Moz DA vs Ahrefs DR: The Complete 2026 Comparison
Moz Domain Authority and Ahrefs Domain Rating both score domains 0–100 — but they measure different things, update at wildly different speeds, and disagree constantly. Here's exactly how each is calculated, how they correlate with rankings, which to trust for link building vs. reporting, what a 'good' score is, and how to check any site's DR free.
Moz Domain Authority (DA) and Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) are both proprietary 0–100 scores — but they are not the same metric and are not comparable to each other. DR measures one thing: the strength of your backlink profile, calculated from the number and DR of your dofollow referring domains (links only, no traffic, no spam scoring). It updates every ~15 minutes to 24 hours, so it reacts fast and is ideal for link prospecting and tracking link-building progress. DA is broader: a machine-learning model trained on 40+ signals to predict how likely a site is to rank in Google, including a dedicated Spam Score. It updates roughly monthly, so it's stable and better suited to client reporting and competitor benchmarking. Both scales are logarithmic — going 20→30 is easy, 70→80 is brutal — and only a handful of sites ever reach the high 90s. Critically, neither is a Google ranking factor: Google's John Mueller has said outright that Google does not use DA or any third-party authority metric, and correlation studies bear that out (Onely measured ~0.16 for DA and ~0.14 for DR against rankings). They're proxies, not promises. They're also gameable — one experiment inflated DR (the easiest to manipulate) and others on empty domains for $15–$100 in two months — so always sanity-check a high score against real organic traffic and keyword rankings. Practical rule: use DR for fast, link-focused decisions, DA for stable reporting, and both as a cross-check when the stakes are high (buying a domain, vetting a big link). You can check any domain's DR free with our Ahrefs-powered Domain Rating checker — no signup, no API key.
DA and DR both reward the same thing — links earned by a technically healthy, crawlable site. Broken redirects, orphaned pages, and slow Core Web Vitals quietly bleed the link equity that drives both scores. CrawlRaven's 200-Point Audit finds every one of those issues across your whole site, starting at $9/month. Try CrawlRaven free for 14 days →
I've been building SEO products for about six years, and there's one question I still get in almost every sales call, every Twitter DM, and every agency Slack I'm in: “What's a good DA?” — or some flavor of “my DR dropped, am I in trouble?” Nine times out of ten the person asking has quietly assumed that this little 0–100 number is what Google uses to rank them. It isn't. And the two numbers they're usually comparing — Moz's Domain Authority (DA) and Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) — aren't even measuring the same thing.
So this is the explainer I wish I could just paste into those chats. I'm going to walk through what DA and DR each actually measure, how they're built, why they constantly disagree, what a score like “DA 40, DR 40” really tells you, and — the part I care about most — how Google actually ranks pages, which is a totally different conversation. I'll be opinionated, because after staring at these numbers across hundreds of sites while building CrawlRaven, I've formed some strong views.
What is Moz Domain Authority (DA)?
Domain Authority is Moz's proprietary score — it's been around since roughly 2004 — that tries to predict how likely a website is to rank in Google. It runs 1 to 100, and it comes out of a machine-learning model that weighs 40+ signals: the number of unique linking root domains, the quality and spread of those links, and a dedicated Spam Score that drags down sites with sketchy link profiles.
The word I'd underline is predict. DA isn't describing your backlinks for their own sake — it's a model that's been trained on real SERPs to guess your competitive ranking ability. That's why your DA can move even when you didn't build or lose a single link: Moz retrains the model and recalibrates against the rest of the web. In my experience it refreshes on a roughly monthly rhythm, which makes it pleasantly stable for reporting and basically useless for spotting what changed last Tuesday.
What is Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR)?
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' metric (launched in 2016), and it measures exactly one thing: the strength of your backlink profile, on a logarithmic 0–100 scale. Ahrefs' own definition is refreshingly blunt — DR “represents the strength of the website's backlink profile.” Full stop. It's calculated straight off the link graph:
- How many unique domains have at least one dofollow link to you (nofollow doesn't pass DR).
- The DR of those linking domains — one link from a DR 90 site outweighs a hundred from DR 5 blogs.
- How many sites those domains link out to — link to everyone and you pass less DR to each (dilution).
