Giant guide pages can blur the topic. Ai answers may favour pages with a clearer job and a stronger match to the query.
The joke about marketing design was always “make the logo bigger”. Similarly, for years now, a lot of SEO advice has been in one direction: make the page bigger. If a page can answer ten related questions, surely it has more chances to rank than a page that answers one?
But Ai answers may not work quite like that. Research reported by Kevin Indig in Search Engine Journal looked at a large set of query-page pairs to understand which pages ChatGPT was more likely to cite. The conclusion was not that longer pages always win. Focused pages, closely matched to the query, appear to be more reliable performers.
Make it about the answer
A page about “how to choose a blue widget for food processing equipment” may be more useful to an Ai answer than a giant guide to every type of industrial widget if the specific question being asked is about food processing. The broad guide may contain the answer somewhere. But the focused page is clearly about the answer.
The better approach seems to be to give important topics their own clear home. One page should have one main job. It should answer one main question, serve one clear audience, or explain one specific use case. It can still be substantial. It can still have structure. But the structure should support the topic, not dilute it. We may need more pages that say: this is the best answer to this specific question.
That does not mean creating thin content. A focused page still needs evidence and examples. But every part should earn its place by helping the page do its job. If a section belongs to a different question, perhaps it belongs on a different page.
Ai search is still developing, and nobody should pretend there is a neat formula. But the direction is useful. A page that tries to be about everything often ends up being the best answer to nothing.