Trust Flow and Citation Flow are two metrics from the SEO tool vendor Majestic. Both use a scale from 0 to 100 and describe the backlinks of a URL or domain.
What do they measure?
Citation Flow estimates the link weight of a URL and rises with the number and strength of incoming links. Trust Flow is meant to describe link quality. It is based on a set of trusted seed sites that Majestic selects by hand. The closer a site is linked to those seeds, the higher its Trust Flow, and links from doubtful sources lower it. The idea of passing trust outward from selected sites resembles the TrustRank research method (assumption).
How to read them
Majestic states that Google does not use Domain Rating, Domain Authority or Trust Flow for ranking. The numbers are useful for comparing link profiles, for example your own against competitors in the same market. The two values are usually compared as a pair, and Citation Flow is typically higher than Trust Flow because many links come from sources with little trust.
Example
A domain shows Citation Flow 45 and Trust Flow 12. That points to many links, few of them from the neighborhood of the seed sites (interpretation). The pair becomes useful once you compare it with competitors in the same industry.
Sources
- Glossary – Majesticmajestic.com
- Trust Flow – Majesticmajestic.com
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