TL;DR — Topic gaps are the highest-leverage opportunities in GEO: areas where competitors are consistently cited but your brand is absent. Go to Overview > Compare > By Topic to find rows where your score is near zero while a competitor scores above 50, then validate the gap across providers in the GEO Matrix. Check Strategy > Content Opportunities with the brand gap filter for prompt-level content briefs. Pro tip: cross-reference topic gaps with Strategy > Google Search Console to determine whether you need to create new content or restructure existing pages to be more AI-citeable.
The Question
“What topics do my competitors own that I don’t appear in?”Owning a topic in AI means that when a user asks about that subject, AI consistently mentions your brand as a relevant answer. Topic gaps — areas where competitors are consistently cited but your brand is not — represent some of the highest-leverage opportunities in GEO strategy. Unlike keyword gaps in SEO, AI topic gaps often stem from missing content, absent citations, or a brand narrative that doesn’t connect your brand to a particular domain of expertise. Identifying these gaps precisely lets you turn competitive intelligence into a prioritized content roadmap. You might also be wondering:
- “Are there entire topic categories where I have zero AI visibility while my competitors appear consistently?”
- “Which specific prompts within a topic are driving my competitor’s dominance?”
- “How do I use this data to decide what content to create next?”
Where to Go in Qwairy
Start here: Overview > Compare > By Topic
Navigate to Overview > Compare, then select the By Topic tab. Choose a competitor (or multiple) and your analysis period.
Focus on the topic gap table — each row is a topic cluster, with columns showing your score and each competitor’s score. Rows where your score is 0 or below 20 while a competitor scores above 50 represent your highest-priority gaps.
Go deeper: Overview > GEO Matrix
Open Overview > GEO Matrix and set the rows to Topics (or prompt-level view). Compare your score cells against a competitor’s overlay. The matrix makes it visually immediate which topic rows are red for you but green for your competitor — these are the topic gaps with the clearest competitive signal.
Use the Funnel filter to segment topic gaps by TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU — gaps at different funnel stages require different content responses.
Go deeper: Strategy > Content Opportunities
Navigate to Strategy > Content Opportunities. This view surfaces the specific prompts and topic areas where your brand is absent but competitors are present. Each opportunity includes a suggested content angle based on the gap detected.
Use the brand gap filter to show only opportunities where a tracked competitor appears and you do not — this gives you a directly competitor-driven content backlog.
Complete the picture: GSC + MCP Integration
Connect Google Search Console via Strategy > Google Search Console to cross-reference topic gaps with organic search performance. A topic where you rank well in Google but have no AI presence is a structural GEO gap — your content exists but isn’t being picked up by AI. This cross-reference helps you prioritize updating existing pages over creating new ones.
Use the Qwairy MCP server to pull topic gap data programmatically for use in content planning workflows or editorial calendars.
What to Look For
Compare > By Topic Tab
The By Topic view breaks down competitive performance at the topic level, giving you a structured map of where you stand versus competitors across different subject areas.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Topic gap score | The numerical difference between your visibility score and a competitor’s score on that topic — larger gaps are higher priority |
| Your score | Your brand’s current AI visibility on this topic — a score below 20 means AI rarely associates your brand with this subject |
| Competitor score | How consistently the competitor is cited on this topic — scores above 60 indicate strong topic ownership |
| Prompt coverage | How many of your monitored prompts touch this topic — a gap on a high-coverage topic has broader impact |
GEO Matrix — Topic Row View
The GEO Matrix gives you the topic gap data in a heatmap format, which is particularly useful when you are comparing gaps across both topics and providers simultaneously.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Red cells on topic rows | Topics where your visibility is critically low — prioritize these for content investment |
| Green cells on competitor overlay | Topics where a competitor’s presence is strong — confirms the opportunity is real and contested |
| Cross-reference with provider columns | Whether a topic gap exists on all providers or only specific ones — provider-specific topic gaps may have different root causes |
Content Opportunities — Brand Gap Filter
The Content Opportunities view translates the topic gap data into actionable content briefs. Each entry shows the prompt, the topic, which competitor appears, and a suggested content angle.Pro Tip: Combine Compare > By Topic gap data with Strategy > Content Opportunities brand gap filter to get both a strategic view (which topics matter most) and a tactical view (which specific pages or articles to create). Use the GSC integration to confirm whether existing pages could be updated rather than new content written.
Filters That Help
| Filter | How to use it for this question |
|---|---|
| Competitor | Focus on a single competitor to map their topic ownership comprehensively — useful for deep competitive research |
| Period | Use a longer period (90 days) to confirm that topic ownership is structural, not a recent spike |
| Funnel stage | Separate TOFU gaps (awareness content needed) from MOFU/BOFU gaps (comparison or decision content needed) |
How to Interpret the Results
Good result
Topic gaps are limited to 2–3 topic clusters that are adjacent to your core positioning — these are expansion opportunities. Your brand already scores above 40 on your primary topic areas, and the competitor advantage on gap topics is under 25 points. The Content Opportunities view surfaces specific, actionable prompts for each gap.Needs attention
A competitor scores above 60 on 5 or more topics where you score below 20. At least one of those topics is central to your positioning (not an adjacent or speculative area). The GEO Matrix shows the gap is consistent across multiple providers, indicating the issue is content-level, not platform-specific. The Content Opportunities view returns more than 20 brand-gap entries — this signals systematic underrepresentation rather than isolated gaps.Example
Scenario: You run an online learning platform focused on professional development courses. Your competitor, Coursera, has recently expanded into corporate upskilling programs, and you want to understand whether they are owning that topic in AI.
- Navigate to Overview > Compare > By Topic. Select Coursera. The topic table shows “corporate upskilling platforms” as a row where Coursera scores 72 and you score 9. The “employee training software” and “enterprise learning management” sub-topics show similar gaps.
- Open the GEO Matrix with topic rows and confirm the gap is present across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — not isolated to one provider.
- Navigate to Strategy > Content Opportunities, apply the brand gap filter. You see 16 prompt-level opportunities across corporate learning topics where Coursera appears and you do not. The top 3 prompts each have high estimated query volume.
- Cross-reference with Strategy > Google Search Console. You rank on page 2 for “best corporate upskilling platform” — the content exists but needs to be restructured to be more AI-citeable (clear program outcomes, ROI data, enterprise case studies). You prioritize updating that page over writing new content.
Go Further
Export topic ownership gaps
Export the list of topics where competitors appear but your brand does not as CSV for content planning
Topic ownership dashboard
Build a topic ownership gap dashboard in Looker Studio using the tag-performance data source
Turn gaps into content briefs
Read the Content Opportunities documentation to learn how to convert topic gaps into actionable content briefs
Related Questions
What content should I create?
Turn topic gap data into a prioritized content roadmap with specific briefs
Queries where my brand is absent?
Find the specific prompts AI answers without mentioning your brand
How do competitors rank vs my brand at each funnel stage?
Add funnel context to your topic gap analysis
Rank in Google, invisible in AI?
Identify topics where you have content but AI still doesn’t cite you