Domain Authority (DA)
Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's 1-to-100 predictive score estimating how likely a website is to rank in search results.
Updated , every quotation and figure read in its source that day.
Domain Authority (DA) is a score from Moz, a commercial SEO tool, that estimates how well a website is likely to rank compared with its competitors, on a scale from 1 to 100. It is not a Google metric. Like Ahrefs' Domain Rating, it is handy for comparing sites quickly and easy to over-read.
How Moz calculates Domain Authority
In Moz's words, DA "predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) compared to competitors", with higher scores "indicating a greater ability to rank". It is based on data from Moz's Link Explorer index and "uses dozens of factors", but "the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your site heavily influence your DA". Moz computes it with a machine learning algorithm, so scores move when the model or the link data change (Moz, March 2025).
DA is not a Google ranking factor
Moz says so itself: "Unlike Google's ranking algorithms, Domain Authority is not a direct ranking factor. Instead, it's a comparative metric to evaluate your website's search performance" (Moz). Use it to compare a site with the sites it competes against, not as a grade on its own.
Because DA is driven by links, it can be raised with links built for that purpose. A seller quoting a high DA is not proof of a real audience; check traffic, topic and the site's own links, as described under checking a site beyond its DR.
Domain Authority versus Domain Rating
DA (Moz), DR (Ahrefs) and Authority Score (Semrush) answer a similar question with different link indexes and formulas, so the same site gets different numbers in each tool. Compare scores from one tool only. The differences are set out in DR, URL Rating and the other authority scores.
How to check a site's DA
Moz's Link Explorer shows the Domain Authority of any site with a free Moz Community account, and the free MozBar browser extension displays DA and PA as you browse (Moz).