Authority
The engine's estimate of how far a site or page can be trusted on one specific subject.
Analogy Mental model
A medical paper cites The Lancet, not the flyer from a walk-in clinic. Both are printed on paper. Only one carries weight.
In practice What you actually do
Authority accumulates from things you cannot fake at scale: links from sites that are already trusted in the field, being named in industry coverage, and authors with verifiable professional identity such as a licence number, a hospital affiliation or a portfolio of shipped work.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Authority is measured per topic, not per domain. A pet supplies store that publishes a personal finance essay is still a pet supply store, and the essay will not rank however well it is written.
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