Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) is one of the most popular SEO metrics that companies use to track and understand the strength of their backlink profile and its impact on their website. While DR itself isn’t a Google ranking factor, it’s widely used as a proxy for authority, and can influence how well your site ranks compared to competitors. This impacts your online visibility and traffic, which is why changes to your DR can feel so significant.
So when your website’s DR drops, your initial reaction might be panic: “Is Google punishing me? Have I lost authority?” The short answer is no, not necessarily. Fluctuations in DR are completely normal, and a drop doesn’t automatically signal a major issue. Of course all businesses would like to see their DR increase steadily as they’re investing time and effort into their SEO and link building strategies, but it’s very common to see scores moving up and down over time.
These changes can occur when Google or SEO tools like Ahrefs recalibrate their metrics or update their algorithms, reassessing which sites are crawled and how authority is distributed across the web. For example, in September 2025, many businesses would’ve logged in to Ahrefs and seen that their DRs had suddenly dropped, sometimes by as much as 20 or even 50 points in just one night! This was because Ahrefs rolled out a significant algorithm update, refining how they calculate domain authority and aiming to create a fairer picture of online authority. So, even if your DR dropped, it wasn’t a punishment. It was a recalibration, offering an opportunity for brands to refine their SEO strategies and create a stronger backlink profile in the long term.
In many cases, a small drop is nothing to worry about, particularly if competitors are seeing similar declines at the same time, as it often reflects changes across the wider industry rather than an issue with your site specifically.
But if there has suddenly been a sharp drop, and it doesn’t seem to be a reflection of any industry-wide changes, then it's time to dig a little deeper into what's going on with your Domain Rating. It can be a bit of a head-scratcher, but getting to the bottom of what has caused the drop can reveal how you can recover your DR.
What’s in this article:
- What is domain rating (DR)?
- Common reasons why your DR has dropped
- How can you recover your DR?
- Understanding why DR drops aren’t always bad
- Key takeaways
What is domain rating (DR)?
Domain rating is a third-party metric created by one of the top SEO platforms, Ahrefs, and it measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile and its authority compared to other domains. It gives your website a score from 0 to 100, and the higher the score, the stronger your backlink profile is. DR is calculated by looking at a variety of factors, such as the number of backlinks going to the website, quality of the backlinks, and how many other unique sites each linking domain links to.
DR is a relative metric and is calculated by comparing your backlink profile to the entire web, which is why your score can fluctuate even if you haven’t made any significant changes to your website or strategy. It’s not just about how many high-DR sites link to you either – it’s important to consider how many other websites these high-DR sites link to as well.
For example, experts from Ahrefs have revealed that a DR 10 site that links to just a handful of other websites transfers more authority and “link juice” to your website, compared to a DR 80 site that links to a million other websites. It’s also important to note that moving up from DR 10 to 20 is much easier than going from DR 70 to 80, as the higher you climb, the more high-quality competition there is, and DR also uses a logarithmic scale, which means each new point requires significantly more authority than the last. It’s like in a video game, where early levels are easy to pass, but higher levels require more time and effort.
While a general rule of thumb is that the higher the DR, the more authoritative the site is, it’s important to remember that, again, it’s all relative and there is no set number for a ‘good’ DR that applies to every website. For example, a website with a DR 40 could be strong in one industry and poor in another. The best way to look at it is that if your score is higher or comparable to other similar sites in your industry, you’re on the right track.
DR should be seen as a benchmarking tool, rather than an absolute metric for your SEO success. It’s best used for helping demonstrate where your site stands compared to competitors, tracking progress and improving your link-building strategy. Most importantly, it’s a useful way to identify high-authority sites that are worth targeting for backlinks.
Common reasons why your DR has dropped
So your DR has dropped… what could be the reason?
A sudden drop in DR can be a nightmare for any SEO or marketing professional. That feeling when you log into Ahrefs and see that the score you’ve been working so hard on has taken a nosedive - wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy! But before you hit the panic button, it's crucial to investigate the cause. Understanding what's behind the change is the first step toward finding a viable solution.
1. Algorithm updates
Google and Ahrefs regularly update their algorithms to refine how they crawl the web and evaluate site authority. This can cause rankings and DRs to shift, sometimes even overnight, without you changing anything about your site or SEO strategy.
These recalibrations are designed to improve accuracy and create a fairer reflection of authority across the web, but they can temporarily feel unsettling if your score drops. In many cases, these changes affect large numbers of websites at the same time, which is a good indication that the movement is industry-wide, rather than a problem specific to your site.
For example, some of the recent algorithm updates that potentially had significant implications for websites were Google’s spam update in August 2025, which targeted low-quality content and link spam, and also Ahrefs’ major update in autumn 2025, which also aimed to discourage manipulative link-building strategies. If you got caught out in these updates, it's an indication that your website likely requires some attention.
2. Other sites did a better job at linkbuilding
DR is a relative metric, so even if your backlink profile hasn’t changed, your score can still be pushed down if your competitors are earning a lot of high-quality links faster than you. In a nutshell, when a DR 100 website gets more backlinks, Ahrefs can’t increase its score to DR 101. Instead, other websites need to be pushed down on the rating scale.
