On March 25, 2026, Search Engine Land published a playbook on writing for AI search drawing on a DEJAN AI study covering 7,000 queries. The headline finding: Google Gemini's grounding system allocates an average of just 380 words per page to build its AI Overviews responses. Total context budget per query: roughly 1,900 words, split across multiple sources. Your page is fighting for a tiny slice of a fixed pie.
How the Grounding Budget Works
When Google constructs an AI response (in AI Overviews or Google AI Mode), its retrieval system extracts passages from multiple web pages. This process is called "grounding" — anchoring the response in real sources. But that budget isn't unlimited.
The DEJAN AI study shows Gemini has roughly 1,900 words of grounding context per query, split across 4 to 6 sources on average. Result: each source gets a "chunk" of 300–400 words. If your page is selected, only one dense, relevant passage is read. The rest of your 2,000-word article doesn't exist for the AI.
What this means in practice: writing a 3,000-word article for AI Overviews has no advantage over a 600-word one if the first 380 words of your passage don't directly answer the question. Information density beats length.
Machine-Readable Content: The New Rule
Search Engine Land and researcher Myriam Jessier published concrete recommendations for improving the AI readability of your content. Four criteria Gemini evaluates at the passage level:
- Name entities explicitly — no "it" or "this", use the full name of the tool, product, concept
- Declare the relationship — an active, precise verb between entities (not "is associated with", but "generates", "reduces", "costs")
- Include the condition — the context that makes the statement true (for what company size, on what date, in what language)
- Provide the number — a verifiable data point rather than a marketing claim
Concrete example: "Our solution improves your visibility" is non-extractable by AI. "Cicéro produces 8–12 SEO articles per month for French SMBs, with a readability score ≥ 85/100" is extractable, groundable, citable. This precision is the hallmark of effective SEO copywriting in the AI era.
What This Means for SMBs
For marketing teams and SEO consultants, the 380-word constraint forces an editorial paradigm shift. The classic structure — general intro, long development, conclusion — no longer works if the decisive passage appears in paragraph 7.
Practical implications for your SEO content strategy:
- Place key information in the first 300 words of each H2 section, not the conclusion
- Write each paragraph as if it must be cited independently — without prior context
- Avoid empty openers ("In a world where SEO is evolving…") — every sentence counts
- Structure with lists and data: easier to extract than prose blocks
This logic is exactly what we apply at Cicero in our content production: content optimized for AI search engines isn't just "well written" — it's designed to be extractable, groundable, citable passage by passage.
What to Do Now
If you already have content online, a "grounding-readiness audit" is the priority:
- Identify articles that already rank (positions 3–15) but don't appear in AI Overviews
- For each article, check whether H2 passages contain standalone sentences with entity + relationship + number
- Rewrite section introductions to answer the question directly, without preamble
- Add bullet-point lists with concrete data to sections that lack them
Cicero's take: 380 words per page is the most important constraint to integrate into your 2026 editorial strategy. Not content length, not keyword density, not tags — the density of useful information within each 380-word chunk. It's measurable, actionable, and the time is now. Combine this with a well-structured topic cluster strategy and each page in your cluster becomes an independently-citable grounding source for Gemini. Pair that with solid internal linking to ensure Google can efficiently crawl every optimized page.
Sources
- → Search Engine Land — How to write for AI search: A playbook for machine-readable content (March 25, 2026)
- → DEJAN AI — How Big Are Google's Grounding Chunks? (7,000-query study)
Growth and SEO content strategy specialist, I founded Cicéro to help businesses build lasting organic visibility — on Google and in AI-generated answers. Every piece of content we produce is designed to convert, not just to exist.
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