<b>Q: How does Google actually "know" I'm an authority on a topic?</b>

<b>Q: How does Google actually "know" I'm an authority on a topic?</b>

Short answer: it infers it from patterns, not a single label. There's no "authority score" you can see, but several measurable signals stack up: breadth and depth of related content, how that content interlinks, external references that mention you alongside the topic, and engagement signals on those queries.

Think of it as a reputation the engine assembles from evidence. The more consistently your domain shows up answering questions within a topic, and the more others reference you in that context, the stronger the inference.

In practice the strongest tells you can influence:
— A connected cluster (not scattered posts).
— Co-occurrence: getting mentioned on other sites next to the topic's key entities.
— Ranking spread: when you rank for many long-tail terms in one topic, that breadth itself is a signal.

Question on this? Send it in.