Gorgosaurus was named by Lambe (1914).

It was synonymized subjectively with Aublysodon by Romer (1956), Parsch (1963) and Barsbold (1983); it was synonymized subjectively with Deinodon by Tatarinov (1964); it was synonymized subjectively with Albertosaurus by Russell (1970), Molnar (1980), Thulborn (1984), Molnar et al. (1990) and Carpenter (1992).

It was assigned to Theropoda by Lambe (1914); to Aublysodontinae by Nopcsa (1928); to Deinodontinae by Matthew and Brown (1922) and Hay (1930); to Theropoda by Parks (1935); to Carnosauria by Kuhn (1939); to Deinodontidae by Russell (1930), Stromer (1934), Russell (1935), Gilmore (1935), Gilmore (1946) and Maleev (1955); to Pachypodosauria by Huene (1958); to Dinodontidae by Huene (1926), Huene (1927), Huene (1929) and Swinton (1970); to Megalosaurinidae by Powell (1973); to Tyrannosaurinae by Holtz (1997) and Holtz (2001); to Tyrannosauridae by Walker (1964), Romer (1966), Miller (1967), Steel (1970), Wolberg (1980), Currie (1992), Carr (1995), Carpenter (1997), Padian (1997), Sereno (1998), Eberth et al. (2001), Currie et al. (2003), Rauhut (2003), Erickson et al. (2004), Urban and Lamanna (2006), Smith (2007), Longrich (2008), Li et al. (2009), Paulina Carabajal and Currie (2012), Dalman (2013) and Lü et al. (2014); and to Albertosaurinae by Currie (2003), Currie et al. (2003), Holtz (2004) and Dalman et al. (2018).