DA PA Checker
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About DA PA Checker
You are evaluating a guest post opportunity. The site looks clean, the niche is relevant, and the editor responds quickly. But before you write a single word for their audience, one question matters: does a link from this domain actually carry SEO value? The answer lives in three numbers — Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Spam Score — and you can read them in five seconds.
The DigitalSub Pro DA PA Checker retrieves these metrics for any domain you enter: Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), MozRank, Spam Score, and total backlink count. Together, these numbers give you a fast, standardised read on a website's link equity, trustworthiness, and competitive strength — whether you are vetting an outreach target, benchmarking against a competitor, auditing a new client's site, or simply tracking your own authority growth over time.
This page goes beyond showing you where to find the numbers. It explains what each metric actually measures, why DA is not a Google ranking factor but is still genuinely useful, how the logarithmic scale means the jump from DA 20 to 30 is very different from 70 to 80, what the Spam Score thresholds mean in practice, and exactly how to improve DA with strategies that actually work in 2025.
- What the DA PA Checker Shows
- Every Metric Explained: DA, PA, MozRank, Spam Score
- How Domain Authority Is Calculated
- DA Score Ranges — What Good, Average, and Low Actually Means
- The Critical Truth: DA Is NOT a Google Ranking Factor
- DA vs Ahrefs DR vs Semrush Authority Score
- Spam Score Decoded — When to Act and When to Ignore
- The 5 Most Valuable Ways to Use DA PA Data
- How to Use the Tool
- How to Actually Improve Your Domain Authority
- Who Uses This Tool
- Pro Tips for Reading DA PA Data
- Related Tools
- Frequently Asked Questions
What the DA PA Checker Shows You
Enter any domain and the tool returns a complete authority snapshot in seconds. Here is what a typical result looks like — and what each number represents.
Sample result only. Your domain's live data is fetched when you run the check. Moz updates these metrics approximately monthly.
Every Metric Explained — DA, PA, MozRank, and Spam Score
Each metric the tool returns measures something distinct about a website's link profile and authority. Understanding what each one actually measures — and what it does not — is the difference between using these numbers as a blunt filter and using them as a precise diagnostic tool.
Domain Authority — Overall Site-Level Strength
Domain Authority is Moz's logarithmically scaled score (1–100) that predicts how likely a domain as a whole is to rank in search engine results. It is computed by a machine learning model trained on millions of search results, incorporating the total number of linking domains, link quality signals, MozRank, MozTrust, and spam factors. The logarithmic scale means the jump from DA 10 to DA 20 takes far less effort than DA 70 to DA 80 — improvements become progressively harder as you climb. DA is a relative comparative metric: what constitutes a "good" score depends entirely on your competitive landscape, not on the number in isolation.
Page Authority — Individual Page-Level Strength
Page Authority uses the same 1–100 logarithmic scale as DA but measures the ranking strength of a specific page rather than the domain as a whole. A high-DA site can have individual pages with very low PA — particularly new articles that have not yet earned backlinks. Conversely, a low-DA site can have one or two pages with high PA if those specific pages have attracted quality inbound links over time. PA is particularly useful for guest post evaluation: a DA 80 site that publishes your guest post on a freshly created page with PA 1 delivers far less link value than a PA 45 page on a DA 50 site.
MozRank — Link Popularity Score
MozRank is Moz's logarithmically scaled 10-point measure of a page's link popularity — how many links point to it and how popular those linking pages are themselves. It is one of the foundational signals that feeds into both DA and PA calculations. MozRank is similar in concept to Google's original PageRank: a page that attracts many links from highly-linked pages will have a higher MozRank. It works alongside MozTrust (which measures how close a site's link profile is to trusted seed domains like .gov and .edu sites) to form Moz's view of a domain's overall link quality.
