Ahrefs DR vs Moz DA: I Compared Both on 6 of My Sites

Ahrefs DR (Domain Rating) and Moz DA (Domain Authority) both score a whole website from its backlinks, but they answer different questions. DR is Ahrefs’ 0 to 100 measure of how strong a site’s backlink profile is compared with every other site in its index. DA is Moz’s 1 to 100 machine-learning prediction of how likely a site is to rank. The page-level versions are Ahrefs UR (URL Rating) and Moz PA (Page Authority), and none of these scores come from Google.

The short version, from checking my own sites: the tools don’t even agree which of my sites is strongest, neither score lined up with which of my sites get the most Google traffic, and Ahrefs’ own data says a page’s links track rankings better than DR does. Ahrefs rates rightblogger.com DR 70. Moz rates the same site DA 31.

DR vs UR vs DA vs PA vs Authority Score at a Glance

Here’s what each score measures, according to the company that makes it:

Metric	Made by	Level	Scale	Based on
Domain Rating (DR)	Ahrefs	Whole domain	0 to 100, logarithmic	Followed backlinks from unique domains, weighted by each linking site’s own DR and split by how many other sites it links to
URL Rating (UR)	Ahrefs	One page	0 to 100, logarithmic	Internal and external links pointing to that one URL, using PageRank-style math that respects nofollow
Domain Authority (DA)	Moz	Domain or subdomain	1 to 100	A machine-learning model run on Moz’s link index: mainly linking root domains and link quality, trained against real search results
Page Authority (PA)	Moz	One page	1 to 100, logarithmic	The same method as DA applied to a single page, with no on-page factors
Authority Score (AS)	Semrush	Mainly domain	1 to 100	Link power, estimated organic traffic, and spam checks on whether the link profile looks natural

Read the table in pairs. DR and DA are the domain scores, and UR and PA are the page scores. Ahrefs has no “DA” or “PA” of its own, so when someone says “Ahrefs DA,” they almost always mean DR. A common mix-up: Moz says DA is built primarily from link data. Domain age, traffic and social signals are not what drives it.

I Checked DR, DA and Real Google Clicks on 6 of My Sites

Most comparisons of DR and DA stop at definitions. I wanted to see how the scores line up with something that actually matters, so I pulled every authority score I could for six sites I run, next to the clicks each one really got from Google Search Console. Scores were checked on November 4 and 5, 2026. Clicks cover August 3 to October 31, 2026.

Site	What it is	Ahrefs DR	Moz DA	RightBlogger Domain Rank	Google clicks (90 days)
rightblogger.com	SaaS site with a blog	70	31	59	7,709
ihitthebutton.com	Travel photography blog	46	38	54	7,435
smartwp.com	WordPress tips blog	53	21	51	1,731
titlecapitalize.com	Free title case tool	31	21	50	1,346
awesomestufftobuy.com	Gift ideas blog	33	40	58	1,193
drawne.com	My web developer portfolio	54	21	74	375

Three things jumped out:

1. The tools don’t even agree on the order. Ahrefs ranks awesomestufftobuy.com near the bottom (DR 33). Moz ranks it first (DA 40). Same site, same week, opposite conclusions.
2. Neither score tracked traffic closely. My travel photography blog sits 24 DR points below rightblogger.com and earns almost the same Google clicks. The site with the highest Moz DA came fifth in clicks.
3. Authority without content earns nothing. My portfolio has the second-highest DR and the highest RightBlogger Domain Rank of the six, and the fewest clicks by far. It has plenty of links and almost nothing written to answer a search. Anyone buying links from a site like that based on DR alone would be paying for a number.

Six sites is not a study, so treat this as a sanity check rather than proof. But it matches larger research. Xamsor compared 150 sites in 2024 and found the same domain’s scores varied by 26 points on average across tools, and Onely’s 2022 correlation study of DA, DR and Google rankings measured only weak correlations for both (0.16 for DA, 0.14 for DR).

