Gap analysis
Gap analysis shows where AI answers leave your brand out. It lists the websites and pages that AI answers rely on without naming your brand, ranked by how much AI relies on them, and shows which competitors are named there instead.
You find it in the sidebar, in the Sources group. It uses no AI credits and is available on every active plan.
Why Gap analysis matters
AI answers are built from a small number of sources. When a review site, a best tools article or a forum thread keeps getting used and names your competitors but not you, your brand is left out every time that source is used.
Most teams only see a visibility score, not the pages behind it. Gap analysis ranks those pages by how often they are used, so the effort goes where it counts: getting listed on the review site, getting into the comparison article, or joining the thread.
Two questions it answers
- Which websites and pages do AI answers rely on without naming my brand? The Domains and URLs tabs answer this.
- For which of my tracked questions does an AI answer name another brand and not mine? The Prompts tab answers this. See Gap analysis: the Prompts tab and Gaps closed.
Every number comes from the AI answers LiveMentions has already saved for your project, in the date range and models chosen on the page. Nothing is estimated and no search volume is invented.
The gap score
The gap score is the number of times a source was used where the page does not name your brand. A website or page with a high gap score is one that AI keeps relying on without you in it.
The table shows the parts: Uses, and the share of those uses where the page names your brand.
The Mentions column
LiveMentions reads the text of the pages the answers used, only public pages, and looks for your brand and your tracked competitors by name or by website address. For each page the result is one of these:
- The names found on the page.
- Could not read. The page blocked the reader, was not a normal web page or was too slow. Such a page never counts as a gap.
- Not read yet. The page has not been read yet. Reading happens in the background after you open the page, so the column fills in over a few minutes.
Only the result is kept, never the text of the page. Mentions is a text match, not a judgement of sentiment, and the page says so.
Competitor names appear only when your project tracks competitors. With none tracked, the page asks you to track some. The competitor gap is the number of uses multiplied by the number of tracked competitors named on a page that does not name your brand.
Your own website is left out of the gap lists, because it is not a gap, and is counted as Your website cited. A website that belongs to one of your tracked competitors is labelled Competitor.
The Domains and URLs tabs
The Domains tab lists websites. The URLs tab lists individual pages. Both tabs have the same filters and columns, and the tab you are on stays in the address, so a refresh or a shared link opens the same tab.
- The summary strip shows Answers analysed, Source uses, Your brand named and Your website cited.
- The filters are Models, Date range, Website type, Page type on the URLs tab, Competitors named and a search box.
- The table shows the website or page, its type, Mentions, Uses, share of answers, Brand named, Gap score, Competitor gap and when it was last used. Click a column to sort. On a phone or tablet the table becomes cards with the same numbers.
Website types are Competitor, Corporate, Commercial, News, Community, Social, Editorial, Academic, Government and Technical. Page types are Blog article, Website page, Directory, Community thread, News, Listicle, Research, Documentation, Social post and Video.
The Competitors named filter shows websites and pages that name one, two or three or more of your tracked competitors on a page that does not name you.
How to read this opens the plain-words explanation of the gap score and Mentions.
The website panel
Click any row to open a panel with the website's type and numbers, Uses over time, Pages used with who is named on each page and a link that opens the page in a new tab, Kinds of pages, and Questions it helped answer. For reddit.com the pages are the threads. The panel also has a button, Open Optimize to act on gaps.
Use cases
- Build an outreach list. Open Domains, sort by gap score, filter to Editorial and work down the list.
- Find the comparison pages. Open URLs, filter Page type to Listicle and see which best of pages AI uses without naming you.
- See who is named instead. Filter Competitors named to two or more to find pages that name several competitors and not you.
- Report to a client or boss. Use Export gap analysis for CSV, XLSX or JSON, or the PDF report, which has a Gaps section.
Ask your AI assistant
If you have connected an AI tool through MCP, it can read the same numbers with the get_gap_analysis tool, for example Which websites leave my brand out of AI answers? See Connecting AI tools via MCP.
What Gap analysis does not claim
- It shows where you are not named, as a count of saved answers. It does not say why an AI chose a source, and it never forecasts.
- It does not show search volume or how many people asked a question.
- It cannot read pages that block readers. Those say Could not read.