Query Decomposition
In one line
Query decomposition is the technique of breaking a complex question into smaller, easier sub-questions — a building block used widely across AI search and LLM reasoning.
Going deeper
Query decomposition is the general technique of breaking a hard question into a set of smaller, more answerable ones. It is closely related to query fan-out — fan-out emphasises running the searches in parallel, decomposition emphasises the reasoning step that produces the sub-questions in the first place.
The marketing implication is similar. A big user prompt is split into smaller questions inside the model, and citations are gathered for each one. Pages that also answer the satellite questions — comparison, pricing, onboarding, limitations — tend to be cited more often than a single 'big' page on the same topic.
Because the mechanism is invisible to users, a lot of this remains inferred. The content strategy implication is straightforward, though: 'one big topic, one huge page' loses to 'one big topic plus a cluster of pages that each cleanly answer a sub-question'.
Related terms
Query Fan-Out
Query fan-out is the mechanism where an AI search engine expands a single user query into multiple sub-queries, runs them in parallel, then composes a single answer from the combined results.
GEO·AEOQuery Rewriting
Query rewriting is the step where the search system rephrases a user's prompt into a form better suited for retrieval — typically the first stage of an AI search pipeline.
LLMRAG
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) lets an LLM fetch external documents at answer time and ground its response in them — the technique behind ChatGPT Search, Perplexity and most AI search products.
GEO·AEOAnswer Coverage
Answer coverage is the percentage of a defined target prompt set in which your brand shows up at least once inside the AI answer.
GEO·AEOGEO
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content and data so that a brand gets cited and recommended inside generative AI search answers like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.