MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.
NASA’s huge lunar rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), might be in trouble. As rival launchers like SpaceX’s Starship gather pace, some are questioning the need for the US national space agency to have its own mega rocket at all—something that could become a focus of the incoming Trump administration, in which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is set to play a key role.
“It’s absolutely in Elon Musk’s interest to convince the government to cancel SLS,” says Laura Forczyk from the US space consulting firm Astralytical. “However, it’s not up to him.”
SLS has been in development for more than a decade. The rocket is huge, 322 feet (98 meters) tall, and about 15% more powerful than the Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 70s. It is also expensive, costing an estimated $4.1 billion per launch.
It was designed with a clear purpose—returning astronauts to the moon’s surface. Built to launch NASA’s human-carrying Orion spacecraft, the rocket is a key part of the agency’s Artemis program to go back to the Moon, started by the previous Trump administration in 2019. “It has an important role to play,” says Daniel Dumbacher, formerly a deputy associate administrator at NASA and part of the team that selected SLS for development in 2010. “The logic for SLS still holds up.”
The rocket has launched once already on the Artemis I mission in 2022, a test flight that saw an uncrewed Orion spacecraft sent around the moon. Its next flight, Artemis II, earmarked for September 2025, will be the same flight but with a four-person crew, before the first lunar landing, Artemis III, currently set for September 2026.
SLS could launch missions to other destinations too. At one stage NASA intended to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa using SLS, but cost and delays saw the mission launch instead on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in October this year. It has also been touted to launch parts of NASA’s new lunar space station, Gateway, beginning in 2028. The station is currently in development.
NASA’s plan to return to the moon involves using SLS to launch astronauts to lunar orbit on Orion, where they will rendezvous with a separate lander to descend to the surface. At the moment that lander will be SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, a huge reusable shuttle intended to launch and land multiple times. Musk wants this rocket to one day take humans to Mars.
Starship is currently undergoing testing. Last month, it completed a stunning flight in which the lower half of the rocket, the Super Heavy booster, was caught by SpaceX’s “chopstick” launch tower in Boca Chica, Texas. The rocket is ultimately more powerful than SLS and designed to be entirely reusable, whereas NASA’s rocket is discarded into the ocean after each launch.
The success of Starship and the development of other large commercial rockets, such as the Jeff Bezos-owned firm Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, has raised questions about the need for SLS. In October, billionaire Michael Bloomberg called the rocket a “colossal waste of taxpayer money”. In November, journalist Eric Berger said there was at least a 50-50 chance the rocket would be canceled.
“I think it would be the right call,” says Abhishek Tripathi, a former mission director at SpaceX now at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s hard to point to SLS as being necessary.”
The calculations are not straightforward, however. Dumbacher notes that while SpaceX is making “great progress” on Starship, there is much yet to do. The rocket will need to launch possibly up to 18 times to transfer fuel to a single lunar Starship in Earth orbit that can then make the journey to the moon. The first test of this fuel transfer is expected next year.
SLS, conversely, can send Orion to the moon in a single launch. That means the case for SLS is only diminished “if the price of 18 Starship launches is less than an SLS launch”, says Dumbacher. SpaceX was awarded $2.9 billion by NASA in 2021 for the first Starship mission to the moon on Artemis III, but the exact cost per launch is unknown.
MICHAEL DEMOCKER/NASA
NASA is also already developing hardware for future SLS launches. “All elements for the second SLS for Artemis II have been delivered,” a NASA spokesperson said in response to emailed questions, adding that SLS also has “hardware in production” for Artemis III, IV, and V.
“SLS can deliver more payload to the moon, in a single launch, than any other rocket,” NASA said. “The rocket is needed and designed to meet the agency’s lunar transportation requirements.”
Dumbacher points out that if the US wants to return to the moon before China sends humans there, which the nation has said it would do by 2030, canceling SLS could be a setback. “Now is not the time to have a major relook at what’s the best rocket,” he says. “Every minute we delay, we are setting ourselves up for a situation where China will be putting people on the moon first.”
President-elect Donald Trump has given Musk a role in his incoming administration to slash public spending as part of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency. While the exact remit of this initiative is not yet clear, projects like SLS could be up for scrutiny.
Canceling SLS would require support from Congress, however, where Republicans will have only a slim majority. “SLS has been bipartisan and very popular,” says Forczyk, meaning it might be difficult to take any immediate action. “Money given to SLS is a benefit to taxpayers and voters in key congressional districts [where development of the rocket takes place],” says Forczyk. “We do not know how much influence Elon Musk will have.”
It seems likely the rocket will at least launch Artemis II next September, but beyond that there is more uncertainty. “The most logical course of action in my mind is to cancel SLS after Artemis III,” says Forczyk.
Such a scenario could have a broad impact on NASA that reaches beyond just SLS. Scrapping the rocket could bring up wider discussions about NASA’s overall budget, currently set at $25.4 billion, the highest-funded space agency in the world. That money is used for a variety of science including astrophysics, astronomy, climate studies, and the exploration of the solar system.
“If you cancel SLS, you’re also canceling the broad support for NASA’s budget at its current level,” says Tripathi. “Once that budget gets slashed, it’s hard to imagine it’ll ever grow back to present levels. Be careful what you wish for.”
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
This is a busy time of year for all of us, and that’s certainly true in the advanced nuclear industry.
MIT Technology Reviewreleased our list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch less than two months ago. Since then, awardee Kairos Power has had three big announcements about its progress toward building next-generation nuclear reactors.
Each of these bits of news represents an interesting aspect of the process. So let’s dig into the announcements and what they mean for where nuclear technology is going.
First, a quick refresher on Kairos Power: While nuclear plants today overwhelmingly use pressurized water to keep reactors cool, Kairos is using molten salt. The idea is that these reactors (which are also smaller than those typically built today) will help generate electricity in a way that’s safer and more efficient than conventional nuclear power.
When it comes to strategy, Kairos is taking small steps toward the ultimate goal of full-size power plants. Construction began earlier this year on Hermes, the company’s first nuclear test reactor. That facility will generate a small amount of heat—about 35 megawatts’ worth—to demonstrate the technology.
Last week, the company announced it received a construction permit for the next iteration of its system, Hermes 2. This plant will share a location with Hermes, and it will include the infrastructure to transform heat to electricity. That makes it the first electricity-producing next-generation nuclear plant to get this approval in the US.
While this news wasn’t a huge surprise (the company has been working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for years), “any day that you’re getting a permit or a license from the NRC is an unusual and special day,” Kairos CEO Mike Laufer told me in an interview.
The company is developing a plan to work on construction for both Hermes and Hermes 2 at the same time, he added. When I asked if Hermes is still on track to start up in 2027 (as we reported in our profile of the company in October), Laufer said that’s an “aggressive timeline.”
