What is topical authority?
Topical authority is the idea that a website which covers a subject in depth, and is recognized as a go-to source on it, ranks more easily for queries on that subject. A site that has published hundreds of accurate, well-linked pages about sourdough baking should, on this view, find it easier to rank a new sourdough article than a general lifestyle site publishing its first one.
Topical authority is a concept, not a number. Google does not publish a topical authority score, and no SEO tool can read one from Google. Every "topical authority" figure you see is a third-party estimate built from rankings, traffic or content coverage.
Is topical authority a Google ranking factor?
Topical authority is not a confirmed Google ranking factor under that name. Google has confirmed one narrower system, for news, and its public advice on the broader SEO idea has been to ignore the label. The evidence splits into four kinds:
| Claim | Status | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Google has a "topic authority" system | Confirmed, for news queries | Google explained it in May 2023 and said it had been used for several years [3] |
| Google gives sites a general authority score | Denied | John Mueller, June 2019: Google does not evaluate a site's authority or give it an authority score [5] |
| "Topical authority" is a special signal SEOs should target | Dismissed | Mueller endorsed a Reddit post calling it relevance under a new name and said "Don't worry about it" (November 2023) [4] |
| Google measures how focused a site is on its topic | Attributes exist in leaked documentation, use unknown | The 2024 leak listed siteFocusScore and siteRadius [6] |
The honest summary: Google clearly models topics and how a site relates to them, but nothing public says how much that affects ranking for any query, and Google itself discourages treating "topical authority" as a lever.
What is Google's topic authority system?
Google's topic authority system is a ranking system that helps surface expert, knowledgeable sources for news queries in specialized areas such as health, politics and finance [3]. Google explained it in May 2023 and said it was not new: Danny Sullivan said Google had used it for several years [3].
Search Engine Land reported the signals Google named [3]:
- How notable a source is for a topic or location.
- Influential and original reporting, judged partly by how other publishers cite it.
- The source's reputation, including its history of high-quality reporting and recommendations from expert sources.
This system is the strongest official support for the topical authority idea, but it is scoped to news. Applying it to an ecommerce blog or a SaaS knowledge base is an assumption, not something Google has said.
Who coined the term topical authority?
No single origin for topical authority is documented. The idea that linked, in-depth coverage of a topic signals authority to search engines was argued in HubSpot's topic cluster research in May 2017 [2]. The term was later popularized by Koray Tuğberk Gübür and his semantic SEO case studies; his site states that the topical authority concept was "founded" by him on May 18, 2022 [1], although the wording and the underlying idea were already in use before then.
2013 to 2017: from keywords to topics
After Google's move toward understanding meaning rather than matching words, HubSpot published "Topic Clusters: The Next Evolution of SEO" on May 11, 2017, arguing that a pillar page linked to related cluster pages signals authority on a topic [2].
2018: Google's Topic Layer
In September 2018, Google added a Topic Layer to its Knowledge Graph, which it said was engineered to understand a topic space and how interests develop as expertise grows [7]. This was about organizing results for searchers, not scoring websites, but it confirmed Google maps topics and subtopics at scale.
2022: semantic SEO and topical maps
Gübür's framework defined topical authority as a semantic SEO method for ranking higher by covering connected topics and queries with accurate, expert information, planned through topical maps [1].
2023: Google weighs in twice
In May 2023, Google explained its news topic authority system [3]. In November 2023, John Mueller agreed with a description of topical authority as rebranded relevance and told SEOs not to worry about it [4].
2024: the documentation leak
In May 2024, leaked Google Content Warehouse API documentation, which Google confirmed was authentic while warning against drawing conclusions from it, listed siteFocusScore (how focused a site is on its main topic) and siteRadius (how far individual pages stray from it) [6]. The documentation shows the attributes exist. It does not show how, or whether, they are weighted in ranking.
What is the difference between topical authority and Domain Authority?
Topical authority describes how strongly a site is associated with one subject, while Domain Authority is a third-party score based mostly on links that ignores subject entirely. A small site that only covers aquarium plants can have a low Domain Authority and still outrank a high-authority news site on aquarium plant queries.
Neither is a Google metric. Domain Authority comes from an SEO tool vendor. Topical authority has no official score at all.
How do you measure topical authority?
You measure topical authority indirectly, by tracking how much of a topic's search demand a site captures. Kevin Indig proposes "Topic Share": collect the keywords that make up a topic, then calculate each site's share of the estimated traffic across those keywords [8]. In his example, Shopify held about 11% of the ecommerce topic and BigCommerce about 10% [8].
Three practical measures, from simplest to most useful:
- Coverage. The share of a topic's important subtopics that you have a page for. Useful for planning, says nothing about quality.
- Ranking breadth. The share of a topic's keywords where you rank on page one.
- Topic share. The share of estimated traffic across the topic's keywords [8].
All three are proxies. A rise in topic share shows you are winning the topic. It does not prove Google has assigned you "authority", and treating it as proof confuses correlation with causation.
Why do sites with topical authority rank better?
Sites that cover a topic in depth tend to rank better for several overlapping reasons, and "authority" may not be the one doing the work. Deep coverage produces many internal links between related pages, more pages that match the specific queries people search, more natural links from others in the field, and more chances to satisfy follow-up searches. Each of those helps on its own.
That is why Mueller's description of topical authority as relevance [4] is a useful correction rather than a dismissal. The practical advice is the same either way: cover the subject properly. What changes is that you stop expecting a hidden bonus for page count.
How do you build topical authority?
To build topical authority, plan the full set of questions a subject involves, publish genuinely useful pages for them, and link those pages so the structure is obvious:
- Choose a defined subject small enough to cover completely.
- Map the subtopics with a topical map before writing.
- Publish in depth, not in bulk. Each page should answer something specific that searchers ask.
- Link pages logically, from broad pages to specific ones and between siblings.
- Earn citations and links from others in the field, the signal Google names for its news system [3].
- Keep pages accurate as the subject changes.
Publishing large numbers of thin pages to "claim" a topic works against you. Mass-produced pages made mainly to rank are what Google's spam policies call scaled content abuse.
When should you care about topical authority?
Care about topical authority when choosing what a site covers and in what order, because staying focused and completing a subject is sound strategy whatever Google calls it. Do not care about it as a metric to report or a score to chase: there is no official score, and Google has said not to worry about the label [4].