is moving forward with ads in ChatGPT, but early adopters say it isn’t ready for serious performance marketing.
The big picture. ChatGPT’s ad product shares almost no data, lacks automated buying tools, and offers minimal targeting—leaving advertisers with little ability to measure whether their spend is doing anything, The Information reported.
What advertisers are dealing with. SEO consultant Glenn Gabe outlined the issues:
No automated way to buy ad space — deals happen over calls, emails, and spreadsheets.
No meaningful performance data to evaluate outcomes.
Two agency executives told The Information they couldn’t prove the ads drove measurable business results for clients.
Why we care. If you’re considering ChatGPT as an ad channel, the lack of performance data means you’re spending blind — with no reliable way to prove ROI to clients or stakeholders. As OpenAI prepares to scale ads to all U.S. free users, the audience will grow, but measurement tools haven’t caught up. If you jump in now, keep expectations tight and treat it as experimental budget, not a performance channel.
What’s coming. OpenAI told advertisers it plans to show ads to all U.S. users on free and low-cost ChatGPT tiers in the coming weeks — a major expansion. It also advised that performance may improve if you supply more variations of text and visual creative.
The irony. OpenAI builds some of the world’s most sophisticated AI, but its ad reporting tools are stuck in the spreadsheet era.
Bottom line. ChatGPT ads are about to reach a much larger audience, but there’s no way to prove they have value yet. If you enter now, you’re largely flying blind — and paying for it.
Credit. Gabe shared highlights from The Information‘s article (subscription required) on X.
In a recent keynote at the Industrial Marketing Summit, Rand Fishkin argued that we’re marketing in a “zero-click world.” His observation captures an important surface-level trend: fewer users are clicking through to websites.
The deeper shift, however, is structural. What has changed is the way information is evaluated, repeated, and trusted across the web — and that’s where many are drawing the wrong conclusion.
As clicks decline, it can look like websites matter less. In reality, their role in shaping what gets seen and trusted may be increasing.
Why ‘zero-click’ discussions often lead to the wrong conclusion
From a traffic perspective, the trend is unmistakable. Clicks are declining in many contexts.
Search engines now answer many questions directly on the results page.
Social platforms function as discovery engines where people research ideas, products, and services without leaving the platform.
AI assistants synthesize answers from across the web before a user ever sees a list of links.
Part of the reason the zero-click discussion resonates so strongly is that it disrupts the way we’ve historically measured visibility. For more than two decades, traffic and click-through rates have served as the primary signals for forecasting performance and evaluating the impact of search.
When answers appear directly in search results, AI summaries, or platform conversations, those interactions often occur outside the analytics frameworks we’re accustomed to using.
The conclusion many draw from this trend — that websites matter less — is an incomplete assessment. The role of websites is changing, but their importance in the information ecosystem hasn’t disappeared. In some ways, it may be increasing.
The reason has to do with how modern information systems determine what to trust. Large language models and AI-driven search interfaces don’t evaluate truth the way humans do. They rely on probabilistic signals drawn from the information available across the web.
When the same message appears consistently across multiple independent sources, the statistical likelihood that the information is correct increases. Visibility in this environment is determined by where information appears.
The fragmentation of discovery is real. Information consumption now happens across many environments: search results, social feeds, community forums, video platforms, and AI interfaces.
Users frequently encounter answers without needing to click a link.
A search result might contain an AI summary.
A product recommendation might appear in a Reddit thread.
A professional insight might circulate on LinkedIn.
From a traditional web analytics perspective, these interactions can appear as lost traffic. However, focusing exclusively on clicks misses the more important question: where does the information itself originate?
The environments where people consume information are expanding, but the underlying knowledge those systems rely on still has to come from somewhere.
Zero-click doesn’t mean zero influence
The critical distinction you need to understand is the difference between traffic and information influence.
Traffic measures whether a user visited your website.
Influence measures whether the information you produced shaped the answer someone received.
AI systems don’t generate answers out of thin air. They construct them from patterns learned across the open web.
When an LLM answers a question about a legal issue, a technical concept, or a marketing strategy, it draws on the analysis, explanations, and original thinking that publishers have already placed online.
