This Week in M&A Issue #244
July 6, 2026
Hello buttercup!
Today’s trend of the week is “frozen yogurt”. 🍨
Remember the frozen yogurt craze of the early 2010s? Well, it’s back.
According to Circana, US frozen yogurt sales rose 26% in the year leading up to March.
This isn’t just a nostalgia play, though. This froyo has been updated to suit the health-centric focus of 2026 consumers. We’re talking premium Froyo with quality ingredients and unexpected toppings like olive oil and crumbled baklava.
Of course, this fresh take on an old favorite comes with an updated price tag. At the trendiest spots, a cup can cost as much as $30.
There are opportunities here beyond the product itself, from froyo-themed subscription boxes to digital recipe guides that teach people how to make premium frozen yogurt at home.
This trend also shows that you don’t always need to invent something completely new. Sometimes the best opportunities come from taking a product, business model, or niche that people already know and giving it a fresh twist for today’s market.
Today we have for you:
- Shopify data shows rural eCommerce is booming
- Trustpilot brings reviews to Shopify stores
And:
- TikTok Shop tightens seller rules with new compliance updates
- How to collect more reviews for your Amazon business
- AI Search is the new target of Google’s spam crackdown
Alright, let’s dive in.
eCommerce
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Image Source: Shopify
Small Town Entrepreneurs Are Building Global Businesses
For a long time, many people believed you had to live in a big city to build a successful business. That’s where the customers, investors, and opportunities were. But new data from Shopify suggests that’s no longer true.
Advances in ecommerce have made location far less important than it used to be. Shopify analyzed merchant activity across the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, and Japan and found that rural ecommerce businesses are growing faster than many of their urban counterparts.
Over the past five years, exports from rural Shopify merchants have increased by 342%, growing from $655 million in 2019 to $2.9 billion in 2025. More than half of rural merchants now sell internationally, showing that even businesses in small towns can build global customer bases.
In the US, the share of new Shopify stores launched in rural areas increased from 25% in 2015 to 30% in 2025. Canada saw that figure rise from 14% to 20.5%, while France grew from 11% to 19%. According to Shopify, this growth started well before COVID-19 and continued after the ecommerce boom of the pandemic.
Shopify also found that rural businesses are reaching customers just as effectively as urban ones. The average rural order traveled 1,799 kilometers, compared with 1,870 kilometers for urban merchants. In other words, where you build your business has very little impact on how far your products can travel.
Europe has seen some of the fastest growth. Rural cross-border sales have increased by 1,844% in Spain, 1,571% in Germany, and 1,114% in France over the past five years. Shopify credits this to tools that make it easier for small businesses to sell globally, including multi-currency payments, automated international shipping, AI-powered translations and product descriptions, and financing based on business performance rather than location.
The benefits go beyond the business owner. Shopify estimates that every $100 generated by rural merchants creates another $64 in local economic activity through jobs and spending with local suppliers and service providers.
You no longer need to live in a major city to build a business with global reach. If you have a product people want and the right ecommerce tools, your location matters a lot less than it once did.
eCommerce
Shopify Merchants Can Now Display Verified Trustpilot Reviews
As AI-generated product descriptions, images, and even customer chatter flood the internet, online shoppers are looking harder for signals they can trust.
That’s why Shopify has announced a partnership with Trustpilot that allows merchants to collect, manage, and display verified Trustpilot reviews directly within their stores. The integrated reviews went live on Monday, June 29.
As more shoppers rely on AI search engines and shopping assistants to research products, AI systems need reliable sources to evaluate which brands deserve to be recommended. Independent review platforms like Trustpilot are becoming an important source of that credibility.
According to Trustpilot CEO Adrian Blair, AI-generated content has made it harder for consumers to know what information they can trust. Verified customer reviews provide a stronger signal because they come from real buyers rather than brands themselves.
Trustpilot reports that click-through traffic from AI-powered search platforms increased by 1,490% during its most recent financial year, highlighting how frequently AI models are referencing trusted third-party review data when surfacing businesses.
Reviews are no longer just about increasing conversion rates after a customer lands on your website. They are becoming an input that influences whether AI recommends your business in the first place.
eCommerce
TikTok Shop Introduces Tougher Rules on Listings, Refunds, & Account Health
TikTok Shop is beefing up its seller compliance requirements, with three new policy updates that could directly affect listings, sales, and customer disputes.
