Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs’ 0–100 score for the strength of a domain’s backlink profile. The checker above reads it live from Ahrefs’ own API, so the number is the one Ahrefs would show you today — not a copy from a database that was refreshed some months ago.

What goes into the number

DR looks at one thing: the links pointing at a domain from other domains. Roughly, it counts how many unique domains link to yours, weighs each one by its own DR, and divides that weight by how many other sites the linking domain also links to. A link from a strong domain that links out sparingly is worth more than a link from a weak domain that links to everyone.

The scale is logarithmic. Moving from DR 10 to 20 takes a handful of decent links; moving from 70 to 80 takes what a global publisher has. Comparing two sites ten points apart at the top of the scale is comparing sites that are worlds apart; ten points at the bottom is one good month of outreach.

What DR is not

It is not a Google metric. Google has never used DR and does not see it. DR correlates with rankings because links correlate with rankings, not because Google reads Ahrefs.
It is not traffic. A DR 60 site can have no visitors; a DR 20 site can rank for everything in its niche. DR says how linkable the domain has been, not how useful its pages are.
It is not page authority. DR is the whole domain. A brand-new page on a DR 80 domain starts with the domain’s trust but none of its own links; Ahrefs’ URL Rating (UR) is the page-level counterpart.
It is not comparable to DA. Moz’s Domain Authority and Semrush’s Authority Score are different formulas on different link indexes. A DR 40 and a DA 40 are not the same thing, and a site can be 40 on one and 25 on the other.

Reading the bands

The bands the checker shows are descriptive, and they map to what the score buys in practice:

0–9, just starting. Ahrefs has seen few or no referring domains. Every launch listing and directory counts here.
10–29, early links. A young or niche site with its first real mentions. Long-tail keywords are winnable with good pages.
30–49, growing. A real profile. Mid-tail keywords open up; head terms still need more.
50–69, established. Competitive keywords are within reach when the content is genuinely the best answer.
70–89, high authority. New pages are found, crawled and trusted quickly. Publishers, large SaaS, universities.
90–100, internet-scale. Platforms and institutions. Nobody gets here with a link-building campaign.

How to use the comparison

Check your domain first, then add the two competitors that outrank you. Three cases come up again and again:

They are far above you. Twenty points or more at the same part of the scale. Head-on competition for the same keywords is a long project; the faster path is the keywords they have not bothered with — longer, more specific, still worth ranking for.
You are roughly level. Within ten points. Now the page decides: which of you actually answers the query better, updates more often, and earns the next few links.
They are below you and still outrank you. The most useful result of all: your problem is not authority. It is relevance, freshness, or a technical issue keeping your page from being crawled or indexed properly.

How to raise DR

Only one thing raises DR: links from more domains, especially domains with a DR above your own. What has worked for the sites we have measured:

Launch and directory listings for the first twenty referring domains. The startup directory list ranks 160+ of them by the DR we measured ourselves, with dofollow status.
Free tools and data that other sites cite because they are useful — a checker, a calculator, an original dataset.
Comparison and integration pages that partners and reviewers link to when they write about the category.
Guest contributions and interviews on sites your customers already read — one link from a relevant DR 50 site outweighs fifty from a link farm, which Ahrefs discounts anyway.

What does not work: buying links from sellers, link exchanges at scale, and press-release networks. Ahrefs sees the pattern, and so does Google.

Frequently asked

Why is my DR 0?

Ahrefs has not found any links to the domain yet, or the domain is too new to have been crawled. New sites usually appear with a non-zero DR within a few weeks of their first links.

How often does DR change?

Ahrefs recalculates continuously as its crawler finds and loses links. This checker caches each domain for a day, so a fresh link earned this morning shows up tomorrow.

Is the number here the same as in Ahrefs Site Explorer?

Yes. It is fetched from Ahrefs’ API at check time, under the Domain Rating licence, which is why every rating on this page is labelled “Domain Rating by Ahrefs”.

Can I share the card?

That is what it is for. Download the PNG or copy the link; the link carries the domains, so the card is there when someone opens it.

What is a good DR?

The one that is higher than the sites ranking above you for the keywords you want. In most B2B niches the page-one domains sit between 30 and 70; in consumer niches, higher. Check three of them and you have your target.

What Domain Rating measures, what it does not, and how to read your DR next to a competitor’s