SEO gap
An SEO gap is a technical problem that stops AI platforms reaching, reading or using your pages, like a blocked bot or hidden text.
An SEO gap is a technical or structural problem on your site that stops AI platforms from reaching your pages, reading them, or picking out the parts that answer a question. A bot that's blocked, text that only appears after a script runs, a page that returns an error, or a page with no clear headings are all SEO gaps.
It's usually the first thing to fix. Better content and more press coverage can't help a page the platforms can't read.
The common kinds
Most SEO gaps fall into one of four groups:
- Access: your robots.txt or firewall turns away the AI bots you want
- Errors: pages return errors or time out when bots ask for them
- Hidden text: the words are added by a script, or sit behind a tab, so a bot reading the HTML never sees them
- Structure: no clear title or headings, so it's hard to tell what each part of the page answers
An example
Harrow & Pine wonders why its gift guide is never cited, when a rival's thinner guide is. The guide loads its product list with a script after the page opens. A bot reading the HTML gets the title, one paragraph and nothing else. Harrow & Pine puts the list into the page's HTML, and within a few weeks the guide starts being used for gift questions.
How to find yours
Check your robots.txt against the AI bots you care about. Look at your pages the way a bot does, with scripts turned off. Check your server logs for errors returned to bots. Then compare your page's headings with those of pages the platforms do cite for the same question.
In AnswerOrbit
Website and AI traffic covers most of this. The Audit tab shows which AI bots your robots.txt allows. The Pages tab shows What a person sees next to What a bot reads, with blocks marked Hidden from bots. Bot visits shows which requests failed, once you connect your server logs. Recommendations suggests fixes like letting a blocked AI bot read your site, showing text bots can't see, or fixing pages that return an error to bots.