May 09,2026 
This past month, Hoverboard AI analyzed over 1 million query fan-outs across ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Grok. Tracking query fan-outs can be incredibly helpful to the AEO/GEO process, and if you’re wanting to improve your brand’s visibility, it’s something you should be paying attention to and optimizing for. While the answer engines intentionally make fan-outs hidden to users on their app, Hoverboard AI makes these valuable sub-queries visible to you.
What are fan-outs and why are they important to answer engine optimization?
Answer engines in 2026 rarely rely on the original user query alone or their original training data to provide answers to users. Instead, they run sub-queries (fan-outs) so they can provide better, more informed answers.
When a person asks an answer engine a question (ex. “Can you recommend a great restaurant in Copenhagen?“), it often runs additional sub-queries before answering (ex: “best restaurants Copenhagen Reddit”, “top restaurants in Copenhagen 2025″, “Michelin rated restaurants Copenhagen”, etc.). Depending on the complexity of the question or prompt, the answer engine may take in many pieces of information before it gives an answer. It may be looking at Google Maps results, Google organic search results, Yelp reviews, Google reviews, Reddit threads, etc. and then synthesizing the data before providing an answer back to the user.
Based in our study findings and analyzing over 1M (1,002,472) queries from ChatGPT, Google Gemini and xAi’s Grok, these were the top 10 adjectives used:
- Best
- Top
- Rated
- Reviewed
- New
- Better
- High-rated
- Good
- Leading
- Recommended
A few patterns stood out:
- 29%+ of the fan-outs included the word “best”
- Nearly 25% included the word “top”
- Around 13% included the word “rated”
The Importance of Third-Party Signals Tied to Fan-Outs
Yes, optimizing for fan-outs is important but in reality this is just part of the entire game. While the information you put on your own website may impact an answer engine, it’s often the third-party signals that have the most impact on the response it generates. Especially for highly competitive prompts or phrases. This is highly evident based on the most common fan-out adjectives we analyzed. With 54% of fan-outs including words like “best” or “top,” it’s clear that answer engines are not just looking for your brand’s own claims. They are looking for external sources that validate whether your brand deserves to be included, recommended, or ranked among the best options.
The reality is that answer engine responses are often shaped by consensus. If multiple third-party sources say your brand is one of the best, top rated, trusted, popular, or highly recommended options, answer engines are more likely to believe that and recommend your brand.
As of now, even lower-quality listicles and directory pages can (and do) influence LLM recommendations. Right now the answer engines do not evaluate a domain’s authority or trust levels in the same way Google does in traditional organic search. This includes Google Gemini, as we’ve observed low quality “Best of” type articles on low quality sites that can impact a brands visibility on Gemini and AI Overviews.
That means brands need to pay attention to the entire ecosystem of sources that may influence recommendations.
Here’s How to Improve Your Visibility on Answer Engines
1. Identify Common Fan-Out Queries
Start by finding the sub-queries answer engines use for the prompts where you want visibility.
Look for patterns like:
- Best [category]
- Top [category]
- Highest rated [category]
- [Brand] vs [competitor]
- Best [category] for [use case]
- [Category] reviews
- [Category] Reddit recommendations
These fan-outs often reveal what the answer engine is trying to validate before it recommends a brand.
2. Create Content That Answers Those Sub-Queries
Once you know the fan-outs, create content that directly answers them. Examples:
- Best-of pages
- Comparison pages
- Listicles
- Case studies
- Data studies
- Review-based content
- Use-case pages
- Industry guides
- Competitor comparison pages
Content like this shouldn’t just exist on your site, this includes third-party sites as well when possible. Just remember to write for both humans and answer engines. Conversion rate optimization is still important to consider. I know there are a lot of people telling you to write in a specific style, (we’ve done so ourselves in our atomic answers article) but the reality is answer engines are very good at parsing content. You do not need to over-engineer every page “for the machine”.
One more comment on content – don’t overdo it with AI generated content, as this still has the potential to lower your trust with Google. When that happens, you lose both organic Google rankings and brand visibility on the answer engines that rely on Google organic results.
3. Strengthen Third-Party Signals
I can’t stress this enough…work on your third-party signals if you want to have better visibility on answer engines. This includes:
- Review sites
- Maps and listings
- Industry directories
- Third-party databases
- News articles
- Forums
- Comparison pages
- Best-of articles
- Award pages
- Niche authority sites
- Reddit threads
- Media mentions
Reviews are extremely important and yes, it’s often hard to get reviews. But if you want better visibility on answer engines, reviews are a huge part of how they determine who “best” is. Keep in mind, if third-party sources consistently mention your competitors but not your brand, that is a visibility gap. That’s the reason they are being mentioned and you are not.
4. Track Visibility Across Fan-Outs
You need to track where your brand appears across both answer engine responses and on Google search results for fan-out queries. FYI, that first page of Google organic search results is heavily used by ChatGPT and has a lot of influence over the recommendations it makes.
This helps you understand which sub-queries are helping you, which ones are hurting you, and where competitors are showing up instead of you.
5. Find Citation Gaps
Citation gaps are places where competitors appear but your brand does not. Examples include:
- A competitor is listed in a “best tools” article, but you are not.
- A competitor is mentioned in a Reddit thread, but you are not.
- A competitor appears in an authority directory, but you are missing.
- A competitor has reviews on a platform that answer engines cite, but you have no presence there.
- A competitor is included in comparison content, but your brand is not part of the conversation.
Once you identify those gaps, you can decide where outreach, PR, review generation, partnerships, or directory submissions are worth pursuing. Identifying citation gaps is made easy with Hoverboard.
How Hoverboard Helps Brands Win
Hoverboard AI helps brands track and improve answer engine visibility by showing:
- Which fan-outs are being used
- Where your brand appears on the answer engines that matter most
- Who your top competitors are and how they are appearing across each model
- Which sources are being cited (with ability to filter by each model so you know which sources matter most to each answer engine)
- Identifies the most important third-party sources
- Which citations your competitors have that you are missing
- Helps you create articles/content for your website (although we still encourage human editing)
- Gives you specific recommendations and actions to take to improve your visiblity