Free DR Checker: Check Ahrefs Domain Rating in Bulk

How to check Domain Rating

1. Paste up to 5 domains or URLs, one per line. Full URLs are fine. We read the domain and ignore "https://", "www." and page paths.
2. Click "Check Domain Rating". Results usually appear in a few seconds.
3. Read the score and strength label for each site, or download the list as a CSV for your outreach sheet.

Use it to compare your site with competitors, to shortlist guest post and link-building prospects, or to track your own DR over time.

What is Domain Rating (DR)?

Domain Rating is a metric created by Ahrefs. It shows how strong a website's backlink profile is on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is the strongest. Three things are important to understand:

• It is relative. Your DR is your position compared with every other website in Ahrefs' index, not an absolute grade.
• It is logarithmic. Ahrefs notes that climbing from DR 20 to 30 takes a handful of links, while climbing from 70 to 80 can take thousands.
• It is site-wide. DR describes the whole domain. A single page has its own score, called URL Rating (UR).

How DR is calculated

Ahrefs does not publish the exact formula, but it explains the method in its Help Center. In plain English:

1. Count unique linking domains. Ahrefs finds every domain that links to the site with at least one followed (dofollow) link. Only the first link from each domain counts.
2. Weigh each one by its own DR. A link from a higher-DR domain passes more value.
3. Split by outgoing links. Each linking domain splits its value equally among all the domains it links to.
4. Scale to 0–100. The totals are calculated for every site, then scaled into the 0–100 range.

Example (illustrative): Site A has DR 60 but links out to 300 different domains. Site B has DR 30 and links out to only 5. Because each site's value is split across the domains it links to, a link from Site B can be worth more to you than a link from Site A. This is why a site can reach a high DR with links from many low-DR sites, as Ahrefs itself points out.

What does not count: nofollow links, extra links from a domain that already links to you, and internal links.

What is a good Domain Rating?

There is no universal "good" DR. According to Ahrefs, a DR is good if it is higher than or comparable to the sites you compete with. The best benchmark is the DR of the pages already ranking for your target keywords.

For real-world context, Ahrefs measured 600 SaaS companies (June 2026):

Why your DR changed or dropped

• Other sites grew. DR is relative. When other websites gain many links, everyone else can move down, even if you lost nothing.
• You lost links, or a linking site removed links or changed them to nofollow.
• Your linking sites changed. If the sites linking to you lose DR, or start linking out to many more domains, they pass less value.
• Ahrefs' data refreshed. Ahrefs says its database gets fresh data every 15–30 minutes and a full refresh cycle takes about two months.

Small moves of a point or two are normal. Look at the trend over several months, not one day.

DR vs DA vs Authority Score

Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush each have their own "authority" score. They measure similar things in different ways, so never compare a DR from one site with a DA from another.

DR vs UR (URL Rating)

DR rates a whole website. UR rates a single page and, according to Ahrefs, counts both internal and external links. That is why a strong page on a weaker site can outrank a thin page on a big site: Google ranks pages, not websites. Ahrefs also notes that UR correlates with rankings more closely than DR does.

Does DR affect Google rankings?

No. DR is an Ahrefs metric, and Ahrefs states there is no evidence that search engines use it. In an Ahrefs study, DR had only a small positive correlation (0.131) with rankings. Treat DR as a way to compare backlink strength, not as a ranking factor or a goal on its own.

How to increase your DR

DR goes up when more unique, well-linked websites link to you with followed links. In practice:

• Earn links from new domains. Ten links from ten different sites help far more than ten links from one site.
• Favour relevance and quality. A real link from a respected site in your niche beats many links from low-quality pages.
• Create link-worthy assets. Original data, free tools, templates and in-depth guides attract links on their own.
• Do outreach and digital PR. Guest posts on genuine publications, expert quotes and newsworthy stories earn editorial links.
• Reclaim lost and unlinked mentions. Ask sites that mention your brand, or linked to a page that moved, to add or fix the link.
• Avoid link schemes. Private blog networks and bulk spam links can inflate DR for a while but put your Google rankings at risk.

Using DR to vet a site before buying a link

High DR alone does not make a good link. Ahrefs itself advises never to judge a site on site-wide authority alone. Before you buy a guest post or link insertion, check:

• Organic traffic and its trend. A high-DR site with little or falling traffic is a red flag.
• Topical relevance. The site and the page should be about your topic.
• Outbound links. Sites that link out to hundreds of unrelated domains often exist to sell links.
• Content quality. Read a few recent articles. Would a real reader find them useful?
• Where your link sits. A contextual link in a relevant article is worth more than one in a footer or a "sponsored posts" section.

Every publisher in the Backlink Express marketplace is reviewed manually for these signals before it is listed, so you can shortlist sites by DR and traffic without the guesswork.

About this tool and its data

• Source: Ahrefs' free Domain Rating API. Domain Rating by Ahrefs.
• Freshness: each domain's score is cached for up to 24 hours.
• Limits: up to 5 domains per check. Full URLs are reduced to their hostname, without "https://" or "www.".
• Independence: Backlink Express is not affiliated with Ahrefs.

Frequently asked questions