Watch: Grounding Snippet
A short, extractive selection of sentences pulled from a page and supplied to an AI model as the evidence it grounds an answer on; the atomic unit of visibility in AI search.
Transcript
When you ask an AI search engine a question, it doesn't just pull answers out of thin air. It relies on something called a grounding snippet.
A grounding snippet is a short, specific selection of sentences pulled directly from a web page. These sentences are supplied to the AI model as the concrete evidence it must use to ground its answer. If the most relevant information is scattered across a page, those non-contiguous sentences are joined together with ellipses. This creates a familiar chain of text segments separated by dots.
Think of the grounding snippet as the atomic unit of visibility in AI search. It is produced during the grounding phase, right after the search engine processes and expands your initial query. Ultimately, it is the bridge between the raw information on the web and the natural response the AI generates for you.