Definition Sentence Finder

Definition sentences are the highest-value sentences on an informational page, because they are what search engines and AI assistants extract when someone asks what something is. A sentence in the form "X is a Y that does Z" is self-contained: it can be lifted out of the page and still make sense. Sentences that depend on the previous paragraph for their subject cannot be, however well written they are.

That structural property is what makes this worth checking deliberately. Many drafts explain a concept perfectly across three paragraphs without ever stating it in one extractable sentence, which leaves the page competing for the same query with a worse-written article that happened to include a clean definition near the top. Finding whether such a sentence exists — and putting one in if it does not — is usually a bigger ranking improvement than another round of editing.

Pattern matching finds explicit forms and misses implied ones. A definition delivered across two sentences, or introduced by a phrase like "think of it as", will not be detected even though a reader would follow it fine. Use the candidates as a starting inventory rather than a verdict: check that each important concept on the page has at least one, that it appears early enough to be found, and that it is written for someone who does not already know the answer.