What I love about DR is what it leaves out: no traffic, no content quality, no on-page SEO, no domain age, no spam scoring. It's a clean, link-only number. And because Ahrefs is recrawling constantly, DR moves fast — I've watched a brand-new site's DR jump 12–15 points within a week of landing one genuinely big link. That speed is exactly why I reach for it during active link building.
Moz DA vs Ahrefs DR: the core differences
Here's the whole thing in one view. If you only stare at one row, make it “what it measures” — everything else falls out of that.
Moz DA vs Ahrefs DR at a glance
DR is a pure, fast-moving backlink score. DA is a slower, broader prediction of ranking ability. Same 0–100 look, completely different machines — a DA 50 and a DR 50 are not the same thing.
The line I repeat constantly: a DA 50 and a DR 50 are not the same number. Different crawlers, different indexes, different math. Saying “my DA is higher than my DR so Moz likes me more” is like comparing your Uber rating to your credit score. Compare DA to DA, DR to DR — and always against the sites you're actually fighting in the SERP, not the whole internet.
How are DA and DR actually calculated?
Both curves are non-linear, but the engines underneath are different in kind.
Ahrefs DR is basically a domain-level, PageRank-style pass over the link graph. Ahrefs finds every dofollow link pointing at you, weights each by the linking domain's own DR, divides by how many sites those domains link out to, and plots the result on a log curve. It's mechanical and (to me) easy to reason about: more high-DR domains in → higher DR out. Ahrefs also runs one of the biggest link indexes out there, which is a big reason it's my default for link work.
Moz DA is a learned prediction, not a fixed formula. Moz trains a model on its own link index plus live Google results, learning which mix of 40+ signals — linking root domains, total links, MozRank, MozTrust, Spam Score, link-quality patterns — best separates sites that rank from sites that don't. Because it's fit against the SERPs, DA bakes in notions of spam and ranking pattern that DR deliberately ignores.
Both are logarithmic, and that has a practical consequence people miss constantly: the points are not evenly spaced. Dragging a new site from 20 to 30 might take a handful of decent links. Pushing an established site from 70 to 80 can eat a year and hundreds of strong referring domains. So don't read a 10-point gap at the top of the scale like a 10-point gap at the bottom — they're different universes.
What is a good DA or DR score?
The honest answer nobody wants: “good” is relative to your niche and your competitors. I've seen a DR 40 site dominate a sleepy local niche, and I've seen a DR 65 SaaS site be the weakest player on page one of a competitive keyword. Same number, opposite meaning. That said, here are the rough bands I actually use in my head — they map reasonably well onto both DA and DR since both are 0–100 logarithmic:
What counts as a “good” DA or DR score
Both scales are logarithmic. Climbing from 20 → 30 is easy; 70 → 80 is brutally hard. Only a tiny fraction of the web reaches 80+ — Moz reports just a handful of sites (Google, Facebook, YouTube-class) ever touch DA 100. Treat the score as relative to your direct competitors, not an absolute grade.
Two gut-checks I always do. First, the top of the scale is brutally thin — Moz reports only a tiny handful of sites on the whole web ever touch DA 100 (your Googles, Facebooks, YouTubes). Second, ignore the universal “DA 50 is good” folklore. The only benchmark that matters is the set of pages currently ranking for your keyword. Pull their DA/DR, take the median, and that's your target. (Want a quick read on any domain's DR while you do this? I built a free DR checker for exactly that — no login.)
Do DA and DR affect Google rankings?
No. This is the single most important thing in this whole article, so I'll say it plainly: Google does not use Domain Authority, Domain Rating, or any third-party authority score. DA is Moz's. DR is Ahrefs'. Google has no contract with either and no reason to agree with them. Google's John Mueller has said it about as bluntly as he says anything: “We don't use Domain Authority at all.”
And the correlation data backs him up. When independent researchers line these scores up against actual ranking positions, the relationship is weak:
Correlation with Google rankings
Correlation coefficient with position in Google (0 = no relationship, 1 = perfect). Both are weak — neither metric is a Google ranking factor.
Backlinko's 11.8M-result study found the #1 organic result has on average 3.8× more backlinks than positions #2–#10. Links matter — but the domain-level score built on top of them is only a rough proxy.
So why do high-DA/DR sites seem to win? Because the thing both scores are built on — a strong, diverse backlink profile — genuinely does help you rank. Backlinko's study of millions of results found the #1 result has on average 3.8× more backlinks than #2–#10. DA and DR are useful proxies for that link strength. They are not the cause, and they are not what Google measures.
