Website Authority Checker
Powered by Semrush Backlinks
Check the domain authority of any website on a 1–100 scale. Evaluate the Authority Score of your own website, a competitor, or a link building prospect.
For example: google.com, apple.com
- Authority Score from 1–100 for any website
- Total backlinks and referring domains
- Estimated monthly organic traffic
- Backlink and referring domain growth over the last 12 months
- Top pages by backlinks to find viable outreach targets
- Top competitors and their Authority Scores
Need more than a free authority check? Try Semrush Backlinks
How to Check Website Authority
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Enter a domain or website URL in the field above
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Click "Check Authority" to analyze the site for free
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Use the Authority Score to assess any site’s SEO strength
What Is Website Authority?
Website authority is an estimate of a website’s SEO strength and influence on the open web. Website authority is based mostly on the site’s backlink profile: how many other websites link to it and how trusted those sites are.
Websites with higher authority typically rank higher in Google search results and get referenced more often by AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Website authority is not an official metric used by Google, AI search platforms, or other search engines. It’s a concept the SEO industry created to approximate a website’s strength. Even so, authority scores are a practical way to compare websites, assess link building prospects, or track a site’s progress over time.
Different SEO tools calculate authority in different ways. Semrush calls its metric an Authority Score. Moz calls theirs Domain Authority. And Ahrefs calls theirs Domain Rating. All three run from 1 to 100, but the actual numbers differ across tools because each one uses a different formula.
Authority Score vs. Domain Authority vs. Domain Rating
These are different metrics created by different tools to estimate a website’s SEO strength. Here’s what each metric measures and which tool it comes from:
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Authority Score
Authority Score is Semrush’s website authority metric, rated 1 to 100 and calculated using backlink data, organic search traffic, and anti-spam signals. It differs from similar metrics by accounting for real traffic and manipulated link patterns, so websites relying on purchased links or spam tactics generally score lower.
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Domain Authority
Domain Authority is Moz’s authority metric, rated 1 to 100. Domain Authority is calculated using data from their Link Explorer backlink index and a machine-learning model trained to predict how likely a website is to rank in Google search. Moz introduced the concept of domain authority to the SEO industry.
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Domain Rating
Domain Rating is an authority metric from Ahrefs, scored from 1 to 100 and calculated using the quantity and strength of backlinks pointing to a website. It focuses solely on backlink data and doesn’t factor in organic traffic or spam signals.
How We Calculate Authority Score
We calculate Authority Score by combining eight weighted signals that fall into three categories: link power, organic traffic, and spam signals.
- Link power. The quantity and quality of dofollow backlinks pointing to a site, including the authority of the domains those links come from.
- Organic traffic. The estimated monthly search traffic a site receives, based on its keyword rankings and the click potential of each position.
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Spam signals. Six checks that look for signs of manipulation in the backlink profile:
- No keyword rankings in Google’s top 100 results
- An unusually high percentage of dofollow referring domains (over 90%)
- A mismatch between the size of the backlink profile and the amount of organic traffic
- Too many referring domains sharing the same IP address
- Too many referring domains sharing the same IP network
- Another domain with a nearly identical backlink profile
We pull link and traffic data directly from our databases and update Authority Scores for all domains every two weeks.
What Is a Good Website Authority Score?
A good Authority Score depends on your niche, your competition, the authority of your own site, and what you’re trying to do with the information. There’s no single number that counts as “good” for every site.
Scores run on a scale of 1 to 100. Higher scores generally mean a site is more trusted and influential, but a lower score is not automatically bad. A score of 30 might be strong in a small niche and weak in a competitive one.
Generally, a website’s Authority Score is good if it’s higher than or comparable to other sites in the same niche.
If you’re doing outreach or link building, a useful benchmark is your own site’s score. Links from sites with an Authority Score higher than yours will generally help your backlink profile the most.
How to Use Website Authority Scores
Here are five practical ways to use website authority scores:
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Vet outreach prospects before you pitch
Before you email a website about a guest post, link insertion, or partnership, check its website authority to decide if it’s worth reaching out. This saves hours you’d otherwise waste on two types of bad prospects: sites too weak to pass meaningful link value, and sites so strong they’re unlikely to reply.
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Screen incoming link offers before you accept
When someone pitches you a guest post, link exchange, or paid placement, check the pitching site’s Authority Score first. Pass on weak or spammy offers, and accept offers from sites that would strengthen your backlink profile.
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Prioritize your link-building target list
If you have a list of 50 or 500 potential sites, rank them by website authority. Focus your first round of outreach on mid-to-high-scoring sites that match your niche.
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Audit your existing backlink profile
Run your own domain through the tool, then check the Authority Scores of the sites currently linking to you. Flag low-authority or suspicious links that are worth a closer look, and identify your strongest existing links so you can add internal links from those pages to content you want to rank, and earn more links from those same sites.
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Track your own site’s progress over time
Check your own domain every few weeks to see if your SEO work is moving the score. A slowly rising number is a signal that your backlink and content efforts are paying off. A flat or falling score means your current approach isn’t working and needs a rethink.
How to Improve Website Authority
You can improve website authority by earning more high-quality backlinks, growing your organic traffic, and keeping your backlink profile free of spam signals.
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Earn backlinks from more unique referring domains
Getting links from websites that have never linked to you before is the single most effective way to raise your score. Multiple links from the same site won’t help as much. Focus on digital PR, original research, unlinked brand mentions, and broken link building to earn new referring domains.
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Publish content that ranks and attracts links
Write pages that target keywords your audience searches for and that other sites will want to reference. Pages that rank well earn organic traffic and AI visibility, and tend to attract backlinks over time, which improves the inputs to your Authority Score.
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Keep your backlink profile clean
Avoid paid links, link exchanges, private blog networks, and any tactic that creates unnatural patterns. Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool can help you spot and take action on links that hurt your profile.
Domain Authority Alternative
Authority Score is a practical, improved alternative to Domain Authority. You can use it for the same tasks: vetting guest post opportunities, comparing competitors, and qualifying link building prospects.
Domain Authority is based primarily on backlