Neil Gass

In September, traffic sent by AI tools to U.S. retail websites was up 71% from last year, and those shoppers converted 90% better than everyone else. Have you checked what ChatGPT says about your business lately? That comes from Adobe, which looked at more than a trillion visits to U.S. retail websites. Shoppers sent by AI also brought in 83% more revenue per visit, and Adobe expects AI traffic on Thanksgiving to jump 159%. It makes sense when you think about how people use AI to shop. By the time someone clicks through from ChatGPT, they've already asked their questions, compared their options, and narrowed it down to you. They've done the browsing already, and they're ready to buy. I've been saying this for a while, and I'll keep saying it: AI is becoming the front door to your business. If it can't understand your website, it sends those ready-to-buy customers somewhere else, right as the biggest shopping weeks of the year start. Try this today. Ask ChatGPT what it knows about your business and see what comes back. If you don't like the answer, we offer an affordable one-time cleanup for small business WordPress sites, and we'll review your site for free first. The article and the review link are in the reply below. AI is now sending out the most ready-to-buy customers on the internet. When it describes your business to them, what does it say?

We just passed a milestone I didn't expect to see this soon. AI agents and bots now visit websites more often than people do. So who is your website really built for? Adobe points to data showing that in June, AI agents and crawlers passed human visitors in web traffic for the first time. Cloudflare's CEO had predicted that wouldn't happen until the end of 2027, so it showed up about 18 months early. Adobe also found AI-driven visits to retail websites more than doubled in a year, up 127% in August. For a small business, this changes how customers find you. When a customer asks their AI to find a plumber, a gift, or a dinner reservation, the AI goes and reads websites for them. If it can't find your prices, your hours, or what you actually offer, it just recommends someone else. You never get the phone call, and you never even know you were in the running. Most small business websites were built only for human eyes. That was fine until this year. The sooner your site can be read by AI, the less business you quietly lose to the competitor whose site it can read. If you want a hand with that, we offer an affordable one-time cleanup for small business WordPress sites, and we'll review your site for free first. The article and the review link are in the reply below. Your next customer might send an AI to your website before they ever visit it themselves. Is your site ready for a visitor that isn't human?

More than half of Americans now use AI to help them shop. Right at the start of the holiday rush, that raises a question every small business owner should be asking: can AI even read your website? Visa's new holiday survey found 54% of U.S. adults have used AI for shopping tasks, up from 47% last year. They're using it to compare prices, check whether something's in stock, and hunt for deals. Among Gen Z, more than 80% are open to it. Think about what that means. Before a customer ever shows up on your site, their AI may have already visited it, read it, and decided whether you're worth recommending. If it can't make sense of your products and services, it moves on to the competitor whose site it can read, and you never even knew you were in the running. The good news is that most small business websites don't need a rebuild to fix this. They need a cleanup: clearer pages, better structure, and the behind-the-scenes details AI tools look for. We offer an affordable one-time service that does exactly that for small business WordPress sites, and we'll review your site for free first. The article and the free review link are in the reply below. If a customer's AI went shopping on your website tonight, would it understand what you sell?

Is AI actually making small businesses any money, or is it all hype? New survey data says 70% of small business owners using AI saw it increase their revenue over the past year. That's not hype. That's money in the bank. Thryv surveyed 561 U.S. small business decision-makers for its 2026 AI report. On top of the revenue number, 55% say AI has measurably cut their costs, 83% say it measurably saves them time, and 81% say it's made them more strategic. Most of the owners using it are getting back somewhere between 11 and 40 hours a month. I've been building businesses for over 30 years, and I've watched plenty of shiny new tech promise the world and deliver nothing but a monthly bill. This one's different. Owners are seeing it in revenue, costs, and hours, which are the three places a small business actually feels it. And these aren't tech companies. They're regular small businesses using AI for automation, marketing, and the everyday work that used to eat their evenings. If you've been wondering whether AI is worth it for a business your size, the numbers say it is. And if you want to figure out where it would pay off first in yours, we're always happy to hop on a free 20-minute call. The full report is linked in the reply below. Is AI paying off in your business yet, or are you still waiting to see?

