
This tech stock is the big winner so far this quarter — and analysts see more to come
Analysts are raising their forecasts on Uber Technologies stock by an outsized margin compared to peer tech names. CNBC Pro scanned the S & P 500 to find stocks where analysts have grown increasingly bullish since the start of what's proven a tumultuous second quarter, and Uber stuck out. Specifically, the stock has seen its average price target increase 8% since the start of the second quarter on April 1. Shares have advanced 22% in that time, through Wednesday, and up nearly 47% in 2025. Analysts cite both strong demand for Uber's core ride-sharing business as a reason for optimism, while also pointing to future growth opportunities thanks to the company's investments in autonomous driving and its partnership with Waymo, Alphabet 's self-driving car project. UBER YTD mountain Uber stock in 2025. "Importantly, we expect the AV [autonomous vehicle] narrative for Uber to continue to improve as the launch [with] Waymo in Austin proves out higher utilization & scope expands, & we anticipate similar early progress soon in Atlanta," JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in a May 20 note. "While there is still a long way to go, we believe Uber is becoming an increasingly valuable partner to AV tech providers as both a demand & utilization platform, as well as a fleet operator, as evident in its series of recent AI alliances." Anmuth's $105 per share price target implies about 19% upside from Wednesday's $88.26 close. Waymo began offering robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas earlier this year, with the Google-backed company utilizing the Uber app to hail the cars. Uber no longer has a dedicated autonomous driving segment in 2020, with the firm instead now opting to combine its application platform with Waymo's physical robotaxi technology. Elsewhere, TD Cowen analyst John Blackledge upped his price target to $104 per share from $96 in a note last week, implying about 18% upside from Wednesday's close. While the analyst similarly views autonomous driving as a long-term growth driver for the ride-sharing segment, Uber should be one of larger beneficiaries. While human drivers won't be displaced anytime soon, Uber benefits from offering both options, Blackledge said. "Near to medium-term, we believe that the optimal mix of rideshare vehicles in a given market implies human drivers should comprise the majority share (vs AVs), largely reflecting the highly variable nature of rideshare demand," TD Cowen said. "This near-term dynamic favors rideshare platforms such as Uber and Lyft (which can offer riders both AV and human-led ride options) vs a pure-play AV rideshare network."

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Tom's Guide
25 minutes ago
- Tom's Guide
AI on phones feels too much like homework — and Apple should use iOS 26's redesign to fix that
Tech companies, especially the ones that make and sell phones, have been telling us how important AI is for several years, and offering a range of new AI-powered features that promise to make our lives easier. But despite promising that, it seems a bunch of those companies forgot the most important thing about new features — making sure people can actually find and use them. As someone who's spent a great deal of time reviewing new phones, nothing irritates me more than being told about new AI features and then having to do a bunch of research to figure out how to access them. Even Apple, a company that has made its own AI suite a lot more transparent, is guilty of this in some regard. And since iOS 19 (or iOS 26) is set to redesign the entire Apple ecosystem, WWDC 2025 is a chance for the company to make AI feel less like homework and transform it into something a lot simpler and more intuitive. I'll preface this with an admission that not all AI features are difficult to find. If it involves going through some kind of voice assistant, like Google Gemini or Siri, then AI capabilities are literally only a voice prompt away. Similarly AI photo editing features, like Google's Magic Editor, have long been available in photo gallery apps, like Google Photos or Apple's equivalent. But at the same time, considering all these features have been around for quite some time, their location and functionality have already been ingrained into our collective memories. Plus, once you know about one of those features, you can often find similar ones in the same spot. Or in the case of voice assistants, physically ask it about the kind of things it can do. There's also a bunch of AI working in the background that the user doesn't actually need to initiate. All that processing that happens to your photos? AI has a hand there, just as it does in helping translate foreign languages for you. We've also seen AI applied to software that helps manage the battery and displays, to help phones run more smoothly and efficiently. None of this is the flashy AI that gets promoted in keynote speeches or TV commercials. It's