Type a question into an AI tool and it can look as if the tool simply searches for what you wrote. Often it doesn't. Behind the scenes it may split your question into several smaller searches, run them, gather what comes back and write one answer from the lot.

That's called query fan-out. Your customers never see it and neither do you. It still changes which pages and which businesses end up in the answer, so it's worth understanding.

This guide explains query fan-out in plain English, which AI tools do it, why it matters and what you can sensibly do about it. It's also one reason Midwaver, an AI visibility tracker, asks the full, realistic questions your customers ask rather than single keywords. If AI search itself is new to you, start with What Is AI Search and Why Should Your Business Care?

What query fan-out means

Query fan-out is when an AI tool takes one question and fans it out into several related searches. "Fan out" just means spreading out from a single point, like the ribs of a hand fan.

Think of asking a colleague to find you a supplier. A good one wouldn't run a single search. They'd look up what the service costs, check what's legally required, read some reviews and compare a few options before coming back to you. Fan-out is an AI tool doing that legwork in seconds.

Google uses the term itself. When it introduced AI Mode, it said AI Mode uses its query fan-out technique, "breaking down your question into subtopics". Its documentation says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use the technique, which it describes as "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources".

One question becomes many searches

Say the owner of a small building company in Birmingham asks an AI tool: "I run a small building company with six employees. What insurance do I actually need and who should I use?"

The tool might quietly search for things like:

• what insurance a UK building company is legally required to have

• public liability cover for builders

• what small builders typically pay for insurance

• commercial insurance brokers for builders in Birmingham

• reviews of those brokers

We've made these up to show the idea. The real searches are hidden, differ between tools and change from one run to the next.

The point is that the answer draws on pages matching those smaller searches, not only pages matching the question as asked. A page explaining what cover a builder legally needs can shape the answer even if it never mentions Birmingham. A different page might be the one cited for the local recommendation.

Which AI tools do this

It depends on the tool. What's documented differs too.

• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google has said so itself, as above. In May 2025 it also described a mode called Deep Search that uses the same technique "taken to the next level" and can "issue hundreds of searches". It was labelled as still in development at the time.

• ChatGPT. OpenAI says ChatGPT chooses whether to search the web based on what you ask. We haven't found OpenAI describing how it forms the searches. What we know comes from researchers who watch the background searches ChatGPT runs. A roundup by SEO specialist Lily Ray in August 2026 pulled together several analyses. They found the number of background searches per prompt rising as ChatGPT's models changed. In her own testing, one model ran ten or more searches for a single prompt. The studies use different methods and models, so treat any exact figure with care.

• Perplexity and others. They also search the web before answering, but we haven't found them describing the process in the same terms.

Why it matters for your business

Three things follow. The first two are our reading of how it works rather than documented fact.

First, the pages that shape an answer may not be the ones that rank for your obvious keyword. Marie Haynes, an SEO consultant, studied AI Mode in 2025 and found it often showed different websites from traditional results, or the same ones in a different order. A business can rank well for the headline term and still be missing from the answer because other businesses answered the smaller questions better.

Second, a narrow page that answers one smaller question well can pull a business into a much broader answer. If you're the clearest source on one of the smaller questions, you can be picked up for a bigger question you'd never have targeted directly.

Third, long and specific questions give a tool more to split up. A short keyword-style question gives it less. That's our inference. No tool has confirmed it.

None of this means Google rankings have stopped mattering. Google says a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet to be a supporting link. The wider picture is in GEO vs SEO: What's the Difference?

How to cover the questions behind the question

You can't see the searches an AI tool runs for your customer. You can work out the smaller questions a customer needs answered before choosing you. Here's the approach we'd take.

1. List the questions behind the question. For each thing you want to be found for, write down what a customer needs to know first. What it costs, what's involved, who it's for, what the rules are, how you compare, whether you can be trusted and whether you cover their area.

2. Answer each one properly on your site. Use a clear page or a clearly headed section, written from real experience. Google says you don't need to chop your content into tiny pieces for its AI features. Write for people, plainly.

3. Say something only you can say. Your own experience, examples and data. Google's guidance tells site owners to focus on high-quality, non-commodity content, which means content that offers something you can't find everywhere else.

4. Keep your details consistent elsewhere. Reviews, directory listings and your Google Business Profile all feed the picture an AI tool builds of you.

5. Make sure AI tools can read your site. The basics are in How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT. Midwaver also flags anything on your site that stops AI tools reading it.

What you can't know

Be wary of anyone who claims to know the exact searches an AI tool will run for your customers. They vary between tools, between runs and over time. The studies of ChatGPT show the pattern shifting as its models change. Tools that display fan-out searches are showing samples, not a fixed list.

It's the same lesson as with rankings. SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai ran a study in which the same list of brands almost never came back twice for the same prompt. Gumshoe.ai sells AI tracking tools, a connection the researchers disclosed. The signal sits in the pattern across many questions checked repeatedly. So the practical approach is to cover the topics well and then measure what happens.

Find out how you show up

Come back to the building company in Birmingham. Somewhere an AI tool is splitting a question like that into smaller searches and choosing which businesses to name. You can wonder whether yours is among them or you can look.

Midwaver is an AI visibility tracker. It asks ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews the questions your customers ask, including the long, specific ones. It then shows you the answers. You can see how often you're mentioned and how that's trending, which questions bring you up, which competitors are named instead and where your website is cited. A simple dashboard turns the results into clear next steps.

Midwaver can't make an AI tool recommend you and no tool can. It shows you where you stand so you can see whether what you change makes a difference.

Search is changing. Your customers used to search on Google or Bing and get a list of links. Now they’re asking AI for recommendations. Is your business being recommended? Start your free 7 day trial with Midwaver. See what AI says about your business, who’s winning in your industry and how to get mentioned more. No credit card needed, no obligation.