Domain Rating vs Domain Authority: Which Metric Should You Trust?
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' 0–100 score for the strength of a website's backlink profile. Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's 0–100 prediction of how likely a domain is to rank compared to others. They sound interchangeable, and people quote them as if they were the same number, but they're built by different companies, from different link indexes, using different math. The same site can show DR 62 and DA 38 on the same day, and both tools are "right" by their own definitions. Here's how each one actually works, why the numbers diverge, and why neither should be the only thing you look at before paying for a link.
What Domain Rating (DR) measures
DR is a pure backlink metric. Ahrefs calculates it from its own crawl of the web, and the score reflects roughly three things:
- How many unique websites link to the domain — referring domains, not raw backlink counts. A thousand links from one site count far less than links from a hundred different sites.
- The DR of those linking sites — links from strong domains pass more weight than links from weak ones, so the calculation is recursive.
- How many other sites each linker points to — a domain's "voting power" is split across everything it links out to. A followed link from a site that links to 50 domains passes more equity than one from a site linking to 5,000.
The scale is logarithmic. Climbing from DR 10 to DR 20 takes a modest amount of link growth; climbing from DR 70 to DR 80 takes a very large one. That's why new sites move fast early and then plateau.
Just as important is what DR ignores: traffic, content quality, keyword rankings, domain age, and spam signals. It is a links-only calculation, by design. We've covered the metric in more depth in our guide to what Domain Rating is, including realistic benchmarks by site age.
What Domain Authority (DA) measures
DA takes a different approach. Instead of scoring the backlink profile directly, Moz uses a machine-learning model that predicts how often a domain should appear in Google's search results relative to other domains. Link data from Moz's index — linking root domains, total links, and Moz's own link-quality signals — feeds the model, but the output is a ranking prediction, not a link-strength score.
Two practical consequences follow from that design:
- DA is explicitly comparative. Moz recalibrates the model against real search results, so your DA can drop even when you did nothing wrong — the sites you're being compared against simply gained ground, or the model was retrained.
- DA is harder to reverse-engineer. Because it runs through a machine-learning layer rather than a direct formula, you can't cleanly attribute a DA change to a specific batch of links the way you often can with DR.
Moz also publishes a separate Spam Score, and its Domain Authority documentation is upfront that DA is a comparative tool, not a grade Google assigns.
Why the same site gets different numbers
When a client asks why their site is DR 55 but DA 32, the answer is almost always some combination of these four factors:
Different crawlers, different indexes. Ahrefs and Moz each run their own crawler and maintain their own link database. Neither has a complete map of the web, and they don't overlap perfectly. A chunk of your backlinks may exist in one index and not the other.
Different formulas. DR is a recursive link-equity calculation. DA is a machine-learning prediction trained against SERPs. They aren't computing the same thing, so there's no reason the outputs should match.
Different scaling curves. Both are 0–100 and logarithmic, but the curves aren't calibrated to each other. DR 50 and DA 50 are not equivalent milestones.
Different update cycles. The scores refresh on different schedules, so one tool may have already counted links the other hasn't crawled yet.
The mistake to avoid: comparing your DR against a competitor's DA. Cross-tool comparisons are meaningless. Pick one tool and compare within it.
Neither one is a Google metric
This is the point most worth internalizing. Google does not use Domain Rating or Domain Authority. Google's representatives have repeatedly said there is no single site-wide "authority score" in the ranking systems that works the way these third-party numbers do. DR and DA are estimates made by SEO software companies looking at the web from the outside.
That doesn't make them useless — Ahrefs and Moz both maintain enormous link indexes, and their scores correlate reasonably well with ranking ability in aggregate. But correlation at the population level tells you little about one specific site. A domain can carry a high DR earned from a link scheme, an expired-domain rebuild, or a PBN network, and Google may have already discounted every one of those links. The score stays high; the ranking power doesn't.
