Search Atlas vets the quality of links and citation sources using Majestic Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) — not Domain Authority (DA). There is no DA cutoff enforced by Search Atlas for citations.
Here is how the quality check actually works:
- Trust Flow below 5 is automatically flagged as low-quality ("Disavow: Metric").
- A low Trust-to-Citation Flow ratio (roughly TF ÷ CF below 0.25) is automatically flagged as potentially spammy ("Disavow: Ratio"), regardless of the absolute Trust Flow score.
- Trust Flow below 10 combined with a TF/CF ratio below 0.5 may be flagged as a possible disavow candidate for manual review.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Higher Trust Flow and a healthy TF/CF ratio indicate a more trustworthy source. These are Majestic's own quality metrics, not an official Google ranking factor.
- Context matters. In some niches, high-Trust-Flow sources may be harder to find. Using the best available source is always better than using none at all.
- These metrics are one signal among many. Relevance, recency, and accuracy of a source still matter when choosing what to cite.
If you have questions about how citation quality is being evaluated for your specific content, feel free to chat with a human teammate using the in-app live chat widget.