Why DR and DA Disagree on the Same Site

The biggest reason is boring: each company can only score the links its own crawler has found. Look at the linking domains each tool reported for my sites:

Site	Linking domains (Ahrefs)	Linking root domains (Moz)	Scores
rightblogger.com	3,200	1.8k	DR 70 vs DA 31
awesomestufftobuy.com	1,452	4.3k	DR 33 vs DA 40
ihitthebutton.com	2,730	3.2k	DR 46 vs DA 38
titlecapitalize.com	1,055	402	DR 31 vs DA 21

Moz rounds its counts to the nearest hundred, so its column is approximate.

Ahrefs found almost twice as many sites linking to rightblogger.com as Moz did, so its score is far higher. For the gift blog it’s the reverse: Moz counted three times as many linking domains, and DA comes out ahead. Coverage isn’t the whole story, though: Moz found more linking domains for my travel blog and still scored it lower. DA and DR come from different formulas on different scales, so the same link count doesn’t land on the same number. When the two scores disagree, use this table to work out why:

What you see	Likely reason	What to check	On my sites
DR much higher than DA	Ahrefs found more linking domains, or Moz’s model discounts the links it found	Compare linking-domain counts in both tools	rightblogger.com: DR 70 vs DA 31, with 3,200 linking domains in Ahrefs and 1.8k in Moz
DA much higher than DR	Moz found links Ahrefs hasn’t, often older links	Moz’s linking root domains vs Ahrefs’ referring domains	awesomestufftobuy.com: DA 40 vs DR 33, with 4.3k linking domains in Moz and 1,452 in Ahrefs
Both high, traffic near zero	Links exist, content doesn’t rank or the links are paid or spam	Organic keywords and real traffic before trusting either score	drawne.com: DR 54 and RightBlogger Domain Rank 74, but 375 Google clicks in three months (it’s a portfolio, not a content site)
DR jumped 10+ in a month	A burst of new links, often low-quality directory or network links	New referring domains in Ahrefs, sorted by first seen	Not seen on my six sites

For your own site you can settle it with real data: Search Console’s Links report lists the top sites Google sees linking to you. If one tool is missing several of those, its score is working from an incomplete picture.

What Ahrefs DR and Moz DA Actually Measure

What Is DR in Ahrefs?

DR (Domain Rating) is Ahrefs’ score for how strong a website’s backlink profile is compared with the other sites in its database, on a 0 to 100 scale. It is all about backlinks, and according to Ahrefs’ own explanation of DR, it looks at:

• How many unique domains link to the site with followed links (only the first link from each domain counts)
• How strong those linking sites are, based on their own DR
• How that link authority gets split, since a site that links out to thousands of domains passes less to each one

DR is calculated from Ahrefs’ live backlink index, which gets fresh data every 15 to 30 minutes (index processing speed, not crawl speed), so DR can move within a day when you gain or lose backlinks. DR deliberately ignores traffic, domain age and link spam. Ahrefs says a good DR is one that’s higher than or comparable to the sites you compete with, and the vast majority of domains sit between DR 0 and 10.

Why Your Ahrefs DR Dropped

Because DR is relative and depends on the sites linking to you, it can fall even when you haven’t done anything wrong. The usual causes:

• You lost followed links from one or more referring domains
• A site that links to you lost DR itself, so it now passes less value
• A site that links to you started linking out to many more domains, which splits its value thinner
• Other sites grew faster than yours, and since the score is scaled against the whole database, you slid down the curve

Check your lost referring domains in Ahrefs Site Explorer to see which of these happened. If your Google clicks didn’t move, the DR drop probably doesn’t matter.

What Is Moz Domain Authority (DA)?

Moz Domain Authority predicts how likely a domain is to rank in search results compared with other sites. It’s also built from link data. The difference is the method: Moz runs its Link Explorer index through a machine-learning model trained against real search results, weighing linking root domains, link quality and Spam Score.

Moz’s index updates continuously, and newly found links show up within about 3 days. DA moves when Moz finds new or lost links to your site, or when Moz retrains the model behind it, so in practice it shifts more slowly than DR. Moz is clear that DA is not a Google ranking factor.

Why Your Moz DA Changed

DA can move for reasons that have nothing to do with your site. Moz periodically retrains the model behind it, and when it does, scores shift across the whole index at once. Your DA also changes when Moz finds or loses links to you, and because DA is relative, it can slip when the sites at the top of the scale gain links faster than you. If DA dropped and your traffic didn’t, it’s almost always one of these.

