How Does The Web Define Authority

Great, thought provoking post, Chris.

I generally like your working definition at first blush, but in the end I feel the need to dispute it a bit. I think that it’s really easy on the web to conflate “authority” with “celebrity”. The metrics you point to are great at measuring the celebrity of a person – how many people believe you are interesting enough to link to… and how many people your site links to. However, I don’t think that they directly measure authority – the sense that what you speak approaches “the truth” and the sense that your encouragements should (and will) be generally followed by the masses.

I might be totally missing the boat here, but if you were to use the tools you list to measure the “authority” of Paris Hilton vs. Ben Bernanke I’ll bet that Paris turns out to be the “authority” when looked at society writ large. Even within a specific niche’s context I’ll bet you’d often see the same thing: the noise celebrity will often drown the signal of authority.

In the social media space perhaps it is easier to say that celebrity = authority because that’s often how it seems to work. But outside of the space… I’m not so sure. I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

Authority carries the notion of credibility, trustworthiness, … In my opinion, the measurements described above for “authority” are only indicative of “popularity”. But what is popular is not necessarily right…

Chris:

Not too long ago, TC 50 time actually, some people I follow on Twitter referred to themselves as “webebrities” which is on point with what Mike says above.

On your point about whether this is a numbers game, I think many see it that way. You may remember the time when Twitter had a problem and the number of ‘Dude, where are my followers?’ type of cries from otherwise perfectly reasonable looking people was embarrassing.

I culled my ‘following’ list recently and now follow people who meet at least two of these four criteria: ‘informative’, ‘interesting’, ‘dialectical’, ‘original’. That brought my list down rather rapidly. I also do not feel obliged to follow everyone who follows me (I follow you, you don’t follow me which is fine by me, because when I want a chat, I will email you anyway).

‘Authority’ is harder to establish because of two reasons – one needs to be consistently authoritative in one’s views which means it is a content/ substance game and not easy; and second, authority is nothing without a fan-following, which means it is also a numbers/ PR game. Also it does not matter how much of an authority one is, nobody likes to deal with an arschloch. If somebody is one, it comes out sooner than later. It is however possible to be perfectly nice and an ‘authority’ of which Dharmesh Shah (OnStartups and Website Grader) is a brilliant example.

My view is that the real world and the web are not that separate and in fact, the statuses in the two worlds should be conflated, not disparate. That is a harder trick to muster than being deafened by the amplification of noise on the web. After all, on the web, you could be a dog but in the real world, you will get found out. No? :-)

Chris, the whole influencer question is a vexed one. It gets very confused when you throw in the irrationality of real human behaviour – our liklihood simply to copy the monkey next to us.
I touched on some of this on a post I wrote for Stowe’s /message. It’s called How We Are Made Great – might have sent you a link to it in the past?

Another thing that I think contributes to this equation is geographical location. We all know internet is ‘seamless’ but I think geography still plays a small role.
Different geographical locations have people will different levels of interaction (due to shyness or habit)
So what I am trying to say is defining web authority may depend a little bit on the geography of things…
What do you think?

Surely the real measure of the authority of your site is if you are reaching your target audience and achieving the goals for your site.

Some small tight niche sites might not leave much of a digital footprint at all, but if they reach a large percentage of the people interested in that niche then they must be an authority in that niche.

Also not all sites rely on online authority. Many specialist magazines have an online forum or other presence. Many of the users of that site probably get to it directly after reading the magazine and the knowledge shared there is likely to make it an authority on that subject, yet it’s pagerank and online authority seems minimal.

Having said all that though, the majority of sites have their authority measured by the means you have mentioned, perhaps with an eye on their Analytics stats too to track actual results.

Dear Chris, I have question how did you add google adsense into your email/newsletter. It will be highly appreciated if you could please let me know about it.
regards,

Hi Chris, excellent post that is very thought-provoking. The comments are also very well considered.

I am still relatively new to the whole social networking arena but one thing that has struck me is that many people who are trying to gain credibility and respect, and ulimately authority, are trying too hard to play the numbers game. For example, I see people trying very hard to bulk up their LinkedIn connections, or obtain recommendations on their LinkedIn profiles. In many instances (of course not all) I believe these and similar endeavours elsewhere on the web are aimed at wowing visitors and building up an impressive online presence.

