Domain Authority (DA) is a metric created by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine results pages. Domain Rating (DR) is a metric created by Ahrefs that measures the strength of a website's backlink profile. Both run on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100. Neither is a Google ranking factor. If you have seen both scores floating around in SEO conversations and wondered whether they measure the same thing, the short answer is: they do not.
This post breaks down what each metric actually measures, how each one is calculated, what a good score looks like depending on where your site is in its growth, and how to use DA and DR together without over-relying on either number.
Key Takeaways
- DA is a Moz metric built on a machine learning model using 40+ signals; DR is an Ahrefs metric focused almost entirely on backlink profile strength.
- Both metrics use a logarithmic 0-100 scale, meaning the gap between a score of 60 and 70 requires significantly more effort than the gap between 10 and 20.
- Neither DA nor DR is used by Google in its ranking algorithm. They are third-party approximations, not official signals.
- A 2023 study from repositori.upf.edu found that sites with higher DA and DR scores tend to rank better, but correlation is not causation.
- The most useful benchmark is always your competitors' scores in your specific niche, not an absolute target number.
What Is Domain Authority (DA)?
Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that estimates how likely a website is to appear prominently in search engine results pages. It scores websites on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100. A higher score signals stronger predicted ranking potential relative to other domains in the Moz index. DA is a comparative metric: your score is not evaluated in isolation but against every other website Moz has indexed.
Who Built DA and What Was It Designed to Do?
Moz introduced Domain Authority around 2005 as a practical substitute after Google retired its public PageRank scores. SEO professionals needed a way to benchmark website strength and evaluate link building opportunities without access to Google's internal data. DA was built to fill that gap.
The metric received a significant update in 2019 with the release of Domain Authority 2.0, which shifted the calculation toward a machine learning model. Rather than applying a fixed formula, the model analyzes thousands of real Google search results to identify which link patterns correlate with actual rankings. Moz describes it as a system that continuously looks for the best-fit algorithm matching link data to real-world SERP positions. If a domain appears more frequently in Google's results, its DA score tends to be higher.
How Is DA Calculated?
DA is calculated using a machine learning model that considers over 40 signals pulled from Moz's Link Explorer index, which spans more than 37 trillion links. The most important factors in the calculation are linking root domains (the number of unique websites linking to your domain), total link count, link quality (measured partly through MozRank, a logarithmic score of the prestige of pages linking to you), and MozTrust (a measure of how close your domain is to other trusted authoritative domains like government or educational sites).
Moz also incorporates a spam score into the model. Websites with a high concentration of low-quality or manipulative backlinks receive a lower DA than their raw link count might suggest. The model attempts to detect link farms, private blog networks, and purchased links, and penalizes accordingly.
Two characteristics of DA matter especially for beginners. First, it is a relative metric. If major sites across the web gain enormous quantities of new backlinks, the DA scores of sites that did not gain links may drop, even if those sites did nothing wrong. Second, DA updates on approximately a monthly cycle rather than in real time, so short-term link gains will not be reflected immediately.
What Is Domain Rating (DR)?
Domain Rating is a metric developed by Ahrefs that measures the strength of a website's backlink profile on a scale of 0 to 100. Where DA attempts to predict overall ranking potential using a broad set of signals, DR has a narrower and more deliberate focus: it measures backlink strength and almost nothing else. A high DR score means the site has earned links from many strong referring domains. It does not say anything about content quality, traffic levels, or ranking probability.
Who Built DR and What Was It Designed to Do?
Ahrefs introduced Domain Rating in 2016 as an alternative to Moz's DA. The design philosophy behind DR reflects Ahrefs' identity as a backlink analysis tool first. Rather than building a predictive model around ranking outcomes, Ahrefs built DR to give a clean, fast, and transparent read on the link profile of any domain. The score is designed to be an absolute measure rather than a relative one, which means your DR does not shift when a competitor gains backlinks.
How Is DR Calculated?
DR is calculated based on the number of unique referring domains pointing to a website and the quality of those domains, weighted by their own DR scores. A backlink from a domain with a DR of 80 passes more influence than a backlink from a domain with a DR of 15. Ahrefs weights the contribution of each referring domain using a logarithmic formula to prevent any single high-DR domain from distorting the score.
Only dofollow links count toward DR. Nofollow links are excluded from the calculation. DR also does not factor in domain age, on-page content quality, or organic traffic. It is a purpose-built backlink strength meter, and Ahrefs updates it more frequently than Moz updates DA, often reflecting new links within days of Ahrefs crawling them.
One practical nuance: if a site has many backlinks from a single referring domain, those additional links contribute very little once the first link from that domain has been counted. DR rewards diversity in the backlink profile, specifically the number of unique referring domains, not the raw total of links.
