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Moz upgrades controversial ‘domain authority’ metric

The company says it has made a lot of improvements, but SEOs still struggle with this hot-button metric.

Barry Schwartz on February 5, 2019 at 2:00 pm

Moz, the popular SEO toolset, announced they have upgraded and improved how they measure their internal metric they call “domain authority,” a score given by Moz that estimates how valuable a certain domain is in terms of how well it might rank in Google or other search engines. According to the company, the upgrade, which rolls out on March 5, is meant to create a more trustworthy measurement by better weeding out paid and spammy links designed to game the metric.

Domain authority is not a score by Google, and the search giant does not use it to determine ranking. Furthermore, many SEOs have said it causes confusion in the field.

Over the years, especially since Google killed their visible PageRank scores, some in the SEO community have used “DA,” as some call domain authority, as a substitute to Google’s own toolbar PageRank metric, even though the Moz metric has no connection with Google.

What is domain authority? Moz defines it as “a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.”

What changed with domain authority? Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist at Moz described how the company made several technical changes to how they calculate domain authority. “We can remove spam, improve correlations, and, most importantly, update Domain Authority relative to all the changes that Google makes,” they added.

Here is what he said changed:

Training set: Domain Authority is better at understanding sites which don’t rank for any keywords at all than it has in the past.
Training algorithm: Rather than relying on a complex linear model, Moz switched to a neural network. This offers several benefits including a much more nuanced model which can detect link manipulation.
Model factors: Domain authority doesn’t just look at link counts, Moz added Spam Score and complex distributions of links based on quality and traffic, along with a bevy of other factors.
Index. Moz has an index of 35 trillion links.

Does it matter? As I hinted to above, in many cases domain authority can be a distraction for SEOs. I way too often seen novice SEOs focused on the Moz DA score, asking even Google representatives how they can improve their DA score on their web site. Improving a DA score has no direct relationship to improving your rankings in Google. Even when PageRank was around, focusing too much on Google’s own PageRank metrics often was a distraction to SEOs. That is why Google killed PageRank, or at least the visible score, from being displayed to SEOs.

Resources on SEO tools

Community reaction. I asked the SEO community what they think about domain authority, and you can see for yourself the controversy.

SEO community: What do you think about DA? Good or bad for the community and why? https://t.co/KEZsD93xyO
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) February 5, 2019

Here are some of the responses:

I just want accurate and actual link numbers, not this rounded b.s. they’re giving us. DA could die for all I care.
— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) February 5, 2019

Useless made up metric hardly standing for anything
— IrishWonder (@IrishWonder) February 5, 2019

It’s good-ish. It’s another metric that provides additional information about the status/health of a site in search, but even with a lot of good minds behind it, Google still controls a key piece of DA. For the industry is bad as may be taken as a Google signal
— Blas Giffuni (@BGiffuni) February 5, 2019

DA is OK …
I just wish more people understood that it is Purely a metric for Popularity,
NOT Quality (same issue as PR).
Far to many leap to the conclusion that a low score means the site isn’t worth their attention, which is simply not true.
— Lyndon NA (Darth Autocrat) (@darth_na) February 5, 2019

Agreed. DA is just a made up metric by @moz.
— Bill Hartzer (@bhartzer) February 5, 2019

The problem is that there are so many guys selling DA 30-40 links for 50$ each and so many fall for that, but behind those DA 40 links are GSA spammed domain and later buyers wonder why they received Google Manual action. Tl’dr – DA is an excellent way to cheat newbies.
— Elvis Meisters (@ElvisMeisters) February 5, 2019

“It depends” how you use it.
Great when coupled with other metrics for a more wholistic view of a site. Terrible/misleading on its own.
— bwelks (@bwelks_) February 5, 2019

I always tell people it’s not a ranking factor, etc. However, it is handy when explaining to them that trust and good information is important. It’s one of those “candy” metrics that looks good to the client or helps get the point across that something is wrong.
— Stevie Howard (@MyMktingSense) February 5, 2019

Color me skeptical. We’ve been seeing less and less relevance in DA as of late.
— Jason Landry (@thebiganvil) February 5, 2019

After PR shutdown , DA was the only option . Happy to know about it’s new update.
— Sunny Ujjawal (@sunnykujjawal) February 5, 2019

I don’t care about DA, PA and I suggest other SEO’s to that as well. It’s too easy to manipulate with. I can make DA 40 site with a 50$ budget. #seo #mozsucks
They better improve their overall service not their DA,PA, Spam Score bullshit.
— Elvis Meisters (@ElvisMeisters) February 5, 2019

Depends. At best its a non-issue because you’ve educated your client / employer that DA is a fake metric that has no relation to anything Google does. 1/2
— Larry Madill (@larrymadill) February 5, 2019

Moz responses. Russ Jones from Moz responded to some of the feedback:

Yep, and the new DA addresses that. We are able to devalue link sellers, link buyers, comment spam, link islands, links from untrafficked sites, and a whole bunch more link schemes. It is truly a dramatic change.
— Russ Jones (@rjonesx) February 5, 2019

Well, the Spam Score is a measurement of likelihood of being deindexed or penalized, and it is totally based on on-site metrics (not links). Most people get confused and think it detects link spam. It doesnt and it isn’t supposed to.
— Russ Jones (@rjonesx) February 5, 2019

Are you referring to the old spam score which was on a scale of like 0-14? We rewrote spam score completely and it is on a 0-100 scale now (has been for quite a while).
— Russ Jones (@rjonesx) February 5, 2019

Oh, and it is about to get a helluva lot better. The new DA can pick out link sellers, link buyers, comment spammers, link island networks, and a whole lot more. I am super proud of it.
— Russ Jones (@rjonesx) February 5, 2019

P1. This is silly. Google uses a variety of machine learned models which take into account a variety of raw metrics. The “hidden layers” of a neural network very well could establish a domain authority type model and we would be none the wiser.
— Russ Jones (@rjonesx) February 5, 2019

Russ also wrote a more detailed blog post on his blog named “in defense of domain authority.”

Google’s reaction: Google did not say much about this news. John Mueller from Google responded to a tweet from a former Googler’s named Pedro Dias:

What’s the DA weather report say?
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 5, 2019

In short, John is trying to be funny and maybe even mock the Mozcast search ranking fluctuations report. Google overall doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of domain authority based on their comments over the years. Google had to deny domain authority as a Google metric for years. And the fact that Google removed toolbar PageRank scores shows they prefer that SEOs not focus on any link-based metric score.

Final thoughts. The biggest issue with domain authority is the lack of understanding within parts of the community about the score. Too many SEOs feel the score comes from Google. Even those that know it is a Moz only score, may use that score to buy links, which is against Google’s guidelines. Google has been trying hard to push SEOs and webmasters away from looking at single metrics and looking at building overall better sites and user experiences. Focusing too much on link metrics can cloud one’s judgment and provide a distraction. But if you fully understand what Moz’ domain authority metric does, having another data point on your side can be useful — if used properly.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.