Domain Authority or Domain Rating

[anderson]

I am trying to understand the impact of Domain Authority (DA) vs. Domain Rating (DR) on SEO. Since DA is from Moz and DR is from Ahrefs, how much do they actually matter for rankings? Do you trust one more than the other, and have you seen a strong correlation between these scores and actual search performance? Curious to hear your thoughts!

 

[Helmuts]

Hi Anderson.

DA (from Moz) considers over 40 factors including backlinks, on-page SEO, and domain age, offering a broader view of a site’s authority.
DR (of Ahrefs), focuses mostly on the quality and quantity of backlinks.

This probably is strongly related to the products these both brands cover > for Afrefs, their "forte" is backlinks data and analytics, and for Moz > they measure different SEO data instead of dominating 1 particular niche (like Ahrefs does with b-links).

Neither metric is more trusted .. these provide different insights.

 

[Daniel - Monetize.info]

Besides what @Helmuts said, it is worth mentioning that both these ratings are artificial, and these SEO tools create their algorithms to try to decode Google's ranking algorithms on ranking websites. You may also look into Majestic TF/CF or SemRush authority score.

In practice, DA is used more than ahrefs' DR, but you should pay attention when evaluating a domain. The DA can be easily faked with no-follow links or redirects from other high-DA sites.

 

[anderson]

Thanks @Helmuts and @Daniel - Monetize.info for your useful answers.

 

[nicenic]

DA and DR differ, but neither guarantees top rankings—quality backlinks and content matters most.

 

[HostAddon]

This will only tell you the range and quality of back links. They indirectly do effect ratings as more backlinks you have from quality sources better you rank.

Only content which is useful and considered helpful will take precedent, otherwise these ratings can help identify quality sources for link building as you know if these are higher better the link source.