Even in a zero-click environment, those sources continue to exist. They continue to shape the answers. The difference is that influence increasingly occurs earlier in the information pipeline, before the user even reaches a website.
Fewer clicks don’t mean fewer sources. In practice, it often increases the value of authoritative sources because AI systems depend on them to construct coherent responses. Without expert explanations, detailed analysis, and original insight, there’s nothing for the system to synthesize.
In discussions that follow the “zero-click world” framing, the recommendation is that brands should focus more heavily on platforms they don’t control — social networks, communities, and other forms of “rented land.”
Brands can think of their visibility footprint as two categories of territory:
Owned land, where they control the infrastructure and content.
Rented land, where their message appears on platforms they do not control.
Owned land includes assets such as a company website, product documentation, knowledge bases, and other first-party content environments. These are places where a brand controls the structure, the message, and the permanence of the information.
Rented land includes platforms such as LinkedIn, Substack, industry publications, forums, podcasts, and social media environments where the brand participates but does not control the underlying platform.
In an AI-mediated discovery environment, both types of territory matter. Owned land provides the canonical source of information. Rented land distributes that information across the broader ecosystem where AI systems encounter it.
These platforms are powerful environments for discovery, amplification, and conversation. They are often where audiences encounter brands for the first time and where ideas circulate widely. However, they rarely serve as the place where authority itself is established.
Authority tends to emerge from deeper forms of publishing:
Long-form explanations.
Original analysis.
Research.
Consistent demonstrations of expertise over time.
These forms of content typically live on first-party websites, where ideas can be developed fully and preserved as reference points. Rented platforms still influence how AI systems interpret information, but their role differs from that of first-party publishing.
When a brand, concept, or explanation appears consistently across multiple environments — first-party sites, industry publications, social platforms, and other third-party mentions — the association between that entity and the idea becomes stronger.
Repeated exposure stabilizes the relationship between the brand and the concepts connected to it. As a result, the likelihood that the brand will be included in an AI-generated answer increases.
Platforms amplify the signal. First-party publishing is where the signal originates.
Another misconception in the zero-click discussion is the assumption that AI systems primarily rely on aggregated or repackaged information. In practice, the opposite often occurs.
When AI systems generate answers, they frequently rely on sources that provide clear explanations, detailed reasoning, and subject-matter expertise. These characteristics are more common in original publishing than in aggregated content.
Legal blogs, technical documentation, research publications, and expert commentary often perform well in AI citations because they provide usable knowledge. The material contains context, reasoning, and structured explanations that models can extract and synthesize.
Aggregated summaries frequently lack that depth. Without detailed explanation or original analysis, the content provides limited value for AI systems attempting to construct coherent answers.
The result is a quiet shift in visibility. Domains that consistently publish authoritative explanations may become more influential in AI-generated answers, even if traditional click-based metrics decline.
Websites still matter, but their role is changing. They’re no longer just traffic generators.
In an AI-mediated information ecosystem, websites function as knowledge sources, training signals, and citation anchors — where expertise is documented, and ideas originate.
Platforms distribute those ideas, conversations amplify them, and AI systems synthesize them into answers. The source of the underlying knowledge, however, still matters.
The marketing implication is straightforward. Success can’t be measured solely by clicks. The objective is to ensure that credible expertise exists in durable forms that can be discovered, referenced, and synthesized wherever information surfaces — whether in search results, AI-generated responses, or discussions on other platforms.
Content that is clear, authoritative, and genuinely useful will continue to shape the answers people receive. In a zero-click world, influence simply happens earlier in the information pipeline.
Capcom claims that it doesn’t plan to use AI-generated materials as part of “game content” As part of a new Q&A with investors, Capcom has confirmed that it has no plans to utilise assets made by AI in its games. However, this does not mean that Capcom is entirely anti-AI. After all, Capcom’s Resident Evil […]
Xbox has announced its next Partner Preview for March 26, revealing new details on what to expect, including updates on Stranger Than Heaven, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, and more third-party games, alongside Game Pass news.
