The AI visibility funnel: how engines choose sources

AI engines move through four stages when generating an answer: retrieved, filtered, trusted, and selected. Most fintech companies fall out at the filter stage, before trust and selection are ever evaluated.

Retrieved

AI engines first retrieve candidate sources from index, knowledge graph, and live search. Indexability and topical authority decide eligibility here.

Filtered

Candidates are filtered by structure, freshness, and clarity. Most fintech content fails at this stage.

Trusted and selected

Surviving sources are scored on trust signals and citation patterns. The selected sources appear in the answer.