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Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' 0 to 100 score of a website's backlink profile strength. How it is calculated, what a good DR is and its limits for SEO.
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Summary
Domain Rating (DR) is a metric created by Ahrefs that scores the strength of a website's backlink profile on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100. It is a third-party estimate, useful for comparing sites, and it is not used by Google.
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Domain Rating, abbreviated DR, is an indicator calculated by the SEO tool Ahrefs from its own index of links. It summarizes, in one number between 0 and 100, how strong the backlink profile of a domain is compared with all the other domains Ahrefs knows. A site with a DR of 80 has a much stronger link profile than a site with a DR of 20; a new site with no links has a DR of 0.
DR belongs to the family of authority metrics created after Google stopped showing PageRank publicly. Its closest equivalents are Moz's Domain Authority and Majestic's Citation Flow and Trust Flow. Each tool uses its own crawler and formula, so the scores are not interchangeable.
According to Ahrefs, DR looks at the number of unique domains that link to a site with at least one followed link, the DR of those linking domains, and how many different sites each of them links to. A link from a strong domain that links to few sites passes more value than a link from a weak domain or from a site that links to thousands of others. Nofollow links, and multiple links from the same domain, add little or nothing.
The scale is logarithmic: moving from DR 10 to DR 20 is far easier than moving from DR 70 to DR 80. Because scores are relative to the whole index, a site can lose a point without losing links, simply because other sites grew faster. Ahrefs also computes URL Rating (UR), the same logic applied to a single page.
There is no absolute threshold, because DR only makes sense compared with your competitors. A local bakery with DR 15 may dominate its market, while a software company with DR 50 may be behind its rivals. The useful question is: what is the DR range of the sites that rank on the first page for your target keywords, and how far are you from it? Sorank's free domain authority checker gives a quick view of where a site stands.
No, not directly. Google does not use Ahrefs' metrics, and it has said many times that it does not have a "domain authority" score of its own of this kind. DR correlates with rankings because it measures something Google values, links from relevant and trusted sites, but a high DR is not a ranking factor in itself. A page with strong content and a few relevant links can outrank a page on a higher DR domain.
Earn followed links from many different, relevant domains rather than many links from the same few sites. Create assets that attract citations: original studies, tools, comprehensive guides, expert quotes for journalists. Reclaim unlinked brand mentions and fix broken backlinks that point to deleted pages. Avoid buying links on sites that sell them to everyone: these links are often devalued, and link schemes violate Google's spam policies.
The first mistake is treating DR as a goal, choosing link opportunities only by their score and ignoring their topic and traffic. The second is comparing DR across tools or across very different industries. The third is panicking over small fluctuations, which often come from changes in Ahrefs' index rather than from your site. The fourth is selling or buying links on "high DR" sites built only for link placement, which have high scores but little real audience.
For SEO, DR is a practical way to benchmark your link profile, prioritize outreach targets and follow the effect of link building over time. For GEO, what counts is the reality behind the score: AI assistants tend to cite sources that other reputable sites already reference. A strong, diverse link profile, built on real editorial mentions, increases the chances that ChatGPT or Perplexity find and quote your pages.
Sorank's authority tracker follows the evolution of your domain's authority over time, alongside the backlinks you receive.
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0 to 100 score of a site's backlink strength, calculated from the number and quality of unique referring domains. It is a useful benchmark against competitors, not a Google metric. Focus on what moves it for good reasons, relevant editorial links from diverse domains, and the score will follow.
To go further, read our pages on Domain Authority and backlinks. Reference sources: Ahrefs' definition of Domain Rating and Google's policy on link spam.
Sources
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' metric and Domain Authority is Moz's. Both estimate the strength of a domain's link profile on a 0 to 100 scale, but they use different link indexes and formulas, so the same site gets different scores. Compare sites within one tool, never across tools.
No. Google does not use Ahrefs' data. DR correlates with rankings because it reflects links from other sites, which Google does take into account, but raising the score itself does not improve rankings.
DR can drop when you lose referring domains, when linking sites lose strength, or simply because the rest of the web grew faster, since the scale is relative. Check lost backlinks in your link tool before drawing conclusions; small changes are often noise.
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Guillaume Guersanguersanguillaume.com“We are an Ads agency and we wanted to get our SEO back on track once and for all. Sorank gave us a clear view of our site, helped us prioritize optimizations, and properly structure our content. The tool is easy to use, well designed for a team, and very practical for centralizing tracking without having to juggle multiple platforms. A very solid foundation to start fresh with our SEO.”
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