Adding to the recent controversy surrounding Intel Arc GPU support—or lack thereof—in Crimson Desert, gamers recently flagged a very peculiar in-game painting, among other assets, as evidence of use of generative AI in the game. The image depicted a battlefield filled with cavalry, but many of the soldiers and their horses were blended into one another, and there were general inconsistencies in the image that stood out as being AI-generated. Despite the almost obvious use of generative AI, Pearl Abyss did not use Steam's generative AI disclosure on the Crimson Desert store page. Now, three days after the AI-generated in-game art was discovered, Pearl Abyss has issued a statement, via the @CrimsonDesert_ account on X, acknowledging that it was AI-generated but also claiming that the artwork was not meant to make it into the final game.
According to the announcement, the development team used "experimental AI generative tools" during early iteration to generate 2D props to "explore tone and atmosphere," and that it was always the studio's intentions to replace these AI-generated assets with final artwork after an internal review by the art and development teams. Pearl Abyss says that it "acknowledge that we should have clearly disclosed our use of AI," adding that it apologizes for the oversights. The studio also notes that it has started an internal audit of all in-game assets in order to replace any affected content, and that those updated assets will appear in upcoming patches. The game's Steam store page has also been updated with the corresponding generative AI disclosure following the statement and community backlash, which reads "Generative AI technology is used in a supplementary capacity during the creation of some 2D prop assets. Any such assets are replaced through our production pipeline by our art and development teams, ensuring they meet our quality standards and creative direction." Pearl Abyss's full statement follows.
Semiconductor manufacturing is arguably one of the greatest marvels of the modern world, with only a few companies competing for the top spot. Recently, Elon Musk announced an ambitious project called "TERAFAB," which he plans to build on Tesla's campus in eastern Travis County, Austin, Texas. This initiative will be a joint effort involving Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Musk introduced this idea during a livestream on X as a practical solution to the growing gap between his companies' future chip needs and the current pace of global chip production. The project could become one of the most engineering-intensive tasks these companies have ever undertaken, with some estimates placing the capital expenditure at $20 billion.
As Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI require substantial computing power to support their expanding user base, relying solely on external suppliers is insufficient for the scale of growth Musk envisions. Tesla is known for utilizing TSMC, Samsung, and even some of Intel's manufacturing and packaging capabilities to support its chip production. However, with the creation of TERAFAB, these companies aim to gain more control over the entire chip development process. The plant is expected to integrate several stages of semiconductor production at one site, including logic fabrication, memory, packaging, testing, and mask production. This setup is unusual, as these steps are typically spread across multiple specialized facilities. Musk believes that consolidating these processes could accelerate development by enabling engineers to design, test, and revise chips with fewer delays.
LG Display, the world's leading innovator of display technologies, today announced that it is beginning the world's first-ever mass production of an LCD panel for laptops equipped with its Oxide 1 Hz technology.
The panel's core feature is its ability to intelligently detect the usage environment. It automatically switches the refresh rate down to 1 Hz when the screen is static and up to 120 Hz when needed. For example, when performing tasks involving primarily still images—such as checking emails or reading e-books and research papers—the panel operates at the lowest refresh rate of 1 Hz. Conversely, it runs in high-refresh-rate mode at up to 120 Hz when streaming content such as movies or sports as well as playing games with frequent screen changes.
The AirDrop rollout to Samsung's flagship series starts in Korea today, with US devices set to follow later this week before expanding to more regions, including Europe, Latin America, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.
The company, valued privately at about $730 billion, is expected to nearly double its headcount to roughly 8,000 employees by year's end, up from about 4,500 currently, people familiar with the matter told The Financial Times. New hires will be concentrated in engineering, research, sales, and product development. A significant share...
WebsitePublisher.ai is an AI web platform that lets Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Grok, Mistral, and Gemini publish complete websites via API. No WordPress, hosting setup, or CMS configuration is required.
Another week, another reminder that the internet is still a mess. Systems people thought were secure are being broken in simple ways, showing many still ignore basic advisories.
