What Is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in Google search results. It's expressed as a number from 1 to 100 — higher scores indicate greater predicted ranking ability. A new website with no backlinks typically starts at DA 1. Major publications like Wikipedia and major news organizations score in the 90+ range.

DA is a third-party metric — it is not created by or endorsed by Google. Google does not use Domain Authority in its ranking algorithm. DA is Moz's best model of what makes a domain likely to rank well, based on their proprietary analysis of backlink profiles and other signals.

How Domain Authority Is Scored

Moz calculates DA using a machine learning model trained on Google ranking data. The primary inputs are:

• Linking root domains: The number of unique domains that have at least one link pointing to your site. 100 links from 100 different domains contributes far more to DA than 100 links from a single domain.
• Quality of linking domains: Links from high-DA sites contribute more to your DA than links from low-DA sites. A single link from a DA 80 site may contribute more than 50 links from DA 20 sites.
• Spam score of linking domains: Links from spammy or penalized domains can harm DA rather than help it. Moz's spam detection filters these from positive contribution.

DA is a logarithmic scale — moving from DA 20 to DA 30 is much easier than moving from DA 70 to DA 80. The upper ranges require an increasingly large and high-quality backlink profile to move the score.

DA vs Google's Actual Ranking Signals

Understanding where DA is useful and where it falls short requires understanding what it doesn't capture. Google uses hundreds of signals that DA doesn't model:

• Content quality and relevance to the specific query
• Core Web Vitals and page experience signals
• Author expertise and E.E.A.T signals
• Click-through rate and engagement signals
• Topical authority (coverage depth in a specific subject area)
• User intent alignment

A domain with DA 30 but highly relevant, comprehensive content on a specific topic will routinely outrank a DA 70 generalist site for queries in that topic area. DA is a rough predictor of general ranking ability — it's much less predictive for specific queries.

Domain Rating, Authority Score, and Other Equivalents

Every major SEO tool has an equivalent domain-level authority metric. They measure roughly the same thing (backlink profile strength) but use different calculation methods, so scores aren't directly comparable across tools:

• Domain Rating (DR) — Ahrefs: Focused specifically on backlink profile strength using Ahrefs' own link index. Generally considered a close correlation to DA but calibrated differently.
• Authority Score — Semrush: Incorporates organic traffic data in addition to backlink signals, making it somewhat more holistic than pure backlink-based metrics.
• URL Rating (UR) — Ahrefs: Page-level equivalent of DR, assessing the backlink profile of a specific URL rather than the whole domain.

Don't compare DA scores from one tool to DR scores from another — they're calibrated to different reference points. Choose one metric and use it consistently for competitive benchmarking.

How to Improve Domain Authority

DA improves primarily through earning high-quality backlinks from other websites. The strategies most reliably correlated with DA growth:

• Publish linkable assets: Original research, comprehensive guides, free tools, and unique data that other sites want to reference. These earn editorial backlinks naturally over time.
• Guest posting on relevant sites: Contributing articles to established publications in your industry earns links from domains with existing authority.
• Broken link building: Finding broken links on other sites and offering your content as a replacement. A reliable source of genuine editorial links.
• Digital PR: Creating newsworthy content (surveys, studies, trend reports) that journalists cite in their articles. These links from news domains carry significant DA weight.
• Earn competitor links: Identify sites linking to competitors and offer better resources as alternatives. Use Ahrefs' "Link Intersect" tool to find these opportunities systematically.

When DA Is Misleading

DA is a useful benchmarking tool, but there are situations where it's actively misleading as a strategy guide:

• Niche topical authority: A DA 25 domain that covers a specific niche exhaustively will outrank DA 60 generalists for queries in that niche. DA doesn't capture topical depth.
• AI search performance: AI citation selection has essentially zero correlation with DA. Content depth, schema markup, and entity recognition predict AI citations far better than backlink-based metrics.
• New domain potential: A new domain with exceptional content and growing topical authority may outpace a high-DA domain with stagnant, thin content far faster than DA scores suggest.

Use DA as one input for competitive analysis, not as the primary measure of your site's health or potential. Organic traffic, citation frequency, and content quality are better overall indicators of search performance.