Fan-out Extraction

You ask ChatGPT which accounting software a freelancer should use. Before it writes a single sentence, it goes and searches the web. Two searches, sometimes five, each phrased its own way: "best accounting software freelancers France", "accounting app self-employed comparison". It reads what comes back, then writes its answer from that.

If your site is not in what those searches return, you are not in the answer. The question is: what did it search for, and who came back?

What is a fan-out extraction?

A fan-out extraction takes the prompts you choose and records, for each one, the web searches ChatGPT's engine runs to answer it, the results each search returned, and the pages the final answer cites.

That gives you three layers for every prompt:

The queries, in order. The exact phrasing the engine used to search, which is rarely the phrasing of your prompt. That is the vocabulary your content has to match.

The ranked results of each search. Every page each search returned, in its rank, whether the answer ended up citing it or not. This is the pool the answer is written from.

The citations, with their passage. The pages the answer actually links to, and the sentence each one backs.

In every list, your site and your competitors are flagged, so you see at a glance where you stand in the searches that decide the answer.

Why are fan-out queries so useful for GEO?

Because they tell you what to write and where to be present, which is the hard part.

Knowing that ChatGPT does not mention you on a prompt says you have a problem. The fan-out queries say which searches you are missing from, and the results say which pages occupy that space instead: a comparison on a competitor's blog, a directory listing, a forum thread. That is a list of pages to write and places to earn a mention, not a visibility score.

Why is fan-out extraction paid?

ChatGPT no longer shows its search queries on its public interface. The answers Mentionable tracks every day still carry their sources, but not the searches behind them.

To get those searches, Mentionable queries OpenAI's search engine directly, through its API, on the prompts you pick. Every call has a cost, so extractions are launched on demand and charged 5 credits per prompt, only when the engine actually runs a search. A prompt it answers without searching costs nothing.

An extraction is a separate call made when you launch it. It shows what the engine searches for and finds on that question. It is not a replay of a specific answer from your daily tracking.

How does a fan-out extraction work?

Everything starts from the Fan-outs page of your project.

1. New extraction. You open the extraction wizard.
2. Pick your prompts. Search your list and select one prompt, several, or all of them.
3. Check the cost. The recap shows the maximum cost (number of prompts × 5 credits) and the credits you will have left. If you do not have enough, it tells you before anything runs.
4. Launch. The extraction runs in the background, prompt by prompt, and you follow its progress.

Each extraction then stays in the list, with its date, its number of prompts and the credits it used. You can come back to it anytime.

What does an extraction show?

Per prompt: the searches in order, their queries, the ranked results of each one, the pages the engine opened and the pages it cited, with the cited passage.

Across the whole extraction:

• The most present domains, the sites that come back across the most prompts.
• Your presence against your competitors, the share of prompts where your site shows up in the results, next to the share where a competitor does.
• The queries where your site is absent, the most direct list of content to create.

What about fan-outs from daily tracking?

They stay, and they stay free. Claude and Perplexity expose their search queries in the answers Mentionable tracks every day. You find them on each answer in your prompt detail, along with the search results the engine saw.

Paid extractions only cover what the public interfaces no longer show.

Can my own AI launch extractions?

Yes, through the Mentionable MCP server. Three tools cover the whole flow:

• create_fan_out_extraction launches an extraction on a list of prompts. With dryRun, it returns the cost and the credits left without launching anything.
• list_fan_out_extractions lists your extractions and their progress.
• get_fan_out_extraction returns the queries, the ranked results, the citations and the extraction's summary.

Your AI can then cross the queries where you are absent with your pages, and draft what to write. The MCP server is available on Pro and Agency.

Which plans include fan-out extraction?

All of them. Extractions draw on the same credit pool as the rest of Mentionable, on Growth at €79/month (1,500 credits), Pro at €149/month (3,000 credits) and Agency at €299/month (5,000 credits). An extraction of 20 prompts costs at most 100 credits.