Spam Score — Link Profile Health Indicator
Spam Score is a Moz-developed percentage (0–100%) that indicates how closely a site's characteristics resemble those of websites that have been penalised or banned by search engines. It is based on 27 features that Moz found to correlate with penalised sites — such as thin content, suspicious anchor text patterns, links from known spam networks, and manipulative linking behaviour. Crucially, Spam Score does not directly cause penalties — it is a diagnostic indicator, not a trigger. A high score warrants investigation, not panic. Full interpretation in the Spam Score section below.
How Domain Authority Is Calculated
Moz does not publish the exact formula for DA — like Google's algorithm, the specific weights and signals are proprietary. But Moz has disclosed the high-level framework, and from industry analysis we understand the primary factors with reasonable confidence.
One of the most important practical implications of this model: the number of unique root domains linking to you matters far more than the raw number of backlinks. Ten links from ten different high-quality websites grow your DA significantly more than one hundred links from ten different pages on one website. This is why link-building strategies focused on link diversity — reaching new domains rather than accumulating more links from existing ones — are what actually move the DA needle.
The machine learning model is re-trained approximately monthly, which is why your DA score can change without you doing anything. Moz's model changes, the broader web's authority landscape shifts, and your relative position within it fluctuates. A DA drop of 1–3 points between checks is often the model recalibrating — not evidence of a penalty or a problem with your site.
DA Score Ranges — What Good, Average, and Low Actually Means
DA score ranges are widely referenced in SEO, but the most important caveat is almost always omitted: what counts as a "good" DA is entirely relative to your competitive landscape. A DA of 31 may be excellent for ranking in a niche local market; the same score may be completely insufficient for competing against DA 80+ sites in a national or global market. Read these ranges as directional guidance, not absolute targets.
Very Low
Low
Average
Good
Excellent
New or undeveloped sites with few or no external backlinks. Expected for fresh domains. Focus is on establishing basics: clean site structure, quality content, first backlinks from local directories and relevant communities.
Sites with some backlink history but limited reach. Can rank competitively in low-competition niches and local searches. Research from Authority Hacker shows niche-focused sites reach DA 40 in an average 18 months from launch.
The average DA for most active websites across industries falls in this range. Competitive for mid-difficulty keywords. Sites with DA 30–45 regularly outrank higher-DA competitors when they show stronger topical depth and content relevance.
Strong authority — these sites compete effectively for high-volume, competitive keywords. Typically established brands, media publications, major industry blogs, or sites with consistent link-building for 3+ years. Highly sought-after for guest post placements.
Major publishers, established platforms, global brands, universities, and government sites. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Wikipedia, the BBC — all sit at 90+. Getting here requires years of consistent link acquisition from top-tier sources. The logarithmic scale means improving from 70 to 80 is vastly harder than 20 to 30.
The right way to use these ranges: check the DA of the top 5 pages ranking for your target keywords. That tells you the actual competitive bar you need to clear — not any generic benchmark. If top-ranking pages average DA 45, a DA 31 site with superior content and better topical relevance is genuinely competitive. If they average DA 85, a DA 31 site faces a significantly steeper climb.
The Critical Truth: DA Is NOT a Google Ranking Factor
This is the most important section on this page — and the one most commonly glossed over in DA PA discussions. Google does not use Domain Authority as a ranking signal. Moz is a third-party company. Google has not licensed DA, does not reference it, and has explicitly confirmed it uses its own internal signals that are separate from any third-party metric.
Google has its own internal equivalent — PageRank — but has not made this publicly accessible since 2016. The publicly visible DA is Moz's best attempt to model a proxy for ranking strength based on observable signals. It correlates with Google rankings because both Moz and Google weight similar underlying factors (quality backlinks, link diversity, site authority). But correlation is not causation, and chasing a DA number is not the same as doing the things that actually improve rankings.
So why does DA still matter? Because it is a fast, standardised, comparative number that helps you make better decisions in three specific contexts — none of which require it to be a direct Google signal:
- Outreach qualification: Quickly filtering dozens of potential link targets by authority before investing time in personalised pitches
- Benchmarking: Tracking whether your link-building efforts are moving your site's overall authority in the right direction over months and years
- Competitive analysis: Understanding the authority gap between your site and competitors ranking above you for target keywords
Used as a filter and a benchmark — not as a target in itself — DA is a genuinely valuable tool. Used as a goal ("we need to reach DA 50 by Q2") disconnected from actual ranking and traffic outcomes, it is a distraction that pulls effort away from the work that actually matters.
