What Domain Rating tells you
Higher DR generally means more and stronger sites link to you, which correlates with the ability to rank. Use it to size up competitors, vet a guest-post or backlink opportunity, or track your own site's authority over time. It is one signal, not the whole picture: relevance, content quality, and search intent still decide rankings.
The logarithmic scale is the part most people read wrong. A 10-point gain is not a fixed amount of work. Going from 20 to 30 is ordinary progress for a site publishing consistently; going from 70 to 80 can take years and an order of magnitude more strong referring domains. Read a DR gap as a ratio, never as a distance.
What the scale looks like in practice
Real Domain Ratings, checked with the tool above on 27 August 2026.
| Domain | DR | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| wikipedia.org | 97 | Effectively the ceiling. Almost nothing on the web is linked to more. |
| stripe.com | 95 | A top-tier commercial site, and still two points below the ceiling. |
| startuphub.ai | 62 | Our own domain: a solid, established niche site. |
Note how compressed the top is. Wikipedia and Stripe sit two points apart despite enormously different link profiles, while the 35 points between Stripe and a solid niche site represent a gap far larger than the number suggests. That compression at the top is the logarithm doing its work.
DR vs DA vs Authority Score vs eDR
| Metric | Source | Scale | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain Rating (DR) | Ahrefs | 0-100, logarithmic | Strength of your backlink profile, relative to the strongest site in the index |
| Domain Authority (DA) | Moz | 0-100, logarithmic | The same idea from a different crawl, so compare like for like and never mix the two |
| Authority Score (AS) | Semrush | 0-100 | Backlinks plus organic traffic and spam signals, so it moves for reasons DR ignores |
| Effective Domain Rating (eDR) | StartupHub.ai | 0-100 | Whether that authority actually converts into rankings and AI citations, shown as a delta against DR |
DR and DA measure the same idea from different crawls, so the numbers are similar but not identical. Compare like for like, and never quote a DR against a competitor's DA.
How do I increase my Domain Rating?
Earn links from relevant, higher-authority sites. DR rises as quality referring domains grow, and because it is a lagging signal it moves slowly: expect months, not weeks. Three things move it reliably.
Create linkable assets
Original data, free tools, and research nobody else has published. A tool like this checker earns links passively for years, because people cite the thing they used rather than the page that described it.
Guest posts on relevant, higher-authority sites
Relevance carries more weight than raw DR. One link from a respected site in your category is worth more than a dozen from unrelated high-DR pages, and it is far less likely to be discounted.
Digital PR: get cited by news
Publish something a journalist can quote, with a number in it. Press coverage is the fastest legitimate way to add strong referring domains, and news links tend to be followed by aggregator and roundup links you did not have to ask for.
Domain Rating checker FAQ
- What is Domain Rating (DR)?
- Domain Rating is a 0-100 score from Ahrefs that estimates the strength of a website's backlink profile compared to the strongest site on the web. Higher DR generally means more and stronger sites link to you, which correlates with the ability to rank.
- Is Domain Rating the same as Domain Authority?
- They measure the same idea (backlink strength on a 0-100 scale) but come from different tools: Domain Rating is Ahrefs, Domain Authority (DA) is Moz. The numbers are similar but not identical, so compare like for like.
- Is Domain Rating logarithmic?
- Yes, and it is the single most misread thing about the metric. Moving from 20 to 30 is ordinary progress; moving from 70 to 80 can take years and an order of magnitude more strong referring domains. A flat 10-point gain means completely different amounts of work depending on where you start, so never read a DR gap as a linear distance.
- How do I increase my Domain Rating?
- Earn links from relevant, higher-authority sites: publish content worth citing, get listed in real directories, do digital PR, and build genuine partnerships. DR rises as quality referring domains grow. It is a lagging signal, so it moves slowly.
- Can I bulk check Domain Rating?
- Yes. Switch the checker to bulk mode and paste up to 10 domains, one per line or comma separated, and they are checked together. Results are cached, so re-checking a domain someone has already looked up returns instantly.
- Is this Domain Rating checker really free?
- Yes. It uses the free Ahrefs Domain Rating API. No signup, no credit card, and you can check as many domains as you like (a short pause kicks in only if you check very rapidly).
Domain Rating by Ahrefs. Bulk mode checks up to 10 domains at a time.