SEO
What is a good Domain Rating? Benchmarks by site type and age
Outclimbed
A good Domain Rating is one that is at least level with the sites you compete with. There is no universal number: a new SaaS at DR 15 can be doing well, and a national publisher at DR 60 can be falling behind. Below are the rough bands, what is normal for each kind of site, and what actually moves the number.
If you have not looked yours up yet, our free Domain Rating checker shows any site's DR, which band it falls in and what that band means. It is ours, and so is the leaderboard this blog belongs to; we say where that matters below.
What is a good Domain Rating?
Ahrefs, who make the metric, refuse to name one. In their own help article on DR they write that it is not possible to say a rating of 30, 50 or 70 is good, "It's all relative", and that yours should be higher than or comparable to similar sites. That is the honest answer, and every other answer is a rule of thumb.
Rules of thumb are still useful when you have nothing to compare against. These are the bands our checker uses:
| DR | Band | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| 0-19 | Low | A young or lightly linked site. Most sites start here, and the first few good links move it fastest. |
| 20-39 | Fair | A site with a real backlink profile starting to form. Steady links from relevant sites keep it climbing. |
| 40-59 | Good | A well-linked site with authority most competitors do not have yet. |
| 60-79 | Strong | A strong backlink profile. Links from this site carry real weight. |
| 80-100 | Excellent | Among the most linked-to sites on the web. |
Read the table as a map, not a grade. A good Domain Rating for a two-month-old side project sits in the Low band, and that is not a problem to fix.
What Domain Rating measures, and what it does not
DR is Ahrefs' estimate of how strong a site's backlink profile is compared with every other site they have crawled, on a 0 to 100 scale. It looks at which domains link to you, how strong those domains are themselves, and how many other sites each of them links to: a strong site that links out sparingly passes more than one that links to everyone.
It does not measure:
- traffic, sales or how many people have heard of you
- the quality of your content or your product
- anything about a single page (Ahrefs has a separate URL Rating for that)
- anything Google itself calculates
So a good Domain Rating says other sites link to you. It does not say anyone reads you. Plenty of sites with a strong DR get little traffic, and plenty of useful products with a low DR are doing fine.
Why a good Domain Rating gets harder to reach as it rises
The scale is logarithmic. In Ahrefs' guide to Domain Rating they put it plainly: the gap between DR 70 and 71 is much bigger than the one between DR 20 and 21. The first few followed links from established sites can take a new domain from 0 into double figures. The same effort at DR 60 barely moves it.
That has two consequences. Early progress is fast and then slows, which is normal and not a sign that something stopped working. And a few points near the top of the scale stand for far more links than the same few points near the bottom, so compare high numbers with care.
A good Domain Rating by type of site
These are rough expectations for sites that are doing reasonably well at their stage. They are rules of thumb, not measurements, and your own competitors beat any table:
| Type of site | Typical DR | Band |
|---|---|---|
| New product or side project, first year | 0-19 | Low |
| Indie SaaS with a few years and some press | 20-39 | Fair |
| Funded startup, active content and PR | 40-59 | Good |
| Established brand in its niche | 60-79 | Strong |
| Household names, major media, big platforms | 80+ | Excellent |
The useful comparison is sideways, not upwards. Look up three or four sites that rank for the searches you want, and a good Domain Rating for you is one in the same range as theirs.
What is a good Domain Rating for a new website?
Anything above zero. A brand-new domain starts at or near 0, because nobody links to it yet, and most stay in the Low band (0-19) for their first year. That is where almost every product on the internet begins.
A new site with a good Domain Rating for its age is one that is moving: a few followed links from real sites in its first months, and a number that is higher this quarter than last. The direction matters more than the level.
What the sites on our wall actually score
A real sample, for scale. On 24 September 2026 we looked up the Domain Rating of the ten websites listed on the outclimbed wall, mostly young SaaS and AI products:
- the highest was DR 58, and only three of the ten were above 20
- seven of the ten were in the Low band, under 20
- the middle of the group sat around DR 9 to 10
It is a small sample and not a survey. But it is what a room of early-stage founders looks like, and it is a better benchmark for a new product than the DR of the companies it hopes to become.