Two out of three small businesses now use AI, and 86% of owners say they're comfortable with it. Yet 70% say they don't have the skills to use it effectively. Sounds like a contradiction, right? I don't think it is. Those numbers come from Thryv's 2026 survey of 561 U.S. small business decision-makers. AI use jumped from 55% to 66% in a single year, and 60% of the owners using it reach for it every day. So how can you be comfortable with something and still feel like you're missing skills? Once you use AI every day, you start to see how much more it could be doing. You know it can write the email. You suspect it could also handle your follow-up, your scheduling, and half your marketing, and you're just not sure how to get there. That's not a confidence problem. That's an owner who's ready for the next step. That's exactly why we built our free AI Readiness Assessment. It takes about five minutes and gives you a personalized score plus clear recommendations on where AI can do more in your business. The full report and the assessment are both linked in the reply below. If you're comfortable with AI but know it could be doing more, what's the one job you'd want it handling next?

More than half of business owners now spend three or more hours a week checking their AI's work. That sounds like a waste until you look at what they're getting for it. Would you trade a few minutes of review for work you couldn't do yourself? A new Pax8 survey of 1,150 business leaders found 55% spend at least three hours a week reviewing, editing, or fact-checking what AI hands them. Skeptics will call that busywork. But the same survey found 69% say AI freed up real capacity, and that's the number I'd pay attention to. I see this with owners all the time. A close friend of mine sells real estate, and he recently started using ChatGPT to make social posts and graphics for his new listings and recent sales. He has no design training. Now he's posting professional, on-brand graphics almost every day, which is basically a marketing team. His only cost is a few minutes looking it over before he posts. That review time isn't AI failing you. It's you teaching it who you are, what you do, how you do it, and which facts it has to get right. No AI tool can be left alone yet, but the better you train it, the faster the checking goes. That's exactly what we help owners set up at SBSAI. The full article is linked in the reply below. If a few minutes of checking got you a marketing team, would you still call it busywork?

If you own a WordPress website, this one's urgent. The NSA just told site owners to patch two critical holes in PHP right now, or take their sites offline until they can. Has anyone actually confirmed yours is patched? PHP is the software running underneath WordPress and roughly 70% of all websites. AI tools from OpenAI and Wiz found two flaws that have been hiding in it since 2004, and they let an attacker get into the server and the database behind your site. The fixes came out October 21. Now that the holes are public, it's a race between the people patching and the people attacking. What worries me is that most owners assume their webmaster or hosting company already took care of it. Maybe they did. But if your site gets hijacked or your customer data walks out the door, it's your business on the line, not theirs. Making sure this gets done is on you. So today, send one email to whoever runs your site and ask: What PHP version am I on? Is it patched? When was my last backup? If you're on PHP 8.1 or older, there's no patch coming, and you need a real upgrade. The full article is linked in the reply below. If I asked you right now whether your website is patched, could you say yes for certain?

Two out of three shoppers say they'll likely use AI to research what they buy next. Can AI even read your website? American Express just surveyed 2,005 U.S. online shoppers. 66% said they're likely to use AI agents to find the best price on a product or service in the next 12 months. 61% said they'd use one to get a recommendation. So a lot of your future customers won't visit your website first. Their AI will. And most small business websites were built for human eyes, not for a bot trying to figure out what you sell, where you are, and what it costs. Most owners have no idea this is a problem, because nothing looks broken. The site loads, it looks great on a phone, and the AI still comes up empty and recommends somebody else. The fix usually isn't a new website. It's making the one you have readable to AI, and that's exactly what we do at SBSAI. The full Amex report is linked in the reply below. When a customer's AI checks out your business, will it understand what you sell?

Your next software purchase might be something you build yourself in an afternoon. Am I wrong? Google just made it possible to describe an app in plain English in Google AI Studio, then run it on your own Android phone through Google Play. The app stays private. It doesn't show up in the store, and nobody else sees it. It's live in the U.S. now for adults 18 and up, and Google says sharing with a small group of people is coming next. Think about what that means for a small business. A quote calculator for your crew. A simple job tracker. A checklist for opening the shop. Tools you'd never pay a developer to build and would never find in an app store, because they're built for exactly how you work. It won't replace your accounting software. But it can replace a lot of those little monthly subscriptions that each do one thing. And if you've got the idea but not the time, building these for owners is part of what we do at SBSAI. The full article is linked in the reply below. Is the next app your business needs one you'll buy, or one you'll build?

Your customers can now tell Facebook to hide boring brands. Is your content worth keeping? Meta just brought its "Your Algorithm" tool from Instagram to Facebook. People type what they want more or less of, in plain English, and their feed changes in real time. It's one tap away in the three-dot menu on every post. The polished, say-nothing brand posts get tuned out first. The local owner who shows a real face and answers real questions is what people will ask to see more of. The full article is linked in the reply below. If your customers got a vote on your last five posts, would they keep them?