Foundations
Fact Density
How many specific, sourced facts a passage packs per sentence.
Fact density is the amount of specific, verifiable information packed into a passage — named numbers, dates, sources, entities — relative to its length. High fact density reads as authoritative to both humans and models, because every sentence carries something concrete rather than filler.
Models favour dense, sourced passages for the same reason editors do: they are easier to verify and harder to fake. A sentence like 'many companies are invisible to AI' adds nothing an engine can attribute; 'G2's March 2026 survey found 51% of B2B buyers now start research with an AI chatbot' is dense, dated and attributable, so it is far more likely to be lifted.
Raising fact density means replacing vague intensifiers with named figures and sources. It is also the strongest defence against reading like AI-generated filler, which tends to be fluent but fact-thin.
Related terms
Quotable Sentence
A self-contained statement an AI can lift verbatim into an answer and attribute.
Extractability
Whether a passage can be lifted into an AI answer and still stand on its own.
Citation Readiness
How ready a page is to be quoted and attributed inside an AI answer.
Machine-Readable Content
Content encoded so software can parse its meaning, not just display its text.
Answer Engine Optimization
Structuring content so answer engines can return your answer directly.
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