Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating (DR) both try to answer the same question — how strong is this domain’s backlink profile — but they are built by different companies, on different link indexes, and they are not interchangeable. DA comes from Moz. DR comes from Ahrefs. Neither is an official Google metric, and Google has repeatedly said it does not use either one.
That doesn’t make them useless. It makes them tools for comparison, not proof of quality. Used correctly, they help you shortlist guest post and link insertion candidates quickly, before you look at the things that actually matter: real traffic, real audience fit, and a real editorial process.
What each score is built from
Both scores are 0-100 and both are logarithmic, which means the jump from 20 to 30 is much easier than the jump from 80 to 90. Beyond that, they diverge.
| Domain Authority (DA) | Domain Rating (DR) | |
|---|---|---|
| Built by | Moz | Ahrefs |
| Based on | Moz’s Link Explorer index | Ahrefs’ own crawl index |
| Counts | Linking root domains, weighted by their own authority | Backlinks and referring domains, weighted by their own strength |
| Typical use | Comparing domains within Moz’s tools | Comparing domains within Ahrefs’ tools |
Because the two tools crawl the web independently, they don’t see the same links. A site can score 45 DR and 30 DA, or the reverse, without either number being “wrong.” They’re measuring against different, overlapping snapshots of the web’s link graph.
Why the scores move independently
A domain’s DA or DR can change even if nothing on the site itself changes, for reasons that have nothing to do with quality:
- A large referring domain lost or gained links elsewhere. Since both scores weight links by the authority of the linking domain, a change upstream ripples down.
- The crawler re-indexed the site and found (or lost) links it hadn’t previously counted.
- Moz or Ahrefs updated their scoring algorithm. Both vendors have adjusted their models over the years, which can shift scores across the board without any actual link building happening.
This is the main reason neither score should be read as a fixed, permanent fact about a domain. Check it close to the time you’re actually making a decision, not from a screenshot someone sent you weeks ago.
Using DA/DR to shortlist, not to decide
A common mistake is setting a hard cutoff — “only DR 40+” — and treating everything above it as safe and everything below it as worthless. That ignores audience fit entirely. A DR 25 site with a genuinely engaged, relevant readership can be a better guest post placement than a DR 55 site stuffed with unrelated affiliate content.
A more useful process:
- Use DA or DR (whichever tool you already have access to) as a first filter to remove domains with almost no backlink profile at all.
- Check estimated organic traffic for anything that passes the filter — a real number is a stronger signal than either authority score.
- Read the site. Recent articles, comment activity, and whether it looks like a publication a real reader would return to.
- Only then look at price and placement terms.
Our website quality score checker runs DA, PA, DR and traffic together into one weighted score with a visible breakdown, so you can see exactly which input is pulling a site’s score up or down instead of trusting a single number blind. If you’re pricing out a placement once a site clears your filter, the guest post price calculator gives a market-based starting range from the same inputs.
What Google actually says
Google has stated plainly that DA, DR, and similar third-party metrics are not part of its ranking systems. See Google’s own overview of its ranking systems — none of them reference a “domain authority” score, because no such single number exists inside Google’s algorithm. What Google does evaluate is closer to expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trust signals at the page and site level — see its E-E-A-T guidance — which is a fundamentally different, more holistic judgment than a link-count score.
Third-party metrics are still useful as a proxy for the thing Google actually cares about, since sites with strong natural link profiles tend to also have those underlying trust signals. Proxy is the key word — it correlates, it doesn’t cause anything.
Common questions
Which score should I trust more, DA or DR?
Neither is “more correct” — they’re different measurement systems. If you subscribe to Ahrefs, use DR consistently; if you use Moz, use DA consistently. The mistake is comparing a DA number from one site against a DR number from another, since they’re not on the same scale in practice even though both display as 0-100.
Can a site manipulate its DA or DR?
To a degree, yes — buying low-quality links from high-DR-but-otherwise-empty domains can nudge the score up without improving real traffic or trust. This is exactly why relying on DA/DR alone as a placement filter is risky; see our guide on private blog networks vs editorial backlinks for how that gap between score and quality shows up in practice.
Does a higher DA or DR guarantee better rankings for my linked page?
No. It’s one weak signal among many, and it says nothing about relevance. A closely relevant DR 30 link in a topical article usually outperforms an unrelated DR 60 link in a generic resource page.
How often should I re-check a prospect’s score?
Check it at the time you’re deciding, not from an old report. Scores shift as both vendors’ indexes update, sometimes by several points with no real change to the site itself.
Want a shortlist that’s already filtered on more than one metric? Explore Web Grouth’s guest posting service — every recommended website is checked on authority, traffic and editorial quality before it reaches your list.
