AUT-005 · External Authority and Earned Evidence

Prefer unique relevant domains

• Major
• IF
• AND
• THEN
• ELSE

The decision

• IF
  • many links come repeatedly from the same source while relevant independent sources are available
• THEN
  • diversify outreach toward unique relevant domains
• ELSE
  • deepen the useful relationship without treating every link as independent authority

Primary metric

qualified unique referring domains

Guardrail

diversity for its own sake

Reason

Makes the decision explicit, measurable, and reversible where possible.

LAKA levels

• Major

Operators

• IF
• AND
• THEN
• ELSE

Governs gates

• information advantage

Source

04-IF-ELSE-AND-OR-RULEBOOK.md — AUT-005 — Prefer unique relevant domains

The other eleven rules in External Authority and Earned Evidence

• AUT-001 Evaluate link quality multidimensionally IF an external link opportunity is considered Baseline
• AUT-002 Create a linkable reason IF outreach asks for attention without a concrete user benefit Major
• AUT-003 Support difficult commercial targets IF the target commercial page is unlikely to earn independent citations Major
• AUT-004 Reject manipulative placements IF a link requires deception, irrelevant insertion, undisclosed payment, or policy violation Baseline
• AUT-006 Prefer contextual editorial placement IF a link can appear in a useful body context or only in a repeated footer/sidebar Major
• AUT-007 Use tool metrics as proxies IF DA, DR, UR, PA, traffic estimates, or difficulty scores are used Baseline
• AUT-008 Investigate lost evidence IF a valuable relevant link or mention disappears Minor
• AUT-009 Measure brand demand effects IF earned media or authoritative mentions may increase awareness without direct referral clicks Baseline
• AUT-010 Segment outreach by relationship IF prospects differ by audience, reason to care, or editorial context Major
• AUT-011 Compound original research IF original data or a benchmark performs well Structural
• AUT-012 Judge authority by target outcomes IF links or mentions increase but the target cluster does not improve Baseline