The Recommendation Gap

Which businesses appear when buyers ask for a recommendation—and what public evidence supports the answer?

This research program compares a fixed set of buyer-style prompts, visible businesses, repeated sources, and public trust signals in one market at one point in time.

Publication state: protocol available · first market benchmark evidence pending

Current state

The protocol is public. No unfinished benchmark is presented as a result.

A dated market report appears only after the prompt set, tested surfaces, business sample, captured evidence, findings, and limitations pass review. Until then, this page explains the test rather than implying an outcome.

Report contract

Every published benchmark must make these fields inspectable.

Scope

One named market, one industry, one test window, and a defined business sample.

Prompt set

A fixed set of buyer questions covering discovery, comparison, trust, location, and decision intent.

Observed surfaces

The search and AI surfaces tested in the same window, with important interface limits recorded.

Evidence

Who appeared, which sources were cited or repeated, and which public business facts were easy or difficult to verify.

Interpretation

Patterns and practical gaps separated from facts, author opinion, and unsupported causal claims.

Limits

Sampling limits, personalization risk, volatility, missing data, and what the test cannot prove.

Method

A repeatable six-step market test.

  1. Define the market, industry, business sample, and test window.

  2. Freeze the buyer-prompt set before collecting observations.

  3. Run the same prompts across the declared public surfaces.

  4. Record appearances, competitors, cited sources, and visible trust signals.

  5. Compare the public evidence without treating correlation as causation.

  6. Publish the dataset boundary, findings, limitations, and next questions together.

Apply the Research

A market benchmark cannot diagnose one business by itself.

If you need a business-specific first read, the Free Snapshot checks your public website, market, competitors, and clearest visible gap.