Can Domain Authority make a difference in how well your website ranks in google searches? learn more about Domain Authority from the pros. Lots of businesses and marketers think it’s important, do you know why?
You can find thousands of tips everywhere on how to improve your website’s Domain Authority for better search rankings.
But does having a higher Domain Authority really mean you’ll rank better?
In this article, we’ll look into what Domain Authority is and check if it really matters to Google’s ranking system.
Read also: 5 SEO Techniques (That work 99% of the Time)
What is Domain Authority(DA)?
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz, a company that provides tools and services for search engine optimization (SEO).
DA is used to estimate the overall authority or credibility of a website in relation to its ability to rank in search engine results. The concept behind Domain Authority is based on the idea that websites with a large number of high-quality, authoritative backlinks are likely to be more trustworthy and credible in the eyes of search engines.
Backlinks are links from other websites to your site, and when reputable sites link to yours, it can positively influence your domain’s authority.
Domain Authority is measured on a scale from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating a stronger and more authoritative domain.
However, it’s important to note that the scale is logarithmic, meaning it’s much easier to improve from a DA of 10 to 20 than from 70 to 80.
It’s essential to understand that while Domain Authority can provide insights into a website’s SEO potential, it is just one of many factors that search engines consider when determining rankings.
Now let’s understand the claim about Domain authority as a ranking factor
Claim – Domain authority is a ranking factor
Lots of articles talk about Domain Authority like it’s a score that shows how well a website will do in search engine results for certain words.
Read also: How to ranked low domain authority website on google first page
Some people might think that Domain Authority is a big deal for search engines like Google. In a cool Twitter thread from 2020, Rand Fishkin, one of the founders of Moz, shared some documents from Google that hint they might have a metric similar to domain authority.
But if you keep reading, things start to make more sense.
Domain Authority As A Ranking Factor: The Evidence
Moz’s website clearly states that its Domain Authority score doesn’t affect Google search results.
Domain Authority doesn’t influence Google’s ranking and has no impact on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
In 2015, Gary Illyes, the Chief of Sunshine and Happiness at Google, was questioned about the transfer of authority from HTTP to HTTPS. His reply was:
“We don’t have “authority”, but signals should pass on, yes.”
In 2016, Illyes addressed a question about whether adding or removing pages from a website would impact its domain authority.
“So, my issue is that I’m not aware of anything in ranking that would equate to ‘domain authority,’ so I can’t provide an answer.”
A few weeks later, in a conversation about whether linking to image files or webpages could affect domain authority, Illyes responded:
“We don’t really have ‘overall domain authority.’ A text link with anchor text is better, though.”
Following that, you’ll come across numerous statements from John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, confirming the existence of Domain Authority but emphasizing that Google doesn’t utilize it.
In December 2016, Mueller addressed a comment regarding a desktop domain having higher authority by stating, “Google doesn’t use ‘domain authority.'”
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session in 2018, when asked about the existence of Domain Authority, Mueller acknowledged, “Of course it exists, it’s a tool by Moz.”
Later that same year, responding to a Twitter query about the existence of Domain Authority, Mueller clarified, “‘Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz’ so exists = yes. Search engines don’t use it.”
In 2019, when questioned on Twitter about a site-wide metric similar to Domain Authority, Mueller explained, “We don’t use domain authority.
We generally try to have our metrics as granular as possible, sometimes that’s not so easy, in which case we look at things a bit broader (eg, we’ve talked about this in regards to some of the older quality updates).”
In 2020, Mueller faced another question about domain authority. This time, someone inquired if backlinks from high domain authority websites impact website rankings.
Mueller’s response was clear: “We don’t use domain authority at all in our algorithms.” A few months later, on Twitter, Mueller was asked about the importance of Domain Authority in speeding up the crawling of webpages.
“Just to clarify, Google doesn’t use Domain Authority at all for Search crawling, indexing, or ranking. This information is explicitly stated on their website. However, we do index tweets that discuss it.”
Before this, Google folks were clear that they don’t use Domain Authority. But in a late 2020 interview with SearchLove, Mueller was asked if Google has something like Domain Authority. His answer was different from before and hinted that there might be something similar in Google’s system.
“I’m not sure if I’d use the term ‘authority’ exactly, but we do have certain metrics that focus on a website as a whole, others that zoom in on individual pages, and some of those overall site metrics might align with similar concepts.”
Domain Authority As A Ranking Signal: Our View
Domain Authority (DA) from Moz is kind of like Domain Rank (DR) from Ahrefs, Semrush Authority Score, and Flow Metric Scores from Majestic.
They’re numbers from tools, but these numbers don’t change how well a website shows up in Google. Even though Mueller hinted that Google might have similar numbers, he keeps saying on Twitter and Reddit that Google doesn’t use Moz’s Domain Authority.
He also mentioned that inside Google, they don’t use the term “domain authority.”
So, in simple terms, Domain Authority doesn’t really affect how high up a website appears on Google.
