If you want to see how your website’s Domain Rating (DR) compares with competitors, Ahrefs makes this fairly simple. The easiest method is to use Batch Analysis in Ahrefs, where you can enter multiple domains and see their DR values in one report.
Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ metric for measuring the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. It is scored from 0 to 100, and the scale is logarithmic, meaning that increasing from a higher DR level generally requires substantially more link strength than increasing by the same number of points at a lower level.
How to Compare DR in Ahrefs
1. Open Ahrefs
Log in to your Ahrefs account and open Site Explorer.
From there, go to Batch Analysis. This tool is designed to analyze multiple websites or URLs at the same time and place their metrics into one report.
2. Add Your Website and Competitors
Enter your own domain along with the domains you want to compare.
For example, you could enter:
- yourwebsite.com
- competitor1.com
- competitor2.com
- competitor3.com
- competitor4.com
For a useful comparison, focus on websites that actually compete with you in the same market or search results. Comparing your DR with completely unrelated websites may not tell you much about your competitive position.
3. Select Domain Mode
Make sure the analysis is being performed at the Domain level rather than comparing individual pages.
This is important because DR is a domain-level metric. It measures the overall strength of the website’s backlink profile rather than the backlink strength of one specific page.
4. Click Analyze
Run the Batch Analysis report.
Ahrefs will return the available metrics for all of the domains you entered. Among those metrics is Domain Rating (DR). The report can also include referring domains, backlinks, organic keywords, organic traffic and other SEO metrics, depending on the available report fields.
5. Compare the DR Column
Look at the DR column to compare the domains.
For example:
| Website | DR |
|---|---|
| Your Website | 32 |
| Competitor A | 41 |
| Competitor B | 36 |
| Competitor C | 28 |
| Competitor D | 47 |
In this example, your website has a DR of 32. Two competitors have a lower DR, while two have a higher DR.
This gives you a quick view of how the backlink strength of your domain compares with the websites you selected.
What Does a Higher DR Actually Mean?
A higher DR generally means that Ahrefs considers the website’s backlink profile stronger relative to other domains in its database.
Ahrefs calculates DR using factors related to the domains linking to a website, including the DR of the linking domains and how many other domains those linking websites link to. The calculation is therefore not simply based on the total number of backlinks.
For example, having 1,000 backlinks does not automatically mean that a website will have a higher DR than a site with 500 backlinks. The number and strength of referring domains matter, as does how much authority those referring domains can pass through their links.
This is why it is useful to look at DR and referring domains together rather than treating DR as a standalone number.
How Many Websites Can You Compare?
The number of domains you can enter into Batch Analysis depends on your Ahrefs plan.
According to Ahrefs’ current documentation, the maximum number of targets per Batch Analysis report is:
| Ahrefs Plan | Maximum Targets |
|---|---|
| Standard | 200 |
| Advanced | 500 |
| Enterprise | 1,000 |
Batch Analysis is available on new Standard plans and higher.
This makes the tool useful when you want to compare not just a few direct competitors but a much larger group of websites.
DR Comparison Is More Useful When You Compare the Right Websites
One common mistake is comparing DR with random high-authority websites.
For example, suppose your website has a DR of 30 and you compare it with a website that has a DR of 90. The number itself may look impressive, but the comparison might not be useful if that DR 90 website operates in a completely different industry.
A better approach is to build a list of websites that compete for the same customers, topics or keywords.
Ahrefs itself recommends using competitors as a practical benchmark because there is no universal DR number that is considered “good” for every website. A DR that is strong in one niche may be relatively ordinary in another.
For example, if most of your direct competitors have DR values between 25 and 40, a DR of 35 gives you a very different competitive picture than it would in an industry where most competing domains have DR values above 70.
Compare DR With Referring Domains Too
DR should not be viewed by itself.
After checking the DR of each competitor, look at their referring domains as well. Referring domains represent the websites linking to a domain, and Ahrefs includes them among the metrics available in Batch Analysis.
For example:
| Website | DR | Referring Domains |
|---|---|---|
| Your Website | 32 | 180 |
| Competitor A | 38 | 420 |
| Competitor B | 35 | 160 |
| Competitor C | 29 | 210 |
This tells you more than DR alone.
Competitor A has a higher DR and substantially more referring domains. Competitor B has a slightly higher DR than your site despite having fewer referring domains, which may indicate differences in the strength of the domains linking to each website.
The goal is not to assume that one metric explains everything. Use the numbers together to understand the backlink profiles behind the comparison.
Can You Compare DR for a Specific Keyword?
Yes, but DR comparison and keyword competition are two different things.
When evaluating whether your site can compete for a particular keyword, you should also examine the SERP overview in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. This lets you see the websites ranking for the keyword and examine metrics such as DR, backlinks and referring domains for those ranking pages or domains. Ahrefs specifically recommends using SERP analysis to understand the strength of the sites already ranking for a keyword.
This is often more useful than simply asking whether your website has a “good” DR.
For example, your website may have DR 30, but if several sites with DR 20–35 are already ranking on the first page for your target keyword, that gives you a different picture than a SERP dominated by domains with DR 70–90.
Does a Higher DR Mean Higher Google Rankings?
No.
DR is not a Google ranking factor. It is an Ahrefs metric created to measure the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. Google does not use Ahrefs’ DR score as a ranking signal.
A website with a higher DR can still rank below a lower-DR website for a particular keyword. Content relevance, search intent, page-level backlinks, internal linking, technical SEO and many other factors can affect search performance.
Therefore, DR is best used as a competitive SEO metric, not as a direct prediction of Google rankings.
The Best Way to Use DR Comparison
For a meaningful DR comparison, use this process:
Your domain → Direct competitors → Batch Analysis → Domain mode → Analyze → Compare DR → Check referring domains → Review the target SERPs
This gives you a much clearer picture than checking your DR in isolation.
The main purpose of DR comparison is to understand the relative strength of your backlink profile compared with the websites you are competing against. It can help you identify whether your site has a similar level of backlink strength or whether there is a significant gap that may require additional link acquisition.
Just remember that DR is a relative, link-based Ahrefs metric. A higher number does not automatically mean better SEO performance, better content or higher Google rankings.
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