Ahrefs DR vs Moz DA is a comparison of two third-party estimates that measure different things on different scales, computed from two different indexes of the web. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' calculation of how strong a domain's backlink profile is. Domain Authority is Moz's machine-learning prediction of how likely a domain is to rank. Neither is a Google metric, neither is used by Google's ranking systems, and there is no reliable conversion between them. If you came here looking for a DR-to-DA conversion table, the honest answer is that one cannot exist.
Both scores are useful for one job — triaging large lists quickly — and actively harmful when treated as a KPI. Here is what each actually measures, why the numbers disagree, and what to watch instead.
What Ahrefs Domain Rating actually measures
Domain Rating is a 0 to 100 logarithmic score describing the strength of a domain's backlink profile. In broad terms it counts the unique domains linking to you, weights each linking domain by its own strength, and divides that strength across the number of sites each linking domain links out to. A link from a strong site that links to almost nobody is worth far more than a link from a strong site that links to everybody.
Three consequences follow directly from that formula.
- Adding more links from a domain that already links to you barely moves DR. Unique referring domains are the lever.
- DR says nothing about traffic, content quality or relevance. A domain can hold a high DR and rank for nothing.
- Because the scale is logarithmic, moving from 20 to 30 is far easier than moving from 60 to 70, and 70 to 80 is a different sport entirely.
Ahrefs UR vs DR: the distinction that matters more
URL Rating is the page-level version of the same idea: the link strength of one specific URL, counting the links pointing at that page — internal links included — rather than the whole domain.
This distinction matters more than most people realise, because Google ranks pages, not domains. A brand new post on a DR 80 site starts life with a low UR. It inherits some strength through internal linking, but not by magic and not instantly. That is why a big site can publish a page that goes nowhere, and why internal linking from your strongest pages is one of the most underrated levers in SEO.
The practical rule: use DR for domain-level triage such as filtering an outreach list, and UR when you are asking why one page outranks another on a comparable site. Ahrefs Rank, sometimes searched as "Ahrefs DR rank", is a third thing again — an ordinal league table of sites by backlink profile strength, where a lower number means stronger. It is a curiosity, not a decision input.
What Moz Domain Authority actually measures
Domain Authority is also a 0 to 100 logarithmic score, but it is built differently. Moz trains a machine-learning model to predict how likely a domain is to rank in search results, using signals derived from its Link Explorer index, and calibrates the output against real search results. DA is explicitly a comparative, predictive score rather than a direct measurement of link count.
Two consequences of that design catch people out.
- Because DA is a model that gets retrained and recalibrated, scores can move across the whole web without your backlink profile changing at all. Your DA can drop while your links, traffic and rankings are flat. Moz has been open about this.
- Because DA is calibrated against a fixed distribution, it is relative by construction. A DA of 40 means "roughly this far up the pack", not "this much link equity".
Page Authority is Moz's page-level counterpart, the rough analogue of Ahrefs' UR.
Ahrefs DR vs Moz DA side by side
| Property | Ahrefs DR | Moz DA |
|---|
| What it models | Strength of the backlink profile | Predicted likelihood of ranking |
| How it is built | Link-graph calculation over Ahrefs' index | Machine-learning model over Moz's index |
| Scale | 0 to 100, logarithmic | 0 to 100, logarithmic |
| Page-level sibling | URL Rating (UR) | Page Authority (PA) |
| Moves without new links? | Yes, when the index or competitors shift | Yes, and also when the model is retrained |
| Used by Google? | No | No |
| Best use | Filtering prospect and competitor lists | Filtering prospect and competitor lists |
| Worst use | A target on a marketing dashboard | A target on a marketing dashboard |
Why the two numbers disagree about your site
Four independent reasons, all boring and all sufficient.
- Different indexes. Each vendor crawls its own copy of the web. A link one crawler has found and the other has not simply does not exist in the second tool's maths.
- Different crawl freshness. A link discovered three days ago and a link discovered three months ago carry the same weight once counted, but only one of them is counted today.
- Different formulas. One is a graph calculation, the other a trained model. They are not two measurements of the same quantity, so a mismatch is expected rather than an error.
- Different normalisation. Both are squeezed into 0 to 100, but the squeezing functions are unrelated. A DR 50 and a DA 50 are not describing the same position in the pack.
