What is domain authority and how to increase it (DA, DR and Authority Score)

Sooner or later, every conversation with an SEO agency brings up an acronym: DA, DR or simply "authority". It is used to compare websites, to decide which outlets are worth appearing in and, quite often, to set prices. But domain authority is not a score Google gives you. It is an estimate calculated by private tools, each with its own formula.

This guide explains what each metric measures, how to read it without falling into traps, how much authority Chile's biggest news outlets have today and what actually raises your own site's score.

What is domain authority?

Domain authority is a score, usually from 0 or 1 to 100, that estimates how strong an entire website is at ranking on Google. It is calculated mainly from the links the site receives from other websites (its backlinks): how many different domains link to it and how strong those domains are in turn.

The idea comes from Google's original PageRank, which treated every link as a vote. After Google stopped showing PageRank publicly in 2016, SEO tool companies built their own versions. The three most widely used are Moz's Domain Authority (DA), Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush's Authority Score (AS).

Domain Authority, Domain Rating and Authority Score: the differences

All three point to the same idea, but they are not calculated the same way, so a single site can get different numbers in each tool.

Sources: Moz's Domain Authority guide, the Ahrefs help center (article updated in September 2026) and the Semrush knowledge base, all retrieved on November 2, 2026.

The most useful practical difference: Ahrefs' DR looks almost only at links, while Semrush's Authority Score also penalizes profiles that look manipulated and adds estimated organic traffic. That is why a site that bought lots of low-quality links can look good on DR and worse on AS. To review those links one by one, see our guide on how to check a website's backlinks for free.

You do not need to pay to check your own score. Moz Link Explorer offers 10 free queries a month with an account, and Ahrefs and Semrush have free checkers that show the DR or Authority Score of any domain with a limited number of lookups. The sensible approach is to pick one tool, write down your site's number and that of three or four competitors, and repeat the measurement every quarter with the same tool: mixing metrics from different companies only creates confusion.

Does Google use DA, DR or Authority Score to rank pages?

Not as such. Moz says so in its own guide: Domain Authority "is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs". It is a comparative metric. John Mueller, Google's search advocate, has said the same several times since 2016, as Search Engine Journal compiles: Google does not use Moz's DA in its algorithms.

That does not mean authority does not exist for Google. Google still uses PageRank internally, among many other signals, and the internal documents leaked in May 2024 mention an attribute called "siteAuthority". What Google does not do is read the number from Moz, Ahrefs or Semrush. Those metrics are external thermometers: useful for comparison, not something to obsess over.

Why raising domain authority gets harder at every step

All three scales are logarithmic. Moz puts it this way: it is easier to grow a score from 20 to 30 than from 70 to 80, because giant sites occupy the top tiers. Ahrefs adds another effect: since DR is relative to its whole database, a site can drop without losing any links, simply because other sites gained more.

For a company, this has two consequences. First, a new site can improve quickly with a few good links. Second, comparing authority only makes sense against your direct competitors on Google, not against an ideal number. A store with a score of 35 can outrank one with 50 if its content answers the search better.

How much authority Chile's biggest news outlets have

News outlets are among the most authoritative websites in any country, because thousands of domains link to them. We checked three of Chile's leading outlets in Semrush's free authority checker.

Source: Semrush Website Authority Checker, retrieved on November 2, 2026. Organic traffic is the tool's monthly estimate.

To put the gap in perspective: esbuenisimolinks.com had 47 referring domains on November 1, 2026, according to DataForSEO. La Tercera has more than a thousand times that figure. That is why a single editorial link from an outlet like that weighs more than dozens of links from small sites. You will find more outlets in our list of Chilean digital media with the highest authority.

How to increase domain authority

What raises authority is the same thing that creates it: links from strong sites related to your industry. In order of impact:

1. Get articles in real media outlets. A piece in a high-authority newspaper or portal contributes more than many directory links. It can come from a press release, proprietary data a journalist wants to publish or a sponsored article in an outlet with a real audience.
2. Create content that earns links on its own. Data studies, rankings, calculators and statistics that other sites cite.
3. Reclaim unlinked mentions. If an outlet already named your brand, asking it to add the link is the cheapest way to gain one.
4. Fix your internal linking. It does not raise domain authority, but it spreads the authority you already have toward the pages that sell.
5. Clean up harmful links. Link networks and spam sites can drag down metrics like Authority Score; our guide to toxic backlinks explains how to spot them.

These time frames are working references: each tool crawls the web at its own pace and the metrics are recalculated periodically.

One last piece of advice for marketing and communications teams: do not buy links based on an outlet's DA or DR alone. Also check that the site has real traffic, publishes about your topic and does not sell links to anyone who asks. That is the standard we apply at ESBUENISIMO LINKS, with more than 1,400 real media outlets across Latin America. If you want to raise your site's authority with articles in the Chilean press, see how we do it at ESBUENISIMO LINKS.