Should the summary go at the top or the bottom of the page?

Both positions work, but top-of-page summaries have the advantage of being captured within the model's highest-attention zone. If you can only have one, put it at the top. Having both — a TL;DR at the top and a 'Key takeaways' section at the end — is the optimal approach.

What's the ideal length for a TL;DR block?

3–5 bullet points, each under 25 words. The block should be scannable in under 10 seconds and self-contained — a reader who only reads the TL;DR should understand the page's core argument.

Does this apply to product pages, not just articles?

Yes. Product pages benefit from a clear 'What it does' summary block. For product pages, frame it as: 'X does Y for Z type of customer, resulting in W outcome.' This is the claim AI shopping assistants extract when answering product comparison queries.

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Core GEO Signals · Published Mar 31, 2026

Clear Takeaway / Key Summary

An explicit summary section that surfaces the page's conclusion for AI extraction.

TL;DR — AI engines synthesise across multiple sources. A page that buries its conclusion in the final paragraph loses to a page that states it explicitly upfront. A labelled "Key takeaways" block guarantees the conclusion is captured.

Why Clear Takeaways Matter for AI Engines

AI engines synthesise information from multiple sources to produce a single response. When a model reads your page, it's looking for the conclusion — the most citable, highest-confidence claim. Pages that bury their key insights in the middle or end of a long article make the model work harder to extract them.

The Princeton GEO paper (2024) analysed the structural features of pages that appeared most frequently as cited sources. Pages with explicit summary sections — whether labelled "Key takeaways", "TL;DR", or "Summary" — were cited significantly more often than equivalent pages with the same information buried in prose.

The mechanism is attention budget. Language models have a finite context window and assign higher attention weight to content at the beginning of a document (the "lost in the middle" problem is well-documented in AI research). A summary at the top of an article guarantees the conclusion receives maximum attention weight regardless of how much content follows.

How to Implement

Add a "Key takeaways", "TL;DR", or "Summary" section — either at the top (above the article body) or as the first content block
Use a <ul> or <aside> element with 3–5 bullet points
Keep each point under 25 words — concise enough to be reproduced verbatim
The summary should be self-contained: someone reading only the takeaways should understand the page's core argument

Common Mistakes

A vague introduction instead of a concrete summary — "In this article, we'll explore..." is not a takeaway
Burying key claims 3,000 words into the page — models may not reach them, and those that do won't assign them high citation weight
Using "In conclusion..." language without a dedicated block — a <section> or <aside> with a visible label is what triggers reliable extraction