Domain Rating (DR)

Domain Rating is an Ahrefs metric designed to summarize the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. It is not a Google metric and does not prove that an individual link is high quality.

Key points

• Use DR for screening
• Compare similar sites
• Check relevance separately
• Check traffic separately
• Inspect the actual page
• Avoid metric-only buying

Use several signals together

A strong evaluation combines relevance, editorial quality, visibility, placement context and the purpose of the link.

Inspect the real page

Third-party metrics summarize aspects of a site; they cannot replace looking at the page where the link will appear.

Apply the same checks when buying

Marketplace listings are starting points. The underlying publisher should still pass the same quality review.

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