Learn · How agents work
Why do clear headings get your site cited by AI?
An AI assistant does not read your whole website at once. Its search step cuts each page into chunks by heading and scores each chunk against the buyer’s question. Rewrite the headings and first sentences below and watch which passages cross the citation cutoff.
Free lesson, about five minutes. Updated
Fixes applied to the page
- Question headings
- Answer in first sentence
- Named figures and terms
Three chunks on the page (70 needed to be cited)
- A partnership built on trust: “We take security seriously and treat every firm as a long-term partner.”Score 18 of 100 (Below 70 cutoff)
- Tailored investment: “Every engagement is bespoke and scoped around the value we create together.”Score 22 of 100 (Below 70 cutoff)
- The subinternal difference: “Our engineers work alongside your staff to modernize how work gets done.”Score 15 of 100 (Below 70 cutoff)
- Passages cited
- 0 of 3above 70 cutoff
- Average score
- 18 / 100retrieval match
- Page length
- Conciseword count
- Assistant
- Skipped by assistanton this question
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1 PredictWhat happens when a page uses clever slogan headings?
A managing partner asks an AI assistant: “Where does client tax data stay, what does a CPA firm rollout cost, and which accounting systems connect?” Your service page has those answers buried under agency-style headings like “A partnership built on trust” and “Tailored investment”. What does the assistant do?
Pick one first. A guess that turns out wrong teaches the most.
Locked in. Now test it.
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2 TryAdd fluff first, then fix the headings and first sentences
First try Double the word count with intro fluff. Then turn on Question headings, Answer in first sentence, and Named figures and terms.
Word count
Structural fixes
- Passages cited
- 0 of 3
- Average score
- 18 / 100
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3 ObserveWere you right?
Commit to a prediction first.
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4 ExplainWhy does it come out this way?
Before an AI assistant writes an answer, its retrieval engine splits candidate web pages into short chunks around their headings and scores each chunk against the question. The language model only sees the chunks that pass the cutoff.
When a heading says “A partnership built on trust” and the first sentence is throat-clearing, that chunk scores near zero for a question about IRS section 7216 or CCH Axcess connectors. Naming the subject in the heading and answering in the very first sentence puts the question and the facts in the same chunk.
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5 ApplyA new case
Across 316,711 websites audited by clickd, 99.2% of sites with guides had at least one section that did not answer its own heading in the first sentence. If you have one afternoon to improve how ChatGPT and Google’s AI recommend your site, what do you edit first?
Ten new posts with vague headings and slow introductions will score just as poorly per chunk as the pages you already have.
Right. Rewriting the headings on your existing service pages into the questions buyers actually ask, and putting the direct answer with named facts in the first sentence under each heading, immediately lifts those chunks above the retrieval cutoff.
An llms.txt file helps an agent find the right URL, and the page itself still has to pass chunk retrieval once opened. Do the headings and first sentences first.
How chunk scoring works
- Chunking by heading splits a page at each
<h2>and<h3>, attaching the heading to the paragraph right under it. - Retrieval score combines lexical overlap (exact terms like IRS section 7216, CCH Axcess, UltraTax) and semantic similarity between the buyer’s question and the chunk.
- The citation cutoff (70 of 100) represents the top-k threshold: chunks below it are never handed to the model that writes the final answer.
- Test your own site for free with our AI visibility check, or read the full data in Answer the question in its first sentence and How to get recommended by AI.
How agents work
Three lessons on what sits around a model, why agents lose track of long tasks, and how AI search engines score your pages.
- 1What is an agent harness?5 minutes
- 2Why do AI agents forget mid-task?5 minutes
- 3Why do clear headings get your site cited by AI?This lesson