Trust Flow
Also called: TF, Majestic Trust Flow
Trust Flow is a Majestic metric, scored 0 to 100, that rates the quality and trustworthiness of the backlinks pointing to a URL or domain by their proximity to a manually reviewed set of trusted seed sites. It is a third-party score, not a Google ranking factor.
Majestic built Trust Flow around a set of trusted seed sites picked by manual review. The closer a site sits to that seed set through its link graph, the higher its score. Trust decays as it flows across links, so a backlink from a page one or two hops from a trusted source passes more Trust Flow than one buried in a low-quality network. Like PageRank, it is calculated per URL first and then rolled up to the domain, so a strong homepage does not guarantee a strong inner page.
Reading it against Citation Flow
Trust Flow always travels with Citation Flow, its sibling metric. Citation Flow counts link volume; Trust Flow weighs link quality. The gap between them is the useful signal. A domain with Citation Flow 45 and Trust Flow 8 usually points to a thin or spammy profile: lots of links, little trust. When the two track closely (say TF 30 / CF 35), the backlink profile tends to be cleaner. Practitioners watch this ratio when vetting a link prospect.
Majestic also publishes Topical Trust Flow, which breaks the score down by category. That tells you whether a link’s trust comes from your niche or from unrelated sources, which matters more than a raw number.
One caveat worth repeating: Trust Flow is Majestic’s proprietary estimate from its own crawl, not a value Google uses. Treat it as one lens for comparing link opportunities, not as truth.
How it affects your traffic
Trust Flow does not move Google rankings on its own, but it is a fast filter for the link work that does. Chasing high-Citation-Flow, low-Trust-Flow domains wastes budget on links that carry little authority and can pull a profile toward spam. Screening prospects for healthy Trust Flow and topical relevance before outreach concentrates spend on placements that actually build authority. That vetting discipline sits at the core of our Link Building service.
Get Link Building that moves the needle
We turn terms like this into ranked pages and qualified pipeline. Start with a free Initial SEO Strategy.