the boring stuff that makes your phone run and perform better, without you even realizing what's going on. But if a company is trying to add some fuel to the AI hype train, the focus ends up on the new and showy AI features that look and sound good. The problem is phone makers haven't put much consideration into helping users find the darn things. One good example I've found in this area are specialist translation apps — ones that do more than Google Translate. Samsung's Interpreter Mode is the one I've noticed this with most recently, offering the ability to translate two-way conversations happening in two different languages. I know that it exists, Samsung has talked about it at great length, but looking at a Galaxy S25, it's nowhere to be seen. It's not in the app drawer, nor the home screen, nor is it one of the default apps in the Quick Settings menu. Instead you either have to use the search bar to find Interpreter Mode, or change the Quick Settings features to include it — which isn't ideal when you only have 6-8 slots to choose from. The more I think about Galaxy AI features Samsung has talked about, the more I realize that I also have no idea where they are. The same is true for Apple Intelligence, Google Gemini and the countless other AI features that have been added to smartphones in recent years. I made a point of criticizing this in my review of the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, but the problem is a lot more widespread than that — and it's like phone makers don't realize this is a complete hindrance. In the days when new AI features weren't all that common, this probably wouldn't be so bad. Users get the time to get to grips with new features as they arrive, and by the time the next big software update comes around it'll be second nature. But the sheer number of new AI features being added to phones, and with little communication on how they work, makes this much more difficult. The distinct lack of official guidance on how to use new AI features is definitely getting in the way of me wanting to use them — and I doubt I'm the only one who feels that way. If phone makers really care about us using AI features more regularly, then this needs to change. I've often spoken about my severe lack of interest when it comes to using AI on phones, and a big part of that is due to the fact it's usually so difficult to find any of the new features. Back in the day, Apple would proudly declare that "it just works," with die-hard fans parroting that line for several years. But when your new smartphone comes with homework, it certainly isn't passing the intuitiveness test with a particularly good grade. Apple's not the only party guilty of this, but with WWDC set to majorly shake up how Apple software works, be it on iPhone, Mac or another Apple product, it's in a position to try and help users use Apple Intelligence without doing a thesis-load of research first. Who knows, maybe making AI actually intuitive can help make up for all its AI missteps over the past year.


Time Business News
2 hours ago
- Time Business News
Backlinks, Biscuits, and Bounce Rates: The Unlikely Recipe for SEO Success in Columbia, SC
Let's talk about biscuits and bounce rates—two things that should never be dry, but only one of them involves keywords, CTR, and Google's ever-fickle affection. Welcome to my world, where SEO in Columbia, SC is less about keyword stuffing and more about slow-roasted, context-rich strategy with a Southern twist. My team at Web Design Columbia (WDC if you're feeling friendly) has been in the SEO kitchen long enough to know that ranking a site isn't a bake-and-wait process. It's an unpredictable soufflé that responds to Google's latest mood swings, user behavior patterns, and, weirdly enough, the resolution of your image files. We've been doing this for nearly two decades—yes, since before Google even introduced the 'did you mean' feature. Back then, SEO meant hiding white text on a white background. Now it's about trust, authority, mobile readiness, and an obsession with structured data so strong you'd think we were training a robot butler. But here's what's different about SEO in Columbia, SC: it's not just about getting seen. It's about being understood by algorithms and the guy searching for tire repair while eating a Bojangles biscuit at 8:30 a.m. in Cayce. Over the years, numerous clickbait think pieces have declared SEO dead. (Spoiler: It's not.) What has changed is the shape it takes. From voice search optimizations to algorithm updates that now favor user experience over raw keyword volume, SEO is no longer a one-dimensional game. In fact, according to a recent Search Engine Journal report, 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is a top inbound marketing priority. This brings us to Columbia, South Carolina. While we may not be the first city that comes to mind when you think of tech innovation, we're quietly rewriting the rules of smart, sustainable SEO. And by 'we,' I mean the developers, writers, designers, and