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SEO/AEO/GEO

Domain Authority

DA

Portrait of Lukas Horvath, co-founder of Roelu Studio
Lukas HorvathCo-founder

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search results. Scored on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100, DA is calculated from factors like linking root domains and total backlinks. Similar metrics include Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush's Authority Score. None of these are official Google ranking factors — they are third-party estimates.

Why it matters

Domain authority is the SEO metric most often misused. Agencies sell "we'll get you to DA 50" like it's a Google guarantee. It isn't. Google has confirmed publicly it doesn't use Moz's DA score. What DA does well is benchmark: comparing your site against competitors, tracking your backlink profile growth, and assessing the quality of sites you might want to earn links from. What it does poorly is predict actual rankings. Real-world ranking comes from content quality, intent match, technical health, and earned backlinks — not from a Moz score on a slide.

How it works

Moz crawls the web, analyzes backlink data, and runs it through a machine learning model trained against actual search results to assign each domain a score from 1 to 100. The score is logarithmic, meaning moving from 20 to 30 is much easier than 70 to 80. You check your domain authority in Moz, or use comparable scores like Ahrefs DR and Semrush Authority Score. To raise it, the work is the same as off-page SEO: earn real backlinks from high-authority, relevant domains. The number itself is a thermometer, not a ranking factor — useful for tracking direction, useless as a target in isolation.

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