Market gaps
Demand that nobody is serving properly
A market gap is a search with measurable demand where the existing results are missing, weak, outdated, badly targeted, or in a format that does not answer the question.
- Scoring factors
- 7
- Gap types
- 5
- Invented data
- None
The five kinds of gap
- Unserved — real demand with no adequate result at all
- Underserved — results exist but are thin, generic or evasive
- Format gap — searchers need a calculator, template, directory, comparison, video or application, and are being handed another article
- Local gap — national results dominate a question that is answered differently in each place
- Platform gap — the answer exists, but not where the audience actually looks for it
How an opportunity is scored
Seven weighted factors produce a score out of 100. The weighting is fixed and published, and every score is shown broken down into its parts.
| Factor | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Search demand | 25% | Verified monthly searches, on a logarithmic curve |
| Demand trend | 20% | Whether interest is growing or fading |
| Commercial intent | 15% | How close the searcher is to buying |
| Weak competition | 15% | How poorly the current results answer the query |
| Site fit | 10% | Whether this sits within your brief’s subject matter |
| Format gap | 10% | Whether the needed format is missing entirely |
| Content staleness | 5% | Whether ranking pages are outdated |
Demand contributes nothing at all when no verified search volume has been recorded. RankStack will not guess one.
Explainable by design
Each scored opportunity shows every factor, the raw value you supplied, how it was normalised, its weight and the points it contributed — followed by a plain sentence explaining what that means.
If you disagree with a score, you can see exactly which input to argue with.
Start with one project
Create a workspace, add the domain you want to grow, and record the first piece of evidence.