What is Domain Rating (DR)?
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' proprietary 0-100 score of a website's backlink profile strength. It's the most-quoted backlink-authority metric in SEO. Ahrefs calculates it from how many unique domains link to a site, how strong those domains are, and how many other sites each of them links to. It does not account for link spam, traffic or domain age. Unlike Moz's DA (focused on ranking potential), DR focuses purely on link-graph authority.
A free DR checker with an embeddable badge — the Ahrefs DR alternative
FeedPulse uses the OpenPageRank dataset (built on the open Common Crawl backlink graph) to deliver a DR-equivalent score for any domain, linearly rescaled from OPR's native 0-10 into the 0-100 framing every SEO reader recognises from Ahrefs. The methodology is published, the data is open, and the badge is yours to embed forever. No subscription required.
How a 0-10 OpenPageRank score becomes a 0-100 DR
Worth knowing before you quote the number anywhere. OpenPageRank publishes its own authority score on a 0-10 scale, computed over the Common Crawl link graph — the same raw material every backlink tool starts from. We rescale that score linearly into 0-100 because every SEO reader, client and sponsor already reads authority on the Ahrefs DR scale, and a 7.4 means nothing to them while a 74 means something immediately. The rescaling is arithmetic, not a model: no weighting, no secret sauce, nothing added. What you lose is Ahrefs' crawler coverage, which is larger and refreshed faster than Common Crawl. What you gain is a score you can read, embed and redistribute without a subscription — and one that moves in the same direction as DR when your link profile changes.
What a DR score will not tell you
DR is one number describing one thing: the strength of the sites pointing at you. It says nothing about whether those links are relevant to your niche, nothing about whether the linking pages get traffic, and nothing about whether you rank for a single keyword you care about. A DR 60 directory nobody reads and a DR 60 industry publication are the same number and wildly different assets. It is also a lagging indicator — links earned this month show up in the open graph a crawl cycle or two later, so a flat DR after a good outreach push usually means 'wait', not 'failed'. Use DR to track your own trend over months and to sanity-check a prospect before you pitch it. Do not use it to pick keywords, price a link, or settle an argument.
Drop your DR badge on any platform in 60 seconds
Copy the HTML snippet and paste it anywhere — WordPress widget area, Shopify theme footer, Wix HTML element, Webflow embed block, Ghost CMS, Squarespace, Blogger. The badge re-reads its DR score about once a month, matching the cadence the underlying data is published on.