Topic Authority Weight

Extended definition

Topic Authority Weight measures how AI engines perceive your expertise across different subject areas, revealing authority distribution across your content landscape. A brand might have 92% authority weight in 'marketing automation' but only 23% weight in 'sales enablement' despite publishing on both topics. Weights are inferred from citation patterns, content depth, entity associations, and source trust signals. High weights in core topics mean AI confidently cites you; low weights mean you're treated as a weak or unreliable source. Weights can be competitive (your weight vs. competitors) or absolute (how much AI trusts you).

Why this matters for AI search visibility

AI engines don't treat all your content equally—they trust you more in some topics than others based on historical authority signals. Understanding Topic Authority Weight helps prioritize where you can win citations (high-weight topics) versus where you're fighting uphill (low-weight topics). For content strategy, weights reveal where to double down versus where building authority requires long-term investment. Mismatched authority (publishing heavily on low-weight topics) wastes resources. For B2B positioning, weights show whether AI engines recognize your claimed expertise or see you differently than you see yourself.

Practical examples

• SaaS company has 88% authority weight in 'product analytics' but only 19% in 'data warehousing' despite similar content volume
• Authority weight analysis reveals unexpected strength in adjacent topic cluster, informing expansion strategy
• Focusing content production on high-weight topics (75%+) drives 3.8x more citations than spreading effort across low-weight topics