SEO Tycoon

**RichTC** · 02-17-2008, 01:46 PM

Hi all,

Links from authority sites are of obvious benefit from an SEO point of view imo but what sites are now classed as authority? It looks like many sites that were once authority are no longer valued by the mighty google as they used to be?

Currently im thinking that in the directory world they are Yahoo Directory and Dmoz directory and thats it apart from one or two strict directory review sites?. Once business.com carried some weight until it became a pay per click directory

Outside of a directory site im thinking almost any site ending .gov and SOME .edu sites where they are well established and have strong page rank and one or two .org sites.

anyone have any ideas on this?

Rich

**ssandecki** · 02-17-2008, 03:08 PM

TLD extenions do not determine an "authority" site, that is a silly misbelief in the SEO community. In fact, Google doesn't use the term "authority" site, it's a saying made up by webmasters to name sites that have high influence in search engines.

**SeLFiE_12** · 02-19-2008, 02:54 AM

^^what are those sites that you think have high influence with SEs?What are the factors that the SEs check before they can say that the website does have a high influence?

**mhaye_01** · 02-20-2008, 12:17 AM

.edu, .gov are categorized as authority sites,. Another thing are those sites rich with quality contents,.

**ForrestCroce** · 02-20-2008, 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichTC

anyone have any ideas on this?

The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, BBC, and countless others are
very authoritative. Gandhi said "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."

**ssandecki** · 02-20-2008, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhaye_01

.edu, .gov are categorized as authority sites,. Another thing are those sites rich with quality contents,.

Wrong. No wonder you got red reputation

**vangogh** · 02-20-2008, 08:57 PM

Authority sites are going to be the ones that have a lot of links pointing to them. Not just any links. For example a site with millions of links from blog comments probably won't be seen as an authority.

Sites can have a general authority and a topical authority. The sites Forrest mentioned are general authorities. They deal with different topics, but are clearly linked to often.

A topical authority is an authority on a given topic. It may not have as many links pointing to it as CNN.com, but it likely has more links pointing to it than other sites on the same topic.

It's really not that hard to figure out which sites are authorities. For one you can look up the links they have. Common sense can easily be used too. If you read other sites on your topic, which you should be doing you can see which are the sites that get mentioned most often. Those are the sites with the authority for your topic.

You can also try a few searches for the most popular phrases in your industry. If you see the same sites in the results over and over they're probably authorities.

If you're trying hard to analyze it you're thinking too hard. Just think about the definition of the word authority and then think about the sites in your industry and some general sites. The sites that match up pretty well to the definition of the word are the authorities.