Does Alexa Rank Affect Ahrefs Domain Rating? Understanding the Relationship

As a researcher of the authority metrics of websites, you may have heard about Alexa rank and the domain rating of Ahrefs (DR), and wondered whether increasing one of these will affect another. As Alexa rank no longer exists, this issue has become less relevant but it is interesting to learn the correlation between these two things or lack of it.

This article will describe what was measured by each of these metrics, were there any correlations, and what affects the DR nowadays.

Table of Contents

What Was Alexa Rank?

The Alexa Rank (retired by Amazon in 2022) is a website ranking tool that is mainly dependent on traffic estimates and engagement metrics. The Alexa Rank ranks the popularity of a website relative to all other websites in the world based on metrics gathered from browser extension and toolbar installations and traffic estimations.

Key Characteristics of Alexa Rank

Traffic estimates and engagement metrics, no backlink consideration

Numbers were smaller for high-ranking sites (rank #1 meant most popular)

Sampling bias from people who use browser extensions

Commonly used as a popularity metric, even with known inaccuracy issues

What Is Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR)?

Domain Rating is an Ahrefs’ proprietary measure which quantifies the link profile power of a particular website on a 0-100 logarithmic scale in comparison with other sites in Ahrefs’ database.

Key Characteristics of Domain Rating

It is calculated solely based on backlinks data, namely, the number and quality of unique referring domains to a certain site.

Calculations are made using the logarithmic scale which means that the gap between DR 10 and DR 20 is considerably smaller than the one between DR 80 and DR 90.

Does not take into account traffic, quality of content, social media signals and on-page SEO.

Were Alexa Rank and Domain Rating Ever Connected?

That is not true, since these two metrics evaluated completely different aspects and there was no algorithmic connection between them whatsoever.

The Alexa rank is a traffic and engagement based metric, based on their estimation of visitor behavior. Domain Rating is a backlinks based metric, powered by Ahrefs web crawler and their link database.

There was no connection or any relation between Alexa ranking algorithm and Domain Rating algorithm in any way.

Why People Believed There Was a Connection

It’s not difficult to understand why this is the case for several reasons:

Both Are “Authority” Metrics

As both Alexa Rank and Domain Rating were frequently used as general metrics for assessing the authority/importance of a website, it would be natural to think that improving one will lead to improvement in the other.

Correlation Without Causation

Indeed, websites that have good backlinks and high DR also tend to have considerable traffic (and this would increase Alexa Rank) and vice versa. However, this does not necessarily mean that one metric was influencing the other, since in both cases what we had was a response to something else, the popularity of the page itself, as well as its link profile.

General SEO Metric Conflation

For those new to SEO, it’s normal to come across a few metrics that score websites and ask whether they are related and how they influence Google search rankings. Unfortunately, there’s no clear-cut answer, none of these metrics is correlated, since all of them are calculated separately by various companies.

What Actually Influences Domain Rating

Because Alexa rank had no relevance for Domain rating, this is what matters instead:

Number of Unique Referring Domains

The DR metric is strongly influenced by how many unique domains link to your website, rather than by how many backlinks there are overall. The ten links from ten unique domains would add up to DR much more than fifty links from one domain.

Authority of Linking Domains

Links from the high-DR website have more value for your DR score than links from low-DR and new sites. It’s based on the same logic as the PageRank principle.

Link Placement and Dofollow Status

In most cases, do follow links help to increase DR, whereas nofollow links usually do not add this kind of value (though Ahrefs can track and display them regardless).

Overall Link Profile Diversity

A link profile which looks natural, created from many different domains, industries, and different kinds of links will be better received, as compared to a fabricated link profile.

Does Domain Rating Affect Google Rankings?

It is a good additional question: Domain Rating is an Ahrefs metric only, not Google ranking factor. DR is not used in Google’s algorithms, it is Ahrefs independent evaluation of the backlink authority which can be used for competitive benchmarking, but it is not seen or used by Google directly.

Nonetheless, the underlying metric that Domain Rating evaluates, the link-based authority, is really related to Google’s rankings, because backlinks are one of the factors used in Google’s algorithm.

What Should You Actually Focus On for SEO?

Instead of attempting to impact a specific third-party ranking signal, consider working on the real variables that actually impact search visibility:

Genuine and natural backlinks from high-authority sites within your industry
Generating link-worthy and shareable content
SEO health optimization of the website (speed, mobile-friendliness, crawlability)
On-page optimization of targeted keywords
Overall user experience optimization of the website

Domain Rating is a good directional marker for your backlinking progress if tracked correctly, yet it’s one more statistic you can consider amongst others, and not something you should aim at manipulating in any way.

Final Thoughts

Alexa Rank and Domain Rating of Ahrefs were never linked in any way, these were two completely different types of metrics, calculated through absolutely different methods. The correlation that may have existed between these two metrics existed due to the fact that popular and authoritative websites tended to get high ratings on many different metrics, not due to one of these metrics affecting another in any way.

Alexa Rank has become obsolete now, but the lesson is valid nevertheless, be careful with making conclusions about relationships between various third-party metrics without actually knowing how these metrics work. Concentrate on fundamental factors instead of trying to affect certain metrics in your SEO campaigns.