Does Google use Domain Authority?

No. DA is a Moz metric. Google has said it doesn't use third-party authority scores.

What's the difference between DA and DR?

DA is Moz's 1–100 score; DR is Ahrefs' 0–100 score. They're built from different link indexes and models, so they don't match.

What is Open PageRank?

A free, open authority metric (0–10) computed from Common Crawl link data. BuildSEO's free Domain Authority Checker uses it.

What is a good domain authority?

It depends on your niche. Compare against the sites linking to pages that already rank for your keywords.

Can I raise my domain authority quickly?

You can inflate a metric, but that doesn't improve rankings. Earn relevant links from indexed, real sites.

Pillar guide · Authority metrics

Domain authority explained: DA, DR and what actually matters

Domain Authority, Domain Rating and Authority Score are third-party estimates — useful for comparison, easy to game, and not used by Google. Here's how they differ and how to judge a site properly.

By Anurag Pattnaik · Updated 28 Sep 2026

Key takeaways

DA (Moz), DR (Ahrefs) and Authority Score (Semrush) are proprietary metrics, not Google signals.
Open PageRank is a free, open metric based on Common Crawl link data.
Scores are relative and can be inflated; never judge a site on one number.
Check indexing, real organic visibility, relevance and spam signals.
An explainable score beats a black box you can't defend to a client.

What "domain authority" means

"Domain authority" is shorthand for how strong a site's link profile looks compared with others. Several companies publish their own version, each computed differently from their own crawl of the web.

Google has said it doesn't use third-party authority metrics. They're proxies built by SEO tools to help you compare sites quickly.

The main metrics compared

Metric	From	Scale	Based on
Domain Authority (DA)	Moz	1–100	Moz's link index and machine-learned model
Domain Rating (DR)	Ahrefs	0–100	Strength of a site's backlink profile in Ahrefs' index
Authority Score	Semrush	0–100	Backlinks plus organic traffic and spam signals
Open PageRank	Open PageRank initiative	0–10	Common Crawl link data, freely available
BuildSEO Authority Score	BuildSEO	0–100	Index status, domain age & HTTPS, organic visibility, technical health, spam signals, category fit

Scores from different tools aren't interchangeable: a DR 50 site isn't a DA 50 site. Compare sites using the same metric, and treat all of them as estimates.

Free tool

Domain Authority Checker

Look up any domain's Open PageRank score for free.

Open tool →

Why a single score misleads

It can be inflated. Sites can buy or swap links to raise a metric without gaining real visibility.
It ignores relevance. A high-score site in an unrelated niche may be a worse link than a modest site in yours.
It ignores indexing. A strong-looking domain can have large parts deindexed.
It lags. Tool indexes update on their own schedules.
It hides the why. You can't defend "it's a 60" to a client who asks what that means.

We wrote about this in Why We Stopped Buying Domain Authority and Computed Our Own.

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Spam signals to watch

Thousands of outbound links to unrelated sites
"Write for us" pages selling dofollow links
Sudden traffic collapse or deindexing
Thin, spun or AI-filler content across the site
Footer or sidebar links to casinos, loans or pharma
Networks of near-identical sites

What is a good score?

"Good" is relative to your niche and competitors. Look at the scores of sites already linking to pages that rank for your keywords — that's your realistic range. Relevance and indexing matter more than crossing an arbitrary threshold.

How BuildSEO scores publishers

BuildSEO's Authority Score (0–100) combines index status, domain age and HTTPS, organic visibility, technical health, spam signals and category fit — and you can open any score and read it signal by signal. Candidates that fail hard checks (adult, casino, spam, deindexed, PBN) are excluded before any submission; borderline ones go to an operator review queue.