DA vs Ahrefs DR vs Semrush Authority Score — How They Differ
Three of the most widely used SEO platforms each have their own domain authority metric — and they often produce very different scores for the same domain. Understanding why they differ prevents the confusion that comes from switching between tools and seeing different numbers for your site.
| Feature | Moz DA | Ahrefs DR | Semrush Authority Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scale | 1–100 (logarithmic) | 0–100 (logarithmic) | 0–100 (logarithmic) |
| Primary signal | Quality of linking root domains (Moz index) | Number and quality of referring domains (Ahrefs index) | Backlinks + organic traffic + spam signals (combined) |
| Crawl index size | 45.5T links, 1B domains | 34.4T links, 3.5B domains | 43T links (varies) |
| Update frequency | ~Monthly | ~Daily (Ahrefs crawls constantly) | ~Weekly |
| Spam detection | Yes — Spam Score | Partial — toxicity labels since 2026 | Yes — Toxicity Score |
| Same domain score (example: nytimes.com) | DA 95 | DR 93 | AS 87 |
| Best use case | Quick outreach filtering, industry standard reference | Link prospecting, competitor backlink analysis | Holistic authority view including traffic signals |
| Free access | Yes (limited free lookups) | Limited (Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) | Limited (free account) |
The key practical point: these metrics are designed to be compared within the same tool against competitors — not cross-tool. A Moz DA of 45 and an Ahrefs DR of 45 are not directly equivalent numbers. Always benchmark your DA against competitors using the same source, so you are comparing apples to apples.
Spam Score Decoded — When to Act and When to Ignore It
Spam Score is one of the most misread metrics in SEO. Many site owners see a Spam Score above 1% and immediately panic, assuming they are in imminent danger of a Google penalty. In the vast majority of cases, this is not how Spam Score works or what it predicts. Here is the honest breakdown.
Spam Score is a percentage derived from 27 site characteristics that Moz found correlated with websites that had been penalised or removed from Google's index. It is calculated per domain — not per link. A Spam Score of 25% does not mean 25% of your links are spam; it means Moz's model gives your domain a 25% similarity to penalised sites across its 27 signals.
The majority of legitimate websites fall here. No action required. A score in this range is entirely normal and does not indicate any spam-related problem. Continue building quality backlinks and ignore this number unless it changes dramatically.
Warrants a backlink audit — not because a penalty is imminent, but because something in your link profile is triggering multiple Moz spam signals. Review your backlink profile for suspicious patterns: unnatural anchor text concentration, links from clearly low-quality sites, or sudden link spikes.
Strong signal that your link profile has characteristics highly correlated with penalised sites. Conduct a thorough backlink audit, identify toxic or manipulative links, consider submitting a Google disavow file for the worst offenders. A score this high alongside a ranking drop is a combination worth taking seriously.
Important nuance: many large, well-known brands have Spam Scores in the medium range (30–60%) without any penalty — because Spam Score flags certain site characteristics (very high link volumes, broad keyword-rich anchor text, large numbers of low-DA sites linking in) that are common to large brands, not just spam sites. Always interpret Spam Score alongside DA, backlink quality, and actual ranking performance — never in isolation.
Spam Score on Sites You Are Considering Linking From
When evaluating guest post targets or link-building prospects, Spam Score is a useful secondary filter. Sites with Spam Score above 30% alongside a low DA (under 20) and suspicious linking patterns are generally poor outreach targets. The link equity they pass may be devalued, and association with spammy sites in your backlink profile can eventually drag down your own metrics. A useful threshold for outreach: prefer sites with DA 20+ and Spam Score under 30%.
