Authority Score is the primary output of the 📝Authority Index — a normalized measure of how actively peers and audiences recognize a person's expertise on a specific topic, derived from cross-platform engagement rather than from credentials.
It exists because the two numbers people reach for are both wrong for the job. Follower count measures reach, credentials measure permission, and neither answers whether a field actually takes someone seriously. The score is built to be expensive to buy: it weights who engages, not how many.
It is for anyone who has to defend a sourcing decision — researchers, editors, marketers choosing creators, and AI teams whose answer quality is downstream of how the retrieval ranked people.
Read it as a measure of online recognition, not of expertise. Authorix says so plainly — a highly credentialed but less-active figure can score lower — which means the score systematically under-rates people who do the work and don't post about it. That's a feature for finding live voices and a bug for finding the best mind in a room.
Key Capabilities
- Connectivity weighting — A connection from a high-authority, topically relevant source moves the score materially, while a low-quality connection moves it close to not at all.
- Two-source identity requirement — An entity must show consistent presence across at least two independent sources before its signals are aggregated into a single scored profile.
- Topic-relative calibration — Source quality is calibrated against topic relevancy and cluster density, so the same connection is worth different amounts in different fields.
- Signal growth rate — A second output measures velocity relative to the topic average, which separates a rising voice from one that is established and flat.
- Stated anti-gaming defenses — Connectivity weighting, the cross-platform requirement, and anomaly flagging are offered as what makes gaming costly rather than impossible.
Getting Started
- Look up any person, handle, or content URL free at authorix.com/verify.
- Compare scores within a single topic at authorix.com/explore, not across topics.
- Read the published method and its stated limits at authorix.com/methodology.
- Pull the score and its inputs programmatically from the detail endpoint.
- Read a low score on a credentialed figure as low activity, not low expertise.
Related
- 📝Authorix API — returns the score, topics, and social signals as structured fields.
- 📝PersonRank — the broader shift from ranking pages to ranking identifiable people.