This edition covers a mix of issues: supply chain attacks hitting CI/CD setups, long-abused IoT devices being shut down, and exploits moving quickly from disclosure to real attacks. There are also new malware tricks
The Trump administration has deployed ICE agents to over a dozen U.S. airports amid an ongoing federal shutdown that's causing long wait times. Eyewitnesses have already recorded at least one arrest in San Francisco's airport.
Most SEO discussions today center on AI — from AI Overviews to ChatGPT and other LLMs — and the concern that they’re taking traffic from business websites, forcing a shift toward GEO or AEO.
For the most part, that concern is valid. AI is reducing traffic for many sites, especially those that rely on top-of-funnel, informational content. But the data suggests AI may not be the biggest shift.
User behavior has been fragmenting across platforms for years, and I see this play out in agency work every day.
Here’s what the data shows about how search behavior is changing across platforms, and why a “search everywhere” strategy matters more than focusing on LLMs alone.
Third-party platforms are encroaching on traditional search
People search TikTok for restaurants, YouTube for tutorials, Reddit for authentic reviews, and Amazon to buy products. In many cases, these platforms are replacing traditional search engines like Google and Bing as the starting point.
This shift isn’t just about behavior — it shows up in traffic, too. Amazon and YouTube still drive far more desktop traffic than ChatGPT, a trend Rand Fishkin recently highlighted.
Recently, I helped run a comprehensive share of voice analysis for a client. The goal was threefold:
See which competitors are winning in traditional search across multiple service lines.
Find keyword and content gaps.
Create a content roadmap based on priority to fill these gaps.
The analysis revealed a lot of helpful data, but one of the most interesting takeaways was that our core competitors weren’t actually our biggest competitors in traditional search. YouTube and Reddit were.
These platforms rank well in traditional search, take up valuable SERP real estate, and move users away from Google and Bing to funnel them back to their own platforms.
The analysis highlighted a key point: if you don’t focus any effort on these places, you’re not only missing out on visibility in traditional search, but you’re also missing valuable attention when users navigate off Google and start watching videos or reading threads.
And this website isn’t the only one seeing this type of trend. Do this type of analysis yourself, and see who your actual competitors are within traditional search. The answers may surprise you.
Third-party platforms can have higher search volumes
As seen above, platforms like YouTube and Reddit are increasingly occupying traditional SERP real estate. But what about searches within the platforms themselves? Depending on the query, there may be far more search volume on these platforms than on Google or Bing.
For example, YouTube dominates in tutorials and “how-to” content. A term like “how to fix a leaky sink faucet” has 15x the search volume on YouTube than it does on traditional search globally.
Source: Semrush
Source: vidIQ
Search volumes are estimates. But if you want to get in front of the right people where they’re searching, any content strategy around a term like this, or a similar topic, must include creating a YouTube video.
Better yet, to be search-everywhere-friendly, create a blog post and embed that video in it.
Aside from traditional search and in-platform search, we also know that “search everywhere” influences AI-generated results.
To provide answers, LLMs need content to synthesize. More often than not, that content isn’t coming from business websites, but from third-party sources and social platforms.
AI visibility tools can quickly show businesses the power of search everywhere in relation to citations. Take a look at these examples:
Brand A
Brand B
These are two completely different brands, yet the trends are the same: a very small percentage of citations come from your own website or even direct competitors.
In both examples, almost 90% of citations come from third-party news and online publications, or social and forum platforms like Reddit or Quora.
The takeaway here is that focusing on your own website, in the context of LLM citations, can only go so far. If you want to improve brand sentiment or ensure that information is accurately reflected by AI, it needs to happen in places outside of your direct control.
The competitive landscape is shifting, and many marketers have tunnel vision when it comes to AI. Discovery now happens across a wide range of platforms.
YouTube, Reddit, Quora, and others dominate significant portions of traditional search results and may have far more search activity within their own platforms. When AI systems generate answers, they often pull information from these platforms rather than brand websites.
To win in modern search, you need to understand where your audience is actually searching. That doesn’t stop at Google. It means showing up everywhere that shapes decisions.
The numbers tell a story that most agency owners already know in their gut: AI anxiety is rising fast.
