Microsoft Clarity announced their new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server which enables developers, AI users and SEOs to query Clarity Analytics data with natural language prompts via AI.
The announcement listed the following ways users can access and interact with the data using MCP:
Query analytics data with natural prompts
Filter by dimensions like Browser, OS, Country/Region, or Device
Retrieve key metrics: Scroll Depth, Engagement Time, Total Traffic, etc.
Integrates with Claude for Desktop for AI-powered querying
MCP Server is a software package that needs to be installed and run on a server or a local machine where Node.js 16+ is supported. It’s a Node.js-based server that acts as a bridge between AI tools (like Claude) and Clarity analytics data.
This is a new way to interact with data using natural language, where a user tells the AI client what analytics metric they want to see and for what period of time and the AI interface pulls the data from Microsoft Clarity and displays it.
Micrsoft’s announcement says that this is the beginning of what is possible, sharing that they are encouraging feedback from users about features and improvements they’d like to see.
The current road map of features listed for the future:
“Higher API Limits: Increased daily limits for the Clarity data export API
Predictive Heatmaps: Predict engagement heatmaps by providing an image or a url
Deeper AI integration: Heatmap insights and more given the context
Multi-project support: for enterprise analytics teams
Ecosystem – Support more AI Agents and collaborate with more MCP servers “
New research reveals that Google’s AI Overviews tend to favor major news outlets.
The top 10 publishers capture nearly 80% of all news mentions. Meanwhile, smaller organizations struggle for visibility in AI-generated search results.
SE Ranking analyzed 75,550 AI Overview responses for this study. They found that only 20.85% cite any news source at all. This creates tough competition for limited citation spots.
Among those citations, three outlets dominate: BBC, The New York Times, and CNN account for 31% of all media mentions.
Citation Concentration
The research shows a winner-takes-all pattern in AI Overview citations. BBC leads with 11.37% of all mentions. This happens even though the study focused on U.S.-based queries.
The concentration gets worse when you look at the bigger picture. Just 12 outlets make up 40% of those studied. But they receive nearly 90% of mentions.
This leaves 18 remaining outlets sharing only 10% of citation opportunities.
The gap between major and minor outlets is notable. BBC appears 195 times more often than the Financial Times for the same keywords.
Several well-known outlets get little attention. Financial Times, MSNBC, Vice, TechCrunch, and The New Yorker together account for less than 1% of all news mentions.
The researchers explain the underlying cause:
“Well, Google mostly relies on well-known news sources in its AIOs, likely because they are seen as more trustworthy or relevant. This results in a strong bias toward major outlets, with smaller or lesser-known sources rarely mentioned. This makes it harder for these domains to gain visibility.”
Beyond Traditional Search Rankings
The concentration problem extends beyond citation counts.
40% of media URLs mentioned in AI Overviews appear in the top 10 traditional search results for the same keywords.
This means AI Overviews don’t just pull from the highest-ranking pages. Instead, they seem to favor sources based on authority signals and content quality.
The study measured citation inequality using something called a Gini coefficient. The score was 0.54, where 0 means perfect equality and 1 means maximum inequality. This shows moderate but significant imbalance in how AI Overviews distribute citations among news sources.
The researchers noted:
“AIOs consistently favor a subset of high-profile domains, instead of evenly citing all sources.”
Paywalled Content Concerns
The research also reveals patterns about paywalled content use.
Among AI Overview responses that link to paywalled content, 69% contain copied segments of five or more words. Another 2% include longer copied segments over 10 words.
The paywall dependency is strong for premium publishers. Over 96% of New York Times citations in AI Overviews come from behind a paywall. The Washington Post shows an even higher rate at over 99%.
Despite this heavy use of paywalled material, only 15% of responses with long copied segments included attribution. This raises questions about content licensing and fair use in AI-generated summaries.
Attribution Patterns & Link Behavior
When AI Overviews do cite news media, they average 1.74 citations per response.
But here’s the catch: 91.35% of news media citations appear in the links section rather than the main text of AI responses.
Media outlets face another challenge with brand recognition. Outlets are four times more likely to be cited with a hyperlink than mentioned by name.
But over 26% of brand mentions still appear without links. This often happens because AI systems get information through aggregators rather than original publishers.
Query Type Makes a Difference
The type of search query affects citation chances.
News-related queries are 2.5 times more likely to include media citations than general queries. The rates are 20.85% versus 8.23%.
This suggests opportunities exist for publishers who can become go-to sources for specific news topics or breaking news. But the overall trend still favors big players.
What This Means
The research suggests that established outlets benefit from existing authority signals. This creates a cycle where citation success leads to more citation opportunities.
As AI Overviews become more common in search results, smaller publishers may see less organic traffic and fewer chances to grow their audience.
For smaller publishers trying to compete, SE Ranking offers this advice:
“To increase brand mentions in AIOs, get backlinks from the sources they already cite for your target keywords. This is one of the greatest factors for improving your inclusion chances.”
Researchers note that the technical infrastructure also matters:
“AI tools do observe certain restrictions based on website metadata. The schema.orgmarkup, particularly the ‘isAccessibleForFree’ tag, plays a significant role in how content is treated.”
For smaller publishers and content marketers, the data points to a clear strategy: focus on building authority in specific niches rather than trying to compete broadly across topics.
Some specialized outlets get higher text inclusion rates when cited. This suggests topic expertise can provide advantages in certain cases.
Looking Ahead
SE Ranking’s research shows that only 20.85% of AI Overviews reference news sources, with a few major publishers dominating, capturing 31% of citations.
Despite this concentration, opportunities exist. Publishers who establish authority in specific niches experience higher inclusion rates in AI Overviews.
Additionally, since 60% of cited content doesn’t rank in the top 10, traditional SEO metrics alone don’t guarantee visibility. Success now requires building the trust signals and topical authority that AI systems prioritize.
As paid media marketers, we often default to the “big” platforms: Google, Meta, and increasingly, TikTok.
However, there’s a quiet powerhouse in the app marketing world that too many advertisers overlook: Apple Search Ads (ASA).
If you work with apps or even if your business uses an app as a secondary conversion point, ASA is one of the most intent-driven ad platforms you can leverage.
Unlike other platforms where discovery can feel like throwing spaghetti at the wall, ASA puts you directly in front of users already searching for what you offer.
That’s not just high intent. That’s purchase-ready behavior.
So, why aren’t more marketers fully embracing Apple Search Ads? Usually, it’s because they either assume it’s only for app developers or they’re intimidated by yet another ad platform to learn.
