Domain Rating

Ahrefs' 0–100 score measuring the strength of a website's overall backlink profile.

Domain Rating (DR) is a proprietary metric created by Ahrefs that measures the relative strength of a website's backlink profile on a scale of 0 to 100. A higher DR indicates a stronger backlink profile. It is calculated based on the number and quality of unique referring domains pointing to the site.

DR is a logarithmic scale — moving from DR 10 to DR 20 is much easier than moving from DR 60 to DR 70. The largest, most-linked-to sites on the internet (e.g. Wikipedia, major news publishers) have DRs in the 90s. A well-established B2B SaaS company with active content marketing might achieve DR 50–70 over several years.

DR is not a Google ranking factor — Google uses its own internal PageRank calculations, not Ahrefs metrics. However, DR correlates strongly with ranking ability because it reflects genuine backlink authority. Sites with higher DRs typically rank more easily and across more keyword clusters.

Our benchmark research shows that median DR requirements to rank page 1 in B2B vary significantly by industry and keyword category. Understanding the typical DR of ranking pages for your target keywords is essential for assessing competitive viability.