How Google actually ranks pages (not domains)
Here's the mental model shift that fixed more of my SEO thinking than anything else: Google ranks pages, not domains. There is no “site score” sitting in Google's algorithm that DA or DR is secretly approximating. When you search something, Google evaluates individual URLs against that specific query and ranks those. Your homepage's authority doesn't automatically lift every page underneath it.
Google has been explicit about this. Its guidance describes ranking as primarily page-level, with site-wide signals playing a secondary, supporting role. The closest thing Google has ever publicly named to a site-wide quality signal is the “sitewide” component of the helpful content system — and even that modifies how pages are assessed; it isn't a 0–100 authority dial.
What actually decides a given page's ranking is a stack of things DA and DR can't see:
- Relevance of this page to this query — how well the content matches intent. A DR 80 domain with a thin, off-topic page loses to a DR 30 domain with the best answer all day.
- Page-level links — links to the specific URL (Ahrefs' URL Rating, not DR) often matter more than domain-wide ones for that page.
- Content quality & E-E-A-T — depth, accuracy, first-hand experience, author and brand signals.
- Technical health — can Googlebot crawl, render, and index the page? Is it fast on mobile? Is the internal linking funneling authority to it?
- User signals & intent match — does the page actually satisfy the searcher so they stop searching?
That last cluster is the whole reason I ended up building CrawlRaven. A domain score tells you nothing about whether your individual money pages are crawlable, fast, properly internally linked, and structured the way Google's page-level systems reward. Two sites can both sit at DR 40 and have wildly different technical foundations — and that foundation is what decides which one's pages actually rank. Chase the page, not the domain number.
Why do DA and DR disagree so often?
You'll constantly see a site at DA 11 / DR 16, or DA 60 / DR 45, and wonder which one's “right.” Both are. They diverge for concrete reasons:
- Different link indexes. Moz and Ahrefs crawl the web separately. Each knows about links the other doesn't. Different inputs → different outputs.
- Different definitions. DR is links-only. DA blends links with spam signals and modeled ranking patterns. A spammy profile can prop up DR while quietly tanking DA.
- Different update speeds. DR may have already eaten last week's links while DA is still on last month's snapshot.
- Different calibration. Each company tunes its curve to its own index, so the same “50” sits at a different percentile on each.
The fix isn't to crown a winner. It's to stop expecting two different machines to print the same number.
A worked example: what does “DA 40, DR 40” actually mean?
Let's make this concrete, because abstract talk about “authority” is where people get lost. Say you run a domain through both tools and get DA 40 and DR 40. Tidy. Matching. Feels meaningful. So what does it actually tell you?
What it does mean: you've got a genuinely established backlink profile. DR 40 says enough real, dofollow referring domains point at you that Ahrefs rates your link profile as mid-tier — well past brand-new, with room to grow. DA 40 says Moz's model, weighing your links plus spam and ranking patterns, predicts a moderate ability to rank. The two agreeing is mild reassurance that neither is being thrown off by something weird (a spike of spammy links, say, would usually pull DR up while DA lags).
What it absolutely does NOT mean: that you'll rank for anything in particular. I've audited DA/DR 40 sites pulling 80k organic visits a month, and DA/DR 40 sites pulling 200. Same scores, 400× difference in the thing that pays the bills. The number is an input, not an outcome.
Here's how I'd actually read “40/40” depending on what I'm trying to do:
- If I'm vetting it as a link prospect: DR 40 is a fine starting filter — but I won't place the link until I check the page's URL Rating, its real organic traffic, and whether the site is topically relevant to mine. A DR 40 with zero traffic is a private blog network red flag, not a prize.
- If it's my own site and I want to rank for a keyword: the 40/40 is irrelevant until I look at who's on page one. If the median competitor is DR 35, I'm competitive and the work is on-page relevance and page-level links. If the median is DR 70, no amount of obsessing over my domain number changes that I need a lot more links — or a smarter, lower-competition keyword.
- If I'm buying the domain: 40/40 looks healthy, but this is exactly when I cross-check both and pull the traffic graph and the referring-domain list. Matching scores built on bought links are the classic trap.
Same “40/40”, three completely different reads. That's the whole point: the score is context-free, and you supply the context. The number on its own is trivia.