Some people have thousands of followers on Twitter. When I follow these tweets in the hope of some useful insights, I get nothing but updates on what the person had for breakfast, how hungover he is from partying all week, or how wonderful he feels to be alive. So authority is clearly not just a numbers game.

In short, there has to be a balance between original and intelligent content that may influence the way we look at something, and the number of people who care to be influenced by this content.

Nice post Chris.

One thing to keep in mind is that it depending on your goal, you may not want to spend too much time investigating one person.

If you are trying to determine the top 50 influential people in your industry, then this kind of stuff is good. If you are just emailing people that are writing in your industry and email request, then the time it takes is not worth the investigation.

I believe a huge factor is frequency and length of time they are blogging. Rarely will someone keep putting out great content for years on a topic unless it is making an impact for them. They may have a smaller audience than others, but be very influential with them.

The hallmark of credibility is follow-through.

In each and every transaction you have with someone, your ability to follow up and follow through says something. People even take clues and messages from “no response” as a response.

You can look at a resume, look at a blog, look at recommendations. You can factor in any personal knowledge you have, but basically, you have to put all this information in a blender (Will it blend??) and distill it, finding out what’s left in the end, and whether or not it works for you. You trust a little at first, and then a little more, and finally, you have a relationship built on trust and trustworthiness.

I try to work very hard at making everything I do, real life and online, about follow-through. Sometimes projects get sidetracked- that’s normal- but all in all, I try to cultivate a reputation based on honesty, fidelity and action. Life rewards action- you have to put verbs into your sentences and “do” as well as just think and chat. In the end that not only builds your reputation versus celebrity, but it gives you connections you can count on when the chips are down.

Trying to find a correlation between website traffic and whether or not the site author is a subject “authority” is about as misleading as trying to judge how well a movie-star can act based on the # of recent tabloid write-ups.
An influx in website traffic could be the result of the site owner being a clever internet marketer, linkbaiter, SEM strategist or blind luck (a random post gets picked up on sites like digg.com).

I’ve been noticing that more and more people will quote, link, and talk about certain website authors as if they were leaders in their industry when the truth of the matter is that their most popular posts are the off-topic ‘Top 10′ lists that made the front-page of Digg! This happens all the time on social media sites like Twitter/FriendFeed…. 40k followers, sexy blog design, ads and affiliate links up the wazoo but content that is just a re-hash of what other outspoken “industry authorities” are currently debating. Canned crap, and all just because it’s easier to assume authority based on website design, traffic and the # of inbound links.

So how do I judge ‘authority?’ Not with alexa or compete (both of which provide heavily skewed results), not by Google PageRank or with any type of Website Grader – No tools are necessary. Just take a look at the content. Is this something original? A new twist on an old theory?
More importantly, what does the frequency of post updates look like? Are the ‘most popular posts’ recent or do they include articles from long ago? Is the website sprinkled with posts pitching you a new service, company or product, sometimes even contradicting previously held sentiments?

A good example is RandsinRepose.com – We’re lucky if he posts once a month, however his articles flood websites like del.icio.us on a daily basis, continually find new audiences and provide more than just a list of his ‘Top 10 Favorite Vista Applications’ – he tells a story, teaches a lesson, or provokes conversation. Not a single advertisement or affiliate link (other than a link to his published books in the ‘about’ section), he’s not blogging about how you need to try some new service or product because it’s the latest and greatest. Speaking of paid-posts, take a look next time you see a popular post talking up a new company or product – there’s a high probability that the links will include the website owner’s affiliate code!

Ok, ok… i completely disregarded the call-out for tools that might help you determine a website’s authority.

