Consensus Gap
The distance between what an organisation says about itself and what the rest of the web says about it. Where the gap is wide, AI systems follow the web. Coined by Kevin Indig in 2026.
What it actually means
A brand describes itself as the leading provider of something. Independent sources describe it as one of several, or do not describe it at all. That difference is the consensus gap, and a model resolving a conflict between one interested source and many disinterested ones will side with the many.
It reframes marketing copy as a liability rather than an asset. Claims your own site makes that nothing else corroborates do not merely fail to help; they widen the gap the model is measuring.
Closing it
There are two directions. Move the world towards your claim by earning independent evidence: coverage, reviews, mentions, data other people cite. Or move the claim towards the world by describing yourself in terms the record actually supports.
The second is faster, cheaper and almost never chosen. The first is the real work, and it is slow by design, because evidence that could be manufactured quickly would not be worth weighing.