The most common question about DR and DA is whether a higher number helps a site rank on Google. The honest answer has three parts: what Google has said, what seems likely from experience, and what nobody outside Google can know. This guide keeps those three apart, so that you can see where firm statements end and where informed guessing begins.
What Google has said
Google has not published a score like DR or DA. Its representatives have said on several occasions that Google does not use Domain Authority, or a similar domain level score from a third party, as a ranking signal. Both Ahrefs and Moz describe their scores as their own measures, not Google's.
Google's public documentation also says that its ranking systems look at many signals, and it has described links as one of the ways it finds and understands pages. It has been equally clear that links made mainly to manipulate rankings can break its spam policies. The wording of those policies and the systems behind them are updated over time, so read the current versions on Google's own site. It is wise to read the original wording, because summaries online often add certainty that was not there.
What seems likely about links and rankings
These points are widely held in the search community, but they are experience and inference, not Google statements.
- A site that earns links from relevant, well regarded pages often does better over time than a site with none. The links may be a cause, or they may simply travel with good content and a real audience.
- Links from many different sites tend to matter more than many links from one site.
- A third party score such as DR or DA tends to rise when link profiles grow, so it often moves in the same direction as a site's visibility. That is a correlation. It does not show that the score caused the visibility.
- A high score on a site with thin content or no real audience does not appear to protect it. Sites with strong link profiles can still lose visibility when other factors go wrong.
What nobody outside Google knows
- How much any single link is worth in the ranking systems at a given moment.
- Whether a given set of redirect based links is counted in full, counted in part or ignored.
- How a particular site would respond if its DR or DA changed with nothing else changing. Rankings depend on many other factors, so no clean test exists.
- Which of the many signals Google weights most for your particular query, since that varies by topic and changes over time.
This is why a seller who promises rankings or traffic from a higher DR or DA is promising more than anyone can know. We make no such promise. Our own service raises the figure shown by Ahrefs or Moz using permanent redirects (301) placed from established domains. Redirect based links can look unnatural to Google, and no vendor can promise they are safe for any monetization program. The buyer takes that risk.
How to use this in practice
- Treat DR and DA as tracking numbers for comparing link profiles, not as targets for rankings.
- Judge your site by your own traffic, enquiries and Search Console data.
- Put your effort into content, a clear site and links you can earn on merit.
- If you want the number raised for your own reports, read the packages and pricing page and the refill policy first, so you know the limits before you order.
If a claim sounds too clean, ask what evidence sits behind it. Any seller can point to a rising number, and a rising number is exactly what the tools are built to display. It is not the same as rising traffic.
For a plain summary of the two scores, see what DR and DA measure.
Note: tools and search guidelines change, and what is known about ranking changes with them. Check Google's current documentation for its latest position.