If looking for some sort of metric to judge authority is critically important, then i guess you could use any tool that goes through a domain and pulls out the ‘strongest’ interior pages. These are pages that have the highest PR/traffic. Yes, I know I just lambasted using pagerank or traffic to measure a website’s worth, but just hear me out.
You can find one such tool (although it requires you to register in order to use the feature – 100% free though) on seomoz.org’s website -
What are The Strongest Pages On A Domain?:
http://www.seomoz.org/toolbox/strongest

Once it comprises the list of the ‘strongest’ pages on the domain, this is where your own powers of observation come into play. This tool will show you the last time that the webpage was updated. That’s golden information for you if you want to see if the author has always been providing quality content or if it was just a recent post or two that resulted in a traffic spike. You can also see the page-titles (or just click on the link + see the page for yourself). It should take only a few seconds to be able to tell what type of pages are driving the traffic to the website. Are they top 10 lists or are they content-driven articles?
Anyhow, there’s one “tool” that can be helpful in determining if a website deserves to be ranked as an ‘authority.’

I agree with the others that say in terms of the web, “authority” can easily be replaced by celebrity. Not to say that they aren’t credible and deserve both titles. A blog like perezhilton.com is extremely popular and draws top web ranks by any standards, but would you consider him an authority? Debatable.

Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com

The way that I have always explained it to people at my firm is that authority and/or influence can be gauged by using Technorati’s authority but ONLY has it relates to others in the target NICHE of your client/program/whatever.

For instance, I am also a diabetes blogger. My authority on Technorati is 40-something. Not too high compared with Engadget or Perez Hilton. But if you looked up the authorities for several other diabetes blogger, you’d see the highest only goes to approximately 200, and the majority of bloggers are right around 50-60 or below. People say “Well, what is authority?” and you say “It’s the number of blogs linked to me in the last 6 months” and then someone will say, “Well, is X a good number?” and the answer is “Depends on who you are.” If you’re Arianna Huffington or Boing Boing, dropping down to 200 in authority is terrible. But if you’re a Joe Schmoe blogger from Des Moines writing about Iowa politics, an authority of 200 might actually be pretty good because there’s probably not a lot of other bloggers writing about that topic.

I think what a lot of people who discuss metrics and measurements and authority and whatnot forget is that it has to do with perspective.

Of course, authority does not replace: 1) being on target (pitch the right people for the right reasons and 2) an active, healthy blog with comments and frequent posts.

It’s of course a combination of things as far as finding out who the RIGHT blogger is. But for a straight answer regarding “authority” on a particular topic, that’s my opinion.

I totally agree about the difference between popularity and authority–or, rather, that there is no difference between the two as far as the web is concerned.

There is obviously a big a six-degrees-of-separation dynamic to the web; a person’s authority is tied to the authority of the people with whom he or she is associated. Take you, Chris, for example–if you link to or mention someone in one of your posts, that person’s authority goes up a bunch of notches just by association. The assumption is that if you respect that person’s thoughts or knowledge then that person must be credible. Like Technorati but more informal and personal.

I blogged about this subject a while ago—and the authority figure I called out ended up reading and commenting on the post. Raised my authority for sure, to be able to say that this very well-known person reads my blog. Which, incidentally, she ended up doing and subsequently contacted me about joining the network of bloggers on her high-profile website.

http://mizzinformation.blogspot.com/2008/03/experts-new-clothes.html

On the subject of Alexa, I never base anything on their stats. Their stats (at least two years ago) relied on reports from a toolbar which was installed in someones browser. By asking several key site users and all the devs on one of my sites, we were able to completely game the system coming up with a top 10,000 ranking for a site that was at best a small niche community.

Chris, interesting question!

As if it’s not murky enough, let me come at it from a copywriting and persuasion standpoint. One of the most powerful things anyone can do when trying to sell themselves or a client is to position that person as “the wizard,” the all-knowing guru or go-to person in whatever field they seek to be known in.

No doubt, knowledge and ability are essential starting points. You need to be able to solve problems, create and innovate in a way that puts you clearly above the crowd, preferably in the top 5%.

Direct exposure to your solutions and ideas goes a long way toward convincing people of your worth. Killer content, in the online world, is a great example.

But that’s only step one. Step two is to publicly demonstrate that knowledge in a way that leads people to (a) follow you, and (b) evangelize you.

