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Citation flow is an indicator created by Majestic to evaluate “power” the total number of inbound links without considering their quality. The Citation Flow indicator is expressed on a scale of 1-100, where a high value corresponds to a large number of backlinks leading to a website.
How does the Citation Flow indicator work?
Based on the number of inbound links, we can determine the Citation Flow. However,it does not take into account the quality that each URL has The indicator evaluates the value of a link based on the number of all links leading to the page.
If a domain has a high Citation Flow index, and the external links are not valuable, come from low-quality sources – then they can negatively affect the positioning of a website in search results.
Trust Flow vs. Citation Flow
There is a significant difference between Citation Flow and Trust Flow The Trust Flow indicator, unlike Citation Flowevaluates a link by its value, not by its quantity. Link value is one of the most important ranking factors for Google, and the Trust Flow indicator allows us to understand whether a domain has value.
How to evaluate whether websites are valuable?
When analyzing a website for link building’s planning, it is useful to consider Citation Flow and Trust Flow values. With the help of these two indicators, we can assess whether the sites have a natural and quality backlink profile.
When Trust Flow has a much lower value (at a similar level) than the Citation Flow indicator, this indicates a very high number of low-quality backlinks and an unnatural link profile. When you have such a difference in indicators on your website, it is essential to take care of valuable links. Such a backlink profile can negatively affect your website’s positioning by risking penalties from Google.
If the Trust Flow indicator is slightly higher than the Citation Flow value, then we can talk about a very good quality of backlinks.
If the Citation Flow indicator has a much lower value than the Trust Flow – then we can talk about a small number of inbound links of high value.
Citation Flow indicator vs. positioning
Google robots analyze a website to assess its value and determine its position in search results. What place a domain will occupy in the results depends on a number of factors. The position is judged by the number of incoming links, their quality or the content created.
