A randomized field experiment finds Google’s AI Overviews reduce organic clicks to external websites by 38% on queries where they appear, while self-reported search satisfaction stays nearly unchanged when the summaries are removed. The working paper by researchers at the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University was posted to SSRN this month. Authors Saharsh Agarwal and Ananya Sen describe it as the first randomized field experiment to test how AI Overviews affect user behavior in a real browsing environment. How The Experiment Worked Agarwal and Sen built a Chrome extension that randomly assigned 1,065 U.S. participants to one…
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned of a massive increase in losses from social media scams since 2020, exceeding $2.1 billion in 2025. According to reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network, all age groups (except those 80 and over, who were mainly targeted via phone calls) lost more money to scams originating on Facebook than to any other social media platform. Reports linked to WhatsApp and Instagram were distant second and third, and people reported losing far more money to Facebook scams alone than to text or email scams combined. In all, as the Commission found, almost one…
Search behavior has changed dramatically, and teams need to learn answer engine optimization (AEO) best practices to keep up. While traditional search engines still dominate, people increasingly turn to AI tools like ChatGPT to answer their questions. Heck, with 79% of those who already use AI for search believing it offers a better experience, even Google has introduced AI overviews to stay competitive.
If you think 2028 is far-out thinking, you’ll love the next thing: quantum computing. Yes, there are systems around today. No, you won’t find enterprises using quantum computing even in specialized missions. Yes, a recent set of reports suggests that quantum computing is not infinitely scalable, as was once believed. Still, the potential for quantum computing is enormous. A quantum system could, in theory, rival a supercomputer in something no bigger than a decent server, but nobody really knows how long it will take to get to that point. So, Nvidia isn’t waiting. Right now, the only way to test…
Incomplete patch for a Windows SmartScreen and Windows Shell security prompts bypass created a new bug enabling zero-click attacks, Akamai reports. The initial vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-21510 and patched in February, could be exploited for remote code execution (RCE) if the attacker could convince the victim to open a malicious shortcut file. Microsoft warned at the time that the flaw had been exploited as a zero-day, without providing details on the observed attacks. Now, Akamai says Russia-linked APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, GruesomeLarch, and Sofacy, exploited CVE-2026-21510 in attacks that also targeted CVE-2026-21513, a security feature bypass…
SmugMug is a family-owned photo hosting and e-commerce platform that helps professional photographers run their businesses online. Founded in 2002, the company provides tools for photographers to show their work, deliver client galleries, sell prints, and manage payments. In 2018, SmugMug purchased Flickr, the long-running photo-sharing community, which added tens of millions of active hobbyist photographers to the company’s user base. Ben MacAskill is President and COO of SmugMug’s parent company, Awesome, which he co-founded with his family. Awesome also includes the media network This Week in Photo and the nonprofit Flickr Foundation, which focuses on preserving publicly available photography.…
At WordStream, we’ve published the latest Google Ads and Meta Ads benchmarks for the last 10 years. For this guide, we researched the latest cost per click (CPC) data and compiled our best tips to help you keep your costs low across your campaigns. Of course, CPC isn’t one-size-fits-all. Costs can vary widely depending on your industry, targeting, and campaign setup—which is why simply knowing the averages isn’t enough. So beyond the benchmarks, we’re sharing practical, platform-specific ways to lower your costs without sacrificing performance. We spent the time finding the best and most accurate information so you can get…
An unpatched vulnerability can allow for privilege escalation across Windows systems through the abuse of the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) architecture in Microsoft’s OS.Called PhantomRPC, the flaw stems from an architectural weakness in how RPC handles connections to unavailable services, according to Haidar Kabibo, a middle application security specialist at Kaspersky who discovered the flaw and shared his findings in a recent post on X and in a blog post published Friday. By exploiting the flaw, an attacker with limited local access can deploy a malicious RPC server that impersonates legitimate Windows services. In this way, when higher-privileged processes connect to…
As ad dollars begin shifting toward ChatGPT, ad tech firms have started working to make that transition as seamless as possible. What’s happening. Adthena launched a new tool, AdBridge, designed to convert existing Google Ads campaigns into formats ready for ChatGPT advertising. The pitch is simple: don’t rebuild from scratch — repurpose what already works. The tool analyzes advertisers’ search campaigns to generate keyword lists, negative keywords, and competitive insights that can be directly applied to ChatGPT campaigns. It also surfaces which brands are showing up in specific auctions, how often they appear, and which prompts are triggering those placements…
Ravie LakshmananApr 27, 2026 Checkmarx has disclosed that its ongoing investigation tied to the supply chain security incident has revealed that a cybercriminal group published data related to the company on the dark web. “Based on current evidence, we believe this data originated from Checkmarx’s GitHub repository, and that access to that repository was facilitated through the initial supply chain attack of March 23, 2026,” the Israeli security company said. It also emphasized that the GitHub repository is maintained separately from its customer production environment, adding that no customer data is stored in the repository. Checkmarx said its forensic probe…