What is Trust Flow?
Trust Flow (TF) is a metric created by Majestic, scored from 0 to 100, that estimates how trustworthy a page or domain is based on the quality of the sites that link to it.
Why it matters
Trust Flow is one of several third party metrics people use to compare sites before they link to them or buy a placement. Majestic builds it from the idea that sites linked closely to trusted, manually reviewed seed sites are likely to be trustworthy. It is a Majestic estimate, not a figure Google uses, so it should be read as one signal among others, next to the site's topic, its real audience and the other metrics you rely on.
How to read Trust Flow
A Trust Flow value means little alone. Compare it with the sites you are evaluating against, and read it next to Citation Flow, because the relationship between the two says more than either one. A site whose Trust Flow is much lower than its Citation Flow has many links but few from trusted sources, which can point to low quality links. Also check that the topic of the site matches yours, since Majestic offers a topical version of the metric.
Trust Flow variants
Trust Flow
The main metric, scored from 0 to 100, based on the trust of the sites that link to a page or domain.
Domain level and page level values
Majestic reports the metric for individual pages and for whole domains or subdomains, so check which one a number refers to.
Topical Trust Flow
A version that breaks the metric down by topic, which helps judge how relevant the linking neighborhood is to your niche.
Example
Two sites have similar Domain Authority. One has a Trust Flow close to its Citation Flow, and the other has a Citation Flow far above its Trust Flow. The second has many links but few from trusted sources, so it deserves a closer look before you choose it.
Trust Flow and Orbink
Orbink listings show metrics such as DR, DA and monthly organic traffic. Whatever metric you rely on, compare sites on more than one measure and look at the site itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Trust Flow is a Majestic metric. Google does not use it, and it should be read as a third party estimate of link quality.
There is no universal value. Compare it with the sites that rank for your keywords and with the publishers you are considering, and read it together with Citation Flow and the site's topic.
They come from different companies and are calculated differently. Trust Flow emphasizes the trust of the linking sites, while DR and DA summarize the strength of the backlink profile. Compare sites using the same metric from the same tool.
Any metric built from links can be influenced by links, so a high value is not proof of quality. Check the site's audience and content as well.