Website Authority Checker
Check the link authority of any website on a 0 to 10 scale, from the Open PageRank index built on Common Crawl. Enter a domain to see its authority score, global rank and referring domain count.
Short answer
The authority score is Open PageRank: a 0 to 10 measure of a site's backlink strength, computed by running a PageRank-style calculation over Common Crawl's open link graph and refreshed roughly monthly. Google does not use it: it is a third-party proxy for link authority, not a ranking factor. Its value is comparative. A score of 3.4 tells you nothing on its own, and everything once you know the sites ranking for your target queries average 3.8 or 6.5. Because the scale is logarithmic, a point at the bottom costs a fraction of a point at the top.
What the authority score measures, and what it does not
The score looks at one thing: the links pointing at a domain, weighted by how strong the sites providing them are. It does not look at content, traffic, rankings, technical health or anything else about the site.
- It counts unique referring domains, not links. Fifty links from one site move it far less than five links from five sites. The referring domain count shown with your result is the raw input.
- It weights by the linking site's own strength. A link from a strong domain passes more than one from a weak one; that recursion is what a PageRank-style calculation is.
- It is relative, not absolute. Your score can fall while your links grow, if the rest of the index grows faster.
- It is not a Google metric. Google has said repeatedly that it does not use any third-party authority score, and its own PageRank is a separate, private calculation.
So why use it at all
Because link strength genuinely matters, and an open, published link metric is the most honest available approximation of it. Treat it as a way to size up a competitor or a link target in five seconds, not as a number to put in a report.
How to read an authority score
The bands below are a rough guide rather than a standard. What counts as strong in a niche of small independent sites is weak in publishing or finance, and because the scale is logarithmic, most of the web lives in the bottom half of it.
| Score | What it usually means | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 | New or unlinked profile | Earn the first links from relevant, trustworthy sites |
| 1 to 2.5 | Early stage | Volume of unique referring domains is the constraint |
| 2.5 to 4 | Growing | Consistent link earning is compounding; keep it up |
| 4 to 5.5 | Well established | Enough authority for competitive rankings in most niches |
| 5.5 to 7 | Strong | Competing for genuinely valuable keywords |
| 7 to 10 | Elite | Major platforms, news outlets and household names |
The scale is logarithmic
Moving from 2 to 3 is far easier than 6 to 7. Gains get exponentially harder near the top, so a competitor two points above you is not slightly stronger, they are in a different order of magnitude.
Where the number comes from
The score is Open PageRank, computed over the link graph published by Common Crawl, an open repository that crawls billions of pages and releases the result roughly monthly. Because both the data and the method are public, the number can be checked rather than taken on faith, which is not true of any proprietary authority score.
This tool reported Ahrefs Domain Rating until August 2026, when Ahrefs closed the free public endpoint it ran on. We switched to an open metric rather than imitate a number we could no longer obtain, so a reading from before the switch is on a 0 to 100 scale and does not convert to a score here. The idea both metrics measure, link authority weighted by the strength of the linking sites, is the same.
Snapshot, not live ticker
The index is rebuilt as Common Crawl releases arrive, so the score moves monthly, not daily. The snapshot date is shown under every result. A metric that claims to move faster than its crawl is describing its imagination.
How to use an authority score without misusing it
An authority score is a comparison instrument. Used on its own it produces vanity metrics; used against the right set of competitors it produces decisions.
- 01
Check your own domain first
You need a baseline before a competitor's number means anything. Enter the root domain rather than a specific page: authority is a property of the whole site, not of individual URLs.
- 02
Check the sites you actually compete with
Not the biggest names in your industry, the ones that rank on page one for the queries you want. Those are the profiles your link building has to close the gap with.
- 03
Read the gap, not the number
A score of 3.4 means nothing on its own. 3.4 against competitors averaging 3.8 is a fair fight. 3.4 against competitors averaging 6.5 means the keyword is not the constraint, the link profile is.
- 04
Remember the scale is logarithmic
Going from 2 to 3 takes a fraction of the links that 6 to 7 takes. A one-point gap at the bottom of the scale is a very different problem from a one-point gap at the top.
- 05
Use it to prioritise, not to report
An authority score is useful for deciding which keywords are realistic and which link targets are worth pursuing. It is a poor client-facing KPI, because it moves slowly and it is not a Google metric.
Open PageRank, Ahrefs DR and Moz DA
The three best-known authority metrics look interchangeable and are not. Each runs on its own crawl, its own formula and its own scale, so the same site routinely scores in different places on each.
Different indexes
Ahrefs and Moz crawl the web themselves; Open PageRank reads Common Crawl. A link one index has found and another has not simply does not exist as far as the second metric is concerned, and no index is complete.
Different scales
DR and DA run 0 to 100, Open PageRank 0 to 10. All three are logarithmic, so none of them convert linearly into another: a DR of 70 is not a score of 7 here. Compare a metric only with itself.
Neither is a Google signal
This is the part worth repeating. Google uses none of them. Correlation studies between authority metrics and rankings find weak relationships, which is what you would expect from a proxy rather than a cause.