caffeine-powered strategists at WDC who spend their days testing schema markup against the latest Google Search Console glitches and their nights wondering why Moz's domain authority scores change more often than our weather forecasts. Columbia, the heart of South Carolina, has all the ingredients for SEO brilliance: a diverse business landscape, a surprisingly fast-growing tech scene, and an audience that actually reads local content. We've universities, startups, nonprofits, and family-owned hardware stores all vying for page-one glory. In that fight, SEO in Columbia, SC has evolved into a fascinating hybrid—one that borrows from enterprise-grade tactics while staying grounded in human-centered storytelling. We've seen success with structured data integration, local citation curation, and a little trick called 'relevance stacking,' which—despite sounding like something from a Marvel script—is just a fancy way of saying 'making your site matter on multiple fronts.' But we've also seen what doesn't work. Sites overloaded with plugins, DIY SEO setups that ignore crawl budgets, and misguided efforts to rank for terms like 'best plumber universe Columbia SC 2025'—yes, that happened—usually fall flat. Here's a fun fact: Google's RankBrain now adjusts search result rankings based on inferred intent, time on site, and click-through patterns. That means you can't just optimize for 'Columbia dentist' anymore and consider it a job well done. You need to think like the algorithm but write like a human who occasionally misplaces their car keys and Google's 'weird bump on tongue' at 2 a.m. That's where WDC shines. We've built and managed content strategies that focus on nuanced query paths, conversational phrasing, and long-tail keywords that attract real traffic. This is the kind of approach that increased the local medical supply company's page views by 92% over three months, without spending a dime on ads. Still, even we get stumped. When Google's September 2023 Helpful Content Update rolled out, half the industry panicked. The other half—ourselves included—recalibrated. We had to rethink AI-written drafts, emphasize clarity over cleverness, and lean into E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). If you're not building those signals into your site, your rankings will crumble faster than a biscuit in sweet tea. We often tell clients that their website is like a house. Good design is like curb appeal, content is like interior décor, but what about SEO? That's the plumbing. You don't see it until it's broken. SEO in Columbia, SC often suffers not from harmful content, but from bad technical architecture—slow load times, messy mobile layouts, broken image links, or JS errors that block crawlers from indexing key pages. To fix that, we dig deep. And yes, I mean command-line deep. We've optimized AlmaLinux 9-based servers, fine-tuned Cloudflare CDN setups, and configured HTTP/2 and Brotli compression just to shave milliseconds off a time-to-first-byte (TTFB). All of this happens behind the curtain, but it impacts rankings in an obvious way. And while I love a good tool like Ahrefs or Semrush (we use both), there's still no replacement for human debugging. A robot can show you a crawl error. It can't tell you that your JavaScript modal is murdering your CTA visibility. Let's get spicy. One of the most significant flaws in modern SEO is the worship of tools. Everyone uses the same data sets from the same APIs. That's how you end up with hundreds of companies all trying to rank for the exact five keywords, none of which are relevant to how their customers search. We sidestep this issue with something radically simple: we ask your customers how they search. Then we build from that. We call it qualitative SEO, and it's a blend of psychology, storytelling, and common sense. One client told us their customers never searched for 'financial services,' but constantly used 'money help near me.' We adjusted their keyword targets and saw an eightfold increase in organic leads within six weeks. This is the heart of our SEO philosophy in Columbia, SC—stop chasing data; start chasing humans. There was once a company here in Columbia that hired an agency promising 500 backlinks in 30 days. You already know where this is going. Their rankings tanked, their domain was penalized, and worst of all, they were stuck in a 12-month contract with zero recourse. The truth? Not all backlinks are created equal. Google's 2024 spam policy update now penalizes sites that use AI-generated guest posts just to gain links. Meanwhile, links from legitimate, context-rich domains (like a respected local news outlet or a regional chamber of commerce) hold even more value than they did five years ago. At WDC, we build those connections the right way: through partnerships, sponsorships, genuine content, and, yes, articles like this one. Let's address the elephant in the SEO room—Google's algorithm changes are like moody teenagers. One week, they love you for your page speed, the