Authority and Search Query Results

Authority and Search Query Results
Bill Slawski outlines how Google determines authority and how it matters for showing up in search.

Google's definition:
In general, an authoritative site is a site that the search system has determined to include particularly trusted, accurate, or reliable content. The search system can distinguish authoritative sites from low-quality sites that include resources with shallow content or that frequently include spam advertisements. Whether the search system considers a site to be authoritative will typically be query-dependent. For example, the search system can consider the site for the Centers for Disease Control, “cdc.gov,” to be an authoritative site for the query “cdc mosquito stop bites,” but may not consider the same site to be authoritative for the query “restaurant recommendations”. A search result that identifies a resource on a site that is authoritative for the query may be referred to as an authoritative search result. The search system can determine whether to obtain an authoritative search result in response to a query in a variety of ways, which will be described below.

Expertise-Authority-Trust (E.A.T.) the foundation of quality.

Originally shared by Bill Slawski

Given a choice between being the most relevant result for a query or the most authoritative, you may be better off being the most authoritative...

http://www.seobythesea.com/2017/05/how-does-google-look-for-authoritative-search-results/