Domain Rating
Domain Rating (DR) is a 0-100 score created by Ahrefs that measures the strength of a domain's backlink profile relative to other sites. It is not an official Google ranking metric and focuses solely on the quantity and quality of backlinks.
- Domain Rating (DR) is a proprietary 0-100 score from Ahrefs that reflects the strength of a domain's backlink profile.
- It is calculated from the number and strength of referring domains, along with how many sites those domains link out to.
- It is not an official Google ranking metric, and both Ahrefs and Google state it is not a direct ranking factor.
- It differs from Moz's Domain Authority (DA), since DR concentrates on backlink strength alone.
Overview
Domain Rating is a 0-100 score developed by the SEO toolset provider Ahrefs to express how strong a website's backlink profile is compared with other sites in its database. Ahrefs' official documentation defines DR as a metric that shows the strength of a website's backlink profile relative to others on a 100-point scale.
The crucial point is that DR is not an official metric supplied by Google. It is a relative figure that Ahrefs calculates independently, and a high score offers no guarantee of top placement in Google's results.
How DR Is Calculated
Ahrefs computes DR using an approach similar to Google's PageRank. The difference is that PageRank is calculated between individual pages, whereas DR is calculated at the domain level. The process works roughly as follows.
- Identify every domain that points at least one followed link to the target domain.
- Determine how many unique domains each of those linking domains links out to.
- Divide each linking domain's DR by the number of unique domains it links to, passing a portion of score (often called "DR juice") to the target domain.
- Scale the resulting absolute value into the 0-100 range to produce the final DR score.
As a result, DR depends not only on the number of referring domains but also on how widely those domains spread their links across other sites. In addition, only the first link from a given domain contributes to a DR increase; additional links from the same domain no longer affect DR.
DR is built on a logarithmic 0-100 scale. Moving from DR 70 to 71 therefore takes far more effort than moving from DR 20 to 21, and the number of backlinks required for each additional point grows exponentially as the score climbs.
Differences From Domain Authority
Domain Rating (DR) is often confused with Domain Authority (DA), but the two differ in their source and in what they measure.
| Aspect | Domain Rating (DR) | Domain Authority (DA) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Ahrefs | Moz |
| What it measures | Backlink profile strength (link-based) | Overall ranking potential (blend of ~40 factors) |
| Main inputs | Referring domain count and strength, link distribution | Referring root domains, total backlinks, MozRank, MozTrust, and more |
| Update frequency | About every 12 hours | Roughly once a month |
| Scale | 0-100 (logarithmic) | 0-100 |
In short, DR concentrates solely on backlink strength and deliberately excludes non-link variables such as traffic, domain age, and spam signals. DA, by contrast, is a broader metric that blends roughly 40 factors in an attempt to predict a site's overall likelihood of ranking.
Why It Is Not a Google Ranking Factor
Domain Rating is not a metric used by Google's ranking algorithm. Ahrefs' official blog states plainly that Google does not use Domain Rating as a ranking factor, emphasizing that Google ranks pages rather than entire sites.
It is true that DR shows some correlation with Google rankings, but this is correlation rather than causation. Strong backlinks and sound SEO practices influence both a DR score and Google rankings, so the two tend to move together for that reason alone.
DR also does not assess the quality of backlinks. Ahrefs explains that DR does not account for backlink spam, and that piling up a large volume of low-quality backlinks can actually raise DR rather than lower it. It is therefore more appropriate to treat DR as a relative reference point for comparing link prospects or gauging your rough standing against competitors, rather than as an absolute measure of site quality.