Competitive gap analysis: AG1 vs Grüns, measured

What a competitive gap analysis is

A competitive gap analysis compares you and a rival on the same measures, on the same day, and records for each one who leads and by how much. The output is a list of gaps with a direction and a width. Its job is to decide which gaps are worth closing first, given what each one costs to close.

Most gap analyses stop at the first half. They list what the rival does better and hand the list to someone. A list of gaps is not a plan until each gap has a width and a price.

How it works

Every row in a gap analysis has the same five parts.

1. A measure both sides have

Something counted the same way for both brands, from the same source. If you measured your own reviews in your dashboard and theirs on a public site, the gap is between two methods, not two brands.

2. A direction

Whether higher or lower is better. Followers: higher. Page load time: lower. Get this wrong once and the table recommends fixing your strength.

3. A leader and a width

Who is ahead, and by how much. For counts, a ratio reads best (6.3 times as many). For scores on a short scale, the raw difference is more honest, because 4.6 against 4.3 stars is a 7% ratio and a much bigger difference on the page.

4. A date

A gap is a reading, not a fact. Ad counts move weekly, review scores move monthly, links move over years. Undated, a gap turns into folklore.

5. A cost to close

Money, time or both. This is the part you estimate yourself, and it is the part that turns the table into a decision.

Worked on AG1 and Grüns

AG1 and Grüns both sell daily greens supplements and compete for the same search: both show up in the same AI answers about greens. Both were measured on the same public sources, and the numbers below were read on 28 September 2026. The Loop against Hears benchmark shows the same measures on a live page.

The report carries well over a hundred measures for the pair. Most do not belong in a gap analysis, and deciding which to drop is half the work.

Neutral measures come out. AG1 has a discount in 4% of its live ads, Grüns in 72%. That is a large difference and not a gap: discounting is a choice, not a score, so neither side is behind. The same goes for traffic mix, branded search share and how many message ideas the ads carry.

Numbers on their own scale come out. Google Trends scores each brand against its own peak, so AG1's 2.7 and Grüns' 8.4 cannot be subtracted.

Modelled numbers stay out of the table. AG1 draws an estimated 2.3 million visits a month, Grüns about 1.3 million. That is useful context, but it is a traffic panel's model, and ranking gaps on a model mixes guesses with counts. Organic traffic month over month, also modelled, swings too far from one reading to the next to rank on.

That leaves ten measures, counted from public pages, where one side clearly leads.

Read plainly: AG1 leads on nearly everything that takes years to build. Links, content, audience and presence in AI answers. Grüns leads on what the customer feels this month: a higher rating and a faster site.

Width is not the same as importance

The widest ratio in the table is YouTube subscribers, at 14.4 times. The narrowest real difference is the Trustpilot rating, 0.3 stars. Ranking on the ratio would put the rating last. That would be wrong, because the stars sit on every page a buyer opens and the subscriber count sits on one.

Two checks help before you rank.

Does the gap cross a line someone else draws? Google calls responsiveness good at 200 milliseconds or less, and loading good within 2.5 seconds (web.dev). Both brands load inside the line, so the 0.9 second loading gap is real but changes little. On responsiveness, Grüns is inside the line at 183 ms and AG1 is outside it at 248 ms. The smaller gap is the one that matters.

Is the gap about the buyer or about the brand? The one-star share differs by three points on a sample of recent reviews. That is inside the noise of the sample. It stays in the table as a reminder of what a narrow gap looks like, and it gets ranked last.

Rank the gaps by width against cost

Put yourself in Grüns' seat, the smaller brand looking at a larger one. The gaps worth ranking are the ones AG1 leads. For each, give the width a rough band and estimate what closing it would cost. The cost column is my judgement, not a measurement.

Review volume goes first because it is cheap and it feeds another gap. Recent reviews are what a buyer reads, and 152 new reviews a month against 53 means AG1's page stays fresher.

AI answers go second. AG1 is named in 80% of the comparison questions in the test and Grüns in 10%. Comparison pages are a bounded piece of work, and they are the kind of page an assistant can quote. The note on share of AI answers covers how that number is read.

The widest gaps are the ones to leave alone. 8,338 referring domains against 1,327 is a moat built over years. Racing it spends money on the one front where AG1 cannot lose.

From AG1's seat, the ranking is short. Responsiveness is a cheap fix that crosses Google's line. The rating gap is expensive, because a rating only moves when the product or the service does.

How to make one

1. Pick one rival. The one your buyers name when they hesitate, not the biggest in the category.
2. List measures both sides have, read from the same source on the same day.
3. Mark the direction of each: higher better, lower better, or neutral. Drop the neutral ones.
4. Drop modelled numbers from the ranking, or label them and keep them apart.
5. Compute the gap: a ratio for counts, a difference for scores and shares. Date every row.
6. Check for lines someone else draws, such as Google's speed bands. A gap across a line outranks a wider one inside it.
7. Estimate the cost to close each gap and rank by width against cost. Cheap and wide first, expensive and wide last.
8. Measure again in a month. A gap that did not move after you worked on it is the most useful row in the next table.

What it cannot tell you

A gap analysis says where you differ, not whether the difference sells. AG1 leads on links, content and audience, and none of that proves those are why people buy it.

It only covers what you can count. Taste, formula and price are missing here: the report has Grüns' prices from its store but no comparable price for AG1, so price is not in the table. That is a hole, not a tie.

It is a snapshot. The width of every row was true on 28 September 2026. Some of it will not be true in November.

And the cost column is a guess. Two honest people will rank the middle of the list differently. The table is there to make that argument concrete, not to settle it.

FAQ

What is the difference between a gap analysis and a competitive gap analysis?

A plain gap analysis compares where you are with where you want to be. A competitive gap analysis uses a named rival as the target, so each gap is measured against something that already exists in the market.

How many measures should a gap analysis have?

Ten to fifteen is enough. Fewer and you miss a front, more and the ranking turns into a spreadsheet nobody acts on. Start wide, then drop the neutral and the modelled ones.

How often should you redo it?

Monthly for fast measures like ads and reviews, quarterly for links and content. Our live benchmark is read weekly.

How is it different from a battlecard?

A battlecard is for a sales conversation: what to say when the rival comes up. A gap analysis is for planning: what to build or fix, in what order.