Extractive vs generative answer
Whether the words were lifted from a page or written fresh. One sentence of checking tells you which, and they behave completely differently.
Checkable · the test is below
What it means
An extractive answer quotes an existing page verbatim, so the words belong to somebody. A generative answer is composed from several sources and the sentences exist nowhere else.
Why it matters for an HVAC company
It changes what winning means. For the extractive kind, the goal is that the quoted passage is yours. For the generative kind, no passage is anyone's and the goal is being named in text that nobody wrote.
What would settle it
Copy a distinctive sentence from the answer and search it in quotes. If it appears on a page, the answer is extractive. If nothing comes back, it was generated.
A worked example
A featured snippet about furnace lifespans is copied and searched: it returns the manufacturer page it came from, word for word. The same query's AI Overview is copied and searched: nothing matches, because those sentences were assembled from four sources and had never existed before.