How it works internally
Three steps: searching for relevant documents, extracting suitable fragments from them, generating an answer based on these fragments. The model works not with the entire page, but with an extracted piece of text.
What this means in practice
Neither the entire website nor the entire article is cited, but a specific paragraph. If the answer to a question is spread across three screens and cluttered with filler words, there is nothing to extract from it. Therefore, in GEO, the winning structure is «question – direct answer of 40-80 words – details below».
Why a website owner needs to know this
RAG explains why a model might cite you without a link and why a page might not grow in traffic, but still build brand awareness. And why without page indexing in regular search, the mechanic does not trigger at all: the model will search in the same place as the search engine.