A few years back, I was on a call with a potential client, and they asked me something that really threw me for a loop. ‘Can you tell me, whats the real difference between Domain Authority and Domain Rating?’ Our DA was 42, but our DR was only 31. Which one do you actually care about?’ I remember thinking to myself ‘That’s a cracking good question.’ Honestly, early on in my career, I probably would have stumbled over the answer a bit. The SEO world is notorious for bandying around “DA” and “DR” like everyone already knows what’s going on, when in reality most people are in the dark. And that’s got a good reason.

So, let me break down the difference between Domain Authority and Domain Rating in plain English. I’ll explain where each metric comes from and share what I actually spend my time on when I’m doing SEO work for our clients.

What’s Domain Authority (DA)?

Domain Authority is a metric put together by Moz. It’s a score on a scale of 1 to 100 which is meant to guess how likely your website is to show up in Google’s search results. The higher the number, the better your chances. Fair enough, right?

But here’s the main thing most people get wrong with DA: its NOT a Google metric. Google’s said this before, multiple times. DA is Moz’s own score, built from their own crawl data using factors like the number of quality links pointing to your site.

It’s a useful reference point, but it’s not carved in stone. I’ve seen sites with a DA of 25 do better in search results than sites with a DA of 60 on competitive keywords. DA gives you a rough idea of a site’s authority, but it’s just one data point among many.

What’s Domain Rating (DR)?

Domain Rating is Ahrefs take on the same idea. It’s also a 1 to 100 score that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile. But Ahrefs calculates it in a different way to Moz.

DR focuses specifically on the number and quality of backlinks pointing to a domain, plus how many other sites those backlinking domains also link to. So, if a high DR site links to yours but also links to 10,000 other sites, that link is worth less in the DR calculation.

Like DA, DR is a third party metric. Google doesn’t use it, but to be honest at Shortlist, we tend to lean on DR more in our day-to-day work mainly because we use Ahrefs as our primary SEO tool. It’s not that DR is any “better” than DA. It’s just that we see DR more often and have built our workflows around it.

The Key differences between DA & DR

This is where things get really interesting. Even though DA and DR are measuring similar things (backlink strength), they often give you different numbers for the same website. That’s because they use different data sources, different crawlers and different algorithms.

Moz’s DA takes into account a lot of signals beyond just links, like a spam score and the overall link graph. Ahrefs DR is more narrowly focused on the backlink profile itself, specifically the strength and distribution of referring domains.

Neither one is “right”. They’re both estimates built on incomplete data. Think of it like two different weather apps giving you slightly different forecasts. They’re both using real data, but their models are different so the outputs don’t always match.

The biggest practical difference? DA can be harder to artificially inflate, while DR can sometimes be gamed through link schemes that quickly create lots of referring domains. Ahrefs has got better at catching this, but I still keep an eye out for it when evaluating potential link building partners.

Which One Should You Care About?

Here’s my honest answer: neither one should be your main focus.

I know that may sound strange coming from someone who runs an SEO agency but I’ve seen too many business owners get bogged down in their DA or DR score while ignoring the metrics that really matter: organic traffic, keyword rankings and revenue from search.

DA and DR are useful as directional indicators. They help you compare your site’s backlink strength to competitors, they help you evaluate if a site is worth getting a link from and they give you a quick sanity check on if your link building efforts are actually making your site stronger.

But chasing a number on a third-party tool is not a strategy. I’ve had clients come to me after spending thousands on trying to “get their DA to 50” with low-quality link building and their traffic was worse than when they started. The number went up, but the results didn’t follow.

How We Actually Use DA & DR in Client Work

In practice here’s how we figure these metrics out at ShortlistWhen we’re on the hunt for link building opportunities, we tend to take a quick look at a domain’s DR first, and sometimes the DA too, to get a feel for whether it’s worth our time. If some fly-by-night site has just popped up last month with a DR of 5, we generally don’t bother. On the other hand, a site with a solid DR of 60 that consistently puts out quality content within a relevant niche is definitely worth getting in touch with.

When doing competitive analysis for our clients, we take a good hard look at their DR and where it sits in relation to their top ranking competitors. If there’s a pretty big gap between them, it’s clear that link building needs to be a top priority. If they’re pretty evenly matched, we know that factors like content quality and the usual behind the scenes SEO issues are probably holding us back.

When we report back to our clients, we definitely track DR as one of the metrics, but we never make a big fuss about it. The main event is always about traffic, leads and revenue – that’s how we get paid after all.

The Bottom Line

Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating (DR) – the SEO tools we all know and love – are pretty useful to have in your toolkit but let’s be real neither one is a perfect way to gauge how Google really sees your site. Use them as a rough guide, a bit like a benchmark, not a definitive report card.

If you’re the type of person who likes to compare the two, just pick one and stick with it. We use DR because we use Ahrefs, but it’s perfectly fine to use Moz and go with DA. What matters is you’re paying attention to the right stuff alongside it – where you’re actually ranking, actual traffic figures and actual business results.

And if anyone ever tries to tell you they can guarantee a certain DA or DR score, you’d do best to steer well clear – that’s just not how this works.