By Milod · 2 September 2026 · 1 min read · Writing

How to structure a page an assistant will quote

Answer-first openings, self-contained sections and claims that survive being lifted out of the page.

Assistants quote passages, not pages. The unit that matters is the paragraph that can stand alone, keep its meaning and be attributed to you. Most writing advice optimises the wrong unit.

Open with the answer

Put the answer in the first two sentences, then earn it back with the detail. Journalists call this the inverted pyramid; the military calls it BLUF, bottom line up front. Both exist because readers, and now extractors, decide early whether to keep going.

Make every section self-contained

A section that begins "as we saw above" cannot be quoted. Repeat the subject instead of referring back to it: "Content decay usually shows up in impressions first" rather than "it usually shows up there first". The repetition reads slightly heavier to a human and makes the passage portable.

Write claims that can be checked

• Name the thing: "Search Console's 28-day comparison", not "your analytics".
• Give the number, and the date it was true.
• State the limit: what the advice doesn't cover is often what makes it credible.

Use headings as questions people ask

Headings phrased as real questions match the way people prompt assistants, and they give the extractor an obvious pairing of question and answer. "How long does a refresh take to show up?" beats "Timelines".

Read each section aloud with nothing before it. If it needs the paragraph above to make sense, rewrite the first line.