Free Domain Authority Checker (DA, PA and MozRank)

About this tool

What a domain authority score means: Domain Authority (DA) is a metric created by Moz and scored from 1 to 100 using Moz's own link index. It predicts how likely a domain is to rank compared with other domains, not how well a given page will rank, and it is comparative rather than absolute: a DA of 40 is strong in a niche where competitors sit at 25 and weak where they sit at 70. The scale is logarithmic, so moving from 20 to 30 takes far fewer new links than moving from 70 to 80. Since Moz rebuilt the metric in 2019, the score is modelled against real Google results, which means it goes down as well as up when Moz recalibrates, even if nothing changed on your site.

DA, PA and Spam Score: Page Authority (PA) is Moz's page-level twin of DA, a 1 to 100 prediction for one URL rather than the whole domain, and Spam Score is Moz's estimate of how many sites with a similar link profile were penalised or banned, shown as a percentage. Every "DA PA checker" on the web shows Moz's numbers through Moz's API, because only Moz calculates DA and PA. Ahrefs publishes Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush publishes Authority Score, each from its own crawl and formula, so the same site gets a different number from every vendor, and none of them can be converted into another.

MozRank and Alexa rank are gone, so what does a moz rank checker show today? MozRank was Moz's 0 to 10 link popularity score, modelled on Google's original PageRank; Moz retired it, together with MozTrust, in 2019 when it launched its rebuilt link index, so no tool can show a current MozRank, and any page that does is showing stale data. Amazon shut Alexa.com and the Alexa traffic rank in May 2022. Our old mozrank-checker, moz-score-checker, page-authority-checker and alexa-rank-checker pages now point here, because the question behind every one of them, and behind searches such as "moz backlink checker", "pa checker" or "domain seo check", is "how strong is this website", which is answered today by referring domains and a link-based authority score.

What this checker shows and where it comes from: the link-based rank on this page is a 0 to 1000 score from a commercial SEO data index, shown next to the referring domains, backlinks and referring IPs behind it; it is not Moz DA, and it should only be compared with other domains checked here. Below the score sit the trust signals we read ourselves from one homepage fetch and a WHOIS lookup: a valid HTTPS certificate, server response time, schema.org structured data, an indexable homepage and the domain's age. When the live link data is switched off, the page still runs those checks and offers to email you the full report within 24 hours.

How domain authority differs from Google's own signals: Google has no domain authority score and does not use Moz's, Ahrefs' or anyone else's; its representatives have said so repeatedly. Google does weigh links, mostly page by page in the tradition of PageRank, alongside relevance, content quality, freshness, page experience and hundreds of other signals, and it discounts links it judges to be spam or paid. Authority scores are third-party attempts to summarise the link part of that from the outside. They correlate with rankings because sites with more trusted referring domains tend to rank better, but a high score never ranks a weak page, and a DA 20 site regularly outranks a DA 60 site on a topic it covers better.

How to raise domain authority: the score follows the number and quality of independent websites that link to you, so everything that earns those links raises it. Publish pages worth citing, such as original data, genuinely useful guides and free tools; answer journalist requests; get listed where your industry already looks; ask suppliers, partners and customers for a mention; turn unlinked brand mentions into links; and redirect old pages that still have links pointing to them. Avoid bought links, link networks and automated link generators: they add nothing to the score and can bring a manual action. Scores update slowly, so compare months, not weeks, and watch the referring domain count, which moves first.

How to use it: check your domain and the three domains ranking above you for your main keyword, and look at the gap in referring domains, not just the score. For up to ten domains at once, the Bulk Domain Authority Checker puts them in one table. The Backlink Checker shows the detail behind the number, the Backlink Opportunity Finder lists the legitimate places to earn the links that raise it, and the Backlink Maker explains why automated lookup pages will not. At SEO SMO HUB we use these numbers to pick realistic targets: a keyword where the ranking pages have authority close to yours is a better first goal than one dominated by far stronger sites.