While construction on test reactors is rolling, Kairos is forging ahead with commercial deals—in October, it announced an agreement with Google to build up to 500 megawatts’ worth of power plants by 2035. Under this agreement, Kairos will develop, construct, and operate plants and sell electricity to the tech giant.
Kairos will need to build multiple reactors to deliver 500 MW. The first deployment should happen by 2030, with additional units to follow. One of the benefits of building smaller reactors is learning as you go along and making improvements that can lower costs and make construction more efficient, Laufer says.
While the construction permit and Google deal are arguably the biggest recent announcements from Kairos, I’m also fascinated by a more niche milestone: In early October, the company broke ground on a salt production facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that will make the molten salt used to cool its reactors.
“Salt is one of the key areas where we do have some unique and specialized needs,” Laufer says. And having control over the areas of the supply chain that are specialized will be key to helping the company deliver electricity reliably and at lower cost, he adds.
The company’s molten salt is called Flibe, and it’s a specific mix of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride. One fun detail I learned from Laufer is that the mixture needs to be enriched in lithium-7 because that isotope absorbs fewer neutrons than lithium-6, allowing the reactor to run more efficiently. The new facility in Albuquerque will produce large quantities of high-purity Flibe enriched in lithium-7.
Progress in the nuclear industry can sometimes feel slow, with milestones few and far between, so it’s really interesting to see Kairos taking so many small steps in quick succession toward delivering on its promise of safe, cheap nuclear power.
“We’ve had a lot of huge accomplishments. We have a long way to go,” Laufer says. “This is not an easy thing to pull off. We believe we have the right approach and we’re doing it the right way, but it requires a lot of hard work and diligence.”
Now read the rest of The Spark
Related reading
For more details on Kairos and its technology, check out our profile of the company in the 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch package from October.
If you’re dying for more details on molten salt, check out this story I wrote in January about a test system Kairos built to demonstrate the technology.
Donald Trump pledged to enact tariffs on a wide range of products imported into the US. The plans could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more, threatening to slow progress on climate and potentially stall the economy. Read more about the potential impacts for technology in the latest story from my colleague James Temple.
Keeping up with climate
The UN climate talks wrapped up over the weekend. In the resulting agreement, rich nations will provide at least $300 billion in climate finance per year by 2035 to developing nations to help them deal with climate change. (Carbon Brief) → This falls well short of the $1 trillion mark that many had hoped to reach. (MIT Technology Review)
Utilities might be spending a lot of money on the wrong transmission equipment on the grid. Dollars are flowing to smaller, local projects, not the interstate projects that are crucial for getting more clean energy online. (Inside Climate News)
Sustainable aviation fuel is one of the only viable options to help clean up the aviation industry in the near term. But what are these fuels, exactly? And how do they help with climate change? It’s surprisingly complicated, and the details matter. (Canary Media)
Automakers want Trump to keep rules in place that will push the US toward adoption of electric vehicles. Companies have already invested billions of dollars into an EV transition. (NewYork Times)
There’s a growing chasm in American meat consumption: The number of households that avoid meat has increased slightly, but all other households have increased their meat purchases. (Vox)
Trump has vowed to halt offshore wind energy, but for some projects, things take so long that a four-year term may not even touch them. (Grist)
If NASA establishes a permanent presence on the moon, its astronauts’ homes could be made of a new 3D-printable, waterless concrete. Someday, so might yours. By accelerating the curing process for more rapid construction, this sulfur-based compound could become just as applicable on our home terrain as it is on lunar soil.
Artemis III—set to launch no earlier than September 2026—will not only mark humanity’s return to the moon after more than 50 years, but also be the first mission to explore the lunar South Pole, the proposed site of NASA’s base camp.
Building a home base on the moon will demand a steep supply of moon-based infrastructure: launch pads, shelter, and radiation blockers. But shipping Earth-based concrete to the lunar surface bears a hefty price tag. Sending just 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of material to the moon costs roughly $1.2 million, says Ali Kazemian, a robotic construction researcherat Louisiana State University (LSU). Instead, NASA hopes to create new materials from lunar soil and eventually adapt the same techniques for building on Mars.
Traditional concrete requires large amounts of water, a commodity that will be in short supply on the moon and critically important for life support or scientific research, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. While prior NASA projects have tested compounds that could be used to make “lunarcrete,” they’re still working to craft the right waterless material.
So LSU researchers are refining the formula, developing a new cement based on sulfur, which they heat until it’s molten to bind material without the need for water. In recentwork, the team mixed their waterless cement with simulated lunar and Martian soil to create a 3D-printable concrete, which they used to assemble walls and beams. “We need automated construction, and NASA thinks 3D printing is one of the few viable technologies for building lunar infrastructure,” says Kazemian.
A curved wall is 3D printed from waterless concrete.
COURTESY OF ALI KAZEMIAN
Beyond circumventing the need for water, the cement can handle wider temperature extremes and cures faster than traditional methods. The group used a pre-made powder for their experiments, but on the moon and Mars, astronauts might extract sulfur from surface soil.
To test whether the concrete can stand up to the moon’s harsh environment, the team placed its structures in a vacuum chamber for weeks, analyzing the material’s stability at different temperatures. Originally, researchers worried that cold conditions on the dark side of the moon might cause the compound to turn into a gas through a process called sublimation, like when dry ice skips its liquid phase and evaporates directly. Ultimately, they found that the concrete can handle the lunar South Pole’s frigid forecast without losing its form.
Some conditions, like reduced gravity, could even work toward the concrete’s advantage. The experiment tested structures like walls and small circular towers, each made by stacking many layers of concrete. “One of the main challenges in larger-scale 3D printing is a distortion of these thick, heavy layers,” says Kazemian “But when you have lower gravity, that can actually help keep the layers from deforming.”
Kazemian and his colleagues recently transferred the technology to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to implement their design on a larger-scale robotic system and test construction in larger vacuum chambers. If adopted, the concrete will most likely be used for taller lunar structures like habitats and radiation shields. Flatter designs, like a landing pad, will probably use laser-based technologies to melt down lunar soil into a ceramic structure.
There may only be so much testing we can do on Earth, however. According to Philip Metzger, a planetary physicist at University of Central Florida who recently retired from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the concrete’s efficacy may falter with the shift from simulant to real soil. “There’s chemistry in the samples of these planets that the simulants cannot perfectly replicate,” he says. “When we send missions to these planetary bodies to test the technology using the real soil, we may find that we need to further improve the technology to get it to work in that environment.”
But Metzger still sees the sulfur-based concrete as a vital foundation for the tall orders of upcoming planetary projects. Future missions to Mars could demand roads to drive back and forth from ice-mining sites and pavement around habitats to create dust-free work zones. This new concrete brings these distant goals a touch closer to reality.
