Query fan-out

When an AI answers a complex prompt, it rarely searches once. It silently decomposes your prompt into several sub-queries, researches each, and synthesizes an answer from the results. This behavior is called query fan-out.

Why it matters: you can be visible for the main prompt yet absent from the sub-queries that shaped the answer. Covering fan-out sub-queries in your content means being present at every step of the AI's research, not just the final question.

What platforms expose

1. Gemini reliably emits fan-out, typically three to six sub-queries per call
2. ChatGPT typically echoes your prompt as a single sub-query
3. Claude and Perplexity rarely expose any sub-queries

This is why fan-out data concentrates on Gemini answers.

Where you see it in SEOAI

1. The execution result page lists the fan-out queries for that answer
2. The Query Fan-out page lists every sub-query per prompt with the platforms that emitted them, and on Pro and Agency plans whether you are covered and the search demand behind it
3. The Fan-out tab in the Gaps area summarizes coverage per topic: a sub-query is covered when you appeared in at least one answer that ran it, and not covered sub-queries are topics the AI researches where you do not exist yet. See all opens the Query Fan-out page filtered to them

Keywords AI surfaced

Keywords AI surfaced are not fan-out: they are two-to-three-word phrases mined from the answer text, not sub-queries the AI researched. You find them at the bottom of the Reports page.