AI & AEO

Query Fan-Out

Quick Definition

Query fan-out is the technique AI search engines use to silently expand a single user query into multiple sub-queries, retrieve documents for each, and synthesize a unified answer from across them.

In context

Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT search all use fan-out internally. A query like 'best SEO agency Toronto' may fan out into 'top Toronto SEO agencies', 'SEO agency pricing Toronto', 'SEO agency reviews Canada', and several others. Optimizing for fan-out means covering the full neighbourhood of related sub-questions on the same page.

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Related terms

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Voice search is the use of spoken queries to search engines via Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and modern voice-enabled AI assistants like ChatGPT Voice and Perplexity Voice.

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SGE (Search Generative Experience)

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