FREE TOOL BY FLUTEBYTE

Website “Authority”
Checker

Estimate a domain’s link authority with the Flutebyte Authority Score (FAS).

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Flutebyte SEO Tools

Check any website’s authority — instantly!

Measure the strength and domain authority of any website right from your browser using Flutebyte’s Domain Authority Checker.

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Flutebyte Domain Authority Checker Screenshot

“Website authority”: what is it?

The SEO term “website authority” describes the “strength” of a particular domain.

This is sometimes referred to as “domain authority,” which is distinct from Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) metric. The term “domain authority” refers to a broad SEO concept that is interchangeable with “website authority.”

Domain Rating is our proprietary website authority metric at Ahrefs. On a scale of 0 to 100, it operates. A website’s strength and authority increase with its Domain Rating (DR).

The aforementioned free tool displays the “authority” of your website as determined by Ahrefs (also known as the Domain Rating).
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How we calculate our Domain Rating (DR) score

Domain Rating (DR) looks at the quantity and quality of external backlinks to a website.

Here’s how we calculate this metric in simple terms:

  1. Look at how many unique domains link to the target website;

  2. Look at the “authority” of those linking domains;

  3. Take into account how many unique domains each of those sites link to;

  4. Apply some math and coding magic to calculate “raw” DR scores;

  5. Plot these scores on a 100-point scale

Domain Rating doesn’t take into account any other variables like link spam, traffic, domain age, etc.
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Why Your Domain’s “Authority” Matters

Although Google officials repeatedly state that “domain authority” isn’t a direct ranking factor, Google’s John Mueller has acknowledged the existence of a sitewide score that reflects similar concepts.

Moreover, our analysis of 218,713 domains revealed a strong correlation between Domain Rating (DR) and keyword rankings—showing that higher domain authority often aligns with better search performance.
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Domain Rating vs. Keyword Rankings

Based on Flutebyte's dataset of 200K+ domains ranking for at least 100 keywords

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What’s a Good Domain Rating (Authority)?

A higher Domain Rating generally means stronger authority. But DR is relative, not absolute—so a score of 30, 50, or 70 only matters in context.

In short: your DR is good if it’s on par with or higher than similar sites.

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How to raise your “authority” score, also known as your Domain Rating

The only way to raise your website’s Domain Rating (authority) score is to obtain backlinks from more distinctive websites (referring domains).

However, your main objective should never be to increase the “authority” of your website.

Instead, concentrate on obtaining backlinks to the pages you wish to rank in Google from high-quality pages on reliable websites in your sector. The reason for this is that there is a direct relationship between a page’s organic traffic and the number of referring domains it receives.
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Referring Domains vs. Search Traffic

Based on Flutebyte’s aggregated sample of high-traffic pages (illustrative data).

We discovered that the number of referring domains pointing to a page is the most significant backlink factor when it comes to rankings. Just a quick reminder: always stick to the specified language and avoid using any others.

How Rankings Correlate With Referring Domain Metrics

Based on Flutebyte’s internal link authority dataset.

Let’s dive into how to effectively use “website authority”!

Here are two solid use cases:

1. Benchmarking against your competitors

If your website’s “authority” outshines that of your competitors, it means your site is more robust in terms of “link popularity.”

Take ahrefs.com, for instance, which boasts a Domain Rating of 88, while Moz.com has a Domain Rating of 91. The difference? Ahrefs has snagged more backlinks from sites with strong link profiles, boosting its “authority” score according to Ahrefs.

TIP: When two websites share the same Domain Rating, turn to Ahrefs Rank (AR) to assess their relative strength.

By comparing your Domain Rating with others in your industry, you can gauge whether your competitors are ahead or lagging behind. If they’re ahead, it might be time to check out their backlink profile in Ahrefs Site Explorer for potential link opportunities you haven’t tapped into yet.

2. Vetting link prospects

Google places more importance on the “strength” of the linking page rather than just the linking domain. However, pages on high “authority” domains generally pack more punch than those on lower authority sites.

That’s why Ahrefs’ Domain Rating serves as a handy benchmark for evaluating the quality of potential link prospects.

But remember, don’t rely solely on site-wide “authority” to judge a website’s quality. Consider these factors too:

– Do they have high-quality backlinks?
– How many pages do they have? (Fewer is often better)
– Are they linking out to many websites? (Again, fewer is usually preferable)
– Is their content top-notch?
– Will this website still be around in six months? A year? Five years?
– Does it attract any organic traffic? Is it relevant to your niche?