Definition
The retrieval candidate pool is the set of documents a model pulls in before composing an answer. Most of them do not end up being used, and most are never shown to the user.
Why it matters
Being in the pool is not being cited. Reporting pool membership as "citations" is the single most common way GEO results get overstated — it can inflate the figure by a factor of two to four.
Related terms
Concepts that only make sense together
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