All You Need to Know About Domain Rating

Domain Authority (DA) is a score given to a website to show how well the site will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). Website developers and marketers can then use this score to compare websites and track the ranking strength of sites over time.

More specifically, DA shows the strength of a website’s total number and quality of backlinks. It’s measured on a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 being the weakest and 100 being the strongest.

How is Domain Rating Calculated?

Domain Rating is calculated by assessing things such as linking root domains and number of total links pointing to your domain that equal to your DA score. A detailed calculation would incorporate the following:

• Identify the number of unique domains with at least 1 dofollow link to the site;
• Account for the DR values of the linking domains;
• Account for the number of unique domains that all of these sites link to.

It should be noted that more than one link from the same site won’t improve the DR of a target site. In addition, the DR that each unique website offers weakens with more sites being linked to. Your site’s DR won’t get a boost if the site only links to yours via nofollow links.

Further, the linking site will have a positive impact on the DR of each site they link to if the linking site gets more backlinks with a subsequent increase in DR.

Which DR Range is Considered “Spammy”?

While some say that it’s important to keep an eye on your backlink profile and look out for questionable links, others say there won’t be any penalties for having suspicious-looking links.

Either way, Domain Rating is not a way to determine whether or not a site is spammy. That said, if a site has several referring domains and has a low DR, that’s a sign that the linking domains are weak. Therefore, it might be worth manually assessing the backlinks to see if they’re spammy or natural.

Should DR Be Transferred to a Subdomain?

There may be several root domains that probably should not transfer their DR values to their subdomains. Since the resulting sites belong to different individuals with different purposes and types of content, they won’t inherit a high DR from their parent website. One example is WordPress.com versus WordPress.org.

Does Google Use Domain Rating in Their Algorithm?

According to Google, the search engine giant does not have a website authority score. They say that they calculate scores for actual web pages as opposed to entire domains. However, Google has also said that there are certain times that they do look at a website overall.

Got More Questions About Domain Rating?

If so, be sure to post a comment or question below and we’ll be happy to answer questions you may have about Domain Rating and anything else related to search engine optimization or web design and development!