It could benefit construction on Earth, too. Kazemian sees the new material as a potential alternative for traditional concrete, especially in areas with water scarcity or a surplus of sulfur. Parts of the Middle East, for example, have abundant sulfur as a result of oil and gas production.
The technology could become especially useful in disaster areas with broken supply chains, according to Metzger. It could also have military applications for rapid construction of structures like storage buildings. “This is great for people out there working on another planet who don’t have a lot of support,” Metzger says. “But there are already plenty of analogs to that here on Earth.”
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
How worried should we be about bird flu? It’s a question that I’ve been asked by friends and colleagues several times over the last couple of weeks. Their concerns have been spurred by some potentially worrisome developments in the US, including the continued spread of the virus among dairy cattle, the detection of the virus in a pig as well as cow’s milk, and—most concerning of all—the growing number of human infections.
I’ll admit that I’m worried. We don’t yet have any evidence that the virus is spreading between people, but the risk of a potential pandemic has increased since I last covered this topic a couple of months ago.
The good news is we are in a much better position to tackle any potential future flu outbreaks than we were to face covid-19 back in 2020, given that we already have vaccines. But, on the whole, it’s not looking great.
The bird flu that is currently spreading in US dairy cattle is caused by the H5N1 virus. The virus is especially lethal to some bird populations and has been wiping out poultry and seabirds for the last couple of years. It has also caused fatal infections in many mammals who came into contact with those birds.
Those are just the cases we know about. There may be more. The USDA requires testing of cattle before they are moved between states. And it offers a voluntary testing program for farmers who want to know if the virus is present in their bulk milk tanks. But participation in that program is optional.
At the end of October, the USDA reported that the virus had been detected in a pig for the first time. The pig was one of five in a farm in Oregon that had “a mix of poultry and livestock.” All the pigs were slaughtered.
Virologists have been especially worried about the virus making its way into pigs, because these animals are notorious viral incubators. “They can become infected with swine strains, bird strains and human strains,” says Brinkley Bellotti, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. These strains can swap genes and give rise to new, potentially more infectious or harmful strains.
Thankfully, we haven’t seen any other cases in pig farms, and there’s no evidence that the virus can spread between pigs. And while it has been spreading pretty rapidly between cattle, the virus doesn’t seem to have evolved much, says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. That suggests that the virus made the leap into cattle, probably from birds, only once. And it has been spreading through herds since.
Unfortunately, we still don’t really know how it is spreading. There is some evidence to suggest the virus can be spread from cow to cow through shared milking equipment. But it is unclear how the virus is spreading between farms. “It’s hard to form an effective control strategy when you don’t know exactly how it’s spreading,” says Bellotti.
But it is in cows. And it’s in their milk. When scientists analyzed 297 samples of Grade A pasteurized retail milk products, including milk, cream and cheese, they found viral RNA from H5N1 in 20% of them. Those samples were collected from 17 states across the US. And the study was conducted in April, just weeks after the virus was first detected in cattle. “It’s surprising to me that we are totally fine with … our pasteurized milk products containing viral DNA,” says Lakdawala.
Research suggests that, as long as the milk is pasteurized, the virus is not infectious. But Lakdawala is concerned that pasteurization may not inactivate all of the virus, all the time. “We don’t know how much virus we need to ingest [to become infected], and whether any is going to slip through pasteurization,” she says.
The most concerning development, though, is the rise in human cases. So far, 55 such cases of H5N1 bird flu have been reported in the US, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Twenty-nine of those cases have been detected in California. In almost all those cases, the infected person is thought to have caught the virus from cattle or poultry on farms. But in two of those cases, the source of the infection is unknown.
Health professionals don’t know how a teenager in British Columbia, Canada, got so sick with bird flu, either. The anonymous teenager, who sought medical care for an eye infection on November 2, is still seriously ill in hospital, and continues to rely on a ventilator to breathe. Local health officials have closed their investigation into the teen’s infection.
“Just because we [haven’t seen human-to-human spread] now doesn’t mean that it’s not capable of happening, that it won’t happen, or that it hasn’t already happened,” says Lakdawala.
So where do we go from here? Lakdawala thinks we should already have started vaccinating dairy farm workers. After all, the US has already stockpiled vaccines for H5N1, which were designed to protect against previous variants of the virus. “We’re not taking [the human cases] seriously enough,” she says.
We still have an opportunity to prevent the outbreak from turning into a global catastrophe. But the situation has worsened since the summer. “This is sort of how the 2009 pandemic started,” says Lakdawala, referring to the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. “We started to have a couple of cases sporadically, and then the next thing you knew, you were seeing it everywhere.”
Some researchers are exploring new ways to prevent the spread of H5N1 in poultry. The gene editing tool CRISPR could be used to help make chickens more resistant to the virus, according to preliminary research published last year.
From around the web
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Jay Bhattacharya for his pick to lead the US National Institutes of Health, an agency with a $48 billion budget that oversees the majority of medical research in the country. Bhattacharya was one of three lead authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto published in 2020 arguing against lockdowns during the height of the covid-19 pandemic, and supporting a “let it rip” approach instead. (STAT)
An IVF mix up left two families raising each other’s biological babies. They didn’t realize until the children were a couple of months old. What should they do? (Have the tissues ready for this one, which is heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure) (New York Times)
Why do we feel the need to surveil our sleeping babies? This beautiful comic explores the various emotional pulls experienced by new parents. (The Verge)
Australia’s parliament has passed a law that bans children under the age of 16 from using social media. Critics are concerned that the law is a “blunt instrument” that might drive young teens to the dark web, or leave them feeling isolated. (The Guardian)
Automattic quietly updated the WP Engine Tracker website with an activity log showing a continuously updated list of domains that have switched away from managed WordPress host, WP Engine. This update is part of Mullenweg’s self-described “nuclear war” against WP Engine, with the Tracker site actively promoting competitors by offering links to their hosting promotions.
WP Engine Tracker
Automattic created a website for the purpose of tracking how many sites have abandoned WP Engine six September 21st, 2024, the date that Matt Mullenweg started went “nuclear” on WP Engine after they rebuffed his request for $32 million dollars. The website promotes deals with other web hosts for moving away from WP Engine, and a CSV spreadsheet with the domain names of the sites that have left WP Engine.
At some point after launching the website was updated with a list of the top web hosts that WP Engine customers have migrated to and a constantly updated list of sites that have recently moved.
WP Engine Tracker “Activity Log Today”
Automattic escalated what the WP Engine Tracker website does by adding an additional feature that shows a continually updated running list of domains that have migrated away from WP Engine and the destination host.
