Somebody put a domain authority score in front of you. Maybe it sat at the top of a monthly SEO report, maybe it came up in a sales call, and maybe a competitor's bigger number is what started the worry. Now you are wondering whether to act on it, and whether to pay anyone to raise it.
Is domain authority a number you should care about? It deserves a quick look and a date stamp, not a budget line. The score is a third-party comparison figure that helps sort backlink profiles, and Google does not use it to rank your pages.
That still leaves a useful job for it. Read it the right way and you can compare yourself with real competitors, check a link offer before you pay, and spot a pitch that sells a number instead of customers. You can also check your own score in about ten minutes.
Key Takeaways
Moz Domain Authority, Ahrefs Domain Rating and Majestic Trust Flow are each a company's own estimate built mostly from backlink data. Google says it does not use scores from third-party SEO tools.
There is no universal good number. Use one tool, a few real competitors, and Search Console clicks and impressions over several months.
Before paying for a link, ask which tool and date produced the score, what the linking page's traffic and topic are, and whether you will see the URL before it goes live.
What does a domain authority score actually tell you?
Each score comes from a different company, and each company describes its own score in its own words. That is the first thing to know, because "domain authority" gets used as a nickname for all of them.
According to Moz's authority scoring guide, Domain Authority is a proprietary 1 to 100 predictive score that estimates how likely a domain is to rank. Moz says it feeds link data into a machine-learning model trained against search-result rankings. Ahrefs describes Domain Rating as a proprietary 0 to 100 logarithmic measure of a website's backlink profile. Majestic's Trust Flow is a 0 to 100 quality score based on how close a site sits to trusted seed sites that Majestic reviews by hand.
| Score | Maker | Scale | What it is built from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain Authority (DA) | Moz | 1 to 100 | Link data fed into a model trained against search results |
| Domain Rating (DR) | Ahrefs | 0 to 100, logarithmic | Followed referring domains, the DR of the sites that link to you, and how many other sites each of them links to |
| Trust Flow | Majestic | 0 to 100 | Closeness to trusted seed sites that Majestic reviews by hand |
None of the formulas is fully public, and each tool crawls its own index of the web's links. A 40 from one tool and a 40 from another are two different measurements, so never set them side by side as if they matched.
Does Google use domain authority to rank pages?
No. John Mueller of Google said in a Search Central video on August 15, 2023 that "Google does not use scores from third-party SEO tools or services." Google's third-party SEO guidance adds that these tools do not have access to Google's internal ranking data, and that their predictions are their own and may not happen.
Google repeated the point in its March 5, 2024 announcement of the core update and spam policies. It says third-party "reputation" or "authority" scores don't correspond to any of Google's own signals and don't come from Google.
Google does say these tools can provide useful data. The practical meaning is simple. A higher DA, DR or Trust Flow cannot be a guarantee of anything in Google, so it should never be the goal you pay for.
What is a good domain authority score?
A good score is one that sits near the scores of the sites you actually compete with, measured in the same tool on the same day. Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic each publish definitions of their own metrics, but there is no industry standard that says 30, 50 or 60 is good.
So, a DA of 20 is neither a failure nor a win by itself. Look up the sites that rank for your searches in the same tool. If your number sits close to theirs, it is ordinary for your market. If it sits far below, the gap tells you where to start looking at the links behind the score, and nothing more than that.
Scores also move for reasons that have nothing to do with your site. A score can rise without any gain in useful traffic, and it can fall because the vendor's index or relative scale changed. A one-point change is not a business event.
When is a score actually useful to a business owner?
Used as a sorting aid, a score has real uses. It can help you compare similar backlink profiles, pick out links that deserve a manual look, decide which competitors to study first, and screen a proposed link before you spend money on it.
What it cannot do is prove that a site is trustworthy, relevant or worth a link. A site can show a high score and still have thin content, little organic traffic, a pile of outbound links, or a history that has nothing to do with your business.
Scores are also easy to push around. Google's spam policies name expired-domain abuse, link schemes and site reputation abuse as spam risks, and each of those can inflate a number without adding a single reader. Expired domains repurposed for unrelated topics, networks of sites built mainly to sell links, and automated link creation all fit that pattern.
What should you ask someone who sells links by domain authority?
A vendor who sells links by a DA threshold is selling a metric, not a reliable outcome, and you can reasonably decline. Google prohibits buying or selling links for ranking purposes, excessive link exchanges, automated link creation, and paid articles with links that pass ranking credit. A fixed number of "DA 50 links" that skips relevance, traffic and disclosure is a package built around a number.
Before you agree to anything, ask:
- Which tool and what date produced the score?