Why Page-Level Scores Beat Domain Scores

Google ranks pages, not domains. Ahrefs says itself that DR correlates with rankings less well than UR, and that the number of referring domains to a page is the strongest-correlating backlink factor it has found. That’s why my verdict is: use domain scores as a spam filter, and make decisions on page-level signals.

This article is a good example. It sits on a DR 70 domain, but the page itself has a UR of 4.7 and links from 11 domains (Ahrefs, November 4, 2026). The domain was enough to rank it: Ahrefs’ latest snapshot of the US results has it at position 3 for “ahrefs dr vs moz da” and cited in the AI Overview, and Search Console averaged position 7.2 for that query in October. From August 3 to October 31, Google showed the page 40,608 times and it was clicked 9 times, while Ahrefs estimates 134 visits a month. Authority got the page ranked. It did not get anyone to click, because the AI Overview already answers the basic question.

Ahrefs UR vs DR

DR rates an entire domain’s backlink profile. UR rates the link profile of one URL on a 0 to 100 logarithmic scale, counting both internal and external links, so a page your own site links to heavily (like a homepage) gets a boost DR doesn’t reflect. When you’re judging one guest post or one link opportunity, the UR of that exact page tells you more than the site’s DR.

Why a Page’s UR Can Be Higher Than the Site’s DR

It looks like a bug, but it isn’t. Ahrefs explains in its help center that UR compares pages to pages while DR compares domains to domains, so the two numbers aren’t on the same scale. A single page that attracts a lot of strong links can earn a high UR even if the rest of the site is weak.

Moz PA vs DA

Page Authority is Moz’s prediction of how well one page will rank, on a 1 to 100 scale. Moz calculates it the same way as DA, just for a single URL, and it ignores on-page elements like keyword use. A page’s PA can stay flat while the domain’s DA moves, and Ahrefs’ scores have no effect on either one: Moz and Ahrefs run separate link indexes and separate formulas.

How Easy DR and DA Are to Game

Any score built on links can be inflated, and this matters most when you’re buying links or buying a website. In a test by Xamsor, researchers paid $15 to $85 on Fiverr to push five brand-new domains to DR 44 to 59. Moz and Majestic found fewer than 10% of those links, yet their scores still rose. The same research found DR and DA often stay flat or even rise after a site is hit by a Google penalty.

So DA is slower to inflate than DR, not immune. Semrush’s Authority Score was the hardest to fake in that test, because traffic is part of its formula. If you see a site jump 10+ DR points in a month, or a high score with almost no traffic, treat the score as marketing.

A 5-Minute Checklist Before You Trust a High DR or DA

Use this before you pay for a guest post, accept a link swap, or buy a site:

1. Check real traffic. A high DR or DA with near-zero organic traffic is the biggest red flag, like my portfolio in the table above.
2. Check the page, not the domain. Look at the UR or PA of the page your link would sit on and how many sites link to it.
3. Look at the DR history. A jump of 10+ points in a month usually means bought or spammy links.
4. Scan who links to them. If the top linking sites are directories, link farms or unrelated foreign blogs, the score is inflated.
5. Check relevance. A DR 30 blog in your niche with real readers beats a DR 70 site that publishes anything for a fee. What counts as a good score depends on your niche, too: compare a site with the ones ranking for your keywords, then pick partners by topic (more in our guides to backlink outreach and SEO content strategy).

What Is RightBlogger’s Domain Rank?

If you’re on a paid RightBlogger plan, you’ll see a third score in your dashboard: Domain Rank. It’s a 0 to 100 measure of your site’s backlink strength, refreshed every 10 days and shown with your backlink and referring domain counts. It comes from a different link index than Ahrefs or Moz, so it won’t match either one, as my table above shows.

We use it for one job: the Backlink Exchange requires a paid plan, a Domain Rank of 15 or higher and a connected Search Console to keep obvious spam sites out. That’s the right use of any domain score, as a floor that filters out junk. Which links the exchange suggests comes down to topic relevance between real posts, not who has the biggest number. You can also look up any site’s links with RightBlogger’s Backlink Checker, which shows a Domain Rank and Page Rank for each linking page.