Screenshot Of Activity Log Today Feature
WP Engine Lawsuit
The WP Engine Tracker website, created by Automattic and Matt Mullenweg to publicly monitor and offer links to promotions to other web hosts, was cited in a preliminary injunction filed by WP Engine as evidence of Mullenweg’s purposeful “attack on WPE” as part of his “nuclear war” against the managed WordPress host.
The preliminary injunction filed by WP Engine explains:
“Just last week, in an apparent effort to brag about how successful they have been in harming WPE, Defendants created a website—www.wordpressenginetracker.com—that “list[s] . . . every domain hosted by @wpengine, which you can see decline every day. 15,080 sites have left already since September 21st.
September 21 was not selected randomly. It is the day after Defendants’ self-proclaimed nuclear war began – an admission that these customer losses were caused by Defendants’ wrongful actions. In this extraordinary attack on WPE and its customers, Defendants included on their disparaging website a downloadable file of ‘all [WPE] sites ready for a new home’—that is, WPE’s customer list, literally inviting others to target and poach WPE’s clients while Defendants’ attacks on WPE continued..”
But available transcripts of the preliminary injunction hearing of November 26th do not show that it was mentioned. The judge at that hearing asked the plaintiff and defendants to return to court on Monday December 2nd with an agreement on a narrow and specific scope for a preliminary injunction, having said that the original request was too vague and consequently unenforceable.
Brenden Marquardt knows the effect of entrepreneurship on a marriage. He’s the co-owner of Lori Beds, a direct-to-consumer seller of Murphy beds, those that fold into a wall, and the now-divorced father of two children in grade school.
Unlike most divorced entrepreneurs, Marquardt chooses to publicly share his experience in the hopes of helping others.
He did that recently in our conversation, his second on the podcast. Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.
Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of who you are.
Brenden Marquardt: I co-own Lori Beds with my brother, Kyle. We sell Murphy beds, which fold up against the wall, allowing alternative uses for the space. It’s a niche product, but it’s gaining popularity.
I’ve been running this business for almost 10 years. We bought the company from the woman who designed the first model. We kept her name, Lori. She’s no longer involved with the business.
Bandholz: You’ve had a rough year, personally.
Marquardt: I moved from Austin, where I had been living for two years, to Brownsville, Texas, where my wife is from. We decided to end our marriage about a year and a half ago. That separation led me to pull away from friends and people close to me, partly out of embarrassment and a feeling of failure.
I wanted to get my life back together before presenting myself publicly again, but I now realize I would’ve benefited from opening up to my friends earlier. The support I received when I opened up made a big difference. Isolation, though sometimes necessary, is not always the healthiest approach.
I’ve realized the importance of maintaining friendships, especially with other men. While focusing on family is important, it’s easy to lose touch with friends. Male camaraderie and support systems are vital, even weekly. I neglected those friendships while prioritizing family, which left a gap in my life.
Bandholz: Did the business affect your marriage?
Marquardt: It likely played a role, especially during the six years I worked at my corporate job while growing Lori Beds. Once I left that job and focused on the business, I had more time, freedom, and flexibility, which benefited my family.
My brother Kyle and I are equal partners in the business. In Texas, community property laws apply, which means assets acquired during the marriage, including our business, are split equally between my ex-wife and me.
She worked in customer service early on, but she’s not involved in the operations now. We’ve agreed that I’ll keep the business, and she’ll receive other assets, such as savings and real estate. This arrangement allows me to focus on growing the business, which is ultimately in the best interest of our kids. If both of us were involved in running the business, things would’ve been much more complicated, affecting my brother and the company’s daily operations.
Bandholz: Was the process amicable?
Marquardt: The problem often stems from attorneys. Lawyers sometimes escalate things unnecessarily, making the process more contentious. Ideally, both parties should reach an agreement and then have lawyers draft it. Unfortunately, when lawyers get too involved, they can create friction, leading you to dig in and fight back, even when you didn’t intend to.
Attorneys get paid by the hour, so they’re incentivized to prolong the process. Controlling the situation is crucial.
Bandholz: Can a couple share an attorney during a divorce?
Marquardt: It’s possible, especially if both parties have agreed on the terms. One attorney can draft the legal paperwork, but it’s still wise for each side to have his or her own lawyer review everything. In most cases, you’re not splitting everything 50/50, so having individual representation is important to ensure fairness. I encouraged my ex-wife to get her attorney because I didn’t want her to feel taken advantage of.
Attorney fees are expensive. Each of us paid several hundred dollars per hour for legal services. Between us, we’ve probably spent $40,000 on attorney fees, business valuations, and other expenses. While we have enough assets to cover those fees, they still add up. That money could’ve gone toward our kids or other family needs.
One helpful strategy is scheduling weekly meetings with your co-parent to discuss financials and upcoming events. It keeps communication open and prevents last-minute confrontations. Maintaining a friendly relationship is challenging, but you can only control your own actions.
My goal has been to never speak poorly of my ex-wife in front of our kids and to focus on building her up in their eyes. Kids need both parents. While our marriage didn’t last, the love for our kids remains, and there’s no need for bitterness.
Bandholz: How can people reach out to you?
Marquardt: I’m on LinkedIn. Visit LoriBeds.com to learn more about the business.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search is struggling to accurately cite news publishers, according to a study by Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism.
The report found frequent misquotes and incorrect attributions, raising concerns among publishers about brand visibility and control over their content.
Additionally, the findings challenge OpenAI’s commitment to responsible AI development in journalism.
Background On ChatGPT Search
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search last month, claiming it collaborated extensively with the news industry and incorporated publisher feedback.
This contrasts with the original 2022 rollout of ChatGPT, where publishers discovered their content had been used to train the AI models without notice or consent.
Now, OpenAI allows publishers to specify via the robots.txt file whether they want to be included in ChatGPT Search results.
However, the Tow Center’s findings suggest publishers face the risk of misattribution and misrepresentation regardless of their participation choice.
Accuracy Issues
The Tow Center evaluated ChatGPT Search’s ability to identify sources of quotes from 20 publications.
Key findings include:
Of 200 queries, 153 responses were incorrect.
The AI rarely acknowledged its mistakes.
Phrases like “possibly” were used in only seven responses.
ChatGPT often prioritized pleasing users over accuracy, which could mislead readers and harm publisher reputations.
Additionally, researchers found ChatGPT Search is inconsistent when asked the same question multiple times, likely due to the randomness baked into its language model.
Citing Copied & Syndicated Content
Researchers find ChatGPT Search sometimes cites copied or syndicated articles instead of original sources.
This is likely due to publisher restrictions or system limitations.
For example, when asked for a quote from a New York Times article (currently involved in a lawsuit against OpenAI and blocking its crawlers), ChatGPT linked to an unauthorized version on another site.
Even with MIT Technology Review, which allows OpenAI’s crawlers, the chatbot cited a syndicated copy rather than the original.
