{
  "name": "Digital Reality Gap",
  "url": "https://digitalrealitygap.com/",
  "home": "https://digitalrealityscore.com/framework/",
  "description": "The Digital Reality Gap is the distance between what a company is, what it says, and what the web, search and AI say about it. An open framework for finding and measuring it, claim by claim.",
  "maintainer": {
    "name": "PageRadar",
    "url": "https://pageradar.com"
  },
  "license": {
    "name": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
    "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
    "attribution": "Digital Reality Gap framework and Digital Reality Canvas by PageRadar, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Learn more at digitalrealitygap.com"
  },
  "version": {
    "framework": "1.0",
    "canvas": "1.0",
    "rubric": "1.0",
    "published": "2026"
  },
  "realities": [
    {
      "n": "01",
      "name": "Business Reality",
      "description": "What is actually true today: your products, people, customers, markets and capabilities."
    },
    {
      "n": "02",
      "name": "Stated Reality",
      "description": "What you say about yourself: your website, structured data, press releases and the profiles you control."
    },
    {
      "n": "03",
      "name": "Internet Reality",
      "description": "What everyone else says: publications, databases, reviews, knowledge graphs, search engines and AI systems."
    }
  ],
  "principle": "Before asking whether AI reflects your source of truth, establish whether your source of truth is true.",
  "claims": {
    "types": [
      "Founders",
      "CEO and leadership",
      "Company name",
      "Category",
      "Positioning",
      "Product names",
      "Product capabilities",
      "Pricing",
      "Headquarters",
      "Locations",
      "Markets served",
      "Customers",
      "Integrations",
      "Partnerships",
      "Ownership",
      "Acquisitions",
      "Certifications and regulatory status"
    ],
    "states": [
      {
        "name": "Accurate",
        "description": "True, stated clearly, and repeated correctly."
      },
      {
        "name": "Incorrect",
        "description": "Wrong, at the source or somewhere downstream."
      },
      {
        "name": "Stale",
        "description": "True once, and still circulating after it changed."
      },
      {
        "name": "Conflicting",
        "description": "Different sources give different answers."
      },
      {
        "name": "Unsupported",
        "description": "Stated, with no independent evidence behind it."
      },
      {
        "name": "Missing",
        "description": "True, and absent where people look for it."
      },
      {
        "name": "Misunderstood",
        "description": "Present, and interpreted as something else."
      },
      {
        "name": "Divergent",
        "description": "Right in one market or language, wrong in another."
      }
    ]
  },
  "chain": [
    {
      "step": 1,
      "name": "True",
      "question": "Is it actually true?",
      "description": "Verified against the business itself, with a name and a date. Your website does not count as proof."
    },
    {
      "step": 2,
      "name": "Stated",
      "question": "Do you say it clearly?",
      "description": "Consistent across the sources you control, in the words a stranger would use."
    },
    {
      "step": 3,
      "name": "Evidenced",
      "question": "Does anyone else confirm it?",
      "description": "Corroborated by authoritative sources that do not depend on you."
    },
    {
      "step": 4,
      "name": "Understood",
      "question": "Do search and AI get it right?",
      "description": "Represented correctly when someone asks, in every market that matters."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "group": "You control",
      "examples": [
        "Website",
        "Structured data",
        "Press releases",
        "Documentation",
        "Social profiles"
      ]
    },
    {
      "group": "Others publish",
      "examples": [
        "Industry publications",
        "News",
        "Customer reviews",
        "Partner sites",
        "Professional directories",
        "Links and brand mentions"
      ]
    },
    {
      "group": "Reference sources",
      "examples": [
        "Company databases",
        "Wikipedia",
        "Wikidata",
        "Knowledge graphs"
      ]
    },
    {
      "group": "Interpreters",
      "examples": [
        "Search engines",
        "AI systems"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "tiers": [
    {
      "id": "open",
      "label": "Run it yourself",
      "steps": "Canvas + Check",
      "outcome": "You see your gap, claim by claim, and leave with your top three moves."
    },
    {
      "id": "applied",
      "label": "Needs evidence and remediation work",
      "steps": "Measure + Close",
      "outcome": "A defensible Digital Reality Score, and gaps corrected at the source."
    }
  ],
  "stages": [
    {
      "n": "01",
      "name": "Map",
      "description": "Lay out the three realities on the Canvas.",
      "tier": "open"
    },
    {
      "n": "02",
      "name": "Check",
      "description": "Test your key claims against live search and AI.",
      "tier": "open"
    },
    {
      "n": "03",
      "name": "Measure",
      "description": "Score how closely the three realities agree.",
      "tier": "applied"
    },
    {
      "n": "04",
      "name": "Close",
      "description": "Correct sources in order, and verify the change.",
      "tier": "applied"
    }
  ],
  "canvas": {
    "blocks": [
      {
        "n": 1,
        "band": "Business Reality",
        "title": "Real Value",
        "description": "What you actually deliver."
      },
      {
        "n": 2,
        "band": "Business Reality",
        "title": "Target Buyer",
        "description": "Who you help, and why."
      },
      {
        "n": 3,
        "band": "Stated Reality",
        "title": "Stated Value",
        "description": "What you claim, and the category you claim it in."
