By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
How is chunk extractability scored?
Chunk extractability is worth 10 of 100 points, 10 of the 60 in the Selected lever, which asks “Is there a passage worth quoting?” The engine scores it with these rules:
- Up to 5 points for paragraph length: a median paragraph of 60 words or fewer earns full marks, up to 100 earns 3, longer earns 1.
- Up to 5 points for liftable paragraphs: 15 to 60 words that do not open with a bare pronoun or connective such as “This”, “It”, “However” or “Therefore”.
- “This approach” and “These tools” are allowed, because a pronoun followed by a noun names its own subject.
- Paragraphs under 5 words are treated as captions and ignored; paragraphs over 100 words are counted in the fix text.
What does a pass and a fail look like?
| Verdict | Example |
|---|---|
| Pass | “Cold brew coffee has about 70% less acidity than hot-brewed coffee, because the lower temperature extracts fewer acidic compounds.” Quoted alone, the sentence still says what it is about. |
| Fail | “This means the opposite is also true.” Quoted alone, nobody can tell what “this” or “the opposite” refers to, so an engine has nothing it can attribute. |
How do you fix chunk extractability?
In the order worth doing it:
- Split paragraphs over 100 words at the point where they change subject.
- Replace an opening “This”, “It” or “However” with the noun it refers to.
- Make sure each paragraph names its subject at least once, even if the previous paragraph already did.
- Keep the paragraphs you most want quoted between 15 and 60 words.
A scan reports the evidence behind the verdict, such as the sections, paragraphs or tokens that failed, and the fix prompt hands the same evidence to a coding agent so it can make the change for you.
Related checks in the Selected lever
- What is answer-first writing? — 13 points
- Do headings matter for AI search? — 9 points
- Does formatting change whether AI quotes your page? — 9 points
- Why do AI engines prefer pages with numbers in them? — 8 points
- Does an FAQ section help you get cited? — 7 points
- Which schema types help with AI citation? — 4 points
Frequently asked questions
How long should a paragraph be for AI search?
Between 15 and 60 words for the passages you want quoted, and a median of 60 or fewer across the page. Long paragraphs are not penalised individually, but they are hard to lift whole.
Why does a pronoun at the start of a paragraph matter?
Retrieval systems store passages, not pages. A passage that opens with “It” or “This” loses its subject the moment it is stored, and an answer built from it would have to guess what it was about.