Fan-out means you are rarely competing for one keyword. You are competing to be the best source across a whole neighborhood of related sub-questions the engine generates on its own. The effect is measurable: only 38% of AI Overview citations ranked in Google's top 10 for the same query in March 2026, down from 76% in July 2025, a drop Ahrefs ties partly to sources pulled from related fan-out queries.
The practical response is topical coverage: answer the adjacent questions around your main topic so you can be retrieved on the sub-queries, not just the headline one.