The biggest change is a new qualification system for restricted products. Sellers must now receive approval before listing products in 16 categories, including Beauty and Personal Care, Electronics, Food and Beverage, and Pet Supplies.
Depending on the category, sellers may need to submit supplier invoices, product photos, compliance certificates, or regulatory documentation before products can go live. Without approval, listings are blocked entirely.
TikTok Shop is also rolling out a stricter Account Health Rating (AHR) system that replaces its previous violation points model. Every seller starts with 200 points, and their score is calculated over a rolling 180-day period. Falling below key thresholds brings increasingly severe penalties.
At 150 points, sellers lose access to new product listings and promotional campaigns for seven days. At 100 points, the restriction doubles to 14 days. At 50 points, it lasts 28 days, and accounts that reach zero points may be permanently deactivated. Sellers can recover points by fulfilling orders and passing policy quizzes.
Customer service expectations are tightening as well. TikTok Shop now requires sellers to respond to customer refund disputes within 24 hours. If they miss the deadline, the platform can automatically decide the case in the customer’s favor and issue the refund without further input from the seller.
These changes are another reminder of how much control marketplaces have over the businesses that rely on them. When a platform can limit listings, pause promotions, or suspend accounts based on policy changes, diversifying across multiple sales channels becomes more important. Spreading your business across different platforms can reduce platform dependency and limit the impact that any single policy update has on your revenue.
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Amazon
How to Collect More Reviews for Your Amazon Business
Open Amazon’s homepage during Prime Day and you’ll spot it: an entire module called “Shop 4+ star finds under $25.” Not “cheapest finds.” Not “newest.” Four-plus stars, front and center, as its own curated category. Amazon is telling shoppers, in plain text, that rating is the filter worth building a homepage module around.
If your product can’t clear that bar, you’re not just losing a sale; you’re not even in the running. So reviews aren’t a vanity metric. They’re the gate you have to pass through before traffic turns into revenue.
1. Use the “Request a Review” button. Built into Seller Central, it sends Amazon’s own neutral, branded email – zero risk of looking manipulative since Amazon controls the message. Timing matters: 5–7 days post-delivery for consumables, 14–21 days for more complex products.
2. Package inserts. A simple insert card builds goodwill and flags problems before they become 1-star reviews. Learn more on how you can do package inserts without breaking both Amazon’s and the FTC’s rules.
3. Enroll in Amazon Vine. The only program where Amazon itself sanctions free products in exchange for honest reviews, positive or negative, no cherry-picking. Great for new ASINs that need an early trust signal.
4. Let great service speak for itself. Fast fixes and same-day responses turn happy customers into reviewers without you asking twice.
Review count and ratings aren’t just conversion fuel, they’re part of your business’s valuation story. Build them compliantly now, with the right tools doing the heavy lifting, and you’re building what your business is worth later.
Google’s Spam Update Now Targets AI Search Manipulation
For years, Google’s spam policies focused on protecting traditional search results. Now, they also apply to AI-generated answers.
The change was quietly added to Google’s documentation in May and is now being enforced as part of the June 2026 Spam Update. That means anyone trying to manipulate Google’s AI Answers through deceptive tactics could face the same penalties as those attempting to game standard search rankings.
As more people rely on AI-generated summaries instead of clicking through to websites, appearing in those answers has become increasingly valuable. According to SE Ranking, Google now cites its own properties in around 20% of AI Mode citations, leaving fewer opportunities for external websites and creating stronger incentives for bad actors to influence AI recommendations.
Research from Cornell Tech shows just how vulnerable these systems can be. The researchers found that a page from a user-generated platform appeared in up to 48% of AI retrieval queries, while user-generated sites accounted for 17% to 23% of all retrieved URLs. Even more concerning, adding just 13 words of carefully crafted text to one of those pages was enough to insert a chosen brand or entity into AI-generated reports 38% to 51% of the time. When the same text was placed across several pages, the success rate increased to 42% to 62%.
The problem is that these attacks are difficult to detect. Unlike traditional spam, AI manipulation can look like genuine user recommendations posted in forums, reviews, or community websites.
One challenge for businesses is that there is still no reliable way to measure their visibility in Google’s AI Answers. Unlike traditional search, there isn’t a dashboard showing when your content appears or whether competitors have displaced it. That means businesses may struggle to spot problems, even if Google is actively policing AI manipulation.
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