Domain Rating / Domain Authority

Domain Rating / Domain Authority — explained in more detail

Both metrics try to capture the “strength” of a backlink profile in a single number: DR (Ahrefs) based on referring domains and their own DR, DA (Moz) with a similar approach based on Moz’s index. Both scale logarithmically (DR 30 → 40 is much easier than 70 → 80).

Important: Google doesn’t know these values. They are pure third-party estimates from each tool’s own crawls and algorithms. They historically correlate roughly with rankings because strong backlink profiles tend to co-occur with real SEO success — but correlation ≠ causation. A site can have high DR/DA and still rank poorly (irrelevant content), and vice versa.

Example / In practice

While auditing a competitor’s backlinks: DR 65, 800 referring domains. The practical use isn’t “the competitor is objectively stronger” but “which of those 800 domains might also link to me?”. DR here is just a sort and comparison aid, not a goal.

Distinction from similar terms

PageRank was Google’s own domain/URL strength metric (now internal, not public). Visibility Index (Sistrix) measures ranking visibility, not backlink strength. Trust Flow / Citation Flow (Majestic) are the same idea as DR/DA with different methodology.

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Glossar

Anchor Text

The visible text of a link — signals the topical context of the target page to search engines. Anchor-text distribution is one of the oldest and still-effective ranking signals for backlinks.

Lexikon

E-E-A-T and Trust — how Google judges authority (and how you build it)

How Google judges experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust — and how to build them. With author schema, YMYL, reputation and digital PR.

Glossar

Backlink

A backlink is a link from an external domain pointing to your own website — one of the oldest and still most important ranking signals for Google.

Themenuebersicht

Off-Page SEOBacklinks