That is why practitioners routinely see a domain sit at DR 62 and DA 41, or the reverse, without either tool being broken. Pick one scale for a given report and never mix them in the same table.
Why chasing DR or DA is a trap
This is the part the tool vendors are least incentivised to say loudly: the moment an authority score becomes a target, it stops being a useful measure. Both scores are computable from public link data, which means both are gameable — and an entire industry exists to game them.
- Link marketplaces price inventory by DR or DA tier, which is why "DR 60 guest post" listings exist. The score can be inflated cheaply; the rankings usually are not.
- Both metrics can be raised by links that carry no relevance to your topic. Relevance is not in either formula, but it is very much in Google's.
- Neither score is a ranking factor, so a rising score is not evidence of progress. Google representatives have said repeatedly that Google has no domain-authority-style metric of its own.
- Optimising for a proxy diverts budget from the thing the proxy was supposed to represent. Money spent buying score-inflating links is money not spent on content that earns links on merit.
The reasonable use is the one both vendors describe: comparative triage. Sorting two hundred link prospects by DR is a legitimate time saver. Reporting DR to your board as a performance metric is not.
What to watch instead
Replace the authority score on your dashboard with numbers that are yours and cannot be bought.
- Organic clicks and impressions from Google Search Console. Measured, not modelled, and specific to your site.
- Number of URLs earning clicks. A widening base of pages with real traffic is the healthiest growth signal in content SEO.
- Ranking distribution over time. How many tracked terms sit in positions one to three, four to ten and eleven to twenty, and which direction that mix is moving.
- Traffic value of pages linking to you, rather than the linking domain's score. A link on a page that itself receives traffic sends actual visitors and actual signals.
- Topical relevance of new links. Harder to quantify, far more predictive than a two-digit score.
- AI answer visibility. Whether assistants cite you at all for your money queries is fast becoming as important as the classic blue link.
If you want a fast, free read on where a domain sits without opening a paid subscription, run it through our website authority checker, then check the on-page side with the SEO score checker. Use them the way DR and DA should be used: a rough sort, not a scoreboard.
Where AutoSEO sits in all this
Worth being direct, since this is our blog. AutoSEO does not offer to raise your DR or DA, and you should be sceptical of anything that promises to — they are third-party estimates, not levers you can pull directly. What we automate is the other side of the equation: researching what to publish, generating the article with the on-page work already done, pushing it to your CMS, and tracking both classic rankings and AI-answer visibility afterwards. Plans are on the pricing page.
For the tool-choice question underneath all this, see Ahrefs vs Moz and the three-way comparison in Moz vs Semrush vs Ahrefs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Ahrefs DR compare to Moz DA?
They correlate loosely because both are driven by backlinks, but they are not interchangeable. DR is a calculation of backlink profile strength from Ahrefs' index; DA is a trained prediction of ranking likelihood from Moz's index. The same site routinely scores ten or twenty points apart in the two systems, and neither number is wrong — they are answering different questions.
Is there a DR to DA conversion formula?
No. Any conversion table you find is someone's regression over a sample of sites, and it breaks down the moment either vendor updates its index or retrains its model. Report in one scale and state which tool produced it.
What is the difference between Ahrefs UR and DR?
DR describes the whole domain's backlink strength; UR describes one specific URL's link strength, including internal links pointing at that page. Because search engines rank pages, UR is usually the more relevant of the two when you are diagnosing why a particular page underperforms.
Does Google use Domain Authority or Domain Rating?
No. Both are third-party scores produced by Moz and Ahrefs respectively from their own crawls. Google has stated repeatedly that it does not have a site-wide authority score of the kind these metrics imply, and it certainly does not read a competitor's proprietary number.
What is a good DR or DA score?
The only meaningful answer is relative to the sites you compete against on your target queries. If pages ranking for your keywords sit around DR 30, a DR 30 site is competitive there. If they sit at DR 80, a higher score is table stakes and content alone will not close the gap. Look up your actual SERP competitors rather than chasing a universal number.
Why did my Domain Authority drop when I did not lose links?
Most often because Moz retrained or recalibrated the model, which shifts scores across the whole index. It can also happen when other sites gain links faster than you, since both DA and DR are relative to the rest of the web. Check whether your Search Console clicks moved. If they did not, nothing real happened.
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