Pick one and stay with it
The useful habit is consistency: measure yourself and your competitors on the same metric over time, and ignore the absolute value. We compare the proprietary pair in full in the Moz DA versus Ahrefs DR guide.
What this tool returns
Authority score
0 to 10 with two decimals, from the Open PageRank index
Global rank
Where the domain sits when the whole index is sorted by score
Referring domains
The unique linking domains the crawl has seen, the score's raw input
Open methodology
Built on Common Crawl's public link graph, so the number can be checked
A high score does not make a page rank
Frequently asked questions
What does this authority score measure?
It is the Open PageRank score: a 0 to 10 measure of a domain's link authority, computed by running a PageRank-style calculation over Common Crawl's link graph, one of the largest open crawls of the web. The higher the score, the stronger the site's backlink profile relative to every other domain in the index. It is calculated from links alone: content, traffic and rankings play no part.
Didn't this tool show Ahrefs Domain Rating?
It did, until August 2026, when Ahrefs decommissioned the free public DR endpoint this tool was built on. Rather than scrape or imitate a number we could no longer obtain honestly, the tool now reports Open PageRank, an open metric with a published methodology. The two scores measure the same idea on different scales, so do not compare an old DR reading against a new score here.
Is this checker really free?
Yes. The Open PageRank index is openly published and free to query, so you can check any domain here with no account, no API key and no trial. There is a fair-use daily limit shown under the input.
What is a good authority score?
Because the scale is logarithmic, the bands are not linear. Roughly: below 1 is a new or unlinked domain, 1 to 2.5 is early stage, 2.5 to 4 is growing, 4 to 5.5 is well established, 5.5 to 7 is strong and competitive, and 7 and above is the territory of major platforms and household names. What counts as good depends entirely on the sites you actually rank against.
Does the authority score affect Google rankings?
No. Google does not use Open PageRank, Ahrefs DR, Moz DA or any other third-party authority score, and Google's own internal PageRank is a separate, private calculation. What a score like this is useful for is as a proxy: it approximates the backlink strength that does influence rankings, which is why it remains a reasonable way to size up a competitor.
How does this compare to Ahrefs DR and Moz DA?
All three estimate link authority from a link index, but each runs on its own crawl, its own formula and its own scale: Open PageRank on 0 to 10 from Common Crawl, DR and DA on 0 to 100 from Ahrefs' and Moz's private crawls. The same site lands in a similar neighbourhood on all three but the numbers never convert directly. Pick one metric and use it consistently rather than comparing across tools.
Why is the scale logarithmic?
Because link distribution on the web is extremely skewed. A small number of sites have orders of magnitude more referring domains than everyone else, and a linear scale would compress almost every real site into the bottom of the range. The logarithmic scale spreads the useful range out, at the cost of making the top of the scale very hard to climb.
What are the global rank and referring domains shown with the score?
The global rank is the domain's position in the whole index when every domain is sorted by score, so rank 1 is the strongest domain on the web. The referring domains count is how many unique domains the crawl has seen linking to the site. Both come straight from the index alongside the score, and the referring domain count is often the more actionable of the two: it is the input the score is computed from.
How often does the score update?
The index is rebuilt from Common Crawl's releases, which arrive roughly monthly. A newly earned link does not move the number until the next snapshot that includes it, and the snapshot date is shown under your result. Treat month-over-month movement as signal and anything faster as impossible by construction.
How can I increase my authority score?
The score rises as you earn links from more unique, high-quality referring domains. Link-worthy content, digital PR, contributions on reputable sites and reclaiming unlinked brand mentions all work. Diversity of referring domains matters far more than raw link count: a handful of links from strong, relevant sites moves the score more than hundreds of weak ones.
Does a high score guarantee I will rank?
No. It describes one input, and a site with strong links and weak or unindexable content still fails. A page has to be crawlable, indexable, relevant to the query and better than the alternatives. Authority makes the fight winnable; it does not win it.
Why does a domain show no data at all?
The index returns nothing rather than zero for a domain the crawl has not seen. That usually means the domain is very new, parked, or has no links anywhere for the crawl to have found. It is a different fact from a score of 0.5, which is why the tool reports it separately instead of inventing a zero.
Is the score per domain or per page?
Per domain. Authority metrics describe the link profile of the whole site, which is why this tool reduces any URL you paste to its domain before looking it up. For deciding whether a particular page can rank, the links and internal linking of that page matter as much as the domain's overall strength.
Can I check several domains at once?
Not on this page, which checks one domain per request with a daily limit shown under the input. For a list, the bulk website authority checker takes up to 50 domains in one run and reports the median, spread and outliers for the set.
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Read guideTerms this tool checks
- Domain Authority
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search results, scored on a scale of 1-100.
- Backlink
A backlink (also called an inbound link or incoming link) is a hyperlink from one website to another.
- Referring Domain
A referring domain is a unique website that contains at least one backlink pointing to your site.
- Link Equity
Link equity (also called link juice or PageRank) is the ranking value passed from one page to another through hyperlinks.
Authority is built page by page
A strong authority score starts with a technically healthy site. CrawlRaven audits every page for the issues that quietly hold your rankings back, then ranks them by the traffic each page already earns.