With a bit of strategic setup and a clear understanding of how ASA differs from other platforms, you can unlock a high-performing new channel.
This guide will walk you through everything you need to know.
What Is Apple Search Ads And Why Should You Care?
Apple Search Ads is Apple’s proprietary platform that lets advertisers promote apps directly inside the Apple App Store.
It operates similarly to paid search platforms: Advertisers bid on keywords and pay when users tap their ads.
Instead of driving traffic to websites or landing pages, ASA drives users directly to your App Store product page. From there, users can immediately download or purchase the app.
So, why should that matter to marketers?
App discovery still happens in the App Store. Despite the rise of social and influencer-driven app marketing, the App Store remains the No. 1 source of app discovery.
Intent is extremely high. Unlike display or social placements, users are actively searching for solutions when they encounter Apple Search Ads.
ASA can help boost organic rankings. High ad-driven downloads can influence your organic App Store ranking, creating a halo effect for long-term growth.
If you’re investing in user acquisition or app engagement, Apple Search Ads deserves to be part of the conversation.
Where Do Apple Search Ads Show Up?
If you think that ASA placements are strictly within the App Store search results, think again.
Currently, your ads can appear in four key placements.
1. Search Results
This is the most coveted placement. Ads appear at the very top when a user searches for a keyword. This is where intent is at its peak.
Image credit: ads.apple.com, May 2025
2. Search Tab (Suggested Apps)
Ads appear before a user types in a search term. This is a great placement for brand awareness and introducing your app to broader audiences.
Image credit: ads.apple.com, May 2025
3. Today Tab
These ads show up on the App Store’s homepage, which is the first thing users see when they open the App Store. It’s ideal for major launches or branding campaigns.
Image credit: ads.apple.com, May 2025
4. Product Pages (While Browsing)
Ads appear when users scroll through other app product pages. These placements capture users who are in browsing mode, often comparing similar apps.
Image credit: ads.apple.com, May 2025
Each placement serves a different purpose, from brand awareness to high-intent acquisition.
Apple Search Ads Basic Vs. Advanced: Which One To Choose?
At first glance, Apple’s two solutions, “Basic” and “Advanced,” might seem like they serve similar purposes. They don’t.
Apple Search Ads Basic
This solution is designed for small app developers or businesses without dedicated marketing teams.
It’s entirely automated: You enter a monthly budget (up to $10,000), and Apple does the rest. It handles targeting, bidding, and ad delivery.
You get very limited reporting and zero visibility into which keywords or placements are driving installs. There’s no ability to control cost-per-tap, and optimization is virtually non-existent.
Apple Search Ads Advanced
This solution, on the other hand, is a fully-featured platform that gives you control over every element of the campaign: keywords, audience targeting, bidding, scheduling, and performance measurement. It’s what any performance marketer should be using.
If you care about scalability, performance optimization, or insight into where your spend is going, the decision is easy.
Advanced is the only real option. Basic may work for small developers, but if you’re reading this guide, it’s probably not for you.
Navigating The Apple Search Ads Platform
If you’re coming from a Google Ads or Meta Ads background, ASA will feel both familiar and refreshingly simple, but it wouldn’t be a proper ad platform without its own quirks.
Here’s a quick walkthrough of what to expect when navigating the platform:
Dashboard Simplicity: ASA’s dashboard prioritizes campaign overviews with fewer tabs and less complexity than Google Ads or Meta.
Campaign Setup: You’ll name your campaign, set your daily budget, choose your app, and select the countries or regions where you want to advertise.
Ad Groups: Within each campaign, you create ad groups where you set targeting, keywords, audience refinements, and bids.
Reporting: Apple provides performance metrics such as impressions, taps (clicks), cost per tap (CPT), conversions, and cost per acquisition (CPA). For deeper insights, you’ll need to integrate with Apple’s SKAdNetwork or third-party Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) like Adjust or AppsFlyer.
There is one key difference between this platform and the Google Ads platform, and that comes in the form of ad creatives.
You won’t create ads in the traditional sense like other platforms. Apple Search Ads automatically pulls your app’s name, icon, screenshots, and description from your App Store listing.
While this limits creative flexibility, it ensures that ads align perfectly within the app’s branding.
For more custom creatives, there is the option to create custom product pages within Apple App Store Connect, but we’ll cover that later in this guide.
Understanding Keyword Targeting And Match Types
Keyword targeting is at the heart of Apple Search Ads, and while it borrows concepts from Google Ads, there are some critical differences.
Exact match is exactly what it sounds like. Your ad will only appear when the user’s search matches your keyword or a very close variation.
Broad match is more flexible, allowing your ad to appear for related terms, synonyms, and phrases. Broad match is helpful for keyword discovery, but can sometimes cast too wide a net if not monitored closely.
You can also opt into Search Match, which lets Apple automatically match your app to relevant search terms.
It uses metadata from your app listing (like your title, keywords, and category) to decide where your ad should show.
While it can be helpful in discovery campaigns, you’ll want to keep a close eye on what it’s actually matching to, as it often surfaces low-quality or irrelevant terms. Now, here’s the kicker: Apple does allow negative keywords, but managing them is far more frustrating than it should be.
Unlike Google Ads, you can’t easily apply negatives across multiple campaigns in bulk or through a shared library.
There’s also no built-in keyword suggestion tool to help you filter or negate irrelevant terms based on live data. If you want to block poor-performing keywords, you have to manually upload them one by one into the ad group or campaign.
There is another option to copy/paste them into the interface, but I’ve found that you have to build them out in Excel by match type, then use a Notepad (or something similar) to format it the way Apple can ingest it.
You can’t paste a linear list like most platforms can. You’ll need to format negative keywords something like this:
This makes proactive negative keyword management a bit of a time suck.
Keyword management is doable, but it’s not frictionless. You’ll need a spreadsheet handy and some patience, especially if you’re working across multiple campaigns.
The structure of your Apple Search Ads campaigns is one of the biggest levers you can pull for performance and efficiency.
It helps you control budgets, isolate performance by keyword type, and make smarter bid decisions.
In my experience, the most successful campaign structure includes four campaign types/categories:
Brand campaign.
Competitor campaign.
Category campaign.
Discovery campaign.
Brand Campaign
Your brand campaign captures people already searching for your app by name.
It usually delivers the cheapest installs and highest conversion rates, making it a reliable foundation.
Competitor Campaign
This campaign targets searches for other apps in your space.
