AI GLOSSARY FOR SMALL BUSINESS

The plain-English AI glossary

30 AI terms every small business owner should know in 2026. No jargon, no fluff, no "as a language model" hedges.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

AEO is the practice of structuring your website and content so that AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Pe...

Fractional AI Officer

A fractional AI officer is an outsourced AI strategy and implementation lead that small businesses hire on ret...

AI Phone Receptionist

An AI phone receptionist is a voice agent that answers your business line 24/7, books appointments, answers FA...

AI Review Responder

An AI review responder reads new reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc., drafts a personalized response in yo...

AI Inbox Triager

An AI inbox triager reads your business email, categorizes messages (Urgent, Quote Request, FYI, Spam), drafts...

AI Quote / Proposal Generator

An AI quote generator lets you describe a job in plain English (or even by voice memo) and produces a branded ...

AI Lead Qualifier

An AI lead qualifier is a smart chat on your website that asks visitors a few targeted questions before bookin...

AI Customer Win-Back

AI customer win-back finds dormant customers in your CRM, drafts personalized re-engagement emails based on th...

SMB AI Implementation

SMB AI implementation is the process of identifying where AI fits in a small business, installing the right to...

AI Guy (on Retainer)

An 'AI guy' on retainer is a colloquial term for a fractional AI officer - someone you hire monthly to set up,...

GPTBot

GPTBot is the web crawler used by OpenAI to gather training data for GPT models. Allowing GPTBot in your robot...

Schema.org Markup

Schema.org is a standardized vocabulary for structured data that helps search engines and AI assistants unders...

AI Search

AI search refers to using AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) to find information instead of t...

Claude (Anthropic)

Claude is a family of AI assistants built by Anthropic, considered by many to be the most reliable for busines...

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is OpenAI's general-purpose AI assistant - the product that brought AI to mainstream consciousness in ...

Prompt Engineering

Prompt engineering is the practice of writing inputs to AI assistants in ways that reliably produce useful out...

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

RAG is a technique where an AI assistant first looks up relevant information from your business documents (SOP...

AI ROI for Small Business

AI ROI for small business is calculated by adding time freed (hours/week multiplied by owner hourly value) plu...

AI Implementation

AI implementation is the act of installing, configuring, integrating, and training an AI tool inside an existi...

White-Label AI Services

White-label AI services are AI implementations delivered to marketing agencies, web design shops, and consulta...

AI Content Generation

AI content generation is the practice of using AI assistants to draft blog posts, social media content, email ...

AI Agent

An AI agent is an AI system that can take multi-step actions on your behalf - not just answer questions but ex...

CAN-SPAM Compliance

CAN-SPAM is the US federal law governing commercial email. Compliance requires a real physical mailing address...

First-Party Data

First-party data is information you collect directly from your customers and prospects (email addresses, phone...

Local SEO

Local SEO is the practice of optimizing a business's online presence to rank for location-based searches like ...

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is the total cost to acquire one new customer: ad spend + marketing tool costs + your time invested, divid...

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

LTV is the total revenue a single customer generates over their entire relationship with your business. For SM...

Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing means engaging customers across every channel they use (email, social, SMS, phone, web, ...

AI Agency

An AI agency is a service business that helps other businesses adopt AI - either through done-for-you implemen...

Want to actually USE AI in your business?

Take the 5-min free audit. I'll send back the 3-5 highest-impact AI fixes for YOUR specific business.

Get my free AI audit →