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Get a domain's authority score 0–100. Saves the report at /dr/<domain> with backlink profile and trust signals.
Want to see who's linking? Run a backlink check instead.
Domain Rank (DR) is a 0–100 authority score that summarises how strong a website's backlink profile is. It's the single most useful number for answering "can this domain compete in search?" — strong DR domains rank for hard terms, weak DR domains can't, no matter how good the on-page content is. It's not the score Google uses internally, but it's an extremely close correlate, because it measures the same fundamentals: how many quality sites link to you, how unique those linkers are, and how the link graph as a whole values your site.
DR is the same kind of metric as Moz's Domain Authority (DA) and Ahrefs' Domain Rating — same scale (0–100), same logarithmic shape, same general ranking power. The 0–100 scale is deliberately compressed: the difference between DR-30 and DR-40 is much smaller than the difference between DR-70 and DR-80. Each step at the top costs roughly 10× the link equity of the step below. That's why a brand-new site can climb to DR-20 in a few months and a DR-80 site can plateau for years.
We compute DR from five weighted signals: backlink quantity (30%) — the raw count of inbound
links; referring-domain diversity (30%) — how many unique sites link to you; backlink quality
(25%) — the DR of those linking domains; anchor diversity (10%) — how natural the anchor-text
distribution looks; and trust signals (5%) — links from .edu, .gov,
or known-trust sources. The weights match the rough proportions Google's link-graph signals
appear to weigh, based on years of pattern-matching against public ranking data.
Domain Rank is a 0–100 authority score derived from backlink quality, referring-domain diversity, and trust signals.
| Signal | Weight | What we check |
|---|---|---|
| Backlink quantity | 30% | Total number of backlinks pointing at the domain. |
| Referring domain diversity | 30% | Count of unique domains linking back. |
| Backlink quality | 25% | Authority of the linking domains. |
| Anchor diversity | 10% | Spread of anchor-text vocabulary. |
| Trust signals | 5% | .edu / .gov / known-trust-source backlinks. |
Three patterns where a public DR check is the right tool.
Look up DR for every domain in a SERP to see what authority bar a keyword actually requires. If you're DR-25 trying to rank against DR-70 sites, you have an honesty problem to solve before a content problem.
Triage a hundred-domain prospect list down to the few worth pitching. The DR threshold for a guest post or partnership negotiation is whatever you choose — but having the number stops you wasting effort on DR-5 farms.
Track DR over time as a clean proxy for "is the authority work paying off?". The history chart on the report page makes monthly board-deck reporting trivial — one screenshot, one number.
Each DR scan generates these panels.
Headline DR score
The 0–100 number, color-coded by tier. The number you put in slide decks and stakeholder updates.
Backlink profile summary
Total backlinks, referring domains, dofollow ratio. Quick verification that the score makes sense given the underlying data.
DR history chart
After two scans of the same domain, a trend line. The most useful single chart in any link-building program.
Linked tools
One-click jumps to the full backlink checker (who's actually linking) and agent-readiness scanner (whether AI agents can find you).
DR is computed at scan time from a fresh DataForSEO backlink snapshot. We aggregate the five weighted signals shown in the table above into a 0–100 score using a logarithmic curve calibrated against thousands of known-rank domains. The result is comparable in shape (and roughly comparable in absolute value) to Moz DA and Ahrefs DR.
Why logarithmic: the difference in link equity between a domain with 100 referring domains and one with 1,000 is much greater than the difference between 1,000 and 10,000. The 0–100 scale compresses that exponential reality into something humans can reason about. Each 10-point jump represents roughly 10× the underlying link strength.
We deliberately don't penalize domains for having a few low-quality backlinks — the modern Google algorithm largely ignores spammy links rather than counting them against you. The score reflects the strength of the quality links, not the noise around them.
Score history is per-domain. Re-scanning a domain you've checked before appends a new data point to the chart; you'll see meaningful movement over months, not days.
DR tier reference for context.
DR 0–20 · New
Brand-new or unauthoritative
Newly registered domains, unindexed sites, or sites with only a handful of backlinks. Can rank for very long-tail with strong content but won't move on competitive head terms.
DR 21–50 · Growing
Active SEO work paying off
Established sites with consistent content and link-building investment. Most SaaS companies, agencies, and growth-stage startups land here. Plenty of long-tail and mid-tail ranking ability; competitive head terms still hard.
DR 51–80 · Established
Strong authority, broad ranking ability
Mature sites with a real backlink profile, often built over years. Can compete on most non-elite head terms. Marginal DR gains here cost real digital-PR budget — single-link strategies stop working.
DR 81+ · Elite
Top of the link graph
Major brands, news publishers, government, large universities. Tens of thousands of unique referring domains. Will rank for almost anything they choose to write about.
Important context
DR is a relative metric. A DR-30 site competing in a niche where the leaders are DR-35 has a real path; the same DR-30 site competing where the leaders are DR-80 has a much harder one. Always compare your DR against the actual ranking landscape for your target keywords, not against an absolute benchmark.
Depends entirely on your competitive landscape. For a local business, DR 20–30 may be enough. For a SaaS targeting head terms, you typically need DR 50+. The right benchmark is the DR of the sites currently ranking for your target keywords — not an absolute number.
Slow-moving metric. New sites typically need 6–12 months of consistent link building to reach DR 20–30. Established sites see meaningful jumps over 3–6 months of focused work. The higher you are, the harder each additional point becomes — DR-50 to DR-60 takes much longer than DR-20 to DR-30.
No — different companies, different algorithms, different data sources. DR (Ahrefs), DA (Moz), and our DR are all 0–100 backlink-authority proxies, but the absolute numbers will differ between them by 5–15 points. The relative ordering and rough magnitude are usually consistent.
Yes. Common causes: lost backlinks (linking pages deleted, redirected, or removed), competitor link-building shifting the relative graph, or upstream algorithm recalibrations that change scores across the board. A small drop is normal noise; a large drop without an obvious cause is worth investigating via the backlink checker.
Not directly — Google uses its own internal authority signals. But Google measures the same fundamentals (link quantity, link quality, link diversity), so DR is a strong correlate of ranking ability. Treat DR as a proxy, not as the signal Google itself reads.
Different backlink indexes (Ahrefs runs its own crawler; we use DataForSEO) and slightly different scoring weights. Expect a 5–15 point difference between any two DR-style metrics on the same domain. Both are useful for tracking trend; neither should be treated as ground truth.
Earn backlinks from high-DR domains in your niche. The standard playbooks: digital PR (data studies, expert commentary, original research), guest posting on relevant publications, broken-link building, partnership announcements, and integration listings. Avoid link farms, paid networks, and low-quality directory submissions — they don't move DR meaningfully and can trigger Google review.
Yes — the tool works on any public domain. Pull DR for the top 10 sites ranking for your target keyword to know exactly what authority bar you need to clear.
.edu, .gov, or known-trust sources that disproportionately boost authority.
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