Path strength is a measure of how credible a warm path is: how real, how close, and how recent the relationship between the connector and the buyer actually is. It is what lets you rank several possible paths and pick the one most likely to result in a real introduction.
Strength comes from the quality of the underlying tie, not the existence of a link. The signals that raise it include a shared employer with overlapping tenure, role proximity, how recently the two interacted, and the type of relationship (a close colleague outranks a one-time contact). These are the same relationship intelligence signals that separate a working relationship from a social-network accept.
A path is only as strong as its weakest link, so a long chain through distant ties is usually weaker than a short chain through a close one.
Most teams have more warm paths than they can act on, so the question is not whether a path exists but which one to use. Ranking by path strength means you spend a connector’s goodwill on the route most likely to land, and you protect those relationships from weak, low-odds asks. It is what turns a list of possible paths into a confident next step.
Via scores every warm path by strength so you know which one to use. For any target, you see the strongest connector first, why the path is credible, and how to make the ask, rather than working through paths at random.