Topical Authority
Also known as: Subject authority
Whether systems and people treat a property as a source on a subject. Built through depth, consistency, and time rather than assigned by a tool.
Topical authority is the state of being reached for when a subject comes up, rather than merely ranking for a term within it. It shows in faster ranking on new pages in the subject, citations that arrive without being asked for, repeat crawler retrieval of the same sections, and brand queries that carry subject words alongside the name.
It attaches to subjects, not to whole sites. A property can have real authority on one narrow subject and none at all on the subject next to it.
Third-party authority scores are not this. They are link-graph estimates with a marketing name, useful for a fast first look at an unknown domain and not evidence of anything, because the inputs they model are openly bought and sold.