next, they ghost you because you updated your meta description incorrectly. The March 2024 Core Update alone caused significant shake-ups, resulting in a loss of traffic for thousands of sites globally. Reddit threads turned into therapy sessions, and even some Fortune 500 companies saw double-digit drops in organic impressions. But here's the odd truth: Columbia didn't flinch. Or at least, SEO in Columbia, SC didn't. At Web Design Columbia, we've always treated SEO like jazz—improvised but rooted in structure. We didn't chase every trend. Instead, we focused on timeless fundamentals: content depth, site clarity, user behavior signals, and real-life engagement. That's why many of our clients saw either minimal impact or, in a few delightful cases, massive gains, while others across the U.S. were left rewriting entire sites. Of course, there were hiccups. One client's SEO manager insisted on switching everything to AI-written FAQs without proofreading. Their bounce rate skyrocketed. One question read: 'Can dogs vote in South Carolina?' So yes, automation is tremendous—but also, yikes. If your business doesn't show up on the local map pack, you're invisible. More than 40% of mobile searches now include 'near me' phrasing, and almost all of them are tied to location intent. That means ranking in Columbia isn't just about keywords anymore—it's about geography. We've worked hard to master this local frontier. We've optimized Google Business Profiles (GBP) to an extreme level—adding Q&As, product catalogs, service areas, appointment booking buttons, and even custom images with embedded GPS EXIF data. And while all of that might sound overkill, SEO in Columbia, SC is a competition, and the map pack is a three-slot race. We've seen firsthand how accurate business citations, reviews with relevant keywords, and geotagged content can boost a client from obscurity to local domination. However, there's a caveat: GBP is buggy. Updates disappear. Hours get changed by 'Google users.' Reviews vanish or get flagged. We've developed internal monitoring tools just to babysit GBPs. It's a blessing, but also a babysitting gig you didn't ask for. Visual search is changing the way people interact with the web. Tools like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens are becoming smarter every month. Globally, there are over 8 billion visual searches per month. People are now taking pictures of signs, menus, products, and even furniture to search, rather than typing at all. So, how does this affect SEO in Columbia, SC? Here's the twist: Columbia's abundance of small retail shops, boutiques, and service providers are goldmines for visual search—if their image SEO is done right. We optimize alt tags, compress media using AVIF or WebP formats, and ensure all visuals are served responsively. When done right, it allows a local clothing store to appear when someone snaps a photo of a similar outfit in Charlotte. We also work with AI tools like Google Vision AI to 'preview' how Google classifies our images—just in case it accidentally labels your dentist chair as a 'leather recliner.' Let's get technical for a moment. Schema markup, also known as structured data, helps Google understand your content. Think of it like metadata on steroids. We've used it to enhance listings with star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, product pricing, and even job postings. But structured data isn't magic. Some schema types still aren't fully supported in search results. Others conflict with Google's guidelines (especially if you fake reviews or try to auto-generate stars). A competitor in Columbia once tried to fake 5-star reviews using the 'Review' schema—it worked for a week until their entire page was delisted. SEO in Columbia, SC, benefits from schema done correctly. We customize JSON-LD tags for each page, run structured testing in Search Console, and avoid pushing markup that isn't supported in rich results. It's a bit like SEO seasoning—you want to sprinkle, not pour. There's something magical about mid-sized markets. They're not flooded like NYC or LA, and that means your SEO efforts go further. Columbia has just enough competition to keep things interesting, but not so much that a small business needs a $10,000/mo retainer just to rank for 'best cupcakes.' In fact, that's where Web Design Columbia stands out most. We've worked with clients whose monthly SEO budget was lower than the cost of a Netflix family plan—and still delivered results. We don't cut corners; we just know which ones matter. We also know the terrain. We know that West Columbia users search differently from Forest Acres users. We've observed the behavior of USC students compared to business professionals near Gervais Street. And we build SEO strategies accordingly. If there's one thing I've learned from nearly 20 years in SEO, it's this: every time Google makes things more complicated, it's also an opportunity for the smart, the nimble, and the downright stubborn to win. And stubborn is something we do