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Measurement · Citation & Visibility Measurement

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Definition

Domain Authority (DA) is a proprietary Moz metric scored from 1 to 100 that predicts how likely a domain is to rank in search results, based primarily on the quality and quantity of inbound links pointing to the domain. Domain Authority is a traditional SEO metric that has partial but imperfect relevance to AI search. High-DA domains tend to appear more frequently in AI citations — not because AI systems use DA directly, but because the signals underlying DA (authoritative backlinks, wide third-party citation, established entity presence) correlate with the signals AI systems do use. DA is useful as a rough proxy but should not be the primary metric for AI search optimization work.

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Common Misconception

Domain Authority is a Moz proprietary metric, not a Google metric — Google does not use DA in its ranking or citation systems. Ahrefs’ equivalent metric is Domain Rating (DR); both measure similar things but are calculated differently and are not interchangeable.

Site authority

Trust signal

Backlink

Source credibility

Brand footprint

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AI Search Visibility Assessment Context Map