The direct answer belongs near the top, right under the relevant heading or question, written as a self-contained statement an AI can lift without surrounding context. The placement is high and standalone. AI systems that summarize and cite pages tend to grab a clear, complete answer they find early and can quote on its own, so the easier you make that, the more likely your page is the one that gets pulled. Burying the answer or scattering it across paragraphs forces the system to assemble meaning from fragments, which it’s less able and less inclined to do.
“Self-contained” is the part people miss. An answer that reads cleanly on the page but only makes sense after three preceding paragraphs isn’t extractable, because lifting it out strips the context it depends on. So state the answer in a way that stands alone: name the subject, give the verdict or number, and make the sentence complete in itself rather than leaning on what came before. Imagine the sentence quoted in isolation; if it still answers the question without help, it’s in the right shape.
Position reinforces this. Placing the answer immediately under the matching heading does two jobs at once: it tells the system this block answers that question, and it puts the answer where extraction logic looks first. You can and should follow it with depth, the reasoning, caveats, and detail, but the lead statement carries the answer, and everything below supports it rather than withholding it. The structure mirrors how a good featured-snippet answer is built, answer first, elaboration after.
Note this is observed and evolving behavior, worth confirming as AI systems change how they read pages, but the direction is consistent enough to act on. The instinct to bury the answer to keep people reading works against you here, and so does assuming placement doesn’t matter for AI. For each question your page answers, put a complete, standalone answer directly under the heading that asks it, then build the supporting detail beneath.