Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority (DA) is a 1–100 score invented by Moz that predicts how likely a domain is to rank, based mostly on its link profile. Here's the part that costs people money when they get it wrong: DA is not a Google metric, Google does not use it, and "raising your DA" is not an SEO strategy — it's a side effect of one.

Google's own people have said flatly, for years, that they use nothing called domain authority. What Google does have are link-based signals (PageRank still exists internally) and site-wide quality signals. Moz built DA as an outside-in estimate of how those signals might shake out — a useful comparative gauge, and nothing more. Treat the number like a credit score issued by a company that has never seen your bank account.

DA, DR, AS: the third-party authority metrics compared

Every major tool vendor sells its own version of this score. They measure similar things, on different data, with different math — which is why the same site can score 34 in one tool and 51 in another:

None of these numbers rank you. Their legitimate uses: comparing your site to direct competitors inside one tool, triaging link prospects at scale, and spotting obviously fake "high authority" sites when the score and the traffic don't match.

How to check it

1. Moz Link Explorer (free account, limited queries per day): enter the domain, read DA plus linking domains and spam score.
2. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free for sites you verify) or the free Ahrefs DR checker: gives DR and the backlink data behind it.
3. Semrush free tier: Authority Score in the Domain Overview.
4. Sanity-check the score against reality. Whatever number you get, open Google Search Console — impressions, clicks and average position are the ground truth. A DA 45 site with collapsing impressions is losing; a DA 18 site with growing clicks is winning.
5. Always compare within one tool, on one date. Your DA versus a competitor's DA today is a meaningful comparison. Your DA versus their DR is not, and neither is your DA today versus your DA before Moz's last recalibration.

Common mistakes

• Reporting DA to clients as a Google ranking factor. It isn't one, and any client who later learns that stops trusting the rest of your report. Fix: report traffic, rankings and referring domains; mention DA only as a competitive gauge with the caveat attached.
• Buying links priced by DA. "DA 50+ guest post, $150" is a menu for metric-inflated crap — sellers farm the score precisely because buyers shop by it. Fix: check the site's organic traffic and whether a human would actually read it before caring about its score.
• Panicking when DA drops. Moz recalibrates its model and index; scores shift across the whole web with zero change on your site. Fix: check GSC first. If traffic and rankings held, the drop is the tool's, not yours.
• Setting "increase DA to 40" as a goal. You can hit that number with junk links and rank worse than before. Fix: set goals on rankings and revenue pages; watch DA drift up as a lagging indicator.
• Comparing scores across tools or across time. Different indexes, different math, moving baselines. Fix: one tool, same-day snapshots, competitor-relative readings only.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good Domain Authority score?

Only relative to your competitors. DA 30 is strong in a local services niche and hopeless in consumer finance. Pull the DA of the sites actually outranking you — sitting in their range means links probably aren't your bottleneck; sitting far below means they probably are.

How do I increase my Domain Authority?

Earn links from more real, relevant sites — there's no other lever that isn't a trick. In practice that means growing your referring domains through work like the tactics in our link building FAQ. But keep the goal straight: the links are the point; the score just trails them.

Does Google use Domain Authority or anything like it?

Google doesn't use Moz's DA — it can't; it's a third-party product. Google does use link-based signals (PageRank lives on internally) and has discussed site-wide quality signals. Those are cousins of the concept, not the metric itself.

DA, DR or Authority Score — which should I trust?

Whichever tool you already use, applied consistently. They're differently-flavored estimates of the same underlying thing. If a decision changes based on which vendor's score you pick, the decision was too fragile to begin with.

My DA is higher than my competitor's but they outrank me. Why?

Because rankings are decided page by page, query by query — not domain by domain. Their page likely has better links, better content, or better relevance for that specific query. Domain-level scores are the weather report, not the game score.