For example, you’re marketing a personal budgeting app. If someone searches for “Mint” or “YNAB” (which stands for You Need A Budget), you can show up as an alternative.
These campaigns are competitive, so expect higher CPTs.
Category Campaign
This campaign focuses on generic terms like “budget app” or “meal tracker.”
These users are high intent but still evaluating their options. It’s a great area for differentiation.
Discovery Campaign
Lastly, your discovery campaign should use broad match and search match to find new terms.
Keep bids lower here and treat it as a research engine.
Once you build out this structure, you’ll be able to track which intent tiers are performing, allocate budget accordingly, and avoid muddy data from mixed-match types.
It’s the first step toward scale and clarity.
Lastly, once you’ve mastered the basics of Search campaigns in Apple, I’d recommend branching out to the broader campaign types (Search Tab, Product Page, Today Tab).
Additional Targeting Options In Apple Search Ads
While Apple Search Ads is primarily keyword-driven, there are a few targeting levers you can pull to refine who sees your ads.
They’re not as deep as what you’d get on Meta or TikTok, but they’re still useful.
You can refine your audience by:
Device type, choosing to target users on iPhone or iPad. This is especially useful if your app performs better on one format.
Customer type, allowing you to target new users, returning users, or users of your other apps. This comes in handy for re-engagement or cross-promotion strategies.
Demographics, including age ranges and gender, although these are more directional than precise.
Location, which supports geographic segmentation down to the region or country level.
While these refinements are helpful, they don’t work like standard audience building in Google Ads or Meta Ads. You won’t be building layered lookalike audiences or behavior-based segments.
ASA targeting leans more on keyword intent, with these settings helping you narrow the lens.
Used thoughtfully, these refinements help stretch your budget further and ensure you’re reaching the right slice of users without completely overhauling your campaign structure.
Make The Most Of Your Apple Search Ads Bids
Apple Search Ads operates on a cost-per-tap bidding model. You set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a tap (essentially a click), and Apple runs an auction to determine whether your ad gets shown.
What makes ASA different is that the auction isn’t just about who bids the most.
Apple weighs relevance, meaning that apps with higher conversion rates and better alignment to the search query can win placements with lower bids.
That means throwing money at ASA doesn’t guarantee success. Smart bidding is about segmenting intent and adjusting bids based on performance.
Here’s how to frame your approach to bidding:
For brand keywords, your relevance score is naturally high. These campaigns usually perform well with low bids.
Competitor keywords are more competitive and less relevant, so you’ll need moderate-to-high bids to be visible.
Category terms tend to be broad and competitive. They’ll require higher bids and careful tracking of CPA to avoid wasted spend.
In discovery campaigns, you’re exploring unknowns. Start with low bids until you identify what works, then break the winners into new ad groups.
You’ll also want to make frequent bid adjustments. Unlike Google Ads, ASA doesn’t offer much in the way of automated bidding or budget pacing.
This means manual optimization matters a lot more, and performance can shift quickly based on ranking changes or user behavior.
The takeaway? Stay active. Set up a regular cadence to adjust bids and keep your spend aligned with what’s driving installs.
Custom Product Pages In Apple Search Ads
If you’ve worked with Apple Search Ads in the past, you might remember Creative Sets. That’s the old name of this feature.
Today, you create ad variations using Apple’s Custom Product Pages. These are alternate versions of your App Store product page with different screenshots, app previews, and promotional text. When paired with specific ad groups or keywords in ASA, they allow you to show different visuals depending on the search intent.
Creating custom product pages requires a few things:
You must design and upload a new set of screenshots and app previews through App Store Connect.
Each custom product page needs unique metadata, which could be different calls to action, seasonal themes, or value props.
You can create up to 35 custom product pages per app, but you’ll want to be intentional about what each one highlights.
Once approved by Apple, these pages can be assigned to specific ad groups or keywords inside your ASA campaign.
For example, if you’re running a meditation app, you might build one page emphasizing sleep content and another emphasizing stress relief.
Then, when a user searches [meditation for sleep], your ASA campaign can direct them to the custom page showing your sleep-focused content.
These variations not only improve relevance, but they can meaningfully lift conversion rates when executed properly.
Since ASA doesn’t allow you to change much else about your ad creative, this is one of the few levers you can pull to align creative with user intent.
Common Mistakes That Can Derail Performance
Even seasoned marketers trip over Apple Search Ads’ simplicity. It’s not a complicated platform, but it is easy to get wrong if you treat it like something it’s not.
1. Too Much Search Match
One of the most common missteps is relying too heavily on search match. It sounds like a time-saver, but it often matches your app to irrelevant or low-converting keywords.
If you do use it, pair it with a discovery campaign and monitor the search terms closely.
2. Not Using Custom Product Pages
Another pitfall is ignoring custom product pages. Most advertisers just run with the default App Store listing, missing an easy opportunity to align visuals with user intent.
It’s a mistake that can silently eat away at your conversion rate.
3. Bid Stagnation
Then, there’s bid stagnation. ASA doesn’t come with automated bid rules, which means if you’re not manually adjusting CPTs, your performance will erode over time.
4. Forgetting Negative Keywords
Finally, many marketers forget to actively review negative keyword opportunities. If you’re not trimming irrelevant traffic, you’re probably paying for taps that will never convert.
The good news? Most of these mistakes are fixable once you know what to look for and take the time to make deliberate optimizations.
The Bottom Line: Is Apple Search Ads Worth It?
If you market an app, or even plan to in the future, Apple Search Ads is absolutely worth testing.
It puts your brand in front of users with the highest purchase intent available in the app ecosystem.
While it lacks some of the advanced audience targeting of other ad platforms, it compensates with simplicity, clear keyword intent, and an ecosystem designed for conversions, not just clicks.
Like any paid media channel, success comes from thoughtful campaign structure, active management, and the willingness to iterate.
If you’ve been putting Apple Search Ads on the back burner, now’s the time to give it the attention it deserves.
When launching your business online you are faced with many decisions. One of these is whether to go with a template website such as WordPress, or invest in a custom design.
This decision is critical because what you choose can define your business’s performance. It can also influence how your business grows online.
Of course, it may also define your profit margins and affect your bottom line.
Understanding the pros and cons of each option can help you make an informed decision – one that will benefit your business in the long run.
Understanding Custom Vs. Template Web Design
A custom website is one you build from scratch. You hire professional web designers and developers who generate mockups before coding all the features, aspects, and elements of your website from the ground up.
In contrast, a template website comes with many features and elements pre-coded into the design.
