DR (Domain Rating) – ahrefs' core metric. measures the overall external link strength of a website (0-100) to evaluate overall authority.
DR measures the quantity and quality of external backlinks to a website. the simplified calculation: 1. count how many unique domains link to the target site; 2. check the 'weight' of those linking domains; 3. consider how many unique domains each of those sites links to; 4. calculate a raw DR score using math and coding; 5. present the score on a 0-100 scale. DR does not consider other variables like link spam, traffic, domain age, etc.
Generally, a higher DR is better. but DR is a relative metric, not an absolute one. there is no universal 'good' value like 30, 50, 60, or 70 – it depends on your competitive set. a common rule of thumb: your DR is good if it is higher than or comparable to similar websites in your niche.
The only way to increase your DR is to get backlinks from more unique websites (referring domains). However, boosting dr should never be your primary goal. Instead, focus on earning backlinks from high-quality pages on authoritative sites in your industry, pointing to the pages you want to rank on google. there is a clear correlation between the number of referring domains to a page and its organic search traffic.
Link quality matters more than quantity. 1,000 spammy backlinks are worth far less than 10 links from high-DR websites. ahrefs evaluates links based on the DR of the linking domain.
No. ahrefs' DR is a pure link metric that does not filter out spammy links.
