Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a score from 0 to 100, created by Moz, that predicts how likely a website is to rank. Similar scores exist from other tools (Ahrefs’ Domain Rating, Semrush’s Authority Score). Crucially, none of these are used by Google — they are third-party estimates built mostly from backlink data.

Use these scores comparatively, not absolutely: they are useful for sizing up competitors and screening prospective link partners, not as a KPI to grow for its own sake. A jump from DA 30 to 40 means nothing if rankings and traffic did not move. Watch the trend and the gap to competitors, and remember every tool calculates it differently, so never mix scores across tools.

Senior practitioners are careful to never let a vendor’s proxy metric become a reporting goal — optimising for DA is optimising for a model of the thing instead of the thing. Educate stakeholders that Google has repeatedly said it uses no single "authority score", and redirect the conversation to page-level relevance, topical authority, and business outcomes. DA is a rough lens for competitive analysis, full stop.