Ten-minute vetting
Free DR checker steps for vetting a directory
Domain Rating is a quick filter, not a verdict. Follow these steps before you pay any directory or link seller, in the order a careful reviewer would.
Directories sold on a big number deserve a second look. DR, short for Domain Rating, is Ahrefs' own score from 0 to 100 for how strong a site's backlink profile looks.
Google does not use it, and neither does it use Moz's Domain Authority, Semrush's Authority Score or Majestic's Trust Flow. They are outside estimates, useful for comparing sites against each other.
That makes a free DR checker a good first filter. Ahrefs publishes a free authority checker for any domain, and its free Webmaster Tools cover sites you own.
The ten-minute vetting run
Read the DR and the trend
Put the domain into a free DR checker. A score that fell sharply over a year deserves a question.
Look at organic traffic
A high DR with almost no organic traffic is typical of a site built to sell links.
Search the site on Google
Type site:domain.com. If few pages show, or the results are all off-topic, walk away.
Open three listing pages
Do real businesses appear, with real details, or is it thousands of near-empty pages?
Scan the outbound links
Dozens of links per page to unrelated trades means your link will sit in a crowd.
Check the price against the numbers
On our marketplace price scales with authority, traffic and niche, so a price far out of line with the row is worth a second look.
Pass or fail card for one directory
- DR and organic traffic both above zero and not collapsing
- Site search returns many indexed pages in a sensible topic
- Listings are moderated, with real addresses and phones
- Outbound links per page are few and relevant
- The directory suits your trade, your city or your language
- You can name who runs it
DR knows nothing about your postcode. A DR 80 national directory may help a plumber less than a DR 30 trade association page that lists members in your county. Relevance and real readers beat the headline number.
Reading the result like a local
Picture two directories, both invented for this page. One has DR 62 and near-zero traffic, while the other has DR 28, a few thousand monthly visits and a clean list of members in your trade.
Pick the second. Readers matter more than the score, and the score only hints at them.
Where several candidates tie, favour the one whose language and niche match your customers, and check that your own page deserves the link, since a thin page wastes a good one.
Why a free checker is enough here
You are not auditing a bank. You want to rule out the obvious bad ones in minutes.
A free checker plus a Google site search plus three opened pages catches most of the junk, and anything that survives all three can go in a basket for a closer look with Semrush or Majestic if you hold an account there.
Doing the same check on our own rows
The marketplace shows DR, organic traffic, referring domains, niche, language and price on every row. Open the link, then check two or three candidates in Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz yourself.
Numbers from different tools will not match. That is normal. Compare like with like.
If you plan to buy high DA backlink placements, choose by the combination, for example a modest DR with real traffic in your niche, rather than DR alone. The teardown of trial offers explains why single numbers mislead.