Authority

One dimension of search relevancy. This indicates that the document is considered to be an authority for this query.  That is, the document is being referred to by others, for example, through web anchor texts. Many items can be part of the analysis of documents to determine this parameter - Web link cardinality, article references, page impressions, and product revenue, to name a few.

The ability of a page or domain to rank well in search engines. Five large factors associated with site and page authority are link equity, site age, traffic trends, site history, and publishing unique original quality content. Search engines constantly tweak their algorithms to try to balance relevancy algorithms based on topical authority and overall authority across the entire web. Sites may be considered topical authorities or general authorities. For example, Wikipedia and DMOZ are considered broad general authority sites. This site is a topical authority on SEO, but not a broad general authority.

An entity recognized by some set of secure systems as a trusted source of security information[ECMA138].