How to Check DR and DA for Free

Check Ahrefs DR for free

Go to Ahrefs’ free Website Authority Checker, paste in any domain, and you’ll get the DR plus a snapshot of referring domains and backlinks. The DR is the same number you’d see in a paid account.

Check Moz DA for free

Moz has a free Domain Authority Checker (listed as Domain Analysis in Moz’s menu). No login is needed: paste a domain and you’ll get DA, linking root domains, ranking keywords and Spam Score. It’s what I used for the DA numbers in this article. Free use is capped at 3 reports per day (as of November 2026).

The faster way: browser toolbars

MozBar is free, and its search results overlay shows DA and PA under each result. The Ahrefs SEO Toolbar shows DR and UR for any site once you sign in with a free Ahrefs account. Its other metrics, like backlink counts and traffic estimates, need a paid account (as of November 2026).

Is Ahrefs More Accurate Than Moz?

No. Neither is more accurate, because they don’t measure the same thing and each can only score the links its own crawler found. On my sites, Ahrefs found more links for some and Moz found more for others. Pick the one whose index covers your niche better (compare both against Search Console’s Links report), and use it consistently so you’re comparing a score to itself over time.

I use Ahrefs DR and UR as my main scores because I’m in the tool most days. I check Moz when I want a second opinion on a site I’m about to work with, and I never make a decision on either without looking at real traffic.

Other Authority Scores: Semrush AS, Majestic TF

Semrush Authority Score is a 1 to 100 score that blends link power, estimated organic traffic and spam checks. Because traffic is part of the formula, it’s harder to inflate with link buying alone. Semrush recalculates it every two weeks.

Majestic Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) both run 0 to 100. Trust Flow measures link quality based on how closely a site is linked to a hand-picked set of trusted sites, and Citation Flow measures raw link volume. A high CF with a low TF often points to thin, low-quality links.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Ahrefs DR the same as Moz DA?

No. They use different link indexes and different formulas, so a DR of 50 and a DA of 50 don’t mean the same thing. On my own sites the gap ran from 7 points to 39 points, and on one site Moz scored higher than Ahrefs.

Does Ahrefs have Domain Authority or Page Authority?

No. Domain Authority and Page Authority are Moz metrics. The closest Ahrefs equivalents are Domain Rating (DR) for the whole site and URL Rating (UR) for a single page.

Can I check DA and DR without paying?

Yes. Ahrefs’ free Website Authority Checker shows the DR for any domain, and Moz’s free Domain Authority Checker shows the DA (3 free reports per day as of November 2026). The headline scores are the same as in paid accounts.

Do AI search engines use DA or DR?

No AI search provider has said it does. Google says a page needs to be indexed and eligible for a normal search snippet to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Google’s John Mueller has said plainly that Google doesn’t use DA at all. Links still matter for the same reasons they matter in regular search, since AI Overviews draw on pages that rank, but these scores are a byproduct of links, not an input.

How often does Ahrefs DR update?

Ahrefs’ live backlink index gets fresh data every 15 to 30 minutes, so DR can shift within a day once new links are in the index. Moz’s index updates continuously, but DA moves only when Moz finds new or lost links to your site or retrains its model, so it usually moves more gradually. Semrush updates Authority Score every two weeks.

What is a good Ahrefs Domain Rating?

There’s no universal cutoff, because DR is relative. Ahrefs says a good DR is one that’s higher than or comparable to the sites you compete with, and its own data shows most domains sit between DR 0 and 10. My travel photography blog earns almost as many Google clicks at DR 46 as rightblogger.com does at DR 70, so compare yourself with the sites ranking for your keywords, not with a number.

Final Guidance on Using DR and DA

Treat DR and DA as a spam filter, not a scoreboard. Use them to rule out sites with inflated or empty link profiles, then make the real decision on page-level links, relevance and actual traffic. For your own site, the score that matters is in Search Console: clicks.

Next time you open Ahrefs or Moz, decide what you want to know before you look at the number. Then get back to the work that moves both scores anyway: publishing useful posts and earning links from sites your readers actually visit. If you want help with that part, RightBlogger can plan topics, check your backlink profile, run SEO reports on individual pages, and build a topical authority map for your niche.