Posted by Have you ever wondered what happens in the few seconds between someone typing a question into ChatGPT and getting an answer back?
Something happens in that gap that most business owners never think about. When someone asks an AI assistant a question, the assistant often does not just search for the exact words that were typed. It runs a handful of extra searches of its own first, then uses all of that to write its reply. People are starting to call these AI search fanouts.
Picture a customer typing How do I start an online business into ChatGPT. Behind that one question, the AI might quietly check what tools people recommend, what those tools cost, what complaints show up in reviews, and what alternatives keep getting mentioned. Understanding an AI search fanout like this one is the first step to appearing inside it, rather than being left out of the answer altogether.
That gap between what a customer typed and what the AI searched for is where plenty of businesses are missing out, without ever knowing it.
If you sell information products, coaching, or anything else online, this matters to you directly. The question is no longer only where you rank on a page of search results. It is whether AI even considers you worth mentioning when someone asks for help.
Once you understand how these fanout searches work, you can start doing something about it.
What An AI Search Fanout Is
Picture someone typing one simple question into ChatGPT: What is the best way to build an email list?
The AI does not stop there. Behind the scenes it may run several more searches to build a proper answer. It might look for the best email list tools and reviews of those tools. It could also check comparisons between them, current pricing, and complaints people have made about each one.
One question from your customer can quietly become six or seven searches you never see happening, and this hidden layer is what people mean by an AI search fanout.
That is the fanout. And it changes what getting found online really means.
Obviously, if your business does not show up anywhere across those extra searches, the AI has nothing to point to, however good your own website is.
Why The Old SEO Rules Are Not Enough Anymore
For years, the advice was simple. Find the phrase people search for, put it on your page, and hope Google ranks you. That still matters, but it is only part of the picture now.
Say you sell a course on freelance writing, where ranking for freelance writing course used to be the whole game. Now an AI assistant answering that same search might also check what freelancers say about pricing, what complaints come up about course quality, and what other writers recommend instead. Your page is only one voice in a much larger conversation happening around the same question.
AI assistants gather from more than one page. They pull together reviews, comparisons, forum answers, and other people’s opinions before writing a single sentence back to the customer. A perfectly written page on your own site is only one piece of what the AI is looking at.
It is a bit like the old supermarket rule I learned decades ago. If the shelves are not full, you do not make sales, and you find out straight away. Online, nobody tells you a shelf is empty. You simply stop appearing in the conversation and never hear about it.
Think about a customer comparing two coaching programmes before buying either one. They are not only reading your sales page. They are checking a forum thread from last year, a video review, and a comparison article somebody else wrote, and the AI reads all of that too before your customer ever reaches your website.
Try This Yourself This Week
Pick five questions you would love a customer to type into ChatGPT about your kind of business. Do not use your own product name. Think like a stranger who has never heard of you.
For each question, write down ten follow-up searches an AI might run before it answers. Look especially for these four kinds:
What people compare before choosing. What proof they look for that something works. What it costs, roughly. What problems keep coming up with the options already out there.
The question is no longer only where you rank on a page of search results. It is whether AI even considers you worth mentioning when someone asks for help.
Now open a search engine and try running some of those exact phrases yourself. Notice who keeps turning up. Notice who never does. That second list includes you, more often than you would like.
If you sell something for beginners learning affiliate marketing, try searching phrases like best affiliate programmes for beginners or affiliate marketing complaints. Notice which names come up again and again. Those are the businesses currently winning the AI search fanout for that topic, whether or not they planned it.
AI Is Not Only Looking At Your Own Website
Here is the part that catches most people out. An AI assistant gathers reviews, comparisons and outside opinions while it researches an answer. Publishing another page on your own site, saying how good you are, will not solve that problem on its own.
You want your business showing up in the places AI visits while it is researching you. That means genuine customer reviews, mentions in relevant directories, interviews, comparison pieces, and honest discussions elsewhere on the internet.
That might mean asking a genuine customer to leave a review somewhere public, agreeing to a short interview on someone else’s podcast or blog, or simply making sure your business is listed properly in the directories people in your field already search. None of it needs to cost money. It mostly needs you to show up in a few more places than you currently do.
This is a different kind of question to the one most of us were trained to ask. The old question was, how do I rank my own page for this search? The new one is, how do I keep turning up while AI researches the answer, wherever it looks?
I have written about a related idea in some of the other updates I have shared on this site, and it is worth reading alongside this one if the subject is new to you.
One Small Step Before You Do Anything Else
You do not need to overhaul your entire website this week. Start smaller than that.
Choose one question your ideal customer would type into an AI assistant. Write one honest, specific page that answers it properly, without vague marketing language. Then look for one outside place, a review site, a forum, a directory, where you could reasonably show up for the same question.
For someone selling a newsletter or an information product, that outside place might be a forum where people already discuss the topic, or a directory that lists resources for beginners in your field. It does not need to be complicated. One honest mention in the right place, alongside one clear page of your own, is enough to begin closing the gap.
That is two small actions, not a complete rebuild. Do those two things properly before moving on to the next question on your list.
I came to computers late in life, and none of this technical world came naturally to me at first. What I have learned is that you do not need to understand everything about how AI works. You only need to understand enough to know where to put your effort next.
In 2026, that effort is worth spending on being found inside the searches nobody sees, not only the one your customer typed.