This Week in M&A Issue #232
April 14, 2026
Hello there!
Today’s trend of the week is “golf”. ⛳
In 2025, U.S. on-course participation passed 29 million players, continuing a record-breaking run. Globally, both on-course and off-course engagement are at all-time highs, with millions of new golfers entering the sport.
Now, with the weather warming up, people are eager to get back on the course. According to data shared with Retail Brew, Shopify orders for golf club sets jumped 75% last month, with golf tees and bags up 51% and 48%. Even golf carts saw a 43% increase.
That creates opportunities across ecommerce, content, and digital products. Beyond offering accessories and upgrades for new and existing golfers, the influx of new players also means a growing audience looking for guidance, recommendations, and community.
For entrepreneurs looking to enter a new market or expand their offering, now’s a good time to take a swing at the golf market. It could be a hole-in-one opportunity.
Today we have for you:
- Amazon adds new fuel surcharge for sellers
- ChatGPT crawler now outpaces Googlebot by 3.6x
And:
- Google March 2026 Core Update complete
- Finding purpose beyond profit
- Amazon changes discount rules for sellers
Alright, let’s dive in.
Amazon
Image Source: Giphy (FoxADHD)
Another Cost Increase for Amazon Sellers Hits in April
Amazon is raising costs for sellers again, this time with a new fee tied to fuel prices.
Starting April 17, 2026, third-party sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) in the US and Canada will pay a 3.5% “fuel and logistics” surcharge. From May 2, it will also apply to Buy with Prime and Multi-Channel Fulfillment, so it affects not just marketplace sales but also orders from sellers’ own websites.
This fee is added to fulfillment costs, not product prices. On average, it works out to about $0.17 more per unit in the US, though that depends on the size and shipping needs of each product.
Amazon says rising fuel and logistics costs are the reason. Until now, it had been absorbing those increases. With energy prices still high, Amazon is now passing some of that cost onto sellers.
To be fair, this isn’t happening in isolation. Carriers like UPS and USPS have also raised prices and added surcharges, in some cases by more than Amazon. Still, for sellers, it’s another hit to margins.
And that’s the real issue. This comes after earlier FBA fee increases in 2026, plus ongoing pressure from tariffs. Each change on its own might be manageable, but together they add up quickly.
There’s also no clear end date. Amazon calls the surcharge temporary, but hasn’t said when it might be removed. That makes planning harder and increases the chances that sellers will raise prices to protect margins.
This fee currently only applies in the US and Canada. Other regions aren’t affected, at least for now.
Websites
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Image Source: Search Engine Journal
ChatGPT‑User Surges Past Googlebot in Web Crawling Activity
Recent data from Alli AI of over 78,000 web pages shows that ChatGPT’s crawler is now outpacing Googlebot by a huge margin.
During a 55-day period in early 2026, the ChatGPT‑User crawler made more than 3.6x the number of requests that Googlebot did.
OpenAI runs two main crawlers. ChatGPT‑User fetches pages on demand when people ask ChatGPT questions. GPTBot collects pages to help train AI models. Right now, many websites treat them the same, which can lead to mistakes in crawl settings.
When all AI crawlers are counted together, including ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Amazonbot, they made more than 3.6x the requests of traditional crawlers. AI crawlers are also faster and more efficient. Their success rate in fetching pages is nearly 100%, while Googlebot still runs into errors or blocked pages fairly often.
Industry reports show explosive growth in AI crawling activity throughout 2025. One analysis from Cloudflare showed that ChatGPT‑User requests surged thousands of percent year‑over‑year, while others confirmed OpenAI as a leading operator of bot traffic.
For website owners, this is important for two reasons. First, even small requests from AI crawlers can add up and put extra strain on your servers. Second, if your site blocks or handles these crawlers incorrectly, your content might not show up in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT and similar tools.
In short, AI crawlers are dominating crawling activity, are faster and more reliable, and sites need to treat them as a key part of web infrastructure and visibility strategy.
Google’s First Broad Core Update of 2026 is Complete
Google has finished rolling out its March 2026 core update. It started on March 27 and wrapped up globally on April 8. This is the first broad core update of the year, coming after a quick spam update in late March and a Discover feed update in February.
Unlike the spam update, which only targeted low-quality or policy-violating content and finished in a single day, this core update looks at the bigger picture. It focuses on overall content quality and relevance across search results.
Early reports from the SEO community suggest the changes were noticeable but not extreme. Some websites gained visibility, others lost, but overall it wasn’t as dramatic as the December 2025 core update.
Google confirmed the rollout is done but didn’t give details on what exactly changed. That is typical for broad core updates, which adjust Google’s overall ranking systems rather than targeting narrow issues.
Early reports suggest that sites with thin, generic, or mass-produced content often lost rankings, while content that demonstrates real expertise, clear structure, and trustworthiness performed better. The update reinforces the importance of creating content that genuinely meets user needs rather than trying to game search algorithms.
With the update fully deployed, site owners and content teams can now review the impact. Look at which pages gained or lost visibility, find patterns, and tweak your content strategy based on what you see.
Read All About It!
🧠 20 practical ways to use AI in SEO: practical, tested use cases
🔥 Top trending topics April 2026: hottest 100 searches in the US right now
💸 Basic iPhone apps are making people rich again: here’s how
🤝 How Surfer SEO made $15M ARR, then sold: in just 8 years
The Opportunity podcast
![Finding Purpose Beyond Profit With Terry Kyle [Ep.209] (1)](https://1745913.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/1745913/Finding%20Purpose%20Beyond%20Profit%20With%20Terry%20Kyle%20%5BEp.209%5D%20(1).png)
Turning Frustration Into a 100+ Person Company
Many great businesses weren’t started because the founder was inspired.
They were started because they were frustrated.
That’s exactly what happened when Terry Kyle built WPX.
In this episode of The Opportunity podcast, we break down how Terry went from dealing with terrible hosting providers to building a 100+ person company known for speed and customer support.
But the most interesting part? What he did after building a successful business.
Through Every Dog Matters, Terry now runs a large-scale dog rescue operation caring for hundreds of animals daily. And according to him, it’s far harder than building the business.
It’s a good reminder that success isn’t just about revenue. It’s about what you choose to do with it.
If you’re an online business owner, there’s a lot to take away from this one.
Amazon
Amazon Updates How Discounts Are Shown
Amazon is updating how sellers display discounts, which could affect pricing strategies across the platform. The changes focus on the List Price and the Typical Price, two key numbers used to show buyers how much they are saving.
Starting April 23, 2026, the List Price must either be a price another retailer recently sold the item for, or a price Amazon itself offered as the Featured Offer. If it doesn’t meet these conditions, sellers can’t use it as a reference for a discount.
On May 18, 2026, Amazon will adjust how it calculates Typical Price, which is the median price over the past 90 days. If more than half of those days had sales below the normal price, promotional sales will be included in the calculation. Discounts that aren’t explicitly highlighted still count toward this median.
Sellers can still set whatever price they want, but not every price drop can be presented as a discount.
Some sellers worry this could affect how discounts look after big sales events like Prime Day, though Amazon says peak event prices will be excluded from Typical Price calculations.
The changes could also influence customer behavior. Without clear “you save X%” messaging, buyers might react differently, even if the final price hasn’t changed.
The update comes after lawsuits over inflated list prices used to exaggerate discounts.
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