The Tow Center found that all publishers risk misrepresentation by ChatGPT Search:
Enabling crawlers doesn’t guarantee visibility.
Blocking crawlers doesn’t prevent content from showing up.
These issues raise concerns about OpenAI’s content filtering and its approach to journalism, which may push people away from original publishers.
OpenAI’s Response
OpenAI responded to the Tow Center’s findings by stating that it supports publishers through clear attribution and helps users discover content with summaries, quotes, and links.
An OpenAI spokesperson stated:
“We support publishers and creators by helping 250M weekly ChatGPT users discover quality content through summaries, quotes, clear links, and attribution. We’ve collaborated with partners to improve in-line citation accuracy and respect publisher preferences, including enabling how they appear in search by managing OAI-SearchBot in their robots.txt. We’ll keep enhancing search results.”
While the company has worked to improve citation accuracy, OpenAI says it’s difficult to address specific misattribution issues.
OpenAI remains committed to improving its search product.
Looking Ahead
If OpenAI wants to collaborate with the news industry, it should ensure publisher content is represented accurately in ChatGPT Search.
Publishers currently have limited power and are closely watching legal cases against OpenAI. Outcomes could impact content usage rights and give publishers more control.
As generative search products like ChatGPT change how people engage with news, OpenAI must demonstrate a commitment to responsible journalism to earn user trust.
Although YouTube is owned by Google, it’s a unique platform with a different approach to algorithms and discovery to Google Search.
YouTube’s systems take a viewer-first approach, evaluating a user’s preferences and interests based on the data it has about their viewing habits and pulling lists of videos unique to that user.
It also prioritizes signs of video quality, especially user engagement and user satisfaction, much more than metadata.
YouTube search is one of several systems that deliver videos, and while you can rank for specific keywords and search terms, it’s also weighted heavily toward personalization and user satisfaction.
Many videos may not perform well in search but will draw traffic from other discovery systems on the platform – and user journeys don’t include YouTube Search much of the time.
Ranking on YouTube is only one part of a complex relationship between you, your content, and your audience. If you want to build a successful YouTube strategy, then you must expand your thinking beyond ranking.
How YouTube Can Benefit SEO
YouTube has two key benefits for SEO.
YouTube is the second-biggest social media platform, with 2.5 billion monthly active users. An effective video strategy can drive brand awareness and engage your audience. It can also create a unique revenue stream through advertising and channel memberships.
YouTube videos can also appear in organic Google search results, and there is a tab for “videos” in Google Search. A video strategy can be critical to user experience, depending on the audiences you serve and how they prefer to interact.
YouTube is a Google property, and even though there’s unlikely cross-pollination between YouTube’s and Google’s algorithms, YouTube is an excellent look at what Google prioritizes when it has access to every data metric and every user journey.
It’s a closed environment that it controls, which does not describe Search (despite its best efforts). Learning to succeed on YouTube can absolutely make you a better SEO.
How Do Videos Rank On YouTube?
To understand SEO on YouTube, you need to understand how the algorithm works and what its different systems prioritize. YouTube has multiple systems that deliver videos to users.
Each system acts using different sets of signals. There are general algorithmic priorities and then specific functions of systems that weigh different signals in different ways.
Generally, the different signals the YouTube uses fall under two categories:
Personalization.
Performance.
Under these categories, there are hundreds of individual signals.
Signals that fall under personalization include:
A user’s activity history tied to their account or browser.
A user’s activity history in the current session.
A user’s subscriptions, liked videos, notification preferences, and other interaction signals.
Search terms that users input.
Device type.
Time of day.
Signals that fall under performance include:
Total hours of watch time.
Average view duration/percentage of video viewed.
User satisfaction surveys.
Whether users ignore a video or click “not interested.”
Comments, likes, and subscriptions that a video generates.
User behavior while watching a video (skipping forward or back).
User behavior after watching a video (going back to their search, clicking on a new video, etc.).
For more information, watch the video below:
The Recommendation System
The first aspect of discovery we’re going to discuss involves video recommendations.
This term covers two distinct but closely related systems: a user’s homepage view and a user’s suggested videos view.
When a user visits YouTube, they have access to a homepage with video recommendations that are personalized for them.
This personalization is based on their activity history, what they like to watch, their subscribed channels, etc. The recommendations also consider signals of video quality and user satisfaction calculated by the algorithms.
To quote the video: “Home offers to deliver the most relevant, personalized recommendations to each viewer when they visit YouTube.”
The Suggested Videos System
Suggested videos (offered alongside the video a user is watching) are similar, grouped under the same umbrella of recommendations, but they use different signals. These recommendations priotize the experience of a user’s current session.
To quote the video: “Suggested offers viewers a selection of videos they’re most likely to watch next, based on their prior activity.”
While quality and user experience signals absolutely count in the suggested recommendations, they’re more heavily weighted toward satisfying a user’s immediate interest and intent.
This quote from the video is critical to understand, especially when we discuss different factors in YouTube’s algorithm later on: “YouTube’s recommendation system finds videos for viewers (rather than viewers for videos).”
The Search System
YouTube’s search system connects users with videos based on search terms they input, so it works a little more like Google Search.
It doesn’t weigh a user’s history quite as heavily to remain open to what they currently need.
Rather than trying to predict videos to suggest, it waits for user input and then uses available data (such as video topics, satisfaction metrics, and a user’s history) to serve results relevant to the query.
YouTube Search seems to be considered a separate feature. It prioritizes three core metrics:
Relevance: How well a video’s title, description, and content match the query.
Engagement: A video’s engagement statistics, such as watch time and other user signals.
Quality: YouTube also uses E-E-A-T signals, a familiar phrase for SEO professionals.
The Shorts System
The Shorts system is unique. While it uses many of the same principles as other systems, each user has a separate Shorts watch history from their long-form video watch history.
There may be some crossover, but for the most part, any personalization signals are separate between Shorts and other types of videos.
Shorts has its own tab, as well as sections on other areas of the site such as the home page, in Search, and recommendations.
Here’s what YouTube says about how Trending videos are chosen:
“Amongst the many great new videos on YouTube on any given day, Trending can only show a limited number. Trending aims to surface videos that:
Are appealing to a wide range of viewers.
Are not misleading, clickbaity or sensational.
Capture the breadth of what’s happening on YouTube and in the world.
Showcase a diversity of creators.
Ideally, are surprising or novel.
Trending aims to balance all of these considerations. To achieve this, Trending considers many signals, including (but not limited to):
View count.
How quickly the video is generating views (i.e., “temperature”).
Where views are coming from, including outside of YouTube.
The age of the video.
How the video performs compared to other recent uploads from the same channel.”
YouTube Algorithm Ranking Factors
The first thing you need to understand about YouTube’s algorithm is that it is “all about the audience.”
