DR, TF, DA — what the three numbers actually tell you

Every listing on this site shows the same three headline numbers. They come from three different companies measuring three different things, which is exactly why we show all of them instead of blending them into one score.

Domain Rating (Ahrefs)

DR measures the strength of a domain's backlink profile on a 0–100 log scale. It moves fast, it's the number everyone quotes — and it's the easiest to inflate with bulk links. Never read it alone.

Trust Flow (Majestic)

TF measures how close a domain sits to a seed set of manually-reviewed, trusted sites. Links from councils, universities and national press move it; directory networks barely do. That makes it the hardest of the three to manufacture.

The ratio worth learning: a Trust Flow at or above Citation Flow is rare and usually means the domain earned its links rather than bought them. TF far below CF is the classic signature of link-volume spam.

Domain Authority (Moz)

DA predicts ranking ability from the link graph. It's calibrated against real search results, so it's a useful third opinion — we treat DA of 20 or more as the strong tier on our own SEO ranking.

How we colour the chips

The colours are per-metric, so a domain can be green on TF and gray on DR — which is itself information: links that Majestic trusts but Ahrefs hasn't crawled deeply is a very different story from the reverse.