The 5 Most Valuable Ways to Use DA PA Data
Guest Post & Outreach Qualification
Before investing time writing a guest post or pursuing a link from any site, run it through the DA PA Checker. A minimum threshold of DA 20+ and Spam Score under 30% filters out the lowest-value targets quickly. For high-competition niches, many SEOs use DA 40+ as a baseline. The PA of the specific page where your link will live is often more important than the domain DA for estimating the link value you receive.
Competitor Benchmarking
Check the DA of the top 5 domains ranking for your most valuable target keywords. The DA gap between your site and theirs is a rough proxy for the authority disadvantage you need to close. If competitors average DA 55 and you are at DA 32, you know link-building is the priority. If your DA matches or exceeds theirs but you still rank below them, content quality, on-page SEO, or technical factors are the limiting constraint — not authority.
Tracking Link-Building Progress
DA is a useful lagging indicator of whether your link-building programme is working over time. Check your DA monthly and plot it alongside the number of new referring domains you acquire. If your referring domains are growing consistently but DA is static, you may be acquiring links from domains that are too low in authority to move the needle. If DA is growing, the programme is compounding correctly.
New Client Onboarding Baseline
When taking on a new SEO client, the DA PA Checker is one of the first tools to run. It establishes a baseline: current authority, spam risk, referring domain count. This baseline becomes the before-state against which your work is measured. It also immediately surfaces clients with high Spam Scores who may need a disavow campaign before link-building can begin effectively.
Domain Purchase Due Diligence
When buying an aged domain or an expired domain, DA and Spam Score are two of the first metrics to check. A domain with DA 35 and Spam Score 75% has likely been used for spam and carries penalisation risk. A domain with DA 40 and Spam Score 8% is a much cleaner candidate. Always pair this check with a Wayback Machine content review and backlink profile audit before purchasing any domain for its authority.
Validating Link-Building Agency Results
If you are paying an agency for link-building services, use the DA PA Checker to independently verify the quality of every site they place a link on. An agency reporting "25 new backlinks this month" is meaningless without knowing the DA, PA, and Spam Score of each placement. Quick checking reveals whether you are getting DA 35+ placements on clean sites or DA 5 placements on spam-adjacent link farms.
How to Use the DA PA Checker
Enter Any Domain
Type or paste any domain name — no https:// needed. For page-level checks, enter the full page URL to get that specific page's PA score.
Submit the Check
Click Submit. The tool queries Moz's link data API and returns live DA, PA, MozRank, Spam Score, and backlink count for the entered URL.
Read the Metrics
Review all four numbers together — not just DA. A high-DA site with high Spam Score is a warning sign. A medium-DA site with low Spam Score and high PA on the linking page may offer better value.
Compare and Decide
Use the numbers relative to your own site's metrics and to competitors. The raw score is less useful than the gap between your DA and the sites you want to rank alongside.
How to Actually Improve Your Domain Authority
Domain Authority is a lagging indicator — it reflects the cumulative result of link-building, content, and technical SEO work done over months and years. There is no quick shortcut to meaningful DA improvement. But there is a clear sequence of actions that produces consistent, compounding growth.
The single most impactful DA lever is the number of unique domains linking to you. Getting 100 links from 100 different domains grows DA far faster than 1,000 links from 10 domains. Structure your outreach to maximise new domain acquisition — not repeat links from existing sources. Track referring domain growth as your primary link-building KPI, not total backlink count.
Generic blog posts rarely attract editorial backlinks. Original research, data studies, comprehensive guides, free tools, and proprietary benchmark reports do. Every publication that cites your statistic or references your research creates a backlink without any outreach on your part. Publishing one substantial linkable asset per quarter — backed by genuine data or unique insight — consistently outperforms high-volume generic blogging for DA growth. Our own free tools on this platform are examples of the same principle: tools earn links because they are useful, not because we asked for them.
Guest posts on sites with DA 30+ in your niche contribute meaningfully to DA growth. Guest posts on DA 5 link farms contribute almost nothing and add Spam Score risk. A single guest post on a DA 60 site in your industry is worth more than fifty posts on low-quality sites. Use the DA PA Checker to vet every target before pitching — and check the PA of the specific page your content will live on, not just the domain DA.
