What Domain Rating measures
Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ score for the strength of a site’s backlink profile compared with the other websites in Ahrefs’ database, on a 100-point logarithmic scale. Ahrefs describes the method roughly like this: a linking domain passes on more when its own DR is higher, and it splits that value equally among every domain it links to. A link from a site that links out to thousands of others is worth less than one from a site that links to a few.
Because the scale is logarithmic, the steps aren’t even. Getting from DR 10 to 20 takes a handful of decent links. Getting from 70 to 80 takes a very large number of them.
What it doesn’t tell you
- It isn’t a Google metric. Google ranks pages, and it doesn’t use any third-party authority score. DR comes from Ahrefs’ crawl, not Google’s.
- It says nothing about traffic or relevance. A DR 60 site in an unrelated niche can send you nothing. A DR 25 blog your buyers read can send customers.
- It can be inflated. Link networks and spammy link swaps push DR up without making a site more useful. Look at what ranks on the site before you trust the number.
How founders use it
DR is a quick filter. It helps you rank a list of directories, blogs or podcasts you might get a link from, spot obvious junk, and see how your own link profile grows over time. For a batch of sites, use the bulk DR checker. To weigh one specific link, including its rel attribute and the page’s own traffic, try the backlink value calculator.
Our directory database shows DR next to each directory once we’ve looked it up. A new product starts at or near DR 0. Its first real links usually come from launch sites and directories: launching free on LaunchRanked gets you a permanent product page and a followed link after human review, with no badge required.
Where the data comes from
Every number on this page is Domain Rating by Ahrefs, fetched from Ahrefs’ free public API and cached for up to 7 days. Use of the data is subject to Ahrefs’ Domain Rating License.