Citation Flow is a third-party Majestic metric that estimates the quantity and influence of links pointing at a page or domain, without judging how topically relevant or trustworthy those links are.
| Term | Citation Flow |
|---|---|
| Category | Entities, Links and Authority |
| Also known as | Majestic Citation Flow |
| Where it appears | Off-page factors |
What it means in RankGear
Citation Flow appears among RankGear’s off-page factors, populated when you enable a Majestic provider for a run. It answers a narrow question: how much link volume and link influence flows into the URLs you are measuring. Because it counts and weights links by their own connectivity rather than their subject matter, a page can carry a high Citation Flow purely on the strength of many or well-connected inbound links, even if those links have little to do with its topic. RankGear surfaces the raw provider value alongside your other off-page evidence so you can read link quantity separately from link quality.
How to interpret it
Read Citation Flow as a measure of link influence, not link relevance. On its own a high number tells you a page is well-linked, not that those links are earned from topical, trustworthy sources. That is why it is almost always read next to Trust Flow: a strong Citation Flow paired with a weak Trust Flow often signals volume without quality. Keep two things fixed before you compare pages: whether the provider was actually enabled and returned data for each URL, and whether the pages were measured under the same run conditions. Comparing a value from a Majestic-enabled run against a page that had no provider data is meaningless.
Example
You run an off-page analysis on ten competitor pages with a Majestic provider enabled. One competitor shows a Citation Flow of 48 but a Trust Flow of 11. The high Citation Flow says plenty of links point at that page, while the low Trust Flow suggests those links are not coming from authoritative, on-topic sites, a common footprint of bulk or low-quality link building rather than genuine editorial citations.
Important considerations
- Citation Flow is a Majestic-scale metric built on Majestic’s own web index. It is not a Google score and does not measure or predict Google rankings.
- Provider metrics use different indexes and scales, so they are comparative indicators only. Compare Citation Flow across pages measured under the same run conditions, never against values from a different tool or a different index.
- Correlation is not causation: a higher Citation Flow does not make a page rank. Treat it as one piece of link evidence, most useful when read alongside Trust Flow and your other off-page factors.
- The value only exists when a Majestic provider is enabled and returns data for the URL. Separate provider availability from the measured number before drawing conclusions.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.