Recall this quote from earlier:
“YouTube’s recommendation system finds videos for viewers (rather than viewers for videos).”
It’s audience-first every time. Responding to a question about whether it makes sense to change the thumbnail or title of a video, a product manager at YouTube said this:
“When you change your title and thumbnail, you may notice that your video starts getting more or fewer views. And that’s generally because your video looks different to viewers, and that’s going to change up the way that people interact with it when it’s offered to them in recommendations. Our systems are responding to how viewers are reacting to your video differently, not the act of changing your title and thumbnail.”
1. Watch Time, Engagement, And Satisfaction
As explained in the video links above, the primary metrics that YouTube’s algorithm is optimized for are engagement and satisfaction.
Clicks and views are important in this consideration, but the most important is watch time modified by satisfaction.
Watch time can be represented in a couple of different ways:
The amount of time that a user watches a video.
The percentage of a video that a user watches.
Raw watch time is a pretty good indicator of whether or not users like a video. However, the percentage of a video they watch can be a better indicator.
In the analytics of a video, YouTube shows you the number of views, the watch time in total hours, and also a graph that looks something like this:
Screenshot from author, September 2024
This is a helpful visualization of the percentage of viewers engaged with the video and when they stop watching. You can use this graph to examine how successful your video is at grabbing and keeping attention.
This is critical information for you about the quality of your video in the eyes of your viewers, and the algorithm is using it as part of the formula determining how engaging and satisfying your videos are.
YouTube also trains its algorithms with satisfaction data, primarily gathered through surveys. The surveys aren’t a direct factor in an individual video, but the combination of watch time and satisfaction trains the algorithms to recognize high-quality content.
If you want to optimize for YouTube, or use video to enhance your SEO efforts, the first and most impactful rule is:
Make a good video that your audience wants to watch.
2. User Engagement
User engagement factors also matter for ranking.
How users behave during their watch time and after they are finished watching (combined with when they finish watching) goes into calculating video performance. These data sources include:
Whether a user skips forward during a video.
Whether a user moves back to rewatch a video section. (This can result in an automated “most replayed” section on a video’s timeline.)
How a user behaves after they finish watching. Do they:
Click on a new video in the suggested videos list?
Play the next video in the playlist?
Return to their search or homepage?
Close the session?
3. Video Title And Description
Just like websites in Google search, the title of a video is critical for helping users and search engines understand what content to expect.
However, it doesn’t act in the way you might expect. You should think about your title in terms of user experience first.
While it’s important to use keywords, your use of keywords will have much less impact than the CTR, watch time, and other engagement and satisfaction factors.
When it comes to your title, the most important consideration is how you set the stage for the video with your target audience.
Your title and video content are closely related, and you must ensure that the video delivers on the promise of the title – or at least begins to do so – quickly.
Optimizing your title for keywords can end up hurting you if it sets unrealistic expectations or makes the title less appealing.
Similarly, you should use descriptions in a way that helps users. The description should briefly describe the topic and what the user can expect.
It’s also a good place to put references from the video, links to other content the user may want to watch, and actions you may want them to take after watching, such as a link to your website.
A critical note for descriptions is that you should use them to add titled timestamps to your videos. Timestamps look like this:
0:00 Introduction
0:52 Chapter 1
02:02 Chapter 2
You wouldn’t want to use “chapter” – you would add a title that describes what that section of the video is about.
Doing this in the video description automatically adds sectioned chapters to the video timeline.
Google Search indexes these chapter titles and timestamps, so if you execute them carefully, Google can send users to a directly relevant section of your video. You can see this with the “key moments” feature in Google SERPs:
Screenshot from search for [how to train a dog], Google, September 2024
As you can see in the next screenshot, the “key moments” appearing on Google Search are taken directly from the video description on YouTube:
Screenshot from YouTube, September 2024
This is powerful SEO. Do not underestimate this feature for “how to” SEO queries.
It’s a very compelling reason that video should be part of your organic SEO strategy because video results can show up in the “All” tab as well as the “Videos” tab in Google.
If you don’t add these yourself, Google may automatically create video chapters from the transcript. It’s best to control this process yourself.
4. Thumbnail
While they’re not a type of text metadata that algorithms can directly interpret, thumbnails are critical as part of the click-through and watch time formula.
Along with your title, they can make the difference between users clicking or not or finding a video satisfying or not, depending on the expectations set by the image.
I should also note that with Google leaning into multi-modal neural networks, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that algorithms may soon understand thumbnails in relation to a video’s content.
Thumbnails are a ranking factor insofar as they’re a critical part of engagement. The algorithm will respond to how users respond to your video. So, your thumbnail needs to set your video up for viewers, both to attract clicks and set reasonable expectations.
In fact, thumbnails are one of the most important things on YouTube. They’re the first thing a user sees and likely the first piece of information they use to make a decision about whether to click, as they’ll likely parse the image more quickly than the title.
5. Video Content
Video content is, of course, the primary determiner of quality and what users respond to, so it’s what engagement and satisfaction data is based on.
However, there are some specific ways that a video’s content impacts ranking.
Watch Time: If you create a good video that viewers like, you’ll get positive engagement and satisfaction signals.
Captions and Transcripts: If you don’t provide captions, YouTube automatically generates them and builds a transcript for a video. It uses the information from captions to determine what your video is about, which makes your video script a helpful source of metadata.
So, use important keywords early in your script. This is potentially relevant for Google Search as well as YouTube Search and other systems.
It’s a good idea to upload your own transcript with videos for YouTube to build the captions, as the AI will make mistakes.
Relevance: If users indicate or the systems determine that your video content is not relevant to your title, then your video is unlikely to perform well.
Similarly, if you use a “clickbait” thumbnail that sets users up to expect something that you don’t deliver on, that disappointment will be reflected in the data.
Remember that there is a dance to your title and thumbnail, and what happens with the user is much more important than your metadata optimization.
If you have high clicks but low watch time, that indicates that users were drawn in but didn’t like the video. If the opposite is true, it could indicate that users aren’t resonating with your title and thumbnail when they see them.
6. Subscribers And Notifications
Subscribers are a critical part of a channel’s success, and they can impact how a new video performs. New videos appear in the “Subscriptions” tab of users subscribed to your channel.
Additionally, if your subscribers have opted in to receive notifications, they will get a notification when your video goes live.
These views are a critical initial source of data, as they can help YouTube build an understanding of how viewers respond to your videos. If your subscribers like a video, YouTube has a lot of information to work with about how to recommend that video to non-subscribers.
In a video for Creator Insider, Todd Beauprè, YouTube’s Growth and Discovery team lead, said that the Subscription feed “offers a bit of a control over other variables” when it comes to diagnosing why a video could be underperforming. If your subscribers don’t like it, other people probably won’t either.