If your Spam Score is above 40% alongside flat or declining DA, a toxic link audit is warranted. Use Google Search Console's link report to identify sources of suspicious links, cross-reference with Moz's spam signals, and submit a disavow file through Google Search Console for confirmed toxic domains. Removing the drag from a spammy link profile allows the quality links you are building to have their full positive effect on DA.
Any backlink pointing to a page on your site that now returns a 404 is link equity being discarded. Use a broken link checker to identify 404 pages that have external links pointing to them, set up 301 redirects to the most relevant current pages, and you instantly reclaim equity that was already earned but being wasted. This is often the fastest and cheapest DA improvement action because the relationship (the link) already exists — you just need to make it work again.
Legitimate DA growth from quality link acquisition typically shows in Moz's metrics within 4–8 weeks of the links going live, as Moz's crawler discovers and indexes them. Significant DA movement — from DA 25 to DA 40, for example — typically requires 12–24 months of consistent, quality link acquisition. The logarithmic scale means the same number of new linking domains produces a larger DA increase at DA 20 than at DA 60. Measure progress quarterly, not weekly, to avoid chasing noise in monthly fluctuations.
Pro Tips for Reading DA PA Data Accurately
5 Ways to Get More Value From Every DA Check
- Always check PA alongside DA for link-building decisions. A site with DA 70 might publish your guest post on a brand-new page with PA 1. A site with DA 35 might give you a link on a long-established article with PA 40. The PA of the actual linking page often determines more of the link's value than the domain's DA. Check both before committing to any outreach.
- Use DA as a comparative metric, never an absolute target. "We want to reach DA 50" is a poor goal. "We want our DA to match or exceed the sites ranking for our top-10 target keywords" is a useful goal. Always benchmark your DA against your specific competitors — not industry averages or arbitrary round numbers.
- Do not panic over small monthly DA fluctuations. Moz updates its model approximately monthly. A 1–3 point DA drop between consecutive checks is usually model recalibration, not evidence of a penalty or link loss. Only investigate drops of 5+ points or drops that coincide with Google algorithm update dates or a recent site change you made.
- Check referring domain count alongside DA for a fuller picture. Two sites can have the same DA (say, 40) with very different backlink profiles — one with 500 referring domains and one with 5,000. The site with 500 high-quality domains is often more authoritative in practice than the one with 5,000 low-quality domains despite the matching DA score. Referring domain count and their individual quality tells you more about link profile health than DA alone.
- For domain purchases, always pair DA/PA with Wayback Machine and backlink audit. A DA 40 domain with clean Spam Score might still have a toxic history that Moz's spam signals have not fully captured. Historical content on the Wayback Machine and a backlink quality audit with Ahrefs or Semrush are non-negotiable supplements to DA PA checking for any domain you intend to buy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Real questions from SEOs, bloggers, and site owners about Domain Authority, Page Authority, and how to use them effectively.
Is Domain Authority a Google ranking factor?
No. Google has explicitly confirmed it does not use Moz's Domain Authority as a ranking signal. DA is a Moz proprietary metric — a third-party estimate of ranking strength based on Moz's own link index and machine learning model. Google uses its own internal signals, including the original PageRank algorithm (which is no longer publicly visible), quality rater guidelines, and hundreds of other factors.
DA correlates with rankings because both Moz's model and Google's algorithm weight similar underlying factors — quality backlinks from authoritative sources. But correlation is not causation. A DA increase does not directly cause better rankings; rather, both DA and better rankings tend to improve together when you earn quality links from relevant, authoritative sites. Focus on the underlying activities (earning quality links, publishing excellent content) rather than on moving the DA number itself.
My DA dropped suddenly without me doing anything. What happened?
Several things can cause a DA drop without any action on your part:
- Moz algorithm update: Moz periodically updates its DA calculation model. When the model changes, scores across the entire web recalibrate — your score may drop even if your actual link profile improved, simply because the weighting of signals changed.
