Citation Gap Documentation

User documentation for Citation Gap, including how to use it for: on-page GEO/AEO analysis that compares your page against competitors. Free while in beta.

Citation Gap is a Model Context Protocol connector, available for Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP compatible assistants, that analyses any web page for on-page Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), also called answer engine optimization, or (AEO) and tells you what changes can be made to double the chance of that page being cited by LLMs ahead of its competitors.

Free while in beta

Citation Gap is free to use while it is in beta. No card, no trial clock, no limits beyond fair use.

It will not stay free forever. Running a report renders live pages in a real browser, and that costs money. When paid plans arrive, single-page checks will stay free, and the competitive reports will be the paid part. Everyone who signed up during the beta keeps a monthly allowance of those reports at no cost.

Citation Gap welcomes feedback and suggestions from users. If you have a feature request, a bug to report, or if you just want to tell me that it's cool, you can contact me here: [email protected].

What it does

Give Citation Gap a target page and the query you want to be cited for, add a few competitor URLs, and it:

• fetches and renders the live target page and live competitor pages that are not bot protected
• scores its on-page GEO signals (structure, schema, answer-ready content, trust signals, crawlability)
• measures the target page against the competitor pages you supply
• returns a report with paste-ready fixes a shareable link and a PDF to download

Citation Gap is not a simple best practice checklist that tells you what a good page looks like; Citation Gap tells you what the pages already being cited for your query are doing that yours is not. This is based on the competitors that you share and it is based on a regular external analysis across 12 industries that is used to update the Citation Gap algorithm. As LLM ranking factors evolve, Citation Gap keeps evolving with them.

Add it to your favorite LLM Claude or ChatGPT

https://citationgap.johnlawson.dev/mcp

In Claude: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → name it Citation Gap → paste the URL → Connect → sign in with Google.

In ChatGPT: Settings → Connectors (turn on Developer mode under the advanced settings if needed) → Add custom connector → name it Citation Gap → paste the URL → Connect → sign in with Google.

It also works anywhere else that supports remote MCP servers, using the same URL.

Example prompts

• Guided run: Run Citation Gap: it will ask for what it needs, one question at a time.
• Complete GEO report: Run a complete Citation Gap report for https://example.com targeting "your query", comparing against https://competitor-a.com and https://competitor-b.com, run it end to end, then show me the report.
• Technical & on-page audit: Run a Citation Gap technical analysis of https://example.com and list the on-page issues with paste-ready fixes.
• AI answer-engine readiness: Is https://example.com ready to be cited by AI answers?
• Structured data & EntityMap: What structured data should https://example.com have?
• Winning-page blueprint: What page would I need to build to get cited for "your query"? Here are the pages already cited: https://competitor-a.com, https://competitor-b.com.
• Your report history: Show my past Citation Gap reports, with links.

The reports

• Complete GEO report: the full report for a page, benchmarked against competitor pages you supply for a target query: information gain (concepts those competitors cover that your page doesn't, plus net-new ideas), on-page/technical and answer-engine issues, structured-data gaps, and a prioritised action plan with paste-ready fixes and an evidence appendix.
• Technical & on-page audit: the on-page and technical issues holding a single page back (indexability, titles/meta, headings, schema validity, links, mobile, security headers, crawlability), each with a paste-ready fix, plus an overall optimisation score.
• AI answer-engine readiness: whether AI answer engines can quote and cite a single page: direct-answer opening, question headings, FAQ depth, statistics and citations, author and freshness signals, and whether AI crawlers are allowed to read it.
• Structured data & EntityMap: a single page's structured data reviewed for AI engines: which schema.org/JSON-LD types are present, missing or invalid, Organization/Author entity signals, and EntityMap coverage, with ready to paste markup.
• Winning-page blueprint: a build-spec for the page you'd need to win the query, reverse engineered from the competitor pages that you supply.

Data handling

Citation Gap uses the page URL, query and competitor URLs you provide to run the analysis. It signs you in with Google (name and email) so your reports and free allowance stay tied to your account. But it does not store your name or email. Your account is identified by a pseudonymous, one-way key derived from your Google account, and the name and email from your sign in are held only for the session and removed when you disconnect. You can erase everything tied to your account at any time by asking your LLM to "delete my Citation Gap data". Citation Gap does not read your conversation with your LLM, your files, or your Google data. See the Privacy Policy.