Search gap
A search gap is a search AI platforms run while answering your customers' questions that none of your pages answer.
A search gap is a search that AI platforms run while answering your customers' questions, and that none of your pages answer well. The platforms look it up, find other people's pages, and build their answer from those.
It's worth knowing about because the platforms often search for more than the person typed. They break a question into several searches of their own. You might have a great page for the question itself and nothing for the searches around it.
Where it comes from
When someone asks a platform a question, it may run a handful of searches before answering. That's called query fan-out. Some of those searches repeat the question. Others go after details: prices, comparisons, reviews, how-tos.
Each search is a chance for a page to be read. If you have nothing that matches one, that search can only bring your competitors' pages into the answer.
An example
Someone asks ChatGPT "What's a good coffee subscription for an office of 20?" Fernhill Coffee has a strong office subscription page. But the background searches include "how much coffee does an office use per week" and "bean to cup vs filter for offices." Fernhill has no page on either. Kestrel Roasters has a guide to both, so Kestrel's pages are read twice as often, and Kestrel gets named.
Fernhill writes a short guide answering both questions, linked from its office page. Now the platform's searches find Fernhill's pages too.
How to find yours
Look at the searches the platforms actually run for your prompts, where they show them. Group them by subject. For each group, check whether you have a page that answers it plainly. The groups with no match are your gaps, and the busiest ones come first.
In AnswerOrbit
Open an answer in Answers to see the web searches the platform ran before answering, on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot, which show them. The Searches tab in Sources shows how often each platform searched, and how often you were named when it did. In Shopping, Background searches shows the shopping searches ChatGPT ran.