What was read, and what was passed over
Every question you lost is classified by what happened to your pages: retrieved but not cited, read while the answer was being written and passed over, or never retrieved at all. Each state has a different fix, and the audit names which one you are in.
The 3 states
| State | What happened | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Retrieved, not cited | The model fetched your page and chose another source | Make the page answer the question so directly that a model can quote it |
| Read, then passed over | The assistant read your site live while the answer was being written, and the answer cited someone else | Same page, sharper answer. The model found you and still moved on |
| Never retrieved | The model never fetched your page for this search | Depends on which gap you are in (see below) |
Content gap or visibility gap
With semantic scoring on, never-retrieved searches are split into 2 kinds. A content gap means none of your pages closely matches the search: write one that answers it. A visibility gap means a relevant page exists and was not found. The page is hard for machines to reach or not yet trusted, and more writing will not fix it.
Stated plainlyThe read-then-passed-over state needs the Cloudflare or Fastly connector on your site. It is matched to answers by day, not by second, and the screen says so rather than implying more precision than the data carries.
Next: Freshness →
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