ChatGPT runs 12 hidden searches before it picks a vendor for your customer

What ChatGPT actually does when a customer asks for a vendor

When a customer asks ChatGPT for a vendor recommendation, the AI rarely runs the literal question. It breaks the prompt into eight to fifteen smaller background searches, then stitches the answers into one reply. The mechanism has a name: the fan-out, because the AI takes one question and fans it out into a dozen related queries the customer never typed.

The words the AI silently slots into those hidden searches read like industry jargon rather than the way a customer would phrase a question out loud. The seven most common additions are best, top, comparison, reviews, tools, software, and features. A customer types "HVAC contractor in my area" into ChatGPT. The AI runs "best HVAC contractor 2026" and "top HVAC reviews" and "HVAC for older homes built before 1980." Then it counts whose name shows up most often across the dozen hidden searches and names the winner in the reply.

Those words come from a Peec AI study published in April 2026 (Peec AI, patterns we see in ChatGPT query fan-outs). Peec tracked 5 million fan-outs across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok between April 1 and April 21. The seven words above are the most common ones the AI silently adds. The same hidden words show up whether the customer asked about a dentist, a roofer, an in-home care agency, or a law firm.

Why a page-one Google ranking no longer gets you cited

Last year, a page-one Google ranking pulled AI citations along with it. That connection has weakened a lot in the past seven months.

Ahrefs ran a study in February 2026 across 863,000 keywords. They checked how often a page cited in Google AI Overviews also showed up in the top 10 organic Google results for the same query. The share was 38 percent. Seven months earlier the share was 76 percent. The drop is roughly half in a little over half a year, and the trend is going the same way for ChatGPT and Perplexity citations too.

These hidden searches are why you stopped showing up. Google's old ranking system was built to answer one question per search. The new AI answer is built from a dozen hidden searches stitched together. Your services page may rank first for "HVAC contractor in town," but if it never shows up for "best HVAC contractor for older homes" or "HVAC reviews 2026," the AI counts you in only one of the dozen hidden searches it ran. The shop down the street that wrote a page called "Best HVAC Contractors for Older Homes Built Before 1980" picks up three or four citations across the same set.

Here is the bottom line. Ranking high on Google for your category phrase used to do both jobs at once. Today, getting cited by ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews for the same customer is a different job. The page that wins the first does not always win the second.

The Monday move I'd run if I were you

The hidden-search problem is fixable in a week or two on most service-business sites. The work fits inside one weekend.

Pull up your three highest-revenue service pages. For each page, ask whether it answers these four customer phrasings:

1. Best [my service] near me.
2. Top-rated [my service] for [my main customer type].
3. [My service] reviews [this year].
4. [My service] comparison [this year].

A page missing those phrasings in plain text is leaving the hidden search to a competitor. The fix is to add a short section that uses the customer-language phrase as a heading and gives a clear answer below it. A dental practice page titled "Family Dentistry" can add a heading called "Best Dentist for Crowns Under $1,200" with a one-paragraph answer below it. An HVAC site can add a heading called "Best HVAC Contractor for Older Homes" with the same kind of plain answer.

Each section is one more hidden search you can win. A page that answers all four customer phrasings can pick up citations across four of the dozen hidden searches the AI is running, while a page that only targets the plain category phrase keeps showing up in just one.

A second Peec AI analysis of 20 million fan-outs has another piece of news here. The average word count per hidden ChatGPT search has roughly doubled since last fall, from about six words in October 2025 to about twelve by January 2026. The hidden searches keep getting longer and more specific. A short page that targets "HVAC contractor" can't match a twelve-word question like "best HVAC contractor for older homes built before 1980 with good reviews in 2026," which means each service page now needs to read like a full sentence a customer would actually type into a search box.

How you tell if the new pages are working

In the service-business audits I've walked through over the past quarter, the ones that add three to five customer-language sections to their top service pages tend to show up in three to five of the dozen hidden searches a quarter later. Their competitors who skip the work stay at one. The gain comes from each section answering a full customer question in plain English. No new tool needed and no paid ad spend in the mix.

McKinsey researchers found that AI assistants run between eight and fifteen background searches on average for complex questions, with Google AI Mode firing about nine to eleven of them and ChatGPT running closer to two to three on simple questions. Think of a simple question as "what time does my pharmacy close," and a complex one as "which dentist should I take my father to." The complex questions are where the bookings come from, and those are the ones with the longest fan-outs.

Customers don't know the AI is running these extra searches behind the scenes. They see one reply. You get recommended in that reply because of pages your customer might never click into, but the AI counted them when it picked which name to put in the answer.

Service-business owners sometimes hear fan-out and assume it means a fancy SEO problem. The work is plainer than that. Write answers to the questions customers actually ask, in the language customers use. The same instinct that gets a phone call returned on a Sunday gets your name into a ChatGPT reply on Monday.

Common questions about ChatGPT fan-outs

What is a fan-out in ChatGPT and why should I care?

A fan-out is the set of hidden background searches ChatGPT runs each time a customer asks it a question. The AI breaks one customer question into eight to fifteen smaller searches, adds words like best and reviews, and then stitches the answers together. Your business has to show up in more than one of those hidden searches to get named in the reply.

How do I find out which hidden searches ChatGPT is running for my category?

Type your service into ChatGPT with the word best in front. Then type it with reviews after. Then with for older homes or for new patients after. Read each answer and write down whose names come up. Each phrasing shows you a different hidden search the AI is running.

Will ranking on page one of Google still help me get cited by AI?

It helps, but the link is weaker than it was last year. Ahrefs found that only 38 percent of pages cited in Google AI Overviews now rank top 10 for the same query. That share was 76 percent seven months earlier. Ranking on Google and getting cited in ChatGPT are now two different things to work on.

How long does it take to add a best-of page or a reviews page to my site?

A web person can ship a new service page in a day or two. Writing the answers to the eight or ten customer phrasings takes a few hours of the owner's time. Most service businesses see new AI citations come in within two to four weeks of the page going live.

Do I need to pay an SEO agency to chase fan-out queries?

No. The work is mostly writing customer-language answers in plain text on your own service pages. Most SMB owners can do it themselves once they see which phrasings they are missing. A free audit can show you which phrasings are missing so you can write the new sections yourself.