DA vs DR: The Key Differences Side by Side
The simplest way to understand the difference is this: DA asks "how likely is this site to rank?" and DR asks "how strong is this site's backlink profile?" They are related questions, but they are not the same question.
| Criteria | Domain Authority (DA) | Domain Rating (DR) |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Moz | Ahrefs |
| Primary focus | Ranking potential across multiple SEO factors | Backlink profile strength only |
| Scale behavior | Relative: scores shift as the wider index changes | Absolute: scores do not shift based on other sites' gains |
| Factors included | 40+ signals including spam score and machine learning model | Referring domain count and quality weighting (dofollow only) |
| Update frequency | Approximately monthly | Near real-time as Ahrefs crawls new links |
| Best use case | Competitive SEO benchmarking and overall site health | Link prospecting and backlink profile evaluation |
The relative vs absolute distinction is worth spending a moment on because it catches beginners off guard. DA scores across your entire niche can drop simultaneously even when every site's backlink profile remains completely unchanged. This happens when Moz adds a large number of new high-authority sites to its index, which compresses everyone else's relative position. DR does not behave this way. If your DR drops, it typically means you have lost referring domains, not that someone else gained them.
Are DA and DR Google Ranking Factors?
Neither DA nor DR is a Google ranking factor. Google does not use Moz or Ahrefs data in its algorithm. Both scores are third-party estimates built by private companies using their own web crawlers and proprietary formulas. A website with a DA of 60 does not receive any preferential treatment from Google compared to a website with a DA of 30, purely on the basis of that number.
This is one of the most common misconceptions among SEO beginners, and it is worth stating plainly: chasing a DA or DR target as though hitting a specific number will improve your Google rankings is a misunderstanding of what these metrics do.
Why Do High-DA and High-DR Sites Tend to Rank Well Then?
The correlation between high DA/DR scores and strong Google rankings is real, as confirmed by the 2023 study "Reliability of domain authority scores calculated by Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs" published via repositori.upf.edu. But correlation is not causation. Sites with high DA and DR scores tend to rank well because they have earned a large number of quality backlinks from relevant, authoritative referring domains. Those backlinks are a genuine Google ranking signal. The DA and DR scores are just third-party measurements of the same underlying behavior that Google also rewards.
The 2024 Google API documentation leak further confirmed this general direction. An internal feature called siteAuthority appeared in leaked documents, validating the philosophy that domain-level authority is a concept Google considers. However, the leaked data did not confirm that Google uses Moz or Ahrefs scores specifically, and Google has not changed its public position that DA and DR are not ranking factors.
What this means practically: focus on building a strong, diverse backlink profile and producing content that earns links naturally. If you do that consistently, your DA and DR will rise as a byproduct. Pursuing the scores directly, through link farms or purchased links, inflates the number without producing the underlying SEO health it is supposed to represent.
What Is a Good DA or DR Score?
A good DA or DR score is one that is higher than the scores of the sites competing for the same keywords in your niche, not a universal number. A DA of 25 might be more than enough to rank on the first page for low-competition queries in a narrow topic area. That same DA of 25 would not be competitive in a space where the top-ranking sites all sit at 70 or above.
How to Read Your Score as a New Website
New websites always start with a DA and DR of 1. As the site earns its first backlinks from referring domains, both scores begin to climb. The logarithmic nature of the scale means early gains come quickly: moving from a DR of 1 to a DR of 20 or 30 is achievable within one to two years of consistent content production and link building. Moving from a DR of 60 to 70 can require the same volume of effort applied over a much longer period.
As a rough orientation, a DA or DR in the range of 1 to 10 is typical for brand-new sites with few or no backlinks. Scores in the 20 to 40 range are common for small-to-medium content sites with a growing referring domain base. Sites in the 50 to 70 range tend to be well-established with a broad backlink profile spanning many unique domains. Scores above 70 are generally reserved for major publications, large e-commerce platforms, national brands, and high-authority news outlets.
The most reliable way to use these benchmarks is to pull the DA or DR of the top five ranking pages for your target keyword and treat that range as your competitive baseline, not the score of Wikipedia or Forbes.
How to Check DA and DR for Free
Three tools cover the majority of what beginners need for checking both metrics without a paid subscription.
Moz's Link Explorer offers a free tier that allows a limited number of domain checks per day. Entering any domain into Link Explorer returns the DA score alongside the number of linking root domains, total backlinks, and spam score. This is the authoritative source for DA since Moz calculates it. The Moz Bar browser extension is a useful companion: it overlays DA scores directly on search results pages as you browse, allowing you to assess competitor authority without leaving Google.
Ahrefs offers a standalone free DR checker at ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker. It does not require an account. Entering a domain returns the current DR alongside the number of referring domains and the estimated organic traffic from Ahrefs' index. For a single-site check or a quick prospect evaluation, this is the fastest free option available.