really well in South Carolina. SEO in Columbia, SC, isn't about keeping up with global trends. It's about understanding them, adapting them, and applying them with a uniquely local mindset. It's about getting your content in front of the people who actually matter—your customers—without trying to trick Google or fake authority. Whether you're selling cupcakes, cleaning HVACs, or running a law firm, Columbia's search landscape is ready for you to show up. And if you want a partner who's been doing this since Wi-Fi was still considered magic, see what Web Design Columbia can do for you. There's no secret sauce. There's just a team that cares, prices that make sense, and strategies that don't crumble at the first algorithm update. And if you're ready to taste what better rankings look like (served with a side of Southern charm), come check out the latest SEO tricks by Web Design Columbia. We promise not to talk about biscuits too much. TIME BUSINESS NEWS


Time Business News
2 hours ago
- Time Business News
How to Choose the Best Macbook Repair Shop Near You: Red Flags to Avoid
If your MacBook has started playing up, whether it's a flickering screen, battery issues, or refusing to turn on altogether, it's crucial to get it seen by a qualified professional. But with so many options out there when you search 'Macbook repairing shop near me', how do you separate the experts from the amateurs? Choosing the right place for Mac computer repairs near me can save you time, money, and a lot of stress. In this blog, we'll guide you through how to pick a reliable repair shop, what red flags to steer clear of, and why choosing local MacBook repairs in Melbourne can make all the difference. What to Look for in a Quality MacBook Repair Shop Apple devices are complex, and not just any technician can open up a MacBook and put it back together correctly. Always look for a repair shop that employs Apple-certified technicians or has verifiable experience dealing specifically with Apple products. They'll understand the intricacies of MacBook screen repair, battery replacements, and motherboard issues far better than a general computer shop. Jump online and read through Google reviews or Facebook comments before deciding. When searching 'Mac computer repairs near me', take time to browse the feedback from actual customers. Consistently high ratings and detailed positive reviews are a great indicator of trustworthiness. A reputable MacBook repairing shop near me will offer a warranty on parts and labour, typically ranging from 30 days to 12 months. If they don't, that's a big red flag. A warranty gives you peace of mind, knowing the service is backed by a quality guarantee. Before leaving your MacBook behind, ask for a quote and make sure it's written down. Hidden fees or vague pricing is a warning sign. Any reputable MacBook repairs Melbourne provider should be upfront about what you'll pay for diagnostics, labour, and parts. Ask what kind of parts the shop uses. Original Apple parts ensure compatibility and performance, but quality third-party alternatives can also be acceptable if they come with a warranty. Shops that cut corners with cheap, low-grade parts should be avoided. Red Flags to Avoid When Choosing a Repair Shop If a repair shop doesn't have a proper physical location or a functioning website, proceed with caution. A professional shop should be easy to find online with verifiable contact details. When you Google 'MacBook repairing shop near me', be wary of listings without proper photos, ABNs, or location info. It's tempting to go for the cheapest quote, but this often leads to poor workmanship or non-genuine parts. Remember, if the price sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Quality MacBook screen repair or MacBook battery replacement near me typically costs a bit more because it uses high-grade components and skilled labour. You should never feel pressured to approve a repair on the spot. Some less reputable shops may scare you into making a quick decision or claim the problem is urgent without giving you time to think. Good service providers will explain the issue clearly and give you the space to decide. A trustworthy shop will explain what went wrong with your MacBook and what steps they took to fix it. If the technician hands back your device without any explanation or documentation, that's a red flag. You deserve transparency, especially when paying for premium service. Final Thoughts Finding a trustworthy MacBook repairing shop near me doesn't have to be a gamble. Armed with the right knowledge, you can make an informed choice that protects your investment and gets your Mac back in perfect condition. Whether you're dealing with a shattered screen, a battery that won't charge, or water damage, make sure you choose a repair shop with skilled technicians, transparent pricing, and a good local reputation. Next time you're looking for Mac computer repairs near me, keep this guide handy. Your Mac (and your wallet) will thank you. TIME BUSINESS NEWS