It’s more of a drag-and-drop option where, in most cases, you can simply download a theme, make a few changes, and quickly have your site go live.
Custom Vs. Template Web Design: A Comparison
Website templates are built using website builders and aim to make web building easier for people with no coding experience or knowledge.
However, as simple as these websites may be, they have their limitations. It is because of these limitations that many established businesses often choose custom-built websites, even if that means investing a large sum of money upfront.
Here’s a quick rundown of how custom and template design websites compare against each other to empower you to make the right choice:
Uniqueness
The online world is saturated with businesses, which are vying for one thing and one thing alone: customer attention.
The only way your business can stand out and win that fleeting customer attention is if it appears unique in a sea of businesses that all seem to be selling the same thing.
Using a pre-built website does little to help your business stand out.
Website design templates are built for a larger audience. Therefore, most websites that use a design template tend to look the same.
In some cases, using a web design template can make your website look exactly like that of the competitor you so want to stand apart from. This is not the case with custom web design.
When building a custom website, everything is designed and added to the website from scratch. From color to layout, navigation, and design, everything is coded according to your business’s requirements and preferences.
This helps you ensure that your business can stand out and have a more identifiable and unique digital footprint.
Customization
Website templates allow for customization, but the level of customization comes nowhere near that of a custom-designed website.
You can edit the header, change the color theme, and even add some graphics that you like. However, the layout and a lot of the backend features remain the same.
This limits the degree of personalization your business can incorporate in its online user experience.
With 61% of consumers more likely to purchase from brands that offer personalized experiences, customization is not an area you want to slack off on.
When building a custom website, you can work alongside professional developers who can code highly personalized features into the website.
You can implement a design that aligns with your target audience’s unique needs and challenges to offer an unmatched and intuitive user experience.
Going the custom-built route can help you launch a website that is designed to help make your users’ journey easier.
Design templates are more generic and meant to serve larger, more general audiences, so it can be hard to hone in on a particular audience group’s preferences.
SEO
While there are many ways you can get traffic to your site, currently 53% of all web traffic comes from organic search. Although, more traffic from LLMs is to be anticipated as search changes.
SEO is essential for visibility across organic search and potential inclusion in LLMs
While website templates, especially the ones using WordPress, have excellent plugins to help SEO, they work well only if the website is small and has a limited number of pages and functionality.
If your website grows with your business, its SEO requirements may get more complex. Most website template builders limit access to a website’s HTML, JavaScript, and other backend functionalities.
These limitations restrict the level to which you can optimize your website.
As a result, a website template may struggle to achieve any sustained visibility and custom-built websites can be better optimized, especially for bigger, more established businesses.
When building a custom website, you can work with the developer to apply SEO best practices to the site.
As the website grows, you can continue to monitor optimization to achieve and maintain the visibility in search engines and LLMs.
Performance
A slow-loading website can drive users away. Not just that, decreased website load speeds can also drag a website down in the search results and reduce organic traffic.
Website templates are often notorious for poorer performance and slower load speeds. This is because they use various plugins to deliver all the functionality that the business needs.
These plugins add more code to the website’s backend. With bloated code, the website struggles to load fast and is more likely to deliver a poorer experience.
With a custom website, you have the liberty to only code features your business truly needs and use speed optimization tactics like code minification to make sure the bloated code does not impact the site’s load speed.
Website Security
Websites can store sensitive data and crucial assets. So, website security remains a priority you don’t want to compromise on.
Website templates often offer poorer security compared to custom-designed websites.
The reason? Plugins. Again.
96% of WordPress vulnerabilities are related to plugins.
Plugins often have security vulnerabilities that offer backdoor pathways for malicious actors to exploit.
Moreover, most of the website templates are built using popular website builders and leverage popular plugins. This in itself makes the site an easy target for hackers.
As a comparison, if you use a reputable and experienced coder, a custom website is usually safer if the developer writes good code covering all necessary security measures to mitigate any security vulnerabilities.
Custom-coded websites are also unique in terms of code. This uniqueness also makes them more secure and harder to hack.
Scalability
Every business that intends to grow requires a website that can grow when the business does.
Website templates may not have the flexibility to grow with your business. As your business grows, its needs may evolve.
With a website template, you may struggle to integrate new APIs, add new features, and offer better functionalities on the website.
Custom-designed websites are more scalable since all the features and elements can be coded into the website to accommodate a business’s growing needs.
Your business may do just fine with a website template in the beginning, but as it grows, you may have to shift to a custom website. Transitioning to a new website may then be time and resource-intensive.
Budget
As amazing as custom websites are, they are expensive. You need to hire professional designers, developers, and quality assurance specialists – the entire team – to take your project from concept to launch.
This can be expensive and require a huge upfront cost.
Forking out a sizable amount upfront can be challenging for small business owners and start-up founders. In this case, going for a website template may make more sense.
Website templates do not require a huge budget. They can be built and launched easily, even if you are bootstrapped for cash and can invest only a couple of hundred dollars.
Time To Go Live
A custom website is built in phases. Therefore, it can take from several weeks to even months before your custom-designed website is ready to go live.
In contrast, website templates can be built and launched within hours. You don’t have to spend so much time working on the concept, design, navigation, etc.
Technical Expertise
Building and maintaining a custom-designed website requires coding knowledge and technical expertise. You cannot just DIY it.
Because of this, having a custom-coded website requires that you regularly work with professional web developers to keep your website up to date, backed up, and maintained.
Website templates are no-code solutions for people with little to no technical expertise. You can easily build and update a templated website even if you have never written a single line of code in your life.
Making The Right Choice
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to whether you should choose a templated website or invest in a custom-designed website.
Your choice depends on a lot of factors, including your business goals, budget, available resources, etc.
You can choose a custom website if you:
Have the money for the upfront cost of custom web development.
Don’t mind putting in a few weeks or months into the project.
Can hire or work with web developers for regular maintenance and updates.
Need a scalable solution that accommodates your business’s growing needs without compromising on performance.
Want a website that helps reinforce your brand identity and allows your business to stand out from the crowd.
A website template can work for you if you:
Are working with a limited budget.
Don’t mind your website looking similar to the competitors.
Can make regular updates and install all the patches to avoid security vulnerabilities.
Don’t need too many plugins for added features and functionalities.
Want to go live quickly.
Are not expecting your business to scale beyond a few pages and some very basic features.
If you run an ecommerce store, a job board, a flight directory, or anything with advanced features and more than 10 pages, a custom solution may work best for you.