- Lost backlinks: If sites that linked to you have removed or changed those links, your referring domain count drops, which can affect DA. This is particularly common when linking sites close down, change their content, or go through migrations.
- Competitor gains: DA is a relative metric. If your competitors are acquiring links faster than you are, the entire competitive landscape shifts, and your comparative score can drop even if your absolute link metrics improved.
- Moz index changes: Moz's crawler discovers and loses links constantly. If Moz's most recent crawl happened to miss some of your existing links, they temporarily disappear from the count.
A drop of 1–5 points warrants monitoring but rarely requires immediate action. A drop of 10+ points or a drop that coincides with a Google algorithm update date is worth investigating in more detail — check your backlink profile for lost linking domains and your site health for any technical issues.
What is a good DA for a new website?
A brand new domain starts at DA 1 (or sometimes 0 until Moz first crawls it). This is completely expected and normal — every website that exists started here, including Google.com. A new site's DA trajectory over its first 24 months typically looks like: DA 1–5 in the first 3 months, rising to DA 10–20 by the end of year one with consistent content publishing and some basic outreach. Reaching DA 25–35 by the end of year two is achievable with an active link-building programme.
The more useful question than "what is a good DA for a new site" is: what DA do I need to compete for my target keywords? Check the DA of the top 5 organic results for your most important keywords. That is your actual benchmark — and it varies enormously by niche. In some niche markets, DA 20 is sufficient to rank on page one. In competitive global markets, DA 60+ may be needed just to appear on page two.
Can I improve DA quickly by buying backlinks?
Technically, bought links can move DA — Moz's algorithm does not distinguish paid from earned links in the same way Google tries to. A cluster of backlinks from medium-DA sites, even if paid, will show up in Moz's index and can move the score.
The serious risks make this a very poor strategy in practice: Google's spam detection is sophisticated and specifically designed to detect and ignore (or penalise) purchased link patterns. Any DA movement from bought links is not accompanied by the actual ranking improvements you want — because Google is either ignoring those links or devaluing them. Worse, if Google identifies your link profile as manipulative, you risk a manual penalty that can take months and significant effort to recover from. The combination of no ranking benefit + potential penalty + wasted budget makes link buying one of the highest-risk, lowest-return SEO investments available.
How is DA different from PA — and which one should I focus on?
Domain Authority (DA) measures the ranking strength of the entire domain as a whole. Page Authority (PA) measures the ranking strength of a specific individual page. Both use the same 1–100 logarithmic scale and are calculated by similar machine learning models, but they capture different levels of your site's authority structure.
Which to focus on depends on your goal: for overall site health and competitive benchmarking, DA is the relevant metric. For evaluating the value of a specific link (e.g., the PA of the page where your guest post will live), PA is more relevant. For identifying your own site's strongest pages for internal linking priority — the pages best positioned to pass authority internally — PA gives you page-level data DA cannot.
In practice: monitor your domain's DA over time as your primary authority metric, and use PA when making specific decisions about individual pages — either yours or a site you are considering linking from.
How often does Moz update DA and PA scores?
Moz updates its Link Explorer index continuously as its crawler discovers and processes links across the web. However, the DA and PA scores recalculate and are publicly refreshed approximately once per month as part of a formal update cycle. This is significantly less frequent than Ahrefs (which updates DR nearly daily) or Semrush (which updates Authority Score weekly).
The practical implication: if you earn significant backlinks this week, you may not see the DA impact reflected for 3–6 weeks, depending on when Moz's crawler visits the linking sites and when the next recalculation cycle runs. This lag is worth understanding when reporting DA progress to clients — a month of strong link-building may not show in DA for another 4–8 weeks.
Is the DA PA Checker free? Any limits?
Yes — completely free with no account required, no sign-up, and no usage limits. Check as many domains as you need at no cost. This applies to all 47 free tools on DigitalSub Pro — there is no premium tier, no daily cap, and no paywall on any feature.