DR vs DA: Understanding Domain Rating and Domain Authority in SEO

DR = Domain Rating
This is Ahrefs’ metric. It estimates the strength of a website’s backlink profile on a 0–100 logarithmic scale. Ahrefs says it mainly reflects the quantity and quality of followed referring domains pointing to a site, and how much those linking sites link out to others.

DA = Domain Authority
This is Moz’s metric. It is also a 0–100 score, but it is designed to predict how likely a domain is to rank in search results compared with other sites. It is not a Google metric. Moz describes it as a comparative prediction score, not something Google uses directly.

The main difference

The simplest way to think about it:

 DR focuses more on backlink strength
 DA tries to estimate ranking potential

So if a site has:

 lots of strong backlinks, its DR may rise
 a stronger overall ability to rank, its DA may be higher
Important things to know

Neither DR nor DA is a direct Google ranking factor. They are third-party SEO metrics made by tool providers to help you compare websites. Ahrefs explicitly says DR is their own proprietary metric and recommends not using it alone as a measure of site quality.

Also, DR is logarithmic, so going from 20 to 30 is much easier than going from 70 to 80.

Which one should you use?

For practical SEO:

Use DR when checking link-building opportunities
Use DA when doing a broader domain-level comparison
Do not rely on either one alone

A better judgment usually combines:

DR or DA
organic traffic
keyword rankings
content quality
topical relevance
spam signals
Easy example

If one site has:

DR 70
weak traffic
poor topical relevance

and another has:

DR 45
strong real traffic
relevant niche content