In 2024, 44% of digital marketing agencies viewed AI as a significant threat to their business model. Just one year later, that number jumped to 53%, according to SparkToro’s annual State of Digital Agencies survey of hundreds of agency owners worldwide.
But here’s what makes this particularly painful: agencies aren’t just watching AI disrupt their industry from the sidelines. They’re actively using it themselves, automating tasks, reducing costs, and hoping to improve margins. All while their clients are doing the exact same thing, using AI to justify slashing budgets or bringing work in-house entirely.
It’s a squeeze play from both directions, and agencies are caught right in the middle.
The promise that became a problem
When AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude first exploded onto the scene, many agency leaders saw opportunity.
Finally, a way to automate the repetitive, time-consuming work that ate into profitability. Content briefs, initial drafts, performance reports, basic ad copy, all could be accelerated or partially automated. The math seemed simple: use AI to do more work with fewer people, pocket the difference, and stay competitive on pricing.
Except clients did the same math — and they reached a different conclusion. When brands can spin up decent content, analyze campaign performance, or generate ad variations with a few prompts, the question becomes unavoidable: why are we paying an agency for this?
“Several services that agencies once charged a premium for are now performed in-house or by automation software,” notes Al Sefati, CEO of Clarity Digital Agency, who’s been vocal about the pressures facing boutique agencies.
Earlier this year, Sefati had clients “put marketing on pause” despite strong performance metrics. A manufacturing client backed out of a contract entirely due to tariff uncertainty. When budgets get tight, and AI makes certain marketing tasks feel commoditized, agencies become an easy line item to cut.
Agencies adopt AI hoping to increase profits by doing more with less staff. But clients expect the cost savings to flow to them, not the agency’s bottom line.
The result? Shrinking retainers across the board.
SparkToro’s research shows that sales cycles are lengthening, more agencies now report deals taking 7-8 weeks or even 12+ weeks to close, up significantly from 2024.
Prospects are taking longer to commit because they’re doing their own internal math: “If AI makes this cheaper and faster, shouldn’t we pay less?”
Meanwhile, client expectations haven’t decreased at all. In fact, they’ve intensified.
Progress is no longer good enough. Brands now demand tangible business outcomes, pipeline impact, revenue attribution, and demonstrable ROI on every dollar spent.
So agencies are stuck: use AI to stay efficient and risk commoditizing their own services, or refuse to adopt it and get outpaced by competitors and in-house teams who will.
Perhaps the most concerning finding from the research: 66% of agency owners worry that junior team members will have fewer career opportunities in the future. This goes beyond entry-level headcount to the entire talent pipeline.
Historically, agencies have relied on junior staff to handle the repetitive, foundational work, keyword research, content optimization, reporting, and campaign setup. These weren’t glamorous tasks, but they were essential training grounds. Junior marketers learned the craft by doing the work, eventually graduating to strategy and client leadership.
AI is rapidly automating precisely those tasks. And while that might seem like a net positive for efficiency, it creates a devastating long-term problem: where do future senior strategists come from if there’s no ladder to climb?
The war for senior talent is brutal. Top strategists, creatives, and media planners know their worth and demand premium compensation. Meanwhile, clients push back on fees.
The math doesn’t work unless agencies can maintain lean teams, which AI theoretically enables.
But five years from now, when those senior people retire or move on, who replaces them? If an entire generation of marketers never got hands-on experience because AI was doing the work, the industry risks hollowing itself out.
What AI can’t replace yet
Despite the disruption, there’s a clear pattern in what’s working for agencies weathering this transition.
The research shows that larger agencies (51+ employees) are reporting healthier sales pipelines than their smaller counterparts. Part of this is resources, larger shops have dedicated sales teams, and can absorb economic volatility better.
But there’s something else at play.
Agencies that are surviving, and in some cases thriving, are the ones who’ve stopped trying to compete on execution alone. They’re selling something AI can’t easily replicate: strategic thought, real-world market experience, nuanced storytelling, and intelligent execution tied directly to business outcomes.
“Clients desire teams that really understand their industry,” Sefati observes.
