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Free DR checker
Check the Domain Rating of any website, yours or a competitor's, up to five at a time. The score is Domain Rating by Ahrefs, fetched live. It takes a free SEO Stuff account, which is what keeps the bots off it. Below the checker: what the number means, what a good DR is for your situation, and what moves it.
What Domain Rating measures
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0-to-100 score for how strong a website's backlink profile is compared with every other site in its index. Three things drive it: how many unique domains link to the site with followed links, how strong those linking domains are themselves, and how many other sites each of them links out to, because a domain's strength is shared among everything it links to.
The scale is logarithmic. Going from DR 10 to DR 20 takes a handful of decent links; going from DR 70 to DR 80 takes what a large publication earns in years. It is also relative: Ahrefs recalculates it as the web changes, so a site that stands still can drift down a point while stronger sites pull ahead.
What DR does not measure: traffic, content quality, rankings, or anything Google actually computes. Google does not use DR. It is a proxy for the one thing Google does weigh heavily, the links pointing at a site, and a convenient one, because it is a single number you can compare across sites.
What a good DR looks like
There is no universal good score; there is only the gap between you and the sites that rank for your keywords. Check a few of them above. As a rough map of the scale:
Few or no sites link here yet. Every new site starts in this band.
Some links, usually from directories, partners and a few mentions. Most local businesses and young startups.
A real link profile built over years. Many profitable niche businesses never need to leave this band.
The band most link-building campaigns aim at: links from here move the needle for everyone below it.
Major publications, big brands, well-known tools. Hard to earn a link from, and worth a lot when you do.
The most linked-to sites on the internet. Nobody plans to get here; it is a by-product of being Wikipedia.
DR, DA, Authority Score: three rulers for one thing
Moz's Domain Authority, Semrush's Authority Score and Ahrefs' Domain Rating all try to put a number on the same idea, each from its own link index with its own formula. The numbers are not interchangeable: a site can be DR 45, DA 38 and Authority Score 41 at the same time, and none of them is wrong. Pick one ruler and compare sites with it; the ranking of sites against each other is what carries information, not the absolute number.
The SEO Stuff Backlinks Explorer uses a fourth scale, 0 to 1,000, for the authority of each linking page and domain in its results. Same idea again, a different ruler; use it to sort a list of links, not to compare with a DR.
How to raise your Domain Rating
- 1
Count domains, not links
A new referring domain moves DR; a tenth link from a site that already links to you barely does. Chase breadth.
- 2
Aim above your own score
A followed link from a DR 60 site does more for a DR 25 site than fifty links from DR 5 sites. Prefer strong domains that do not link out to thousands of others.
- 3
Win back lost links
Pages get deleted and redesigns drop links. Run your domain through the Backlinks Explorer with the lost filter, and email the sites that used to link; it is the cheapest link you will ever earn.
- 4
Publish something citable
Original data, a free tool, a definitive guide. Pages that people want to point at earn links on their own for years; a DR checker is one such page, which is why this one exists.
- 5
Skip the schemes
Link farms, private blog networks and bulk paid links inflate DR for a while and then get the index's spam flag, or Google's. Neither is worth the DR.
- 6
Or have it placed for you
The Backlink Package places one feature on a DR50+ site for $499; the Premium Authority Bundle places three, on sites already cited in AI search, for $899. One client, a telehealth company, saw its DR climb 8 points in three months, to 66, during a campaign of placements and content.
DR and AI search
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews do not read DR either. But when they decide which sources to cite, they lean on the same signal: sites that many other trusted sites point to. The domains that show up again and again in AI answers are, almost without exception, strong-DR domains, and a feature on one of them does double duty: it raises your own DR and it puts your brand in front of the assistant on a page it already trusts.
That is why the placements in the SEO Stuff packages are chosen from sites already appearing in AI search, not just by DR. If you want to know where your site stands with the assistants today, the free SEO + AI search audit checks it by hand and reports within 48 hours.
Questions people ask
What is Domain Rating (DR)?
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' score for the strength of a website's backlink profile, on a 0-to-100 scale. It is driven by how many unique domains link to the site with followed links, how strong those linking domains are themselves, and how many other sites each of them links to. It says nothing about traffic, content or rankings directly; it is a measure of links.
What is a good DR?
It depends on who you compete with. A local plumber at DR 20 can outrank everyone in town; a SaaS company at DR 20 is invisible next to competitors at DR 60. The useful question is not "is my DR good?" but "how far am I from the sites that rank for my keywords?". Check them in the box above alongside your own domain.
Is DR a Google ranking factor?
No. Google does not use Ahrefs' DR, or any third-party score. DR is a proxy for the thing Google does weigh, which is the quantity and quality of links pointing at a site. Sites with higher DR tend to rank more easily, but the DR number itself is not what moves them.
Why did my DR go down when I did not lose any links?
DR is relative and logarithmic. Ahrefs compares every site against every other site in its index, so when the index grows or stronger sites gain links, a site that stands still can slip. Small drops after an index update are normal. A drop of several points in one go usually means you lost a strong referring domain, which the Backlinks Explorer can show you with its lost-links filter.
DR vs DA vs Authority Score: which is right?
They are three different companies' estimates of the same idea. DR is Ahrefs', Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's, Authority Score is Semrush's. Each is built on its own link index and formula, so the numbers are not interchangeable: a DR 45 site might be DA 38 and AS 41. Pick one and compare like with like.
How do I increase my Domain Rating?
Earn followed links from domains that are strong themselves and do not link out to thousands of sites. One link from a DR 60 site does more than fifty links from DR 5 sites. New referring domains count for more than extra links from a domain that already links to you. Win back lost links, publish things worth citing, and if you want it done, the Backlink Package and Premium Authority Bundle place features for you on DR50+ sites.
How often does DR update, and how fresh is this checker?
Ahrefs recalculates DR continuously as its index changes. This checker fetches the current score live and keeps it for 24 hours, so two checks of the same domain in one day show the same number.
Is this DR checker really free?
Yes. It needs a free SEO Stuff account, which keeps bots and scrapers off it, and no credit card. Up to five domains per check. The scores are Domain Rating by Ahrefs, used under its data licence, which is why every result carries that credit.
Three ways to start
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