> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getcited.in/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Strategic Alignment Multiplier

> A 1.5x multiplier applied to an Impact Score when the recommendation's gap topic matches the brand's declared positioning.

**Strategic alignment multiplier** is a 1.5x multiplier applied to a recommendation's [Impact Score](/glossary/impact-score) when the gap topic matches the brand's declared positioning. It prioritizes recommendations that align with how the brand wants to be known in AI-generated answers.

## Why it matters

Not all visibility gaps are equally strategic. A skincare brand that positions itself around retinol should prioritize retinol content gaps over sunscreen content gaps, even if the raw competitive gap sizes are similar. The strategic alignment multiplier encodes this preference automatically, so brands that populate their positioning data see their most strategically relevant recommendations surfaced with higher priority.

## How Cited uses it

The multiplier fires when there is word-level overlap between a recommendation's gap topic and the brand's declared `target_attributes`. Both sides are tokenized into significant words (longer than 3 characters, excluding stop words), and any overlap triggers the 1.5x boost. A low-query-count safeguard caps the final score at 59 (MEDIUM tier) when the strategic multiplier fires on recommendations supported by fewer than 5 queries — preventing single-query edge cases from reaching HIGH priority on strategic boost alone.

## Related concepts

* [How we score recommendation impact](/methodology/impact-scoring) — full scoring methodology including the multiplier
* [Impact Score](/glossary/impact-score) — the score the multiplier applies to
* [Competitor gap](/glossary/competitor-gap) — the visibility gap that recommendations address