- Is the number for the exact linking page, the subdomain or the whole root domain?
- What organic traffic, ranking history and topic does that page have?
- How many external links does the page carry?
- Will the link be editorial, paid, sponsored or user-generated?
- If money or another benefit is involved, will the link use `rel="sponsored"` or `rel="nofollow"`, as Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links describes?
- Will you see the actual URLs before anything is published?
- What happens if the link disappears, the page changes topic, or the site drops out of Google's index?
- What business result do you expect besides a higher score?
A seller who answers all of these in writing is giving you something you can check. If the answers are vague, or the reply is a bigger number, you have your answer. The same habit applies to a whole contract; the post on what to check in an SEO contract covers the other terms, and questions to ask when hiring an SEO company covers the rest of the conversation.
How can you check your own score in ten minutes?
Start with the score, then spend most of your time on what sits behind it and what Google is actually sending you.
Open a tool such as Moz Link Explorer and record your DA, your linking root domains and your top inbound links. Treat the number as a dated comparison point, not a target. Confirm the current free limits inside the tool before you plan around it, since each vendor sets its own.
Next, open Google Search Console, go to Performance, and set a 3-month or 6-month comparison. Look at total clicks and impressions, then at the top queries and pages. A real change in Google visibility is what to watch, and a movement in DA does not prove anything happened there.
Last, look up two or three real competitors in the same market. Compare the quality and relevance of the sites linking to them, not only the headline scores, and write down the date, since each tool updates its index on its own schedule.
What should you stop worrying about?
Stop chasing a universal number. There is no score that makes a small business authoritative, safe or likely to rank.
Stop reacting to a small change in a third-party score. It moves with the vendor's crawl and model, and a drop is not proof that Google penalized you. Check for lost links, site changes and your Search Console trend before you decide anything.
Stop assuming a high-score link brings real readers. And stop paying to raise a score unless someone can show why the links should help visitors, referrals or qualified search visibility. Your time is better spent on the pages that attract the right searches and on whether visitors call, book or buy.
The broader work of earning links lives in how to get backlinks for a small business. If you already have links you are unsure about, do you need a backlink audit walks through when a review is worth paying for.
Can you read a domain authority score?
Pick an answer to begin.
1. Who calculates Moz Domain Authority?
2. A seller offers "ten DA 50 links" for a flat fee. What is the best first question?
3. Your DA dropped two points. What should you check first?
Frequently Asked Questions About Domain Authority
Is domain authority a Google ranking factor?
No. DA is Moz's predictive metric. Google says third-party authority scores do not correspond to Google's own signals and do not come from Google.
What is a good domain authority score?
There is no universal good score. Compare your number with the sites that rank for your searches, using the same tool and the same date.
Is DA the same as DR?
No. DA is Moz's metric and DR is Ahrefs' metric. They use different indexes and formulas, so their numbers cannot be swapped.
Can a low-DA site rank on Google?
Yes. Google does not use third-party scores, so a low number is not a barrier to appearing in search.
Should I buy high-DA backlinks?
Do not buy links for ranking credit. Google lists buying and selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, and paid placements should be qualified with `rel="sponsored"` or `rel="nofollow"`.
Why did my domain authority drop?
Scores are relative and depend on the vendor's crawl and model, so a drop can come from a change in the tool's index. Check your Search Console clicks and impressions and any links you lost before acting.
The Bottom Line
A domain authority score is one tool's estimate of your backlink profile. Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic each build their own, Google says it does not use any of them, and no number is good on its own. Record the tool and the date, compare against real competitors, and judge the work by clicks, calls and sales in Search Console and your own records.
That habit saves money. You can say no to a package sold by a threshold, ask the questions that make a link offer concrete, and put effort where visitors actually benefit.
If a report or a proposal has you unsure, we can read it with you. At Web Leveling, our search engine optimization work ties link and content decisions to the inquiries they produce. We work with small and medium businesses across the country and overseas. Send us the score, the report or the link proposal and we will tell you which numbers connect to your customers.
Terms
Words used in this post
Tap a term to see what it means.
Domain Authority (DA). Moz's proprietary 1 to 100 score that estimates how likely a domain is to rank.
Domain Rating (DR). Ahrefs' proprietary 0 to 100 logarithmic measure of a website's backlink profile.
Trust Flow. Majestic's 0 to 100 quality score based on closeness to manually reviewed trusted seed sites.
Backlink. A link from another website to yours.
Referring domain. A separate website that links to yours, counted once however many links it sends.
Sponsored link. A paid or otherwise rewarded link, marked with rel="sponsored" so it does not pass ranking credit.
Search Console. Google's free tool that reports the clicks, impressions and queries your site gets from Google Search.