For newer creators, YouTube does have a team and systems in place to assist in finding audiences.
According to Beauprè, there are systems that show videos from new creators to new audiences based on the history and preferences of those users as a sort of test.
Either way, it’s important to look at the initial data coming in about a video to see if it’s satisfying the first audiences who see it. If it isn’t, YouTube may not continue serving that video based on the quality, engagement, and satisfaction signals.
7. Tags Don’t Matter
I feel like this needs to be said multiple times.
Tags don’t matter.
Tags don’t matter.
Anyone who tells you that optimizing tags is important is wrong, and they can come and fight me over it.
Screenshot of the YouTube Help Center, September 2024
If you don’t like to trust what the documentation says at face value – after Google’s shenanigans over the last few months, I don’t blame you – check out these experiments:
YouTube SEO Tips
As a companion to your organic SEO strategy or as its own strategy, YouTube can have a huge payoff.
But you should be careful when treating it like a marketing channel.
Success on YouTube is audience-dependent, and modern audiences are sensitive to marketing campaigns.
If you’re using YouTube as a channel to try and send more traffic to your website or some other off-platform goal, you’re going to have a hard time for a couple of reasons:
If users are on YouTube, it’s because they want to watch videos. If you’re too aggressive with off-platform conversion attempts, it can turn viewers off.
YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes in-platform engagement and activity. A successful video should entice a user to watch the whole thing and then find another video to watch, not end the session and convert.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use YouTube as an organic marketing channel. But you must deliver value to your audiences first and build a community on the platform if that’s the route you’re taking.
If you’re using YouTube to boost your organic search performance, you can consider video more of a supplementary strategy.
But again, you should focus on providing direct value and create videos that are user-friendly and informative, not promotional.
The video should be a companion to your content because it is more user-friendly than text and static images, or a strong alternative for users who prefer it.
Make A Good Video
Nothing else in this article matters unless you make a good video.
This is advice that I find to be missing in a lot of “YouTube SEO advice” type articles.
Sure, many will provide you with guidelines that sort of add up to making a good video, like research and scripting and editing, but the simple statement is missing: Make a good video.
What follows from that is a whole bunch of questions about what “good” and “high-quality” really mean and statements like “that’s vague advice” and “it depends,” but I actually find this to be a very helpful filter statement.
If you don’t know what “a good video” means for your niche and your audience, then I have a question for you:
Why are you considering a video strategy in the first place?
Go and find five videos from other creators that you know for a fact your audience likes. Then, write down all the things that make them good.
If you can’t do that, go back to the drawing board. Go and find out what a good video is, what it does, and why people like it. That isn’t competitor research; it’s understanding the medium in which you plan to work.
Making a good video can overcome poor optimization at any of the points discussed in this article or any other article. Perfect optimization cannot overcome the impact of a bad video or a video that viewers don’t like.
If you’re struggling to get traction for your videos, the first question should never be how well they’re optimized. Your first question should be: “Are the videos good enough?”
Audience Research
Don’t start your keyword research for videos until you’ve done audience research.
YouTube’s algorithm doesn’t take a video and decide who to send it to. It examines the preferences and history of users and then curates a selection of videos for each individual.
You must identify the audience for your videos, which could be a very specific subset of your existing audience or a new audience entirely.
What this audience already watches is of critical importance because YouTube has multiple traffic sources within the platform with their own systems that weigh ranking factors differently.
For many videos, the primary traffic potential comes from the recommendation systems on the homepage or suggested video features.
That makes understanding what your audience is already watching critically important. Build on existing topics on the platform. Watch videos in your niche and find ways to answer questions or provide content that they don’t.
It takes a very specific type of video to get traction in YouTube Search. Search is the part of YouTube that weighs metadata most strongly, but user satisfaction remains a critical factor.
The video cited above in “The Recommendation System” section mentions that “learning or how-to videos – they often get more views from search.”
You must understand not only the preferences and needs of your audience, but how they’re most likely to come across your video.
Not every video is built for YouTube Search, and if that’s the case, it won’t take off if you don’t understand the flow of the experience a user might come to your video from.
Resources About Audience Research:
Keyword Research
Keyword research is important for videos that you’re targeting on YouTube or Google Search. It’s still important, but to a much lesser degree, when it comes to YouTube’s discovery systems.
What I mean by that is that the research is still important so that you understand the language users are engaging with, but there’s only so much optimization you can do. It’s much easier to over-optimize and sabotage yourself when it comes to recommendation systems.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. I’m saying you need to understand your audience and traffic source, do your keyword research, and then choose how to approach your metadata based on the traffic sources you expect for your video.
There are automated tools that can assist you with keyword research, and I encourage installing at least the free versions of both of these tools.
There’s a lot of value you can get out of your existing keyword research process, but it’s important to understand platform-specific keyword trends.
Resources About Keyword Research:
Focus On Thumbnails And Titles
Thumbnails and titles are where you spend the majority of your optimization time. These are the hooks, and how you handle them can make or break a video’s performance (second, of course, to whether the video is good).
The primary goal of titling high-quality content is to set an expectation. That expectation should entice users.
Then, you must fully deliver on the expectation. If your title and video are harmonious in this way, and you’ve researched your audience to know that they will respond to the topic, then you have the makings of a successful video.
Titles are your core keyword opportunity for videos, in addition to your description and video content. Thumbnails are your biggest opportunity to entice a response in users.
YouTube is now offering in-platform A/B testing for video thumbnails, which can help you understand what resonates with your audience.
Like the title, your thumbnail should set expectations for the video. Some elements that work well include:
Humans with expressions or poses that match the video’s tone.
Keywords that your audience will understand as integral to the video’s topic.
Artistic and metaphorical representations of a topic.
Adhering to, or standing out from, a common color scheme or design philosophy that other videos use.
Multiple different styles and design philosophies can work.
Here’s a screenshot of a wildly successful video by YouTuber hbomberguy titled, “Plagiarism and You(Tube)” – it’s 4 hours long with 25 million views.
Honestly, it’s a masterclass in overcoming the pervasive narrative of short online attention spans – and it’s a great video (yes, as you can see, I watched the whole thing).
But the thumbnail isn’t very refined, is it? It’s a bit messy. There’s a bunch of people there, and it’s a mix of real photos and a pretty creepy cartoon guy back there in the corner. Hbomberguy himself isn’t making an exaggerated expression; he just looks sort of baffled.
This thumbnail is masterful at evoking tone. This is the sort of thing you should be paying attention to when it comes to aligning the expectations of your presentation with the impact of your video.
Screenshot from YouTube, September 2024
Below are a few video results from the search we did earlier: [how to train a dog].
As you can see, there’s a wide variety of thumbnails that are all effective in their own way while sticking to the common theme of the search. I’ve cut out the sponsored results.