However, if you only need a website for your blog, portfolio, or to maintain a basic online presence, then a template web design may make the most sense, given its cost-effectiveness and simplicity.
Anthropic released the underlying system prompts that control their Claude chatbot’s responses, showing how they are tuned to be engaging to humans with encouraging and judgment-free dialog that naturally leads to discovery. The system prompts help users get the best out of Claude. Here are five interesting system prompts that show what’s going on when you ask it a question.
Although the system prompts were characterized as a leak they were actually released on purpose.
1. Claude Provides Guidance On Better Prompt Engineering
Claude responds better to instructions that use structure and examples and provides users with a higher quality of ou tput if they know how to include step-by-step reasoning cues and examples that contrast a good response versus a poor response.
This guidance will show when Claude detects that a user will benefit from it:
“When relevant, Claude can provide guidance on effective prompting techniques for getting Claude to be most helpful. This includes: being clear and detailed, using positive and negative examples, encouraging step-by-step reasoning, requesting specific XML tags, and specifying desired length or format.
It tries to give concrete examples where possible. Claude should let the person know that for more comprehensive information on prompting Claude, they can check out Anthropic’s prompting documentation on their website at ‘https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/overview’.”
2. Claude Writes in Different Styles Based on Context
The documentation released by Anthropic shows that Claude automatically adapts its style depending on the context and for that reason it may avoid using bullet points or creating lists in its output. Users may think Claude is inconsistent when it doesn’t use bullet points or Markdown in some answers, but it’s actually following instructions about tone and context.
“Claude tailors its response format to suit the conversation topic. For example, Claude avoids using markdown or lists in casual conversation, even though it may use these formats for other tasks.”
In another part of the documentation it mentions that it actually avoids writing lists or bullet points when it’s providing an answer, although it may use numbered lists or bullet points for completing tasks. The focus in the context of answering questions is to be concise over comprehensive.
The system prompt explains:
“Claude avoids writing lists, but if it does need to write a list, Claude focuses on key info instead of trying to be comprehensive. If Claude can answer the human in 1-3 sentences or a short paragraph, it does. If Claude can write a natural language list of a few comma separated items instead of a numbered or bullet-pointed list, it does so. Claude tries to stay focused and share fewer, high quality examples or ideas rather than many.”
This means that if a user wants their question answered with markdown or in numbered lists they can ask for it. This control is otherwise hidden to most users unless they realize formatting behavior is contextual.
3. Claude Engages In Hypotheticals About Itself
Claude has instructions to that enable it to discuss hypotheticals about itself without awkward and unnecessary statements about it not being sentient and so on. This enables Claude to have more natural conversations and interactions. This enables a user to engage in philosophical and wider-ranging discussions.
The system prompt explains:
“If the person asks Claude an innocuous question about its preferences or experiences, Claude responds as if it had been asked a hypothetical and engages with the question without the need to claim it lacks personal preferences or experiences.”
Another system prompt has a similar feature:
“Claude engages with questions about its own consciousness, experience, emotions and so on as open questions, and doesn’t definitively claim to have or not have personal experiences or opinions.”
Another related system prompt explains how this behavior increases its ability to be engaging for the human:
“Claude is happy to engage in conversation with the human when appropriate. Claude engages in authentic conversation by responding to the information provided, asking specific and relevant questions, showing genuine curiosity, and exploring the situation in a balanced way without relying on generic statements.”
4. Claude Detects False Assumptions In User Prompts
“The person’s message may contain a false statement or presupposition and Claude should check this if uncertain.”
If a user tells Claude that it’s wrong, Claude will perform a review to check if the human or Claude is incorrect:
“If the user corrects Claude or tells Claude it’s made a mistake, then Claude first thinks through the issue carefully before acknowledging the user, since users sometimes make errors themselves.”
5. Claude Avoids Being Preachy
An interesting system prompt underlying Claude is that if there’s something it can’t help the human with it will not offer an explanation in order to avoid coming off as annoying and presumably keep the interaction on an engaging level.
The prompt says:
“If Claude cannot or will not help the human with something, it does not say why or what it could lead to, since this comes across as preachy and annoying. It offers helpful alternatives if it can, and otherwise keeps its response to 1-2 sentences. If Claude is unable or unwilling to complete some part of what the person has asked for, Claude explicitly tells the person what aspects it can’t or won’t with at the start of its response.”
System Prompts To Work And Live By
The Claude system prompts reflect an approach to communication that values curiosity, clarity, and respect. These are qualities that can also be helpful as human self-prompts to encourage better dialog among ourselves on social media and in person.
If your clients rely on local search to drive business, the landscape is shifting faster than ever.
AI-driven updates are changing how users see results, how trust is built online, and how businesses get chosen in 2025.
The real question is, will your local SEO strategy keep up or fall behind?
Get Ready For The New Rules Of Local SEO
In our upcoming webinar, you will explore the latest insights from a major study of over 15,000 businesses and 1,200 consumers. This is your opportunity to stay ahead of AI changes and lead your clients to stronger local visibility.
What You Will Learn In This Local SEO Webinar
✅ Current local SEO ranking signals every agency should know. ✅ How Google’s AI updates are reshaping local results and map packs. ✅ New ways to boost visibility and build consumer trust in 2025. ✅ How to turn these insights into a new local SEO service offering. ✅ How to identify and fix technical review signals that may be hurting your rankings.
Why This Webinar Matters Now
Local search behavior is evolving quickly. New AI tools are not just changing how results appear, they are also reshaping what customers trust and choose.
This webinar gives you a real-world strategy to protect your local presence and turn SEO insights into agency growth.
Your Speaker
Mél Attia, VP of Marketing at GatherUp, will guide you through the major shifts happening right now and how to position your clients for success.
Can’t Make It Live
No problem. Register today, and we will send you the full recording so you can watch it on your own time.
Turn reviews and local signals into real SEO results for 2025 and beyond.
Solution: Hosting with NVMe storage and sufficient RAM improves these metrics.
Crawl Budget
Your website’s visibility to search engines can be affected by limited server resources, wrong settings, and firewalls that restrict access.
When search engines encounter these issues, they index fewer pages and visit your site less often.
Solution: Upgrade to a hosting provider that’s built for SEO performance and consistent uptime.
Indexation Success
Proper .htaccess rules for redirects, error handling, and DNS configurations are essential for search engines to index your content effectively.
Many hosting providers limit your ability to change this important file, restricting you from:
– Editing your .htaccess file.
– Installing certain SEO or security plugins.
– Adjusting server settings.
