Domain Rating, commonly shortened to DR, is a metric developed by Ahrefs to evaluate the overall strength of a website backlink profile. It runs on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, which means moving from DR 20 to 30 is much easier than climbing from DR 70 to 80. This scale was chosen deliberately to reflect the real distance between sites, because truly authoritative resources are relatively rare on the open web.
How the calculation actually works
When calculating DR, Ahrefs focuses on two main factors: how many unique domains link to your site with dofollow links and what DR those linking domains hold. The approach is closely related to the classic PageRank algorithm, because every link carries weight proportional to the authority of its source. A single backlink from a major publication with DR 90 can easily outweigh dozens of links from small blogs sitting at DR 10.
The algorithm also takes into account how many other sites the source links out to. If a single website distributes links to thousands of destinations, the weight of each individual link decreases accordingly. This is part of the protection against manipulation and it makes artificial DR inflation considerably harder to pull off.
The difference between DR and Page Rating
Many people confuse these two metrics, but they measure very different things. Domain Rating reflects backlink strength at the whole-domain level and represents the overall authority of the site. Page Rating, sometimes called URL Rating, evaluates the backlink profile of a specific page. A site can have a high DR while most of its internal pages still carry low URL Rating, simply because few sources link to those pages directly.
Why a high DR does not guarantee high rankings
This is one of the most widespread misconceptions in SEO. Google does not officially recognise DR as a ranking factor, since it is a proprietary metric owned by Ahrefs. Google itself considers more than 200 factors, including page speed, user behaviour, content quality, topical relevance and dozens of other signals. DR approximates only one of those signals, namely the overall backlink profile, and it does so in a simplified way.
Starting from 2024 Ahrefs significantly updated the DR algorithm. Links from spammy, low-quality or suspicious sources now carry far less weight than they used to. This change affected thousands of websites, especially those that had previously boosted DR through PBN networks or purchased links. As of 2026, DR remains the most convenient shorthand metric for quickly judging the quality of a backlink profile.
Comparison with Moz Domain Authority
Domain Authority or DA is a similar metric developed by Moz, but it relies on a completely different algorithm and its own crawl index. Both metrics use the 0 to 100 scale, yet the DR and DA of the same website can differ noticeably. Comparing these numbers directly leads to faulty conclusions, because each tool sits on its own data set and its own methodology.
Strategy for growing DR
The most effective path is producing genuinely valuable content that naturally attracts links on its own. Broken link building also works well, where you find dead links on other sites and offer your own resource as a replacement. Guest posts, podcast appearances and industry partnerships help earn links from authoritative sources. The biggest mistake is becoming obsessed with the DR number and trying to buy links, because in the long run this damages the site.
A good illustration is the story of a small blog whose author spent two years earning around 80 quality backlinks and pushed DR from 5 to 28. However, the real achievement was not the number itself but the fourfold growth in organic traffic. This story clearly shows that DR should be treated as a measurement tool rather than the ultimate destination.