1. Check topical fit

Read the homepage, categories and recent articles. A coherent publication can cover adjacent subjects, but a domain publishing unrelated commercial topics every day deserves closer scrutiny.

2. Inspect audience signals

Use traffic and search-visibility tools as estimates, not truth. Look at trend direction, ranking-page context, freshness and whether the publication appears to serve readers beyond placement buyers.

3. Review outbound-link patterns

Open recent posts and inspect where they link. Repeated exact-match commercial anchors, unrelated destinations or obvious paid-post footprints can indicate a low editorial bar.

4. Look past DR and DA

Authority metrics are proprietary scores, not Google metrics. Pair them with relevance, current traffic, editorial quality and link patterns. See DR vs organic traffic.

5. Check the paid relationship

If money changes hands for publication, understand sponsorship disclosure and link qualification. Google's spam policy explicitly addresses links purchased for ranking purposes.

6. Document the decision

For repeatable buying, record the publisher, topic fit, traffic context, concerns, approved deliverable and terms. This is especially useful for agencies handling multiple clients.