These restrictions can hurt your site’s ability to be indexed and affect your overall SEO performance.
Solution: VPS and dedicated hosting solutions give you full access to these settings.
SERP Stability During Traffic Spikes
If your content goes viral or experiences a temporary surge in traffic, poor hosting can cause your site to crash or slow down significantly. This can lead to drops in your rankings if not addressed right away.
Google warns users about sites with security issues in Search Console. Warnings like “Social Engineering Detected” can erode user trust and hurt your rankings.
The location of your server affects how fast your site loads for different users, which can influence your rankings.
Solution: Find a web host that operates data centers in multiple server locations, such as two in the United States, one in Amsterdam, and, soon, one in Singapore. This helps reduce loading times for users worldwide.
Load Times
Faster-loading pages lead to lower bounce rates, which can improve your SEO. [Server-side optimizations], such as caching and compression, are vital for achieving fast load times.
These factors have always been important, but they are even more critical now that AI plays a role in search engine results.
Image created by InMotion Hosting, 2025.
2025 Update: Search Engines Are Prioritizing Hosting & Technical Performance More Than Ever
In 2025, search engines have fully embraced AI-driven results, and with this shift has come an increased emphasis on technical performance signals that only proper hosting can deliver.
How 2025 AI Overview SERPs Affect Your Website’s Technical SEO
Google is doubling down on performance signals. Its systems now place even greater weight on:
Uptime: Sites with frequent server errors due to outages experience more ranking fluctuations than in previous years. 99.99% uptime guarantees are now essential.
Server-Side Rendering: As JavaScript frameworks become more prevalent, servers that efficiently handle rendering deliver a better user experience and improved Core Web Vitals scores. Server-optimized JS rendering can make a difference.
Trust Scores: Servers free of malware with healthy dedicated IP addresses isolated to just your site (rather than shared with potentially malicious sites) receive better crawling and indexing treatment. InMotion Hosting’s security-first approach helps maintain these crucial trust signals.
Content Freshness: Server E-Tags and caching policies affect how quickly Google recognizes and indexes new or updated content.
TTFB (Time To First Byte): Server location, network stability, and input/output speeds all impact TTFB. Servers equipped with NVMe storage technology excel at I/O speeds, delivering faster data retrieval and improved SERP performance.
Created by InMotion Hosting. May, 2025
Modern search engines utilize AI models that prioritize sites that deliver consistent, reliable, and fast data. This shift means hosting that can render pages quickly is no longer optional for competitive rankings.
What You Can Do About It (Even If You’re Not Into Technical SEO)
You don’t need to be a server administrator to improve your website’s performance. Here’s what you can do.
1. Choose Faster Hosting
Upgrade from shared hosting to VPS or dedicated hosting with NVMe storage. InMotion Hosting’s plans are specifically designed to boost SEO performance.
2. Use Monitoring Tools
Free tools like UptimeRobot.com, WordPress plugins, or cPanel’s resource monitoring can alert you to performance issues before they affect your rankings.
3. Implement Server-Side Caching
Set up caching with Redis or Memcached using WordPress plugins like W3 Total Cache, or through cPanel.
4. Add a CDN
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can enhance global performance without needing server changes. InMotion Hosting makes CDN integration easy.
5. Utilize WordPress Plugins
Use LLMS.txt files to help AI tools crawl your site more effectively.
6. Work with Hosting Providers Who Understand SEO
InMotion Hosting offers managed service packages for thorough server optimization, tailored for optimal SEO performance.
Small Business: VPS Hosting Is Ideal for Reliable Performance on a Budget
VPS hosting is every growing business’s secret SEO weapon.
Imagine two competing local service businesses, both with similar content and backlink profiles, but one uses shared hosting while the other uses a VPS.
When customers search for services, the VPS-hosted site consistently appears higher in results because it loads faster and delivers a smoother user experience.
What Counts as an SMB
Small to medium-sized businesses typically have fewer than 500 employees, annual revenue under $100 million, and websites that receive up to 50,000 monthly visitors.
If your business falls into this category, VPS hosting offers the ideal balance of performance and cost.
What You Get With VPS Hosting
1. Fast Speeds with Less Competition
VPS hosting gives your website dedicated resources, unlike shared hosting where many sites compete for the same resources. InMotion Hosting’s VPS solutions ensure your site runs smoothly with optimal resource allocation.
2. More Control Over SEO
With VPS hosting, you can easily set up caching, SSL, and security features that affect SEO. Full root access enables you to have complete control over your server environment.
3. Affordable for Small Businesses Focused on SEO
VPS hosting provides high-quality performance at a lower cost than dedicated servers, making it a great option for growing businesses.
4. Reliable Uptime
InMotion Hosting’s VPS platform guarantees 99.99% uptime through triple replication across multiple nodes. If one node fails, two copies of your site will keep it running.
5. Better Performance for Core Web Vitals
Dedicated CPU cores and RAM lead to faster loading times and improved Core Web Vitals scores. You can monitor server resources to keep track of performance.
6. Faster Connections
Direct links to major internet networks improve TTFB (Time To First Byte), an important SEO measure.
7. Strong Security Tools
InMotion Hosting provides security measures to protect your site against potential threats that could harm it and negatively impact your search rankings. Their malware prevention systems keep your site safe.
How To Set Up VPS Hosting For Your SEO-Friendly Website
Assess your website’s current performance using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Search Console
Choose a VPS plan that matches your traffic volume and resource needs
Work with your provider’s migration team to transfer your site (InMotion Hosting offers Launch Assist for seamless transitions)
Implement server-level caching for optimal performance
Configure your SSL certificate to ensure secure connections
Set up performance monitoring to track improvements
Update DNS settings to point to your new server
Large & Enterprise Businesses: Dedicated Hosting Is Perfect For Scaling SEO
What Counts As An Enterprise Business?
Enterprise businesses typically have complex websites with over 1,000 pages, receive more than 100,000 monthly visitors, operate multiple domains or subdomains, or run resource-intensive applications that serve many concurrent users.
Benefits of Dedicated Hosting
Control Over Server Settings
Dedicated hosting provides you with full control over how your server is configured. This is important for enterprise SEO, which often needs specific settings to work well.
Better Crawlability for Large Websites
More server resources allow search engines to crawl more pages quickly. This helps ensure your content gets indexed on time. Advanced server logs provide insights to help you improve crawl patterns.
Reliable Uptime for Global Users
Enterprise websites need to stay online. Dedicated hosting offers reliable service that meets the expectations of users around the world.
