Let me clear up the most important thing about Domain Authority upfront, because most content about it does not lead with this: Google does not use it.
Domain Authority (DA) is a score created by Moz, a third-party SEO software company. It runs from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating a stronger backlink profile and a statistically greater likelihood of ranking well. It is a useful proxy metric. It is not a Google ranking factor.
Google has said this directly, on the record. In 2015, when Gary Illyes, Google’s Chief of Sunshine and Happiness (his actual public title), was asked whether “authority” passes from HTTP to HTTPS, his answer was blunt: “We don’t have ‘authority’, but signals should pass on, yes.” That’s about as close to a flat denial as Google gives.
Shwetank Ojha’s audits of mid-size Indian e-commerce sites turn up the same pattern repeatedly: clients who track their DA score weekly while ignoring the actual backlink quality it’s supposed to reflect. The score is not the thing. The backlink profile it reflects is the thing.
Go deeper: the 2024 leak complicates the clean denial
Here’s the nuance most DA explainers skip. In May 2024, over 2,500 pages of Google’s internal search documentation were accidentally exposed through a public GitHub repository. SEO researchers Rand Fishkin and Mike King analyzed the leak and found a metric called siteAuthority among the more than 14,000 ranking attributes documented inside it — an internal, site-level credibility signal that sounds a great deal like what the SEO industry has called “domain authority” for over a decade.
Google confirmed the leaked documents were real, while cautioning the information inside them could be out of context or outdated. The honest read: Google’s denial of “Domain Authority” as a Moz-style score is true and consistent. Google having some internal notion of site-wide credibility that influences rankings broadly is a separate, and apparently also true, claim. Both things can be true at once, which is exactly why this metric generates more confusion than almost any other term in SEO.
One more piece of context worth knowing: Moz overhauled its own calculation method in March 2019 with what it called “Domain Authority 2.0,” retiring the older MozRank and MozTrust metrics in favor of a model built on its Link Explorer index. Scores shifted, sometimes sharply, for sites across the board when that update landed. If you’re comparing a DA score from before 2019 against a current one, you’re not comparing the same measurement.
Why it correlates with rankings anyway
The reason DA appears in every SEO conversation is that it is built from backlink data, and backlinks are one of Google’s most significant real ranking signals. When many credible, relevant websites link to your domain, two things happen simultaneously: Moz’s DA score rises (because it is measuring those backlinks), and Google’s assessment of your domain’s trustworthiness also rises (because Google is measuring the same backlinks). Same underlying cause, two different measurement systems.
DA vs. equivalent metrics in other tools
- Moz Domain Authority (DA): backlink profile breadth, scored 1 to 100
- Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR): strength of unique referring domains, scored 0 to 100
- Semrush Authority Score: backlinks plus organic traffic plus spam signals, scored 1 to 100
- Majestic Trust Flow / Citation Flow: link quality and quantity measured separately, scored 0 to 100
These scores are related but not interchangeable. When benchmarking competitors or evaluating link prospects, pick one tool and use it consistently. Mixing metrics across tools creates noise.
How DA is calculated
Moz uses a machine learning model trained on its web index. Primary inputs: unique referring domains (how many distinct websites link to your domain), authority of linking domains (one link from a DA 90 publication carries far more weight than 100 links from DA 5 blogs), total backlink count, and link profile health.
The scale is logarithmic. Moving from DA 10 to DA 20 is achievable with focused effort over months. Moving from DA 60 to DA 70 can take years. This mirrors reality: elite DA scores belong to national news publications, government domains, and institutions with decades of accumulated credibility.
What actually feeds the score, and what only helps indirectly
A lot of DA explainers list content quality, site UX, and social signals alongside backlinks as if all four feed the score the same way. They don’t. Moz’s own model is built on link data: referring domains, link quality, and link profile health. That’s it. The rest matter, but only indirectly:
- Content quality doesn’t move your DA score directly. It moves it by earning the backlinks that do. A brilliant page nobody links to has zero DA impact from its brilliance alone.
- Site UX and crawl accessibility don’t move your score directly either. They matter because a site Moz’s crawler (or a backlink prospect) can’t navigate cleanly earns fewer links, not because Moz scores your navigation.
