Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' equivalent of Moz's Domain Authority. It is calculated purely from the domain's backlink profile — not traffic, on-page content, or any Google signal.
How it differs from DA
DR only considers referring domains and the DR of those referring domains. DA incorporates a broader set of signals. As a result, the two scores disagree frequently and cannot be compared directly.
Example
A domain with DR 65 in Ahrefs might have DA 48 in Moz. Neither is wrong; they measure different things.
How SEM Optimiser reports it
DR is labelled with the Ahrefs source. Different provider scores are never averaged or blended in the same view.
Related terms
- Domain Authority
Domain Authority is a proprietary Moz metric on a 0-to-100 scale that predicts how likely a domain is to rank in search engine results.
- Backlink
A backlink is a hyperlink on an external website that points to a page on your own domain, and is one of the strongest ranking signals in Google's algorithm.
- Referring Domain
A referring domain is a unique external website that links to your site at least once, regardless of how many individual backlinks originate from it.