Why it replaced ranking
Ranking assumes you are on the page at all. It asks whether you came first, third, or landed on page two. The citation gap asks the harder question: when the model assembled its shortlist, did your name appear in it.
Every category has a set of questions that precede a purchase. Best tool for this. Alternatives to that. How do I solve this specific problem. Buyers used to type those into Google, and a growing share now type them into an AI and read the answer it composes.
How to size yours
You can measure it in an afternoon. Write down the ten questions a buyer asks before they find you. Ask each one to ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. Count how many name you, and where in the answer they do it.
The share that leave you out is your citation gap. Closing it means publishing the specific claim that answers each question, earning mentions in the third-party sources models trust, and doing it across engines rather than one.
The argument behind the term: The citation gap →
Related terms: Native Organic Distribution · Distribution debt · Ghost citation · Answer laundering