Fan-out

also known as: query fan-out

The set of background search queries an AI surface issues to answer a single prompt. Surfaces like ChatGPT with search and Google’s AI Mode decompose one question into several sub-queries before composing the answer; capturing them reveals which searches your content must win to be retrieved and cited. Fan-out is only trustworthy with provenance attached: observed from the surface, inferred, or honestly absent.

In AI Search API

evidence.fanOut ships on every Envelope with a provenance of "observed", "inferred" or "none" plus the query list. It is never fabricated — a surface that exposes no fan-out returns provenance "none" and an empty list rather than a plausible-looking guess.

Envelope — observed fan-out

"evidence": {
  "fanOut": {
    "provenance": "observed",
    "queries": ["best travel mirrorless 2026", …]
  }
}

Related terms

See it in the product

Surface coverage →

Every definition here is enforced in the Envelope contract — run a capture and read the fields yourself.

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