- Social signals have no confirmed direct relationship to DA at all. Any correlation comes from social visibility occasionally leading to more backlinks, not from Moz counting likes or shares.
Treating these as direct inputs leads to wasted effort — like polishing UX expecting a DA bump with no link change behind it. Treating them as indirect levers, useful because they help you earn links, is the more accurate and more useful framing.
Where DA is actually useful
- Competitive gap analysis: before targeting a keyword, check the DA of the top-ranking pages. If they are all DA 65+, a DA 20 site needs a specific long-tail strategy rather than a direct competition play.
- Link prospect evaluation: when prospecting for guest posts or digital PR placements, DA is a fast quality filter. A DA 40 publication is meaningfully different from a DA 5 blog in terms of the link value it can pass.
- Progress tracking: DA is a lagging indicator. If your link-building strategy is working, you will see gradual DA movement over months.
How to improve your Domain Authority
There’s no shortcut around the logarithmic scale, but the path is straightforward, even if it’s slow:
- Benchmark against the sites actually ranking for your target keywords, not against an industry average or your nearest competitor’s homepage. The DA you need is the DA of the page currently sitting where you want to be.
- Earn links through something genuinely citable: original data, a useful free tool, a guide that’s actually more complete than what’s already ranking. Link building aimed at volume produces a profile that looks artificial. Link building aimed at citability produces one that doesn’t.
- Fix the technical issues blocking discovery before chasing more links. A site with crawl or indexing problems can earn excellent backlinks that still don’t translate into DA growth, because Moz’s crawler has to find and process your pages the same way Google’s does.
- Audit and disavow toxic backlinks dragging the profile down. A handful of spammy, irrelevant links can offset months of legitimate link building.
- Expect months, not weeks, especially at the higher end. The logarithmic scale means a DA 15 to 25 jump is realistic within a single focused quarter. A DA 55 to 65 jump on the same timeline isn’t, regardless of effort.
Frequently asked questions
Is Domain Authority a Google ranking factor?
No. It is a third-party Moz metric that Google’s algorithm does not use directly. The reason it correlates with ranking performance is that it measures backlink strength, and backlinks are a genuine Google ranking signal. Optimizing for DA is not the goal. Earning the quality backlinks that DA measures is.
Why did my DA drop suddenly?
Moz recalculates DA regularly as it refreshes its web index. A DA drop does not always indicate a problem with your site. Common causes: competitors gained strong backlinks that shifted the relative scale, Moz discovered and devalued some of your existing links, or Moz’s crawl captured fewer of your links in a given update cycle.
Is DA or Ahrefs DR more accurate?
It is the wrong question — they measure slightly different things. Ahrefs DR emphasizes unique referring domains and their authority. Moz DA incorporates broader signal sets. Neither is a ground truth. What matters is consistency: choose one metric for your benchmarking and stay with it.
What is a good Domain Authority score?
There’s no universal good score — DA is relative to your competitive set. Industry benchmarking analysis suggests first-page Google results tend to average somewhere in the DA 50s to 70s, but that range moves with the niche. The real benchmark is always the average DA of the sites currently ranking for your specific target keyword, not an arbitrary number.
Is a DA of 20 good?
For a newer or smaller site, yes — it usually means you’ve built a real foundation of backlinks rather than starting from zero. Whether it’s competitive enough depends entirely on what’s actually ranking for your specific keywords: DA 20 can dominate a hyperlocal or niche topic and barely register in a saturated national one.
How do I check my Domain Authority score?
Moz offers a free Domain Analysis tool, and the MozBar browser extension shows DA for any page you’re viewing, including competitors’ sites, without leaving the page. Ahrefs and Semrush show their own equivalent scores (Domain Rating and Authority Score) for free with an account. Checking the same domain across multiple tools will give different numbers. That’s expected, not an error.
How long does it take to improve Domain Authority?
It depends entirely on where you’re starting, and the logarithmic scale works against you at the high end. Moving from DA 10 to DA 20 is realistic within months of focused link building. Moving from DA 60 to DA 70 can take years, since you’re competing for the same caliber of links as already-established authorities in that range.
