Domain authority
A third-party score from 1 to 100 predicting how well a whole domain could rank, based mostly on its backlink profile. Not a Google metric.
In depth
What it really means
Domain authority is Moz’s model. Ahrefs has Domain Rating, Semrush has Authority Score. All three are estimates built by third parties trying to approximate something Google has never published. Google has stated repeatedly that it has no domain authority score.
It is genuinely useful as a comparative shorthand when you are assessing a link opportunity or sizing up competitors. It is useless as a KPI, because you can raise it without earning a single additional visitor.
How it works
- Third-party crawlers build their own index of the web’s links.
- Your backlink profile is scored against that index.
- The result is normalized onto a 1 to 100 curve.
- Google plays no part in any of this.
Scores are logarithmic, not linear.
Moving from 20 to 30 is achievable. Moving from 70 to 80 is a different order of difficulty entirely. Compare only within one tool. A DR of 60 and a DA of 60 are not the same measurement.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Quick comparative read on a prospective link source.
- Useful for sizing competitors before committing to a keyword.
- Free to check at small volumes.
Cons
- Not used by Google in any form.
- Manipulable, so a high score can mean a spam network rather than authority.
- Domain-level, so it says nothing about whether a specific page can rank.
Common mistakes
- Reporting it to leadership as a performance metric. It is not one.
- Rejecting a relevant, low-score industry blog in favor of an irrelevant high-score site.
- Comparing scores between tools as if the numbers meant the same thing.
- Assuming a high domain score means every page on that domain will rank.
Best practices
- Use it to compare options, never to report progress.
- Weight topical relevance above the score when assessing a link.
- Check the referring domain count and traffic alongside the score.
- Report actual outcomes instead: rankings, sessions, conversions, citation share.
FAQs
What is domain authority?
Moz’s 1 to 100 prediction of a domain’s ranking potential, modelled almost entirely from its backlink profile. Ahrefs and Semrush publish their own competing versions of the same idea.
Does Google use domain authority?
No. Google has stated repeatedly that it has no domain authority metric. DA, DR and Authority Score are all third-party approximations.
What is a good domain authority?
It only means anything relative to your competitors in your category. A 35 in a niche B2B category can outrank a 70 from an unrelated industry.
DA or DR, which is better?
Neither is authoritative. They use different data and different scales, so pick one, use it consistently, and never compare a number from one against the other.
Keep reading
Related on LymLyt
Beyond LymLyt
Further reading
Want this working on your site?
We build the content behind the term, ranked in search and cited by AI.
Book a 30-min call →