      },
      {
        "n": 4,
        "band": "Stated Reality",
        "title": "Stated Buyer",
        "description": "Who you say it is for."
      },
      {
        "n": 5,
        "band": "Internet Reality",
        "title": "Public Evidence",
        "description": "Your site, content, proof, data."
      },
      {
        "n": 6,
        "band": "Internet Reality",
        "title": "Third-Party Signals",
        "description": "Reviews, mentions, analysts."
      },
      {
        "n": 7,
        "band": "Internet Reality",
        "title": "Machine Understanding",
        "description": "Do search and AI classify you correctly?"
      },
      {
        "n": 8,
        "band": "Internet Reality",
        "title": "AI Representation",
        "description": "How are you represented when buyers ask for options?"
      },
      {
        "n": 9,
        "band": "The gap",
        "title": "Recommendation Risk",
        "description": "Where confidence breaks down."
      },
      {
        "n": 10,
        "band": "The gap",
        "title": "Gap Drivers",
        "description": "The root causes to fix first."
      }
    ],
    "sourceStates": [
      {
        "name": "Declared",
        "description": "Supplied by the company, and confirmed by the people who own it. Blocks 1 and 2 can only ever be this."
      },
      {
        "name": "Observed",
        "description": "Found on the company’s own properties: site, docs, product pages."
      },
      {
        "name": "Perceived",
        "description": "Synthesised from what AI systems actually answered."
      },
      {
        "name": "Evidenced",
        "description": "Supported by a third-party source you can cite."
      },
      {
        "name": "Unknown",
        "description": "Not enough evidence. A real answer, and often the finding itself."
      }
    ]
  },
  "score": {
    "name": "Digital Reality Score",
    "scope": "company-level",
    "methodology": "https://digitalrealityscore.com/methodology/",
    "direction": "higher-is-better",
    "description": "The Digital Reality Score reads as alignment: 100 would mean the internet represents the company exactly as it is. Publish it with a band, never on its own.",
    "bands": [
      {
        "range": "85–100",
        "name": "Aligned"
      },
      {
        "range": "70–84",
        "name": "Minor gap"
      },
      {
        "range": "50–69",
        "name": "Moderate gap"
      },
      {
        "range": "0–49",
        "name": "Significant gap"
      }
    ],
    "rules": [
      "Score from public evidence, never from the Canvas. A self-generated number measures your opinion of yourself.",
      "Verify Business Reality first. A score measured against an incorrect source of truth measures the wrong gap.",
      "Show where the number comes from. One headline number hides which claim is failing.",
      "Benchmark against named competitors. Being absent only means something relative to who is present.",
      "Publish the band and the confidence level with the number. A score standing on two sources and a score standing on twenty are not the same claim."
    ]
  },
  "dimensions": [
    {
      "n": 1,
      "name": "Value & Message",
      "reads": "Real Value ↔ Stated Value",
      "description": "Customers cannot find a product you already offer, because your own pages undersell or omit it."
    },
    {
      "n": 2,
      "name": "Buyer & Audience",
      "reads": "Target Buyer ↔ Stated Buyer",
      "description": "You now sell to a different buyer than the one your public record describes."
    },
    {
      "n": 3,
      "name": "Category & Positioning",
      "reads": "Stated Value ↔ Machine Understanding",
      "description": "Search and AI file you under the wrong category, next to the wrong competitors."
    },
    {
      "n": 4,
      "name": "Proof & Evidence",
      "reads": "Real Value ↔ Public Evidence",
      "description": "A claim is true and stated, and nothing independent confirms it."
    },
    {
      "n": 5,
      "name": "Currency & Freshness",
      "reads": "Business ↔ Internet Reality",
      "description": "A rebrand, acquisition or leadership change is still propagating months later."
    },
    {
      "n": 6,
      "name": "Machine Understanding",
      "reads": "Machine Understanding ↔ Third-Party Signals",
      "description": "Databases and knowledge graphs contradict your website, so nothing resolves cleanly."
    },
    {
      "n": 7,
      "name": "Recommendation",
      "reads": "AI Representation ↔ Third-Party Signals",
      "description": "Competitors are more strongly associated with the category you built."
    },
    {
      "n": 8,
      "name": "AI Representation",
      "reads": "Real Value ↔ AI Representation",
      "description": "AI repeats outdated positioning, or describes you differently by market and language."
    }
  ],
  "remediation": [
    {
      "step": 1,
      "name": "Verify the truth",
      "description": "Confirm the claim with the people who own it. Record who confirmed it, and when."
    },
    {
      "step": 2,
      "name": "Correct what you control",
      "description": "Website, structured data, press pages and your own profiles, consistently."
    },
    {
      "step": 3,
      "name": "Correct the external record",
      "description": "Databases, directories, Wikidata and partner pages, where you are entitled to and the process allows it."
    },
    {
      "step": 4,
      "name": "Build evidence",
      "description": "Give authoritative third parties a source they can cite, so the claim stands without you."
    },
    {
      "step": 5,
      "name": "Watch it propagate",
      "description": "Re-run the same queries later. Propagation takes weeks to months, and some sources never update."
    }
  ]
}