Does a higher DR mean better Google rankings?
Not directly. DR is a third-party metric, and Google does not use it. Ahrefs themselves note that DR correlates with rankings, but less well than their page-level URL Rating, and that Google ranks pages, not websites.
The reason it correlates at all is that it summarises backlinks, and backlinks are one of the things Google does weigh. Chasing the number for its own sake gets the order backwards: earn the links, and a good Domain Rating follows.
DR vs DA vs Authority Score
Three companies, three crawls, three numbers. They all estimate backlink strength on a 0 to 100 scale, and none of them is used by Google:
| Metric | Made by | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Domain Rating (DR) | Ahrefs | Backlink strength only, logarithmic, followed links only |
| Domain Authority (DA) | Moz | Backlink-based prediction of ranking ability, from Moz's own index |
| Authority Score (AS) | Semrush | Mixes backlinks with traffic estimates and spam signals |
The same site will score differently on each, sometimes by twenty points or more. Compare DR with DR and DA with DA. You can read Moz's explanation of Domain Authority for how theirs differs.
What actually raises Domain Rating
New followed links from domains that have not linked to you before. Ahrefs are explicit that only the first link from a domain counts: a hundred links from one site count about as much as one. So the work is breadth, not volume:
- publish something other sites want to cite: original data, a free tool, a clear guide
- get mentioned in newsletters, podcasts and roundups in your niche
- ask sites that already mention you by name to link the mention
- be listed on the handful of places your customers actually use
What does not raise it, including us
Nofollow links do not count toward DR at all, and that covers most of what a new founder reaches for first: social profiles, forum signatures, comment links and most directory listings. Our explanation of what dofollow and nofollow links pass goes through why.
That includes outclimbed. Listings on our wall link out with nofollow and ugc by default, as the rules set out, so a place here will not move your Domain Rating. What it can do is send visitors, which is a different thing and worth judging on its own terms. We wrote about that trade-off in whether directory backlinks are worth it.
How to check your Domain Rating
Type your domain into our Domain Rating checker. It is free, needs no sign-up, and shows your DR, its band and what the band means, with the rating itself from Ahrefs. Check two or three competitors while you are there: their numbers are the only benchmark that tells you whether yours is a good Domain Rating.
Then check again in a month, not tomorrow. DR updates as Ahrefs recrawls the web, so a link you earned this week can take a while to show, and day-to-day wobbles of a point or two mean nothing. Write the number down with the date, note which links you earned in between, and you will learn quickly which kinds of effort move it for a site like yours.
If you want to show the number off, the checker also gives you a small badge for your site that refreshes itself weekly.
outclimbed is a directory where every position has a public price, and where a share link moves you up without spending again.
Common questions
- What is a good Domain Rating?
- There is no single number. Ahrefs, who make the metric, say it is all relative: a good Domain Rating is one that is comparable to or higher than the sites you compete with. As a rough guide, 20 to 39 is solid for a young product, 40 to 59 is strong for a niche, and 60 and above is a well-known brand.
- What is a good Domain Rating for a new website?
- Anything above 0. A new site starts at or near 0 and usually stays under 20 in its first year. The first handful of followed links from established sites move it the most, because the scale is logarithmic.
- Does Domain Rating affect Google rankings?
- Not directly. DR is Ahrefs' metric and Google does not use it. It summarises your backlink profile, and backlinks do matter to Google, which is why DR tends to correlate with rankings without causing them.
- What is the difference between DR and DA?
- Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' score and Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's. Both estimate backlink strength on a 0 to 100 scale from their own crawls, so the same site gets different numbers. Compare DR with DR, never with DA.
- Do nofollow links increase Domain Rating?
- No. Ahrefs counts only followed links toward DR, and only the first link from each domain. A thousand nofollow links, or a hundred followed links from one site, move it less than a few followed links from different sites.