Free Domain Rating Checker
Look up any domain’s DR in one click, live from Ahrefs’ free endpoint. Domain Rating by Ahrefs.
This is one reading.
ShipDR records your DR automatically and charts it daily, free, for every website you add. The backlink engine is $10 once, per website.
What the number can and cannot tell you
DR summarizes one thing: the strength of a domain’s dofollow backlink profile, as Ahrefs measures it.
It is useful for sizing up a directory before you submit, or for watching your own site’s trajectory.
It is not a Google ranking factor, and no one outside Ahrefs can promise you a specific number: the metric is their black box.
What you can control is the input: real backlinks, verified live, dofollow and indexable. That input is exactly what ShipDR verifies, while charting your DR history against every move you make.
How the scale actually behaves
Four properties explain most of the confusion around the number, and all four are worth knowing before you read anything into a single lookup:
It is logarithmic
The distance from 10 to 20 is nothing like the distance from 70 to 80. Early movement is cheap and later movement is brutally expensive, so a young site climbing quickly is not evidence that anything special is working.
It is relative
The score is graded against the rest of the web, not against a fixed yardstick. Your number can fall while your backlinks grow, simply because other sites grew faster. Nothing happened to you in that case, which is why a drop is a prompt to look at individual backlinks rather than a verdict.
It counts domains, not links
Fifty backlinks from one site are close to one referring domain’s worth of signal. This is the single most common misreading, and it is why a page counting your total backlinks tells you very little about the metric.
It is one vendor's opinion
DR is computed by Ahrefs from the web as Ahrefs has crawled it. Another tool looking at the same site will disagree, sometimes sharply, because it crawled different pages. Neither is the truth; they are two measurements.
What we will not tell you
There is a whole genre of content that answers “how many links to reach DR 20”, and every version of it is invented. DR is computed by Ahrefs from data and a formula they do not publish, so nobody outside Ahrefs can convert a number of backlinks into a score, and nobody can promise you the score will move at all.
It is worth being blunt about the incentive here, because this page sits on a product named ShipDR.
The name describes what a maker is trying to do, not a result the product delivers.
ShipDR sells the work being verified: your listing is live, its backlink is dofollow, the page is indexable, and it was all still true this morning.
It charts your DR beside that record so you can see what happened. It never claims to have caused it.
One trap worth naming while you have the number in front of you: because DR reads only inbound links, reciprocal arrangements inflate it.
Trade badges with enough directories and the metric climbs on links Google may well decide to pass nothing through, since a dense web of mutual links is exactly the pattern its guidelines describe as a link scheme.
Anything that makes this number easy to move should be read with more suspicion, not less.
Using DR to judge a directory
Looking up a directory before submitting is the most practical use of a one-off lookup, as long as it is one input among several:
- A high DR does not mean a useful backlink. Plenty of strong domains nofollow every outbound link, or serve their listing pages noindex. In both cases the score is high and what reaches you is nothing.
- A low DR does not mean a bad backlink. Some of the most reliable free dofollow listings sit on modest domains. Filtering by DR alone deletes them, which is why ShipDR ranks its pool by what actually happened to real submissions instead.
- DR says nothing about whether you get listed. Went live or ignored, fast or slow, still there in six months: none of that is in the number, and all of it decides whether the submission was worth the time.
Got a specific backlink to inspect? The dofollow link checker reads its rel and indexability in one fetch, and the noindex checker tests any page on its own.
A dot, or a line
A lookup gives you today’s reading, and a single reading of a relative, lagging, vendor-computed metric is close to noise.
The useful version is the history: the same number recorded day after day, next to a record of what you actually did, so a move has something to be read against.
ShipDR does that part free for every website you add, no card, with the Ahrefs reading pulled daily.
Whether the line goes up is not ours to promise; whether the work behind it was real is exactly what we verify.
A DR reading is a dot. The useful thing is the line.
One lookup of a relative, lagging, vendor-computed metric is close to noise. ShipDR records DR daily for every website you add, free and with no card, next to a verified record of the backlinks you actually earned, so a move has something to be read against.
Whether the line rises is not ours to promise.
- Every listing rechecked on a schedule, not once
- Live, dofollow and indexable, read from the page itself
- Told the day a backlink drops or flips
Adding a website and charting its Domain Rating is free, no card. The backlink engine is $10 once, per website, with no subscription.
Fair questions
What is Domain Rating (DR)?
Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ 0 to 100 score for the strength of a website’s backlink profile, computed from the dofollow links its referring domains point at it. It is a vendor metric on a logarithmic scale: moving from DR 10 to 20 is far easier than from 70 to 80.
Is DR a Google ranking factor?
No. Google does not use Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (or any vendor score). DR correlates with ranking strength because both feed on backlinks, but a rising DR is not itself what ranks you. Treat it as a thermometer, not the weather.
How do I increase my DR?
Earn dofollow backlinks from more referring domains; that is the input DR measures. How much any link moves it is Ahrefs’ black box, so be wary of anyone promising you a number. ShipDR’s approach: verify every backlink you earn (live, dofollow, indexable) and chart your DR history next to the work, so you see what actually happened.
What counts as a good DR?
It depends entirely on what you are comparing. There is no threshold that makes a site good, and a young product site sitting in the single digits is normal rather than broken. DR is most useful as a relative reading: this directory against that one, or your own site against itself last month. Anyone quoting you a target number is selling something, because the scale is logarithmic and vendor-specific, so the same number means different things in different niches.
Why did my DR drop when I did nothing wrong?
Usually because DR is relative and recalculated. The scale is graded against the rest of the web, so a site can lose a point while gaining links, simply because other sites gained faster. Beyond that: backlinks expire when the pages carrying them are pruned or rebuilt, and Ahrefs periodically re-crawls and revises what it believes about a profile. A drop is worth investigating at the level of individual backlinks (did something go away) rather than treated as a verdict on your site.
What is the difference between DR and DA?
Different vendors, same idea, not interchangeable. Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ score and looks at the dofollow backlink profile; Domain Authority is Moz’s score and blends its own signals to predict ranking ability. Both run 0 to 100 and both are logarithmic, so a DR 40 and a DA 40 are not the same claim and should never be compared directly. Pick one vendor and stay with it, because the trend within one metric is the part that carries information.
How often does DR update?
It changes as Ahrefs re-crawls the web and recomputes, so readings move on their own schedule rather than the day you earn a link. That lag is why a single lookup is a weak signal and a history is a useful one: ShipDR records DR daily for every website you add, free, so you are reading a line rather than a dot.