Domain Rating

Ahrefs says it calculates DR "in a somewhat similar way to how PageRank is calculated", between websites rather than pages ¹. It finds every domain with at least one followed link to the target, looks up how many other domains each of those links to, and passes a share of rating to the target, roughly the linking domain's DR divided by the number of unique domains it links to ². In its help centre's words, "the source domain splits its rating equally amongst the domains it links to" ³, and "we also look at how many other unique sites each linking domain links to" ⁴. So a link's value depends on two numbers: the linking site's own DR and how generously that site links out. A small blog with thirty outbound domains can hand over more than a huge directory listing fifty thousand. See PageRank for the page-level original.

Ahrefs states that "DR is measured on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, with the latter being the strongest" ¹: the step from 70 to 71 costs far more link strength than the step from 20 to 21. In the explorable above, every tenfold increase in raw juice moves the score the same distance, so a near-zero site can jump thirty points on two or three followed links from very strong domains, while a site already at 60 barely moves on the same links. Two rules sharpen this: "only the first link from a domain will increase your DR" ², and a nofollow link adds nothing. Small sites still count, in aggregate and linearly in juice; Ahrefs itself notes that "if relevant, even a low-DR link will help your page to rank better" ³. The log scale hides their contribution in the score, not in the sum.

DR is one vendor's estimate of link strength, not a Google signal. In a 2016 hangout Google's John Mueller said Google does not have a "website authority score" ¹; in 2018 he allowed that Google has "some metrics that are more on a site level, some metrics that are more on a page level" that may map to similar ideas ². Ahrefs' own help page says "DR correlates with Google rankings pretty well" while ranking its page-level URL Rating as the better predictor ³. In practice DR is used to compare sites, to prioritise link prospects, and by directories and journalists as a filter. It says nothing about traffic, and a score built on a few directory listings is thinner than the same number earned from many editorial sites.