What is my authority score and how do I raise it?

Your authority score, out of 10, measures how much link strength your site has built up from other websites linking to it. Open Track, then Authority, to see your score, how many domains link to you, and a monthly chart of you against the competitors you track. You raise it by earning links from other sites; Get more links lists the ones a small business can earn without paying.

#Where the score comes from

Common Crawl, a public crawl of the web that samples sites and the links between them. Every site on the page is scored from the same source, so the comparison is fair. Authority moves over months, not days, so treat it as a direction rather than a dial. The line at the bottom says the data date.

#What the page shows

• Your authority: your score out of 10.
• Domains linking to you: how many sites link to you in the sample. If the sample has none, it says Not in our sample yet, which is not the same as none; it may show a count from Bing or your link list instead.
• Your place against your competitors, for example "You rank 2 of 4".
• Authority over time: a monthly line for you and each competitor. Rising lines are sites earning links faster than the web average.
• Side by side: each site's Authority, Linking domains, Global rank and change over the Last 12 months.

#Get more links

The Get more links card gives steps you can do this month, and Get more links puts them on your to-do list:

1. List the business on the directories your sector uses, plus Google Business Profile and Bing Places.
2. Ask suppliers, partners and brands you stock or fit to add you to their stockist, partner or case study pages.
3. Send local press and community sites a short story they can use.
4. Ask sites that mention you without linking to add a link.
5. Publish one useful guide, price guide or checklist other local sites would want to point to.
6. Check again in a month or two.

See who links to you jumps to the list further down. For sites that link to your competitors but not to you, see links your competitors have.

#When your site has no score

Your site is not in the index yet means the public crawl has not reached your domain, because it finds new sites by following links and nothing links to you yet. It is not a judgement on the site. Directory listings, a partner or supplier page, a press mention or a guest post all count.

#Questions people ask

#Why is my count lower than in Search Console?

Common Crawl samples part of the web. Search Console's Links report has Google's own fuller count. The figures are for comparing sites with each other, not an exact total.

#Why does a competitor show no data?

Sites appear once the public crawl has reached them, which needs a few inbound links. They are named on the page until then.

#Why do linking domains count one site more than once?

Subdomains of one site (such as shop.example.co.uk and blog.example.co.uk) are counted separately, as the link data gives them.