Entry: myths
Semrush check domain authority: seven myths about authority scores
Entry: authority scores. Four vendors publish one, none is a Google signal, and the numbers cannot be converted between tools.
Myth against reality
| Myth | Reality |
|---|---|
| Google ranks pages by Domain Authority | Google has said publicly that it does not use third-party scores. DA is Moz's own metric. |
| Semrush Authority Score equals DA | Semrush computes its own Authority Score. Equal-looking numbers are coincidence. |
| DR 50 in one tool means DR 50 in another | Each tool crawls a different web with a different formula. |
| A higher score means a better link | A score describes a whole domain, not the page that links to you. |
| Scores update every day | Ours refreshes roughly monthly. Others publish their own cadence. |
| Buying many links raises the score safely | Scores are easy to inflate. Google's SpamBrain and the December 2022 link spam update target such patterns. |
| A free checker is inaccurate by definition | It is accurate to its own index. It is just a different index. |
What Google actually documents
Google Search Central documents link attributes and spam policies. It does not document any domain-level authority number.
Penguin arrived in April 2012. It became part of Google's core algorithm with version 4.0 in September 2016, and it devalues spammy links in real time. The March 2024 spam update added rules against manipulated links and expired-domain abuse. None of these mention DA, DR or Authority Score.
So why do the metrics exist? They are proxies. A tool cannot see Google's index, so it counts what it can see, which is links.
Google also stated in a 2019 announcement that sponsored and ugc attributes are hints. The practical consequence is that no third-party score can tell you which of your links Google counts.
Choosing a metric for a report
Same tool, same date
Compare sites inside one vendor and one lookup date. Mixed sources produce noise.
Show the input
Quote referring domains beside the score. Ours is derivable, see the formula entry.
Use Semrush where it is stronger
For keywords, rank tracking and daily crawl, Semrush and Ahrefs are fuller products than this API.
The box on the home page is a free DR checker with no sign-up. It will not give you Semrush's Authority Score or Moz's DA.
Before you argue about a score
- State which vendor and which date
- Ask for the referring-domain count behind it
- Check whether the figure is for the domain or one page
- Remember that Moz's DA runs from 1 to 100 and Ahrefs DR from 0 to 100
- Do not treat any of them as Google's opinion
Why four scores coexist
Each vendor needs a headline number for dashboards. Moz introduced Domain Authority, Ahrefs built Domain Rating, Semrush has Authority Score, and Majestic prefers Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
They share an idea. More and better inbound links suggest a stronger site, but they differ in crawl, weighting and update cadence, so a site can be 52 in one and 38 in another without any error.
Our DR is the plainest of them. It uses only the count of referring domains, so you can follow the formula with a pocket calculator.
Further questions
Does Semrush check domain authority the way Moz does? No. Semrush shows an Authority Score computed from its own data. Moz shows Domain Authority from its own. They share a purpose, not a method, and the two numbers should not be swapped in a report.
Can I get Authority Score from this site? No. We provide our own DR from a published formula. For Semrush's figure use Semrush, and for Ahrefs DR use Ahrefs.
Is a high score ever a bad sign? It can be, when it was built by link schemes. A domain can score high on referring domains and still carry spam. Read the anchors and the top pages before trusting the number.