Content gap
A content gap is a subject your customers ask about, and your competitors cover, that your own website says nothing useful about.
A content gap is a subject your customers ask about, and your competitors cover, that your own website says nothing useful about. If people ask AI platforms about office coffee, your competitors have pages on it, and you don't, that's a content gap.
Gaps matter in AI search because the platforms answer from pages. With no page of yours on a subject, there's little reason for them to bring you up when it's asked about.
Three kinds of gap
The plainest kind is a missing page. You sell office subscriptions and have no page about them.
The second is a thin page. The page exists but says little: a headline, a photo and a "contact us" button. A platform looking for prices, delivery areas or who it suits finds nothing to use.
The third is a page that doesn't answer the question. It's about the right subject but written around what you want to say, and the answer people want is buried or missing.
For example, Kestrel Roasters has a page called "Coffee for business." It's mostly about Kestrel's history. Answers to "how much does office coffee cost per person?" cite a competitor's pricing guide instead. Kestrel has a page on the subject, with no answer in it.
Content gaps and source gaps
A content gap is on your own site. A source gap is on someone else's: a review site or article that names your competitors and leaves you out. Both keep you out of answers, and they're fixed in different ways.
Finding gaps systematically, across all your topics, is content gap analysis.
In AnswerOrbit
Recommendations suggests creating a page on a topic, or improving a page for a prompt, when your answers show the need, with the answers and pages behind it. Page checks run eight checks on your page and the same checks on up to five pages the platforms cite for that prompt, so you can see where yours falls short.