3. Referring domains’ DR dropped
If sites that link to you lose authority themselves, they now pass on less link equity. It’s basically like a domino effect - with less “link juice” being transferred to your site from these referring domains, it can also eventually reduce your own DR.
4. Follow links have turned into no-follow links
No-follow links do not contribute to Ahrefs domain rating, so if your previously secured follow links get changed to no-follows, you may notice a slight decrease in DR.
It’s important to note that while no-follow links won’t improve your DR, they still have some benefits - they create a more natural, balanced backlink profile, and still help drive traffic and awareness. Many of the top high-authority sites like Guardian, BBC, and New York Times are likely to have a policy against giving out follow links, but that doesn’t mean that you should exclude these sites from your targets.
5. Technical issues
Technical issues on your website can affect DR, but not directly. Although technical problems don’t factor into how Ahrefs calculates DR, errors such as broken pages, poor internal linking, incorrect redirects, or pages being deindexed can impact how backlinks are crawled and counted.
6. Penalties
While penalties are relatively rare, using black-hat SEO tactics such as spammy link-building, keyword stuffing, or duplicated content can harm your site’s authority over time. These practices can lead to low-quality or unnatural backlinks being ignored, devalued, or removed, which reduces the amount of link equity pointing to your site and weakens your backlink profile.
How to recover your DR?
If your DR has taken a bit of a hit, then I’ve got some good news for you - things can be fixed… there is still hope! A drop in DR doesn’t mean all your efforts have gone to waste. With a little bit of patience, understanding of what’s happened and a few smart adjustments, it’s still possible to turn things around.
If you’ve figured out that the dip in your DR is in fact not an algorithm update or general industry-wide change, but something more specific to your site, then here are some things you can do next.
1. Evaluate backlinks
The first and most obvious step is to open Ahrefs and take a closer look at your backlink profile. Look for any broken backlinks and check if you have lost any high-quality links recently. Or have any referring domains changed your previously secured follow links to no-follows? This kind of thing is more common than you’d think, and spotting it early makes it much easier to work out whether the drop is serious or just part of normal ups and downs of link building.
2. Review recent website changes
If important pages with backlinks return 404 errors, redirect incorrectly, or are blocked from crawling, the “link juice” from those links may no longer be counted. If you’ve made any recent changes to your website, such as migration, URL changes or structural tweaks, it’s important to check that key pages are still accessible and redirects work as they should, so that existing backlinks are passing as much value as possible.
3. Check Google Search Console
If you see a sudden drop in DR and rankings, it may be that you’ve incurred a manual penalty for things like keyword stuffing or duplicate content. You can check this by reviewing your website in Google Search Console and navigating to the ‘Manual Actions’ tab. If you have received a penalty, the next step is to address it, whether that means improving low-quality content or removing duplication and spammy links, and then submitting a reconsideration request.
4. Optimise content
Strengthen your link-building strategy, focusing on quality and relevance to ensure it’s strong enough to earn links naturally. Ask yourself: “Is the content on my website genuinely useful, up to date and worth referencing?” Refresh any thin or outdated blogs, create more link-worthy content that includes more research, original data or expert advice. Make sure to also naturally incorporate relevant keywords into your content.
5. Try to acquire new referring domains
Only the first link from a domain increases your DR, and all subsequent links don’t affect your DR any further. This is why it’s important to focus your efforts on acquiring new referring domains, instead of getting links from the same places. You could start by doing some competitor research - where are your competitors securing links from where you aren’t? Create relevant content and actively seek opportunities to earn links from the sites you haven't managed to get a link from yet.
Understanding why DR drops aren’t always bad
If your organic traffic is not dropping, a DR decrease may not indicate a real SEO issue, as backlinks are only part of the ranking equation. Your actual rankings are based on many factors that Ahrefs doesn’t even look at - such as E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), technical SEO and user experience.
Google doesn’t use any third-party metric like Ahrefs’ DR in its algorithms, so a dip in DR doesn’t automatically mean your site is going to fall in the SERPs.
Slight fluctuations in DR are completely normal, so it’s not worth obsessing over day-to-day changes. Tracking your DR over a longer period of time is a much more practical way of assessing whether your link-building strategy is working.
Also, keep in mind that a drop in your Domain Rating following an Ahrefs or Google update isn't a setback, but rather a chance to start fresh. These algorithm changes are encouraging the SEO community to adopt higher-quality, more ethical link-building methods.
Key takeaways:
- Domain Rating is a useful SEO metric that showcases your website’s authority and backlink profile. However, it’s not a Google ranking factor and should be seen as a benchmarking tool, rather than an absolute metric for your SEO success.
- Fluctuations in DR are normal and can happen even if you haven’t made any changes to your website or link-building strategy. Common reasons for drops in DR include algorithm updates, competitors doing a better job at link-building, losing follow links and a drop in DR of your referring domains.
- If you see a sharp drop in your DR, it’s time to evaluate. Check your backlinks, site changes or potential penalties, and optimise on-site content.
- A lower DR after an update isn’t a failure. It’s often a chance to clean things up and build a stronger, higher-quality backlink profile going forward.
If you want to recover your DR after a drop or prevent it from happening in the first place, contact the Motive team today to discuss how we can help strengthen your backlink profile and build long-term SEO success.
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