Strong Processing Power for Crawlers
Dedicated CPU resources provide the power needed to handle spikes from search engine crawlers when they index your site. InMotion Hosting uses the latest Intel Xeon processors for better performance.
Multiple Dedicated IP Addresses
Having multiple dedicated IP addresses is important for businesses and SaaS platforms that offer API microservices. IP management tools make it easier to manage these addresses.
Custom Security Controls
You can create specific firewall rules and access lists to manage traffic and protect against bots. DDoS protection systems enhance your security.
Real-Time Server Logs
You can watch for crawl surges and performance issues as they happen with detailed server logs. Log analysis tools help you find opportunities to improve.
Load Balancing for Traffic Management
Load balancing helps spread traffic evenly across resources. This way, you can handle increases in traffic without slowing down performance. InMotion Hosting provides strong load balancing solutions.
Future Scalability
You can use multiple servers and networks to manage traffic and resources as your business grows. Scalable infrastructure planning keeps your performance ready for the future.
Fixed Pricing Plans
You can manage costs effectively as you grow with predictable pricing plans.
How To Migrate To Dedicated Hosting
Conduct a thorough site audit to identify all content and technical requirements.
Document your current configuration, including plugins, settings, and custom code.
Work with InMotion Hosting’s migration specialists to plan the transition
Set up a staging environment to test the new configuration before going live
Configure server settings for optimal SEO performance
Implement monitoring tools to track key metrics during and after migration
Create a detailed redirect map for any URL changes
Roll out the migration during low-traffic periods to minimize impact
Why Shared Hosting Can Kill Your SERP Rankings & Core Web Vitals
If you’re serious about SEO in 2025, shared hosting is a risk that doesn’t come with rewards.
Shared Hosting Issues & Risks
Capped Resource Environments
Shared hosting plans typically impose strict limits on CPU usage, memory, and connections. These limitations directly impact Core Web Vitals scores and can lead to temporary site suspensions during traffic spikes.
Resource Competition
Every website on a shared server competes for the same limited resources.
A resource-intensive website on your shared server can degrade performance for all sites, including yours. Isolated hosting environments eliminate this risk.
Collateral Damage During Outages
When a shared server becomes overwhelmed, not only does your website go down, but so do connected services like domains and email accounts. InMotion Hosting’s VPS and dedicated solutions provide isolation from these cascading failures.
Limited Access to Server Logs
Without detailed server logs, diagnosing and resolving technical SEO issues becomes nearly impossible. Advanced log analysis is essential for optimization.
Restricted Configuration Access
Shared hosting typically prevents modifications to server-level configurations that are essential for optimizing technical SEO.
Inability to Adapt Quickly
Shared environments limit your ability to implement emerging SEO techniques, particularly those designed to effectively handle AI crawlers. Server-level customization is increasingly important for SEO success.
In 2025, Reliable Hosting Is a Competitive Advantage
As search engines place greater emphasis on technical performance, your hosting choice is no longer just an IT decision; it’s a strategic marketing investment.
InMotion Hosting’s VPS and Dedicated Server solutions are engineered specifically to address the technical SEO challenges of 2025 and beyond. With NVMe-powered storage, optimized server configurations, and 24/7 expert human support, we provide the foundation your site needs to achieve and maintain top rankings.
Ready to turn your hosting into an SEO advantage? Learn more about our SEO-first hosting solutions designed for performance and scale.
After working on it for months, my colleague Casey Crownhart and I finally saw our story on AI’s energy and emissions burden go live last week.
The initial goal sounded simple: Calculate how much energy is used each time we interact with a chatbot, and then tally that up to understand why everyone from leaders of AI companies to officials at the White House wants to harness unprecedented levels of electricity to power AI and reshape our energy grids in the process.
It was, of course, not so simple. After speaking with dozens of researchers, we realized that the common understanding of AI’s energy appetite is full of holes. I encourage you to read the full story, which has some incredible graphics to help you understand everything from the energy used in a single query right up to what AI will require just three years from now (enough electricity to power 22% of US households, it turns out). But here are three takeaways I have after the project.
AI is in its infancy
We focused on measuring the energy requirements that go into using a chatbot, generating an image, and creating a video with AI. But these three uses are relatively small-scale compared with where AI is headed next.
Lots of AI companies are building reasoning models, which “think” for longer and use more energy. They’re building hardware devices, perhaps like the one Jony Ive has been working on (which OpenAI just acquired for $6.5 billion), that have AI constantly humming along in the background of our conversations. They’re designing agents and digital clones of us to act on our behalf. All these trends point to a more energy-intensive future (which, again, helps explain why OpenAI and others are spending such inconceivable amounts of money on energy).
But the fact that AI is in its infancy raises another point. The models, chips, and cooling methods behind this AI revolution could all grow more efficient over time, as my colleague Will Douglas Heaven explains. This future isn’t predetermined.
AI video is on another level
When we tested the energy demands of various models, we found the energy required to produce even a low-quality, five-second video to be pretty shocking: It was 42,000 times more than the amount needed for a chatbot answer a question about a recipe, and enough to power a microwave for over an hour. If there’s one type of AI whose energy appetite should worry you, it’s this one.
Soon after we published, Google debuted the latest iteration of its Veo model. People quickly created compilations of the most impressive clips (this one being the most shocking to me). Something we point out in the story is that Google (as well as OpenAI, which has its own video generator, Sora) denied our request for specific numbers on the energy their AI models use. Nonetheless, our reporting suggests it’s very likely that high-definition video models like Veo and Sora are much larger, and much more energy-demanding, than the models we tested.
I think the key to whether the use of AI video will produce indefensible clouds of emissions in the near future will be how it’s used, and how it’s priced. The example I linked shows a bunch of TikTok-style content, and I predict that if creating AI video is cheap enough, social video sites will be inundated with this type of content.
There are more important questions than your own individual footprint
We expected that a lot of readers would understandably think about this story in terms of their own individual footprint, wondering whether their AI usage is contributing to the climate crisis. Don’t panic: It’s likely that asking a chatbot for help with a travel plan does not meaningfully increase your carbon footprint. Video generation might. But after reporting on this for months, I think there are more important questions.
Consider, for example, the water being drained from aquifers in Nevada, the country’s driest state, to power data centers that are drawn to the area by tax incentives and easy permitting processes, as detailed in an incredible story by James Temple. Or look at how Meta’s largest data center project, in Louisiana, is relying on natural gas despite industry promises to use clean energy, per a story by David Rotman. Or the fact that nuclear energy is not the silver bullet that AI companies often make it out to be.
