Free Domain Rating Checker

Domain Rating is a metric created by Ahrefs that measures the strength of a website's backlink profile on a 0 to 100 logarithmic scale. A higher DR means the site has more, and more authoritative, websites linking to it relative to every other site in Ahrefs' index. It reflects link authority only — not content quality, traffic, or keyword rankings.

Yes. This tool uses Ahrefs' public, free Domain Rating endpoint, so you can check the DR of any domain with no account, no API key, and no credit card. There is nothing to install and no usage cost.

There is no universal 'good' DR — it is relative to your niche and competitors. As a rough guide: 0–10 is very low (new sites), 11–30 is low, 31–50 is moderate for an established site, 51–70 is strong, and 71–100 is elite authority held by major brands. The practical goal is to have a DR comparable to or higher than the sites you compete with in search results.

DR is based on the quantity and quality of unique websites (referring domains) that link to a target. Links from high-DR sites pass more value, links are weighted by how many other sites each linking page points to, and generally only dofollow links count. The scale is logarithmic, so moving from DR 70 to 71 is far harder than moving from 20 to 21.

Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' metric and Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's metric. Both run on a 0–100 scale and are based on backlinks, but they use different web indexes and different algorithms, so a site's DR and DA are usually not identical and should not be compared one-to-one. Pick one metric and track it consistently over time.

Domain Rating (DR) measures the backlink strength of an entire domain, while URL Rating (UR) measures the backlink strength of a single page or URL. A domain can have a high DR while a specific new page on it still has a low UR until that page earns its own links.

Earn more dofollow backlinks from high-quality, relevant, and unique referring domains. Focus on quality over quantity: a handful of links from authoritative, topically relevant sites moves DR more than hundreds of links from low-value domains. Effective tactics include digital PR, original research, guest contributions, and creating genuinely link-worthy content. Avoid buying spammy links, which can hurt you.

Not directly. DR is a third-party metric, not something Google uses. Sites with strong backlink profiles often rank well, but that is correlation, not causation — Google weighs hundreds of signals including relevance, content quality, and user experience. Use DR as a relative benchmark of link authority, not as a guaranteed predictor of rankings.

No. Google does not use Ahrefs' Domain Rating (or Moz's DA) in its algorithm. These are independent metrics built by SEO tool providers to estimate backlink authority. They are useful for competitive analysis and link-building research, but they are not official ranking signals.

A DR of 0 usually means the domain is brand new, has very few or no backlinks that Ahrefs has indexed, or has only just entered Ahrefs' database. It can also appear for invalid or unreachable domains. As the site earns links from other websites and Ahrefs recrawls the web, the score will rise.

Ahrefs continuously recrawls the web and recalculates Domain Rating as it discovers and processes new links, so scores can shift frequently. This free checker returns Ahrefs' latest indexed DR value at the moment you run the check.

Yes. Switch to the Bulk tab and enter up to 10 domains, one per line, to check and compare their Domain Ratings together. You can copy the results or export them as a CSV file for reporting and competitor analysis.