Can you fake a DA or DR score?
Yep — and more easily than most people want to believe. Because both are computed from links (and DR only from links), you can inflate them by pointing manufactured links at an otherwise worthless domain. In one experiment I always cite, freelancers were paid to pump up authority scores on five empty domains with no content, no traffic, and zero ranking keywords:
Ease of artificially inflating each score
In one experiment, contractors lifted these scores on empty, zero-traffic domains for roughly $15–$100 each in about two months. A high DR or DA with no traffic and no keywords behind it is the classic red flag — always sanity-check against real organic visibility.
The takeaway, especially if you buy links or domains: never trust a domain score on its own. A DR 60 with a few hundred organic visits and no ranking keywords is almost certainly juiced. Cross-reference against real traffic, the keyword profile, and the relevance of the referring domains. This is also why Moz ships a Spam Score and Semrush a traffic-aware Authority Score — they're both trying to catch the exact manipulation a pure link count misses.
When to use DA, when to use DR, and why
This is the question that actually matters day to day, and “which one is better” is the wrong framing. They're built for different jobs, so I use both — just for different things. Here's my honest workflow.
I reach for DR when speed and link-focus matter. Vetting a guest-post site, sizing up a competitor's link profile, tracking whether this month's link campaign is landing — DR is perfect because it's links-only and updates in minutes-to-hours. When I build a link on Monday, I want to see the needle move, and DR is the one that does. It's also more transparent: I can reason about why it changed.
I reach for DA when stability and communication matter. Monthly client reports, board decks, “are we trending up vs. our three competitors” — DA is better here precisely because it's slow. A number that only moves monthly doesn't spook a client with noise, and DA is the metric non-SEOs have actually heard of. Its built-in Spam Score is also genuinely useful when I'm trying to flag a competitor (or a prospect) whose links look manipulated.
I use both as a cross-check when the stakes are high. Buying a domain, approving a big paid link, doing due diligence on an acquisition — I pull DA and DR, and I treat a large gap between them as a signal to dig, not a verdict. Disagreement is information.
And here's the rule I'd tattoo on a junior SEO: neither number is the goal. Both are diagnostics that point you toward the real work — earning relevant links and shipping pages Google's page-level systems can actually rank. Here's the same logic as a quick decision table:
DA vs DR by job to be done
If you want a second, faster take on judging link quality with these metrics, this short explainer is a good watch:
How to check Domain Rating for free
For years, checking a domain's DR meant paying for an Ahrefs seat. That changed when Ahrefs opened up a free public Domain Rating endpoint — and I built a tool straight on top of it. Our free Domain Rating checker returns the live DR of any domain, pulled directly from Ahrefs, with no signup and no API key. Type a domain, get its 0–100 score and a plain-English strength band in a couple of seconds. I use it constantly for quick prospect triage before I bother opening a full tool.
Check any website's Domain Rating in seconds with our free Ahrefs-powered DR Checker — live data, a 0–100 score, and a plain-English strength rating. No account, no API key.
How to improve your DA and DR (the honest version)
Both metrics are link-driven, so the work that lifts them is the same work that builds real authority. There's no shortcut I'd actually recommend:
- Earn links from more unique, high-authority referring domains. Domain diversity moves the needle far more than raw link count. Ten links from ten strong sites beat a hundred from one.
- Chase relevance and quality over volume. One relevant DR 70 link in your niche outweighs a dozen random DR 20 links — for both your score and your rankings.
- Reclaim what you already earned. The fastest wins are usually lost links (killed by redirects or 404s) and unlinked brand mentions. Low effort, real gain.
- Build genuinely link-worthy assets. Original data, free tools, definitive guides — things that attract links passively. It's the only way to scale up a logarithmic curve without burning out.
- Keep the site technically healthy. Link equity can't flow through broken redirects, orphaned pages, or noindexed sections. A clean crawl makes every link you earn actually count.
That last one is the part most people skip, and it's the part I'm closest to. You can earn links all day, but if your internal linking is a mess and half your money pages are slow or buried, that authority never reaches the pages that need it. That gap is literally why we built CrawlRaven's 200-point audit — to surface the broken redirects, orphan pages, and crawl issues quietly capping what your links can do. Run it free for 14 days and fix the foundation before you spend another dollar on links.
