Domain Rating (DR)
Ahrefs’ DR is a proprietary measure related to the strength of a website’s backlink profile. It is useful inside Ahrefs’ ecosystem but should not be treated as a universal authority score.
Domain Authority (DA)
Moz’s DA is a predictive proprietary metric. Like DR, it can help compare sites inside a toolset, but it is not a metric published or used by Google as a ranking score.
Trust Flow (TF)
Majestic’s Trust Flow is another proprietary link metric. Providers sometimes use TF tiers when packaging PBN links, but the score should be paired with domain history, topical fit, and source-level inspection.
Traffic and keyword visibility
Estimated traffic can indicate whether a site has real search visibility. Estimates vary by tool and can miss traffic, so use them as directional evidence rather than exact analytics.
Referring domains
The number and quality of unique sites linking to a domain can reveal more than raw backlink count. Inspect where those links come from, why they exist, and whether the profile looks coherent.
Use a basket of evidence
Metrics are most useful when multiple signals point in the same direction. They are least useful when a seller presents one impressive number and hides everything else.
Important policy context
Google's current spam policies identify buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam. Google also says paid advertising or sponsorship links can be legitimate when appropriately qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". Read Google's spam policies.