Domain Rating, usually shortened to DR, is a number that Ahrefs shows for every website it has crawled. You will see it in Ahrefs reports, in browser toolbars and in many link building conversations. This guide explains in plain terms what the number is, how it is built in general and how to read it without trusting it too much.
What Domain Rating is
DR is a score on a scale from 0 to 100. It describes the strength of the backlink profile of a whole domain, compared with other domains in the Ahrefs index. A backlink is a link from one website to another. A domain with a score near zero has few or weak links in the Ahrefs data. A domain with a score in the 80s or 90s has links from a large number of strong sites.
Two points matter from the start. First, DR is a metric made by Ahrefs, not by Google. Second, DR is about links only. It says nothing directly about the quality of your pages, the speed of your site or the traffic it receives.
How Ahrefs builds the number, in general terms
Ahrefs has published an outline of the idea behind DR. The exact formula is not public and can change, so we stay with the outline.
- Referring domains. The count of unique websites that link to your domain matters more than the raw count of links. Fifty links from one site count for far less than one link each from fifty different sites.
- Strength of those sites. A link from a domain with a high DR carries more weight in the calculation than a link from a domain with a low DR.
- Dilution. If a linking site points to a very large number of other sites, each single link from it is worth less.
- A curved scale. The scale is not a straight line. Moving from 10 to 20 takes far fewer new links than moving from 70 to 80.
In general, Ahrefs counts links that search engines follow, not links marked nofollow. Check the Ahrefs help pages for the current rules, because they are the only authoritative source.
How to read a DR figure
A single number is a starting point, not a verdict. These habits make it more useful.
- Look it up in an Ahrefs tool and write down the date next to the figure.
- Compare it with sites in the same topic. A DR of 30 may be strong in a small local niche and weak in a crowded news topic.
- Check again after a month or two. DR moves as Ahrefs finds and loses links.
- Read it next to your own results, such as organic traffic, enquiries and rankings from your analytics.
Because DR is a relative score, it can move even when you do nothing. When linking pages disappear, or when the index is refreshed, a number can fall. When many other sites gain links, a stable domain can see its position shift.
What DR does not tell you
- Google rankings. As far as Google has said publicly, it does not use a domain level authority score like DR as a ranking signal. Links in general seem to remain one of many signals, but the DR figure is only the Ahrefs summary of them.
- Traffic. A site can have a high DR and little traffic, or the reverse.
- Content quality. DR counts links. It does not read your pages.
- Whether links are natural. The score does not say if the links behind it are the kind Google would welcome.
For a wider view, see our page on what DR and DA measure. If you track DR for your own reports and want to understand how the service works and where it stops, the Ahrefs DR service page sets out the method and its limits.
Note: tools, formulas and search guidelines change. Treat this guide as a general explanation, and check the Ahrefs help pages and Google's own documentation for current details.