This gets into the notion of social proof. In the absence of clear, unambiguous proof, people will look to the opinions, experiences and advice of others in deciding whether an individual is someone of influence.

In the online world, all the factors you mentioned above serve as social proof of a person’s authority. I would also add…

- For bloggers, comment volume and quality,
- In forums, status, seniority, moderating clout and # of posts
- Any widget/chicklet that demonstrates a large # of followers, like feedcount or twittcount.
- Testimonials, both from likeminded people and from authority figures, influencers and traditional media.
- Ubiquity across all forums and media relevant to an individual’s topic area.

Lots more, but you pretty much see where I’m going.

I think one of the big stumbling points is always the difference between “perceived” authority and true authority, though.

It’s not terribly difficult to create perceived authority by manipulating social proof in the short run. But, if it’s not backed up by clear, regular demonstrations of knowledge and ability, that perceived authority quickly cedes to one-hit-wonderland.

Meaningful authority comes from being able to walk the walk better than 95% of those who try, then coupling that with channels to let people know just how good you are.

I’m a new subscriber and loving your perspective and the way you launch it.

Re: defining authority on we, my big hope and prayer is everyone would get over being so enthralled with numbers — both as frequency distributions and in the form of statistics.

I (immodestly) quote myself from p. 143 in my most recently published book:

“Yes, I clearly have a bias against manipulating numbers for evaluation purposes. I come by this bias honestly. I’m a social scientist by education and training. I know how to lie with statistics. Not that I would, of course.”

Whitney has a great point of view up there: follow-through is very important. I’m crap at follow through. Have been for almost two years. And yet, the web doesn’t ding me for this. Whit knows I’m a flake and don’t always get back in time. And yet, the web says I’m amazing.

THAT is the question I have.

Malcom Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point and Blink, both bestsellers and both full of thought provoking concepts about the way things work in the world.

These are BIG ideas that Gladwell cooked up using lots of authoritative ingredients; thought produced elsewhere and results of work done by others.

In the meantime he’s been roundly vilified and praised for the work he’s produced.

Those who vilify him feel he’s just a populist hack who’s built his celebrity on the backs of hardworking academics and other professionals. Yes, he’s accused of being a tissue thin celebrity journalist/hack/writer who has no business espousing such weighty theories just because he’s got connections in the publishing world.

Maybe.

I’d argue that his success is based on his ability to marshal disparate and highly technical data and translate it into engaging prose in such a way that the average person can make good use of the information.

Does he have “authority”? Maybe not exactly as this group seems to want to define it.

Is he just a celebrity? He certainly is now.

But Gladwell’s celebrity, combined with his gift for making prosaic sense of The Complicated, enables him to reach a large audience, disseminating both his ideas and the ideas of others to do with what the reader will.

I’m not sure I see anything wrong with that formula. Cause Celeb is nothing new, and so, if a blogger has celebrity (authority) and successfully uses their celebrity to promote thought leadership – even if it’s not always on target – what’s the difference if we call it authority or celebrity?

When somebody finds the secret recipe to get people to listen, they have authority.

Hi Chris:

This is a great post. I am a total newbie to the whole social media/networking arena and am clueless on how all of this stuff works. Your posts are an excellent learning tool for me.

Thanks again!

Our social media measurement app SM2 calculates a popularity ranking for social media results. It is an amalgam of the sources you mention plus things like number of followers, comments, etc.
The problem in social media is that low popularity sources can become high influence sources very rapidly so you cannot ignore the long tail of popularity. That’s why things like reach and authority are not the same in social media as the rest of the web.

Interesting article…. Technorati is a complete waste of time simply because once a person links – and even though they may visit regularly, decides not to link, as such, again – authority disappears.

Does it really matter…… the only thing that matters to me in terms of my own blog is… “Do people enjoy reading it”

Twitter is just absurd – I get spammed to death – to the extent that I’ve decided to spend time systematically blocking people who try to follow me unless I particularly want to read what they have to say.

Also… there is the element and obsession of quantity over quality – go for quality every time. 50 million flies eat shit… as the old saying goes…. but… they CAN be wrong.

Interesting piece though