Abstract Combining our own observations with data from the literature, we consider the incidence of H I absorption in gigahertz peaked spectrum (GPS) and compact steep spectrum (CSS) sources. Here we present our preliminary results, where we find that the smaller GPS sources (<1 kpc) on average have larger H I column densities than the larger CSS sources (>1 kpc). Both a spherical and an axi-symmetric gas distribution, with a radial power law density profile, can be used to explain this anti-correlation between projected linear size and H I column density. Since most detections occur in galaxy classified objects, we argue that if the unified schemes apply to the GPS/CSS sources, a disk distribution for the H I is more likely.