The trend is clear: specialization is no longer optional. Generalist “we do everything” agencies are struggling most. Those with deep vertical expertise, B2B SaaS, financial services, healthcare, and ecommerce, are proving that context and strategic insight still command premium fees.
This matters because AI is phenomenal at pattern recognition and execution within known parameters. But it struggles with the messy, ambiguous work of understanding a client’s competitive position, reading market dynamics, or crafting positioning that actually resonates with a specific audience.
The problem? Many agencies haven’t made this transition yet. They’re still selling and delivering services that feel interchangeable with what AI, or a capable in-house team with AI, can produce.
A few years ago, simply having the technical skill to launch a Google Ads campaign or set up marketing automation gave agencies an edge. That’s no longer true.
As martech platforms have become more complex and AI tools grow faster, more brands have built competent internal teams. The bar for what counts as “differentiated agency value” has risen dramatically.
This is why the sales pipeline data is so revealing.
These numbers have improved marginally from 2024 (when 36% said “not good”), but we’re talking about incremental gains in a fundamentally challenged environment.
Smaller agencies, those with 1-10 people, are hit hardest. They typically lack dedicated sales staff, so business development competes with client delivery for founders’ time. And when budgets tighten, brands consolidate with larger, more specialized agencies that feel less risky.
How your agency can escape the squeeze
Focus on these priorities as client demands rise and margins tighten.
Be honest about what AI has commoditized
Don’t fight AI or pretend it doesn’t exist. Be brutally honest about what AI has already commoditized, and ruthlessly focus on what it can’t replicate.
This means making some uncomfortable decisions now. Stop competing on services that AI handles well enough. If you’re still selling basic content creation, social media management, or standard reporting as core offerings, you’re volunteering to be price-shopped.
Instead, double down on the work that requires genuine expertise: deep market understanding, strategic positioning, creative concepts that actually move the needle, and the kind of nuanced judgment that comes from having seen what works (and what fails spectacularly) across dozens of client situations.
Lead with AI, don’t hide from it
Change how you talk about AI with clients. Rather than downplaying it or treating it as a threat to hide, lead with it.
“Yes, AI can generate content, and we use it to do that faster and cheaper than ever. But what AI can’t do is know that your competitors just shifted strategy, or understand why your last three campaigns underperformed despite good metrics, or recognize that your messaging is technically correct but completely misses what your audience actually cares about. That’s what you’re paying us for.”
Rethink pricing models
Hourly billing and retainers based on team size are relics of a world where labor hours correlated to value. They don’t anymore.
Outcome-based pricing, value-based fees, and performance partnerships align agency incentives with client success, and make the AI efficiency gains work in your favor rather than against you.
Rebuild the talent pipeline
Address the junior talent crisis head-on. The agencies that figure out how to train the next generation of strategists in an AI-enabled world, by pairing them with senior experts on high-level work rather than relegating them to tasks AI now handles, will have a massive competitive advantage in five years when everyone else is scrambling for talent.
The data shows 64% of agencies expect revenue growth over the next 12 months. Whether that optimism is justified depends entirely on whether agencies adapt to the new reality or keep hoping the old model comes back. It won’t.
The squeeze is permanent. But there’s a path through it for agencies willing to fundamentally rethink what they sell and how they deliver it.
Will your agency become indispensable because of how you use AI, or get bypassed entirely because clients realize they can do what you do themselves?
A strange pattern has emerged in Google’s paid search results: multiple competing ads display the exact same web statistics, raising questions about a bug or an intentional design shift.
What’s happening. Several paid search ads are showing the same website statistics simultaneously, even though these signals are typically unique to each site. The uniformity makes the data look unreliable, and it’s unclear whether this is a display glitch, a test, or something more deliberate.
Why we care. Trust signals in search ads help users make informed decisions and boost click-through rates by building confidence. If those stats appear identical across competing ads, users may dismiss them as unreliable — undermining the credibility boost you rely on.
What we don’t know.
Whether Google is actively testing this or it’s an unintended bug.
How widespread the issue is across different search queries or markets.
Whether it’s affecting user click behavior or advertiser performance.
No official word. Google hasn’t confirmed or commented on the behavior. Paid media expert and founder Anthony Higman first spotted and flagged the anomaly on LinkedIn.
