How do I write a page an AI assistant can quote?

Answer the question in your first two sentences, put the reader's actual question in the heading, and make each answer complete on its own. Retrieval works on passages, so the unit you are writing is the passage, not the page.

Everything else in this post is a consequence of those three sentences.

Why does the passage matter more than the page?

Because a passage is what gets extracted. When an assistant answers, it pulls the span of text that addresses the question and uses that. The surrounding page is context it may never carry across.

This changes two habits that good writers have for other reasons. Building to a conclusion means the conclusion is at the bottom, where an extracted passage will not include it. And referring back — "as we saw above" — breaks the moment a passage travels alone.

Write so that any single section could be lifted and still make sense to someone who has read nothing else.

What shape should a section take?

The question as the heading, then the answer immediately, then the detail. That shape is not a trick; it is what a reference page has always looked like.

The question-and-answer format is well described. Google Search Central characterises such pages as containing "data in a question and answer format, which is one question followed by its answers." One question, then its answer. If a heading covers three questions, it is three sections.

A practical test on your own draft: read only the heading and the first sentence of each section. If that alone answers the reader, the structure is right. If you have to keep reading to find the answer, move it up.

How long should an answer be?

Long enough to be complete, short enough to be one idea. In practice that is usually two to five sentences before the supporting detail begins.

Short does not mean thin. A page of one-line answers with nothing behind them fails a different test — the reader's. Google Search Central frames the standard as: "People-first content means content that's created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings." A page assembled to be extractable, with nothing worth extracting, is exactly what that sentence rules out.

What else has to be true for the page to be used?

Reachability, and it is the part writers do not control but should still verify. Being well-shaped does not help a page that cannot be fetched or read.

Google Search Central states the entry condition: "To be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, fulfilling the Search technical requirements." Indexed, eligible for a snippet, technically sound. Then the writing matters.

So before a rewrite, check three cheap things: your text is present with JavaScript disabled, the crawlers you care about get a 200, and the page is in your sitemap.

A checklist you can apply to one page in ten minutes

• The heading is the question a reader would type.
• The answer is in the first two sentences.
• No section depends on an earlier one.
• Technical terms are defined the first time they appear.
• Dates are real and visible.
• Nothing important arrives only after JavaScript runs.

What this does not tell you

It does not tell you that a well-shaped page gets quoted. Assistants do not publish what they selected or why, so anyone claiming a causal link is guessing. What these steps do is remove the reasons a page gets passed over. That is worth doing on its own terms, and it is all that can be honestly promised.