The top result is interesting. I find it loud and visually unappealing, but it’s clearly working.
Now, we can’t say whether the thumbnail has a significant positive impact or whether the video is just so good that the thumbnail doesn’t matter. But to be the first result, we have to assume it gets a lot of clicks. So, the CTR is good, and the thumbnail is a big part of that.
So this search, then, is less about tone and more about how clear and visually striking the image is.
I haven’t watched any of these videos (and I don’t have a dog), so the algorithm doesn’t have a ton of specific personalization to work with. Still, your results may differ.
Screenshot from search for [how to train a dog], YouTube, September 2024
Screenshot from search for [how to train a dog], YouTube, September 2024
So, we’re back to audience research and specific query research. Intent could be a deciding factor in how you approach thumbnails.
Don’t Ignore The Comment Section
This will be the last point because I’m becoming long-winded.
Comments sections are more important than you might think. They have a ton of functionality, such as your ability to pin comments, that can supplement a video.
You could pin a comment to highlight a specific call to action for highly engaged users who scroll down to the comments. It’s also commonly used to issue corrections and updates.
Some creators choose to pin comments from users that they find to be particularly insightful, complimentary, or in some cases, inflammatory.
Engaging with commenters is good practice. These users, for one reason or another, are highly engaged. That means:
There’s a lot you can learn about your highest-value audiences from what they have to say.
Engaging with them builds a sense of community and feedback.
The Best YouTube SEO Is A Good Video
I want to come back to this point to end the article.
It really is all about the video and what value it adds to the user’s experience and your content.
You can overcome so many obstacles with a video that comes from a place of genuine understanding of your audience’s needs or excitement for the subject matter.
This should be what drives your video strategy, whether you’re using videos to empower your organic SEO or build a following on YouTube.
We publish a rundown each week of new products from companies offering services to ecommerce merchants. This installment includes updates on ecommerce platforms, marketplaces, search engines, APIs, reverse logistics, and local delivery.
Got an ecommerce product release? Email releases@practicalecommerce.com.
New Tools for Merchants
Miva 10.11 launches with precision tools to enhance ecommerce control. Ecommerce pioneerMiva, Inc. has released version 10.11 of its platform. This update introduces tools for greater control over pricing, shipping charges, and fee management. Sellers can now set pricing with accuracy to less than $0.01 (one cent) and weight measurements smaller than two decimal places. An updated module provides flexible fee applications, control over taxability, and other rules to improve the checkout process.
Miva
Temu opens to all U.S. sellers. Over the last six months, China-based marketplace Temu has invited select U.S. sellers to join its site. Temu has now opened the application process to any U.S. brand or seller. According to Temu, applications take just 10 minutes and are typically reviewed within one business day. Plus, Temu sellers can now ship directly from U.S. warehouses.
Button announces general availability of an iOS Creator App.Button, a mobile commerce optimizer, has announced the general availability of its PostTap native mobile app, which enables creators to produce, optimize, and manage affiliate links. PostTap says it allows creators to generate and customize shortlinks instantly for sharing and monitoring across social platforms. Utilizing AI-powered technology ensures accurate attribution and in-app purchasing, per PostTap.
AI search tool Perplexity adds a shopping assistant. AI search engine Perplexity has debuted its “Buy with Pro” shopping recommendation feature within search results and the ability to place an order without going to a merchant’s website. For shopping-related searches, users receive visual cards containing product details, pricing, seller info, a short description, and the pros and cons of the item. Perplexity’s shopping assistant integrates with Shopify.
Perplexity
European AI search engines plan index with merchant rankings. Germany-based CO2-neutral search engine Ecosia and France-based privacy-focused search engine Qwant have unveiled plans to create their own AI-powered European search index, providing merchants an alternative to Google. The joint venture — called the European Search Perspective — plans to break from Google and Bing ranking systems by early 2025, potentially shifting consumer spending as the new index prioritizes European businesses. The combined search companies will initially focus on French and German results.
Coveo expands partnership with SAP to deliver AI capabilities across channels.Coveo, an enterprise platform for AI search and genAI functions, is expanding its partnership with SAP with an app called “Coveo AI Search and Recommendation for SAP Customer Experience.” Coveo says its AI search, recommendations, and generative answering can be used across multiple interfaces, from interfaces in SAP solutions to standalone search pages, in-app experiences, self-service portals and communities, and more.
Searchspring introduces dynamic custom profiles for ecommerce engagement.Searchspring, an ecommerce search and merchandising provider, has released dynamic custom profiles for personalized shopping recommendations. According to Searchspring, the profiles adjust in real-time based on shopper behavior and site variables, such as search terms, applied filters, and customer attributes. Dynamic custom profiles allow retailers to create a flexible framework that recommends products tailored to each shopper’s intent. Search results and product suggestions evolve dynamically without manually configuring profiles for every scenario, per Searchspring.
Appy Pie Endpoint introduces virtual try-on APIs.Appy Pie Endpoint, an AI API provider, has launched a suite of virtual try-on APIs that enable retailers to offer shoppers an interactive, customizable shopping experience. Shoppers can try on fashion, cosmetics, eyewear, or decor products before purchasing.
Appy Pie Endpoint
Stage TEN unveils a live show network for creators to sell Shopify products.Stage TEN has launched a live show network, enabling creators to blend content creation with commerce. With the platform, anyone can turn a live show into a storefront, connect with an audience in real-time, and monetize shows by featuring products from any Shopify store. By leveraging Shopify’s Collective and Collabs programs, Stage TEN’s live show network allows creators to select, showcase, and sell products.
MikMak expands API-first platform with launch of Insights API.MikMak, a provider of ecommerce enablement and analytics, has launched the MikMak Insights API. The API integrates MikMak commerce intelligence data, such as Purchase Intent and Attributable Sales, into data lakes, analytics platforms, and business intelligence tools, including Tableau, PowerBI, and Google Data Studio. According to MikMak, this enables multichannel brands to unlock a holistic view of their performance quickly and easily.
Cirro Fulfillment partners with Loop to streamline returns for retailers and brands.Cirro Fulfillment, a global provider serving ecommerce brands, has partnered with Loop, a reverse logistics platform, to enhance the returns process. Cirro says the integration with Loop’s automated portal enables customers to initiate returns, request exchanges, or secure refunds effortlessly. The streamlined process reduces manual tasks, making returns management faster and more efficient, thus enhancing the customer experience.
FedEx introduces enhanced visibility tools for secure package delivery.FedEx has upgraded package tracking and visibility features in its mobile app. Map View shows the real-time delivery truck location along with the latest timestamp. Picture Proof of Delivery Attempt provides customers with a photo of a door tag in the event of a missed delivery to see exactly when a delivery was attempted.