DR vs DA: side-by-side comparison
| Domain Rating (DR) | Domain Authority (DA) | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Ahrefs | Moz |
| Scale | 0–100, logarithmic | 0–100, logarithmic |
| What it measures | Strength of the backlink profile | Predicted likelihood of ranking vs. other domains |
| How it's calculated | Recursive formula: referring domains, their DR, their outbound link counts | Machine-learning model trained against real search results, fed by Moz link data |
| Main inputs | Followed links from unique referring domains | Linking root domains, total links, Moz link-quality signals |
| Ignores | Traffic, content, spam signals | Direct link-equity math (it's a prediction, not a link score) |
| Can drop without losing links? | Rarely (scale recalibration) | Yes — recalibrated against other sites regularly |
| Used by Google? | No | No |
| Best for | Vetting link prospects, tracking link-profile growth | Comparative benchmarking inside the Moz ecosystem |
When to use which
Use DR when you're evaluating link opportunities. The link building industry has largely standardized on Ahrefs. When sellers list guest post sites, they quote DR; when agencies set quality floors, they set them in DR. If you're vetting prospects for a guest posting campaign or checking a site before a niche edit, DR plus Ahrefs' traffic data is the working standard. It's also the more transparent metric — you can open the referring domains report and see exactly what's driving the score.
Use DA when your reporting lives in Moz. If a client's existing dashboards, historical data, and agency reports are built on Moz, switching metrics mid-stream just creates confusion. DA is fine for tracking direction over time within one tool.
Use either for trends, neither for absolutes. "Our DR went from 20 to 35 in a year" is meaningful. "We need DA 50 to rank" is not — no threshold of either metric guarantees anything, because Google reads neither.
Whichever you pick, the score of the linking site matters less than whether that site earns real search traffic — which brings us to the metric that actually separates good links from decoration.
Why traffic is the better third signal
DR and DA share the same blind spot: both can be inflated by links Google ignores. Organic traffic can't be faked the same way. If Ahrefs shows a site ranking for hundreds of keywords and pulling steady organic visitors, that's third-party evidence Google itself trusts the domain. A DR 70 site with 200 monthly organic visits is a walking red flag — in our vetting work, that pattern usually means an expired domain rebuilt for link selling or a site that's been quietly hit by an update.
So the practical vetting stack looks like this:
- DR (or DA) — a fast first filter to remove obviously weak sites.
- Organic traffic and its trend — is Google actually rewarding this site right now, and is the line flat, growing, or collapsing?
- Manual review — real content, real topical relevance, sane outbound linking patterns, and clean anchor usage.
A genuinely strong site passes all three. Plenty of DR 60+ domains fail at step two, which is exactly why "DR 60 guaranteed" offers are priced the way they are. This is the core of how we vet placements for authority backlinks: every site is checked in Ahrefs for referring domains, traffic, and traffic trend before it's ever proposed — and you see the live metrics before you pay. If you want the fuller picture of what makes a linking domain valuable beyond its score, our guide to referring domains breaks it down.
FAQ
Is DR or DA more accurate?
Neither is "accurate" in the sense of matching Google, because Google uses neither. DR is more transparent (you can trace it to specific referring domains) and is the de facto standard in link buying. DA is a reasonable comparative benchmark inside the Moz ecosystem. For vetting link prospects, DR plus organic traffic is the more useful combination.
Why did my DA drop when I didn't lose any links?
DA is recalibrated against other domains and periodically retrained. If competing sites gained links or Moz updated its model, your score can slide with no change on your end. It's a relative metric, not an absolute one.
What is a good DR or DA for a website that sells links?
There's no magic number, but many buyers set a floor around DR 30–40 for paid placements. The floor only matters alongside traffic: a DR 40 site with solid, stable organic traffic beats a DR 65 site with none. Score without traffic is the most common trap in buying backlinks.
Can I increase DR or DA directly?
Only by earning links from more unique, stronger referring domains — there's no shortcut that moves the real thing. Schemes that pump the score without earning genuine links (link farms, expired-domain redirects) inflate the number while Google discounts the links behind it.
Want to see the actual Ahrefs numbers — DR, traffic, and trend — for every site before you spend a dollar? That's how LinkVetted works by default: proof first, payment after.