As AI-powered search engines continue to rise, more businesses are looking to implement AI-friendly strategies into their content. The latest optimization trend? “Chunk optimization.” Largely unused up until this year, chunk optimization deals with breaking down long pieces of content into smaller pieces, or “chunks”, so that AI language models can better understand the information. As noted by Ahrefs, a data marketing company, in AI pipelines like Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), “chunking” looks like:
- Breaking a document into chunks (small, self-contained sections of text)
- Embedding them as vectors (numerical representations that capture meaning for semantic search)
- Retrieving the most relevant chunks from the vector database to answer a user’s query
Typically, only small sections of these chunks (usually only a sentence) are visible to users.
What Are The Different Types of “Chunk Optimizing” for Your Website’s Content?
- Semantic Chunking: Breaking down pieces of content based on relatedness rather than length.
- HTML Chunking: Uses tags to separate content
- Fixed-size Chunking: Separates text into “token blocks”
- Document-based chunking: Splits up sections based on document structure, such as headers and tables.
- Recursive chunking: Breaks down content using separators (sections, paragraphs, and sentences) in a specific order.
- Late chunking: Embeds the entire content before “chunking” text.
Should You Be “Chunk Optimizing” Your Website’s Content?
Based on a new study from Ahrefs, “chunk optimizing” isn’t worth your time. AI search engines don’t process information the same, forcing users to constantly adapt their “chunking” method. “AI systems will always split, embed, and retrieve your content in ways you can’t predict or control,” the study writes, “and those methods will evolve as engineers optimize for speed and cost.” Rather than “chunking”, the study suggests using the “atomic content workflow” strategy: finding a keyword or a topic, adding a bottom line up front (which puts the most important information at the top); and a final audit to access your content’s clarity, information & length.
Need More Help Optimizing Your Website’s Content for AI-Powered Search Engines? Contact Boston Web Marketing, New England’s Largest Independent Digital Marketing Company, Today!
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