Bottom line. If trust signals can’t be trusted, they stop serving their purpose. You should watch whether this pattern spreads — or quietly disappears.
AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850X3D pricing has dipped, and it comes with Crimson Desert AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850X3D launched last month for £449.99 in the UK, and now the CPU is available at a much lower price, with Crimson Desert included. Overclockers UK is now selling AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850X3D with a free £54.99 game and […]
Capcom has detailed how it plans to use generative AI in game development, focusing on idea generation and efficiency while avoiding AI-generated assets in final game content.
Microsoft’s emergency fix for the Windows 11 sign-in bug is here, but the damage to user trust remains. This latest bug shows why Microsoft needs to let people pause updates forever.
Intel's Core Ultra 200S series CPUs come as a duo of Arrow Lake Refresh processors, and they're refreshingly cheap for creators, with gaming benefits to boot.
Crimson Desert initially launched without working Intel Arc support, prompting backlash from players. Pearl Abyss has now confirmed it is working on compatibility and optimization updates.
After the controversy surrounding the open-world fantasy game "Crimson Desert" not being supported on Intel Arc GPUs, to the extent that the game wouldn't even launch on systems with these GPUs, Pearl Abyss has faced pressure from the gaming community. As a result, the game now officially boots on Intel Arc GPUs, with full optimizations to follow. In a statement on Friday, Intel claimed they had offered Pearl Abyss assistance in delivering full optimization for Intel GPUs, which the studio did not utilize. "Over the past several years, we've reached out to Pearl Abyss many times to help test, validate, and optimize support for Intel graphics, providing early hardware, drivers, and engineering resources across multiple generations, including Alchemist, Battlemage, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake."
As the controversy spread and the studio noticed the comments circulating online from millions of Arc GPU users, the situation improved. Pearl Abyss is now allowing Intel Arc GPUs to boot the game, with further performance optimizations to come. Previously, the Crimson Desert FAQ stated that there was no current support for Intel Arc graphics cards, but it has been updated to indicate that support is now present, with optimizations being added. The studio asks gamers to be patient. "We apologize for any confusion our previous FAQ wording regarding playability on Intel Arc GPUs may have caused. Please regard this as our latest official news on the subject," says Pearl Abyss.
You've known us for decades for ergonomic keyboards. The ones that are built around the idea that your keyboard should fit you and not the other way around. That's still true, and we're still very much that company.
After many years of conversations (with IT managers trying to standardize gear across hundreds or thousands of desktops, with companies that need to onboard new employees fast without a tutorial on how to use a keyboard, and for individuals who are just not there yet when it comes to making the ergonomic jump), we started hearing the same thing in different ways: We love what you do, but we also need something more traditional. So we made it.
The ads mark a broader change in how young tech companies present themselves. Instead of courting consumers, they're advertising to peers who already speak the language of machine learning. "The goal is intentional in a kind of 'if-you-know-you-know' type of way," Mike Bilodeau, head of marketing at the AI infrastructure...
From 2017 to 2024, 52-year-old Michael Smith, from Cornelius, North Carolina, and his co-conspirators ran a large-scale fraud scheme that artificially boosted the stream counts of AI-generated songs across Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube, according to court documents.
After testing the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, we’ve seen fantastic application performance across our suite of benchmarks. Gaming performance still struggles, however, even with Intel’s Arrow Lake Refresh changes and an interesting new Binary Optimization Tool.
Chinese eTail giant Alibaba has removed listings and suspended the accounts of sellers that were found to be advertising 'cruise missiles' and 'suicide attack drones.'
Stratalize gives professional services firms complete visibility into vendor spend, subscription exposure, and renewal risk in minutes. It ingests transaction data from banks, ERPs, and accounting platforms, then uses machine learning to classify vendors, detect anomalies, and project multi-year exposure. The platform delivers plain-English advisory reports with specific recommendations to negotiate, cancel, consolidate, or optimize, and exports shareable PDFs for CFOs and legal teams. Built for accounting firms, law practices, and consultancies, with enterprise-grade security.
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