One prompt can become many searches
An answer engine rarely treats a broad question as one literal keyword. It can decompose the information need into narrower searches for definitions, comparisons, constraints, current facts and primary sources. Those narrower searches are commonly called fan-out queries.
The process improves retrieval coverage, but it also creates a blind spot: publishers can see the final citation or referral while the searches that led to it often remain invisible.
Observed and estimated are not the same
Some assistants expose their web-search tool activity in the interface. Those strings can be recorded as observed queries. When a system does not expose them, another model can estimate plausible alternatives—but those estimates are hypotheses, not evidence of what happened.
Open Queries keeps those two evidence classes separate everywhere: in the extension, API contracts, database and future public datasets.
Why the distinction matters
AEO and GEO work needs a vocabulary for retrieval demand that does not overstate model behavior.
- Observed queries describe a surfaced tool action.
- Estimated fan-outs help explore adjacent retrieval paths.
- Neither score nor repetition is equivalent to traditional search volume.