Kevin Indig in his Substack, Growth Memo, analysed how AI models are reading our websites in a piece title The science of how AI pays attention. His verdict?
AI is a busy editor, not a patient student
Which sections of a text are most likely to be cited by ChatGPT?
44.2% of all citations come from the first 30% of text (the intro). The AI reads like a journalist. It grabs the “Who, What, Where” from the top. If your key insight is in the intro, the chances it gets cited are high.
31.1% of citations come from the 30-70% of a text (the middle). If you bury your key product features in paragraph 12 of a 20-paragraph post, the AI is 2.5x less likely to cite it.
24.7% of citations come from the last third of an article (the conclusion). It proves the AI does wake up at the end (much like humans). It skips the actual footer (see the 90-100% drop-off), but it loves the “Summary” or “Conclusion” section right before the footer.
Possible explanations for the ski ramp pattern are training and efficiency:
- LLMs are trained on journalism and academic papers, which follow the “BLUF” (Bottom Line Up Front) structure. The model learns that the most “weighted” information is always at the top.
- While modern models can read up to 1 million tokens for a single interaction (~700-800K words), they aim to establish the frame as fast as possible, then interpret everything else through that frame.