What is query expansion?
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Query expansion: Rewriting or adding to a search query, with synonyms, related terms or corrected spellings, so it finds more of the relevant results.
Query expansion is an old idea in information retrieval. It trades a little precision for more recall: the search catches more of what matters, along with some noise.
AI assistants do a version of it when they turn one question into several searches. That is query fan-out, and ChatGPT's kinds of fan-out query shows what the expanded searches look like.
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See the fan-out for your own prompts
Only Fan Out is a free Chrome side panel that lists the queries, fetched pages and cited pages behind each ChatGPT, Claude or Grok answer. Nothing leaves your browser.
Add to Chrome, it's free