E22: Structuring Content for AI, GBP Verification Risks, Review Changes

new podcast episode for you <3

March 03, 2026

How do you structure your page in such a way that Google’s AI cites it in its answers?

Dan Petrovic recently did some amazing technical research into Google’s “grounding snippets”, i.e. the sentences it selects from your page to then build its answer to the user’s query.

The grounding process goes something like this:

  1. A user submits a prompt to Gemini, for example.

  2. Google breaks this prompt down into smaller sub-queries and finds web pages relevant to these sub-queries.

  3. Then, Google selects the MOST RELEVANT SENTENCES from those pages.

  4. These sentences turn into the grounding snippets that are fed into the AI model alongside the user’s prompt, so the AI can generate an answer.

One of Dan’s key takeaways from this research is that Google’s system prefers sentences that are both:

  • semantically close to the query

  • and early on the page

What does this mean for you?

Communicate the main idea of your content succinctly in the first paragraph of the page. This will increase the chances of Google using those first sentences as grounding snippets in its AI answers (which in turn will increase your brand’s AI visibility)

Claire and I discuss this topic on today’s episode of the Whitespark Local Update, plus:

  • Google’s Minimum Viable Content Refresh (Steve Toth)

  • Google is Nudging Reviewers to Edit Their Old Reviews (Claudia Tomina)

  • Reviews + The Real World: Learnings From Famed Restaurant Reviewer, Marilyn Hagerty (Miriam Ellis)

  • Updated Privacy Guidelines for Suspension & Reinstatement Requests (Vinay Toshniwal)

  • What Extraction Method Is Google Using to Build Grounding Snippets? (Dan Petrovic)

  • Careful With Google Business Profile Verification Flow (Claudia Tomina)

  • Whitespark’s New Google Business Profile Reinstatement Service 👀

Watch the episode here 👇️

🎧 Or if you prefer listening, find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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