DA&DR Checker

Moz's Domain Authority (DA) is a metric designed to predict how well your website will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Developed by Moz in 2004, DA helps SEO professionals gauge a site's potential performance against its competitors. Thus, it quickly became a go-to metric for SEO professionals.

In other words, DA is a score Moz developed to compare websites on a scale from 1 to 100. The higher your DA, the more likely your site is to rank high in search results.

DA is based on a comprehensive mix of factors, like the number of quality inbound links and the age of the domain. These elements are crunched by Moz’s machine learning algorithm, making DA a robust indicator of potential search engine success.

DA isn't perfect. It's a predictive tool, not a definitive measure of ranking. That means while a high DA points to potential success, it's not a guarantee. Just like Ahrefs’ DR, it’s best used as a comparative tool, not the only metric you rely on.

The DA score is calculated using about 40 key SEO factors, including linking root domains, social media signals, and the site's spam score. Plus, they update DA every few weeks or so, so it's always tuned to the latest web dynamics.

Developed by Ahrefs in 2016, DR is a metric that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile on a scale from 0 to 100. It's become crucial for SEO experts to gauge a site's influence and potential in search rankings.

📝 Fact: in our research, 69% of SEO experts trusted Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) as the go-to metric for measuring a site's strength.

So what makes DR special?

It zeroes in on the number and quality of external backlinks a website garners. High-quality links boost your DR, signaling a robust backlink profile.

Just like DA, DR is updated regularly to reflect the dynamic nature of the web. As websites gain or lose backlinks, their DR can change, providing SEO experts with up-to-date insights into link profile strength.

Here’s why DR matters:

• Ahrefs uses a robust system to calculate DR. The process involves counting the total number of unique domains that link to a site and evaluating the quality of these links;
• Ahrefs' crawler, one of the most active on the web, continually gathers data, making its backlink database one of the most comprehensive available.

A high DR means your site has influential backlinks that could help elevate your presence in search results.

Yet, remember, DR is just one part of your SEO toolkit. While it points to potential, it doesn’t guarantee top rankings. Other factors like content quality and technical SEO play huge roles too.

Ahrefs has one of the best crawlers out there, scanning billions of pages daily to keep its massive backlink database up to date.

Domain Rating (DR) considers the number of unique sites linking to you, the total number of backlinks, and the DR of those sites.

High-authority links are the most valuable as they carry weight.

Using DR gives you a snapshot of your backlink profile. It’s a handy way to spot link-building opportunities and see how you stack up against your competitors.

Just remember, having a high DR isn’t everything. Focus on building real, quality links that help your site grow and improve your SEO.

While both metrics gauge a website’s influence, they do so from different perspectives.

DA evaluates your website’s overall potential to rank in Google. It considers multiple factors, including the age of the domain, the size of the site, and the quality of your link profile.

DR, on the other hand, focuses specifically on your backlink profile, emphasizing the number and strength of links pointing to your site.

Here’s a quick table to help you understand their key differences:

Basically, DR looks at how strong and varied your backlinks are, while DA takes a wider view to estimate how well your site might rank.

Both Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) and Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) help measure how solid your site’s backlink profile is compared to others.

But what counts as a "good" score?

For DR, hitting 50+ means you’ve got a decent overall link profile, and anything above 80 shows real authority.

With DA, it’s pretty similar - a score over 50 means you're ahead of a lot of competitors, and 80+ gives you a serious edge.

Here’s a quick look at how these scores compare:

Keep in mind, though, that these numbers are most useful when comparing sites within your industry. To keep improving, focus on building a stronger link profile, enhancing your content quality, and tightening up your technical SEO.

With all the buzz around DA and DR scores, do they actually influence your SEO rankings directly?

The short answer is no.

Both DA and DR help measure potential, but, as you already know, Google doesn’t use these metrics to rank your site.

Here's something you might find surprising: a site with a sky-high DA or DR can have almost zero traffic and low-quality content.

Why?

Because these scores don’t guarantee that real users find the content valuable—they only reflect the site's backlink strength.