DR vs DA: Which Metric Should You Trust When Buying Links?

This guide compares DR vs DA, the two most quoted website metrics in link building, and shows what I check before placing any link. It is part of my link building guide.

What is DR (Domain Rating)?

Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ score for the strength of a website’s backlink profile, on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100. It is based mainly on how many unique domains link to a site and how strong those linking domains are. Moving from DR 70 to 80 is much harder than moving from DR 10 to 20.

What is DA (Domain Authority)?

Domain Authority is Moz’s score from 1 to 100 that predicts how likely a site is to rank, compared with other sites. It uses Moz’s own link index and a machine learning model. Like DR, it is logarithmic and only meaningful when you compare sites against each other.

DR vs DA side by side

The problem with both metrics

Because many buyers filter sites by DA or DR alone, some sellers pump these numbers on purpose. In the thousands of sites I have reviewed for client orders, the most common traps are:

• High DA, no traffic: DA 50+ but almost zero organic visitors. Google does not trust the site, so neither should you.
• Expired domain shells: an old domain with strong links, rebuilt as a “write for us” blog on every topic.
• Link farms: networks that link to each other to raise DR, then sell posts.
• Traffic from the wrong country: a UK client gets little from a site whose traffic is all from one unrelated market.

What to check instead (my 7-point list)

1. Organic traffic: steady or growing traffic in Ahrefs or Semrush, ideally thousands of visits a month.
2. Traffic trend: no sudden crash, which often means a Google penalty.
3. Relevance: the site and the specific article fit your niche.
4. Country: traffic comes from the market you sell to.
5. Indexing: a site: search shows the site’s pages in Google.
6. Outbound links: not every post is a sponsored post with links to casinos, loans and unrelated topics.
7. Content quality: real authors, real articles, no spun text.

I explain this whole process step by step in how to check guest post site quality.

So which one should you use?

Use DR or DA only as a first filter, never as the final decision. If you have Ahrefs, DR plus Ahrefs organic traffic is a quick pair to start with. If you use Moz, compare DA with Moz’s spam score. Then check the site by hand. A lower DR site with real readers in your niche will almost always beat a higher DR site with none.

Also look at the strength of the page, not only the domain. A link inside an older, already indexed article that ranks for something often helps more than a link on a brand new post.

Frequently asked questions