Average DR of digital media by country in 2026: authority ranking of 1,090 outlets

Updated on November 3, 2026.

When a company decides where to publish, the first number it usually asks for is DR. Domain Rating is an Ahrefs metric on a 0 to 100 scale that measures the strength of a site's backlink profile: how many domains link to it and how strong those domains are.

What almost nobody publishes is the average DR of digital media by country. Is a Chilean outlet with DR 45 above or below the norm? Is it reasonable to demand DR 60 in Peru? To answer that, we reviewed 1,090 unique digital media sites in our database, using the DR we recorded between June and October 2026, across nine markets.

Average DR of digital media by country in 2026

The result sorts the markets into three groups. At the top are the United States (51.7) and the United Kingdom (47.1). In the middle sits a tight group of Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Peru and Brazil, between 34 and 40 points. At the bottom are Mexico (30.9) and Chile (27.9).

United States51.7

United Kingdom47.1

Colombia39.6

Argentina37.1

Spain35.4

Peru34.9

Brazil34.3

Mexico30.9

Chile27.9

Source: ESBUENISIMO LINKS marketplace media database (1,090 outlets), Ahrefs DR recorded June-October 2026

View the data as a table

United States	51.7 · 71 outlets · median 50
United Kingdom	47.1 · 49 outlets · median 46
Colombia	39.6 · 30 outlets · median 38.5
Argentina	37.1 · 90 outlets · median 36.5
Spain	35.4 · 178 outlets · median 35.5
Peru	34.9 · 30 outlets · median 30
Brazil	34.3 · 115 outlets · median 33
Mexico	30.9 · 77 outlets · median 33
Chile	27.9 · 243 outlets · median 28

*Includes the five Spanish-speaking markets in the table plus nine other countries in the region with fewer than ten media each, such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Uruguay.

The median (the value that leaves half the media above and half below) confirms the order: in Spanish-speaking Latin America, half of all media have DR 30 or lower. Requiring DR 50 as a minimum, as some briefs copied from English-speaking markets do, rules out four in five outlets in the region.

Why Chile has the lowest average DR, and why that is not bad news

Chile ranking last on the average is a matter of composition, not quality. It is the country with the most media in the database (243, almost three times Mexico) because it includes regional newspapers, local radio stations, niche outlets and magazines that we have not yet added in other markets. Those sites have few links and pull the average down: 40% of Chilean media have DR below 20.

Look at the top end instead of the average and the picture changes. Chile is the Latin American market with the most media at DR 60 or higher: 20, against 15 in Argentina, 6 in Mexico, 5 in Colombia and 4 in Peru. They include La Tercera (82), Emol (80), El Mostrador (77), Cooperativa (75), 24 Horas (75), T13 (74), CNN Chile (73) and El Dínamo (71), according to the DR recorded in our database.

Regional media with low DR are not dead weight either. A story in a newspaper in Concepción or Antofagasta can be worth more to a local clinic or real estate developer than one on a national site, because it reaches the right audience and gives Google a geographic signal. We cover this in our guide to regional news portals in Chile.

Media DR by band: what to expect in each market

The second table shows the same data by band, which is how media lists are actually built for a campaign.

Three takeaways for anyone buying media visibility:

• Argentina is the most even market. Almost half of its media (47%) sit above DR 40, driven by business and economy outlets such as iProfesional (75) and BAE Negocios (72).
• In Colombia and Peru, the big groups dominate. El Tiempo (83) and Peru's El Comercio (81) concentrate authority, and the supply of mid-sized outlets is shorter.
• The DR 80+ band barely exists in the region. There are 19 such media in the whole database, under 2%, and several are local sections of international outlets.

1,090

unique outlets analyzed

31.4

average DR in Spanish-speaking Latin America

20

Chilean outlets with DR 60+

25%

of the database with DR 50+

Source: ESBUENISIMO LINKS marketplace media database (1,090 outlets), Ahrefs DR recorded June-October 2026

View the data as a table

unique outlets analyzed	1,090
average DR in Spanish-speaking Latin America	31.4
Chilean outlets with DR 60+	20
of the database with DR 50+	25%

News sites versus niche media

Is a general newspaper worth more than a specialist magazine? On authority, yes, but by less than most people think. The 505 news sites in the database average DR 37.3, against 32.8 for the rest (business, sports, technology, travel, health and others). The medians are nearly identical: 35 versus 34.

Within niches the gaps are wide. Business media average DR 45.2 and health media 39.8, while travel (24.7) and food (15.6) sit far below. For a B2B brand, an economy outlet with DR 45 is usually a better bet than a general news portal with DR 60 that never covers its industry.

How to use average media DR when choosing where to publish

DR is for comparing, not for deciding on its own. Ahrefs describes it in its official Domain Rating guide as a logarithmic scale: going from 70 to 71 is much harder than going from 20 to 21. That is why the gap between a DR 30 and a DR 40 outlet is smaller than it looks, while the gap between DR 60 and DR 70 is huge. Moz has an equivalent metric, Domain Authority, which in our database averages about six points more than DR (41.2 versus 34.9).

Based on the averages in this study, here is a practical rule of thumb for marketing and communications teams:

Always cross-check DR against real organic traffic, topic fit and how the outlet marks its links. Google's spam policies ask for paid links to be marked as sponsored, and a high-DR site that sells links to any industry can be worth less than a modest, editorially serious one. We explain this in what domain authority is and how to increase it.

In Chile, the good news is variety: there are 20 outlets above DR 60 and more than 120 between DR 20 and 59 to build a natural mix. For the full ranking of the big players, see the Chilean digital media with the highest authority. And if you want that mix working for your brand, at ESBUENISIMO LINKS we run link building campaigns with Chilean media selected by DR, traffic and topic.

Methodology and limitations

We took the media table from the ESBUENISIMO LINKS marketplace on November 3, 2026: 1,118 active listings, which become 1,090 unique sites when grouped by domain (when an outlet appears with several sections, it is counted once, with its highest DR). DR is Ahrefs' metric, recorded between June and October 2026.

Limitations: the database is not a census of every outlet in each country but the media we work with, and Chile has far broader regional coverage than the rest. Colombia and Peru have 30 outlets each, a small sample. Some local sections of international media, such as El País Chile or Infobae Colombia, inherit the DR of their root domain. We do not publish prices or client data. We will update this study when the database metrics change.