One note on consistency: always use the same tool for tracking your own site's progress over time. DA and DR pull from different crawlers and different data sets. Comparing your Moz DA score from January with your Ahrefs DR score from March will not give you a meaningful trend line. Pick one metric, pick one tool, and monitor it monthly.
How DA and DR Factor Into a Practical SEO Strategy
For SEO beginners, DA and DR are most useful in three specific scenarios: sizing up the competition before targeting a keyword, evaluating the quality of a potential backlink source, and tracking your own site's authority growth over time.
When researching whether a keyword is worth targeting, pulling the DA scores of the top-ranking pages gives you a fast read on how much authority the sites dominating that result page have accumulated. If every top result belongs to sites with a DA above 65 and your site sits at 18, that keyword is likely too competitive at your current stage. Looking for keywords where the top results include sites in the DA 20 to 40 range gives you a more realistic competitive window.
When evaluating a link building opportunity, whether through guest posting, digital PR, or a partnership, DR is the more useful metric because it tells you directly how strong that site's backlink profile is. A dofollow link from a site with a DR of 55 and a healthy set of referring domains is considerably more valuable than a link from a site with a DR of 12 built on a thin content base. Checking the spam score in Moz and the referring domain count in Ahrefs together gives you a more complete picture than either metric alone.
For tracking growth, the most useful approach is to record your DA and DR scores at the start of each month alongside the number of referring domains you have accumulated. The referring domain count is the underlying variable that drives both scores. If your referring domain count is growing steadily and your DA and DR are not moving, the logarithmic scale is likely the reason: you are climbing the steeper part of the curve, and movement requires proportionally more link acquisition than it did at lower scores.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between DA and DR?
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric from Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine results, calculated using a machine learning model that weighs over 40 signals including backlink quality, spam score, and linking root domains. Domain Rating (DR) is a metric from Ahrefs that measures the strength of a website's backlink profile based on the number and quality of unique referring domains sending dofollow links. DA is a predictive, relative metric. DR is a descriptive, absolute metric focused on link strength.
Is DA or DR more accurate for predicting Google rankings?
Neither is definitively more accurate. A 2023 study published via repositori.upf.edu found that both metrics correlate with higher search rankings, but correlation is not the same as causation. DA attempts to model ranking potential using multiple signals, which in theory makes it a broader predictor. DR focuses on backlink strength, which remains one of the strongest documented ranking signals. Most SEO professionals use both together rather than relying on one exclusively.
Can you have a high DR but a low DA?
Yes, and it is more common than beginners expect. A site that has aggressively built backlinks through a limited set of referring domains might accumulate a strong DR while its DA remains lower because DA also factors in spam score, link diversity, and other signals Ahrefs does not use. The reverse is also possible: a site with a broad, organically grown link profile might have a solid DA while its DR appears lower if the referring domains pointing to it have modest DR scores themselves.
How often do DA and DR scores update?
DA updates approximately once per month, though Moz does not publish a fixed schedule. Individual site scores may update at different intervals depending on when Moz's crawler last indexed the domain's link data. DR updates much more frequently: Ahrefs crawls the web continuously, and DR scores for active sites can reflect new backlinks within days of Ahrefs discovering them.
Does a high DA or DR guarantee better search rankings?
No. Neither DA nor DR is a Google ranking factor, and neither guarantees any ranking outcome. High scores correlate with strong rankings because the behavior that produces high scores, earning quality backlinks from many unique referring domains, is independently rewarded by Google's algorithm. A site can have a high DA or DR and rank poorly if its content does not satisfy search intent, its technical SEO is weak, or its topical authority in a given niche is thin.
What is a good DA score for a new website?
A new website always starts at a DA of 1. A score of 20 to 30 is a realistic target for a content-focused site within the first one to two years of consistent publishing and link building. The most meaningful benchmark is not an absolute number but rather the DA range of the sites ranking for your target keywords. If your competitors average a DA of 30, a DA of 25 to 35 puts you in a competitive range for lower-difficulty queries within that space.
Conclusion
DA and DR are not the same metric, they are not Google ranking factors, and neither is more important than the other in isolation. Moz's Domain Authority gives you a multi-signal prediction of a site's ranking potential relative to the broader web. Ahrefs' Domain Rating gives you a focused, real-time read on backlink profile strength. Used together, they give a more complete picture of where a site stands than either number can provide on its own.
For anyone building a website from scratch, the practical takeaway is straightforward. Check your competitors' scores before targeting a keyword. Use DR to vet any site you plan to pursue for a backlink. Monitor your own DA and DR monthly using one consistent tool. And remember that both scores are downstream effects of doing the actual work: producing content worth linking to and building relationships that earn those links from diverse, authoritative referring domains.
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