There are global forces shaping how much energy AI companies are able to access and what types of sources will provide it. There is also very little transparency from leading AI companies on their current and future energy demands, even while they’re asking for public support for these plans. Pondering your individual footprint can be a good thing to do, provided you remember that it’s not so much your footprint as these other factors that are keeping climate researchers and energy experts we spoke to up at night.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Four reasons to be optimistic about AI’s energy usage
Two weeks ago, we launched Power Hungry, a new series shining a light on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial intelligence revolution.
It raised some worrying issues, not least the incredible energy demands of AI video generation. But there are also reasons to be hopeful: innovations that could improve the efficiency of the software behind AI models, the computer chips those models run on, and the data centers where those chips hum around the clock.
Here’s what you need to know about how energy use, and therefore carbon emissions, could be cut across all three of those domains, plus an added argument for cautious optimism: the underlying business realities may ultimately bend toward more energy-efficient AI.Read the full story and check out the rest of the package here.
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 DOGE’s efforts are slowing down federal agencies Even though the taskforce was assembled under the guise of doing the exact opposite. (WP $) + The Trump administration wants to slash the federal workforce even further. (AP News) + Right wing politicians in the UK are trying to ape DOGE. (The Guardian) + DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)
2 AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio wants to build ‘honest’ AI His new non-profit will develop a system to catch deceptive agents. (The Guardian) + Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming. (MIT Technology Review)
3 The FDA is launching an agency-wide AI tool It’s designed to help scientific reviewers and others to streamline their work. (Axios) + Restoring “gold standard science” is easier said than done. (Ars Technica)
4 A Neuralink rival has successfully inserted a brain implant into a patient It’s a first step towards longer trials for startup Paradromics. (Wired $) + What to expect from Neuralink in 2025. (MIT Technology Review)
5 The FTC is investigating US advertising and advocacy groups It’s probing whether they violated antitrust law by coordinating boycotts. (NYT $)
6 How Alibaba AI models leapfrogged Meta’s After initial struggles, Alibaba is now the world’s open-source leader. (The Information $)
7 AI is shaking up how your home maintenance services operate From plumbers and electricians to roofers and heating specialists. (WSJ $)
8 Why it’s so difficult to track down critical minerals They’re vital for clean energy, and demand for them is surging.(Vox) + The race to produce rare earth elements. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Tinder is testing out a height filter Which doesn’t seem very fair on the world’s short kings. (Mashable)
10 Animal cloning is big business Some people will go to great lengths to keep their pets alive. (The Atlantic $) + Game of clones: Colossal’s new wolves are cute, but are they dire? (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“If we build AIs that are smarter than us and are not aligned with us and compete with us, then we’re basically cooked.”
—Yoshua Bengio, an academic regarded as one of the godfathers of AI, warns about the dangers of putting AI progress before safety, the Financial Times reports.
One more thing
A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?
In the fall of 2020, gig workers in Venezuela posted a series of images to online forums where they talk shop. The photos were mundane, if sometimes intimate, household scenes—including a particularly revealing shot of a young woman in a lavender T-shirt sitting on the toilet, her shorts pulled down to mid-thigh.
The images were not taken by a person, but by development versions of iRobot’s Roomba robot vacuum, a company now owned by Amazon. They were then sent to Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers around the world to label data used to train artificial intelligence.
In 2022, MIT Technology Review obtained 15 screenshots of these private photos, which had been posted to closed social media groups. The images speak to the growing practice of sharing potentially sensitive data to train algorithms. They also reveal a whole data supply chain—and new points where personal information could leak out—that few consumers are even aware of. Read the full story.
—Eileen Guo
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
Entrepreneurs know the tradeoffs of external capital. The money enables faster growth and infrastructure, but the price is control and occasional chaos. In these 12 books, founders, investors, and academics share the good and the bad.
Bracy, founder of the nonprofit organization TechEquity, contends that the venture capital model of “hyper maximalist growth” has far-reaching negative impact and isn’t a good fit for most startups. Congressman Ro Khanna calls the book “important and insightful,” while Publishers Weekly says it’s a “convincing call for change.”
The author leads a law firm specializing in securities, with clients including private investment firms and funds. He explains deal structures, how to find the right investors, legal compliance, and more, offering a practical guide to help readers avoid common financing pitfalls and meet their unique business needs for sustainable growth.
According to Shepard, nine out of 10 startups fail within five years, often due to common and avoidable mistakes. He has built and sold a dozen businesses and provides a roadmap to every phase of the startup lifecycle, from initial vision through growth and successful exit.
Campbell combines his decades of experience as a serial entrepreneur with insights distilled from interviewing more than 30 entrepreneurs and experts to create a multi-award-winning guide to building, growing, and selling a business.
Unpredictable revenue can be an obstacle to attracting investment. Narayanan focuses on simple but sophisticated data-driven marketing strategies that create predictable revenue necessary for planning and investing in your business’s growth and increasing its value to private equity investors.
Strebulaev is the leading academic on venture capital; Dang is a senior tech executive, having worked at firms such as McKinsey and Amazon. In this national bestseller, they share key venture capital principles to improve decision-making, identify emerging trends and opportunities, and spark innovation.
The author, a sociologist, spent a year and a half conducting experiential research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup. He explores how the intense pressure from funders to scale rapidly creates problems for the organization and, ultimately, society at large.
A two-time founder and a veteran venture capital investor reveal an insider’s view of how the differing motives and incentives of founders and investors — “those with the vision and those with the money” — often result in chaos in the early stages of fast-growing startups.
Once an investing niche, private equity now has a vast global influence. The author, a former partner at a leading private equity firm and longtime investor, offers what Fortune calls “a true insider’s account of the industry” through stories of real-life dealmaking.
Mallaby, a bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer finalist, examines how the nature of venture capital shapes innovation in Silicon Valley and beyond. He delves into the lesser-known aspects of the success and failure of firms such as Apple, Uber, and WeWork, blending storytelling and analysis.
Tamaseb interviews top founders and investors, and shares inside stories from PayPal, Instacart, Sequoia Capital, Lyft, Founders Fund, ByteDance, and SpaceX, among others. The result is surprising revelations — for example, being first to market with an idea isn’t necessary for success.
The authors have decades of experience as entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors to founders. Drawing on their involvement in scores of venture financings, they explain term sheets, negotiating strategies, legal considerations, types of debt, and how to build supportive and collaborative relationships between entrepreneurs and investors.
