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Howdy Notebooker!
Ever wonder if your AEO efforts are on the right track?
Well, Microsoft just confirmed them.
In an official post, they laid out exactly how Copilot and other AI assistants evaluate and select content and it lines up perfectly with what we’ve been doing:
Today’s note breaks it all down into an AI visibility checklist, straight from the company that backed Open AI.
Let’s get into it!
When Microsoft talks about how AI chooses content, it’s worth listening.
In an official post titled “Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers” (Oct 8, 2025), the company that backed Open AI lays out how content gets parsed, scored, and surfaced inside their AI ecosystem.
Now yes, I'm usually pretty skeptical about listening to the giants giving advice about their own platforms, but in this case, the article affirms some solid fundamentals.
AI search isn’t ranking pages anymore, it’s ranking pieces of content aka passages (Google does it too).