What is domain authority?
Domain authority is a 0–100 score that estimates how much ranking power and trust a website has built up — mostly through the size and quality of the backlink profile pointing at it. A higher score means a site that tends to rank more easily and is harder to outrank.
Here's the part most checkers gloss over: domain authority is not a metric Google publishes or uses. Every score you'll see — Moz's DA, Ahrefs' DR, Semrush's Authority Score, or RankedTag's composite — is one company's estimate, built from its own data and weighting. That's precisely why a single number can mislead you, and why this checker shows the signals behind the score instead of asking you to trust a black box.
How to check domain authority (step-by-step)
- Enter a domain. Type or paste any domain (e.g.
example.com) into the field above — nohttp://or login needed. - Run the check. Click Run authority check. The tool pulls live public signals and computes a 0–100 composite authority score in seconds.
- Read the breakdown. Every component — traffic rank, domain age, archive history, technical health and on-page content — is scored and weighted, so you see why the number is what it is, not just the number.
- Verify it yourself. Each result links back to its public source (Tranco, the Wayback Machine, your live page) so you can cross-check every input.
DA vs DR vs Authority Score: which metric should you trust?
Each major SEO company has its own authority metric. They measure similar things in different ways, which is exactly why understanding them together is more useful than trusting any one in isolation. RankedTag's checker deliberately sidesteps the "whose-number-is-right" problem by computing a transparent composite from public sources you can verify — but here's how the big three compare.
Domain Authority (DA)
Moz coined the term. DA is a 0–100, machine-learned score built on Moz's link index and tuned to correlate with Google rankings. It's the most widely recognized metric.
Domain Rating (DR)
A 0–100 score based purely on the quantity and quality of referring domains, from Ahrefs' own backlink index. DR ignores traffic, age and spam — a clean link-popularity measure.
Authority Score
More holistic: it blends backlink signals, estimated organic traffic and spam factors into one 0–100 number, so it can read differently from DA or DR for the same site.
Bottom line: treat any single authority number as one data point, not a verdict. A site that scores well across independent measures is genuinely strong; a site high on one but low on the others usually has a quirk — lots of links but no traffic, or traffic but a thin link profile — worth a closer look. That's the thinking behind our composite: several independent signals, weighted and shown transparently.
How is domain authority calculated?
Every authority score works off broadly the same inputs, weighted differently by each vendor:
- Referring domains — how many unique websites link to you (this matters far more than raw link count).
- Quality of those linking sites — a link from a strong, relevant site counts for much more than many weak ones.
- Link-profile health — natural, varied, spam-free patterns score better than manipulated ones.
- Traffic and trust signals — some scores (including ours) also weigh traffic rank, domain age, and technical/transport quality.
None of them use Google's actual algorithm — they're independent estimates designed to correlate with ranking ability, not reproduce it. RankedTag's score is computed from Tranco traffic rank, Wayback Machine domain age and archive history, HTTP transport quality, and on-page content signals (schema, headings, link structure).
What is a good domain authority score?
There's no universal "good" number, because authority is relative to your niche and competitors. A score that's excellent in a quiet local niche would be weak in a competitive industry. A practical rule of thumb:
Your authority is "good" when it's at or above the sites you compete with in the search results for your target keywords.
Typical scores by site age and niche
As a rough orientation only: brand-new sites usually sit in the single digits to low teens, established small-business sites often land in the 20s–40s, and large, mature brands in competitive spaces commonly run 60+. Treat these as context, not targets — chasing a number is the wrong goal. Steady upward movement relative to competitors is what matters.
Page authority vs domain authority
Domain authority estimates the strength of an entire website. Page Authority (PA) estimates the ranking strength of a single page. A page can outrank what its overall domain authority would suggest if that specific page has earned strong, relevant links of its own. When you're trying to rank one URL, page-level strength is often the more actionable signal.
How to improve your domain authority
You raise authority by earning links from more unique, reputable, relevant domains — there's no shortcut around that. But "increase my DA" should never be the actual goal; it's a side effect of doing the right things:
- Earn links from strong, topically relevant sites pointing to the pages you want to rank.
- Publish genuinely useful content that attracts links and mentions on its own.
- Prioritize new referring domains over more links from sites that already link to you.
- Keep your link profile clean — avoid bought links, link schemes and spammy patterns.
- Be patient: authority moves slowly and updates periodically, not daily.
Is domain authority a Google ranking factor?
Not directly. Google representatives have repeatedly said they don't use third-party "domain authority" scores. That said, Google's John Mueller has acknowledged Google has some site-wide signal that "maps to similar things," and documents from the 2024 Google leak referenced site-level authority-type attributes — which lines up with the long-observed correlation between strong backlink profiles and better rankings.
The honest takeaway: DA, DR and Authority Score are proxies, not the real thing. They're excellent for comparison and tracking, but Google ranks pages on relevance, quality and many signals these scores only approximate. Use authority to benchmark and prioritize — not as a number to game.
Does domain authority matter for AI search?
AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and other answer engines don't read a Moz DA score. They decide which sources to summarize and cite based on relevance, clarity and perceived trustworthiness on a topic. There's meaningful overlap with what authority metrics capture — established, well-linked sites tend to be cited more — but it isn't the same thing. A high-authority site with vague, hard-to-quote content can lose AI citations to a lower-authority page that answers the question cleanly and is structured to be lifted.
So treat authority as one input into AI visibility, not the lever. To get cited by AI engines, pair a healthy backlink profile with clear, well-structured, genuinely authoritative content on the topics you want to own. Building that kind of citation-worthy presence is what generative engine optimization is about.
How to use this checker
Benchmark against competitors
Run your domain alongside the sites ranking for your target keywords. If they're stronger, that's your gap to close; if you're stronger but still outranked, the issue is on-page or content, not authority.
Vet backlink and guest-post prospects
Before pursuing a link or guest post, check the prospect's authority and the technical and content signals behind it. A strong score backed by real traffic, age and a clean profile is worth pursuing; a number propped up by little substance is not. Never judge on a single figure alone.
Verify every score yourself
Unlike a black-box vendor number, every component here is source-linked. Open the Tranco rank, the Wayback Machine history and your live page straight from the result and confirm the inputs — useful when you need to defend a number to a client or a founder, not just quote it.
Frequently asked questions
Enter any domain in the tool and click Check. It's free, unlimited, and needs no sign-up or Ahrefs/Moz API key — it returns a composite authority score with a transparent, source-linked breakdown in seconds.
It's relative to your niche. A score in the 40s to 50s is solid for most sites and 60+ is strong in competitive industries, but the score that matters most is yours compared to the competitors you're trying to outrank.
Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's 0-100 estimate built on its link index and tuned to predict rankings. Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' 0-100 score based purely on the quantity and quality of referring domains. They often differ for the same site because they use different data and weighting.
No. It computes an independent composite score from public signals — Tranco traffic rank, Wayback Machine domain age, on-page schema and HTTP transport quality — and links every source so you can verify the inputs yourself. No API key required.
Authority scores update periodically rather than in real time, typically when each vendor refreshes its link index. Scores can move up or down with those refreshes, so track the trend rather than a single reading.