A technique where an AI search system breaks one question into several related searches and combines the results into a single answer.
Query fan-out is how Google describes the way AI Mode and AI Overviews can build an answer: instead of running only the query the user typed, the system issues multiple related searches across subtopics, then pulls the most useful information from each into one response.
For SEO and AEO, fan-out shifts attention from single keywords to topics. A page that thoroughly covers the questions around a subject, such as cost, alternatives, eligibility or how it works, has more chances to be pulled into an answer than a page targeting one phrase.
It also explains why AI answers sometimes cite pages that do not rank for the original query: the cited page ranked for one of the related searches the system ran behind the scenes.
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