Key Takeaways
- →Different metrics: DA (Moz) predicts ranking ability from 40+ signals; DR (Ahrefs) scores backlink strength from links only. A DA 50 and a DR 50 are not comparable.
- →Google ranks pages, not domains: There's no site-wide authority dial in Google's algorithm. Ranking is primarily page-level — relevance, page links, content, and technical health decide it.
- →Not a ranking factor: Google uses neither. John Mueller: 'We don't use Domain Authority at all.' Correlation with rankings is weak (~0.16 DA, ~0.14 DR).
- →'40/40' means nothing alone: Matching scores just mean an established link profile. They don't predict traffic — context (competitors, the specific keyword, real traffic) is everything.
- →Speed vs stability: Use DR for link prospecting and tracking (updates in minutes); DA for client reports and benchmarking (stable, monthly); both as a high-stakes cross-check.
- →Both are gameable: Empty domains were inflated for $15–$100 in ~2 months — DR easiest of all. Always sanity-check a high score against real organic traffic.
Primary sources used in this post
- Ahrefs — Domain Rating (DR) definition
- Moz — What is Domain Authority?
- The HOTH — DA vs DR
- UserP — Moz DA vs Ahrefs DR (correlation data)
- Xamsor — Authority metric manipulation experiment
- Backlinko — Search engine ranking factors study
Related reading on CrawlRaven
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Moz DA and Ahrefs DR?
Moz Domain Authority (DA) is a machine-learning score that predicts how likely a site is to rank in Google, built from 40+ signals including links, link quality, and a spam score. Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) measures only the strength of a site's backlink profile, calculated purely from the number and authority of its dofollow referring domains. DA is broader and updates roughly monthly; DR is links-only and updates within minutes to hours. They use different indexes and math, so a DA 50 and a DR 50 are not equivalent.
Is Domain Rating (DR) or Domain Authority (DA) more accurate?
Neither is 'accurate' in the sense of measuring a Google ranking factor — Google uses neither. DR is more transparent and faster-updating, which most SEOs prefer for link building. DA is a broader prediction of ranking ability with built-in spam detection, which suits competitor benchmarking and client reporting. The right choice depends on the job, not on one being universally more accurate.
Do DA and DR affect Google rankings?
No. Domain Authority and Domain Rating are third-party metrics made by Moz and Ahrefs, not Google. Google's John Mueller has stated outright that Google does not use Domain Authority or any third-party authority score. Correlation studies show only a weak relationship between these scores and actual ranking positions (around 0.16 for DA and 0.14 for DR). They are useful proxies for backlink strength, not ranking factors.
What is a good Domain Authority or Domain Rating score?
Both are relative, logarithmic 0–100 scores, so 'good' depends on your niche. As a rough guide: 0–20 is new/thin, 20–40 is growing, 40–60 is established, 60–80 is strong, and 80–100 is elite (major brands). Because the scale is logarithmic, climbing from 20 to 30 is far easier than 70 to 80. The only benchmark that matters is the median DA/DR of the pages currently ranking for your target keywords.
Why are my DA and DR scores so different?
Because they're built differently. Moz and Ahrefs crawl the web with separate link indexes, so each knows about links the other doesn't. DR counts links only, while DA blends links with spam signals and modeled ranking patterns. DR also updates much faster than DA. All of this means the two scores routinely disagree — and that's normal. Compare DA to DA and DR to DR, never one to the other.
Can Domain Rating and Domain Authority be faked?
Yes. Because both are computed from links, they can be inflated with manipulated link profiles. In one experiment, contractors raised these scores on empty, zero-traffic domains for roughly $15–$100 each in about two months, with Ahrefs DR being the easiest to manipulate. Always cross-check a high score against real organic traffic and ranking keywords — a strong DR or DA with no traffic behind it is a red flag.
How can I check a website's Domain Rating for free?
You can use CrawlRaven's free Domain Rating checker, which is powered by Ahrefs' official free DR API. Enter any domain and it returns the live DR score (0–100) plus a plain-English strength rating — no signup or API key required. It's available at /tools/dr-checker.
Co-founder, CrawlRaven · 6+ years building SaaS content & SEO products
Ayush has 6+ years of experience building SaaS products and content strategies in the SEO space. As co-founder of CrawlRaven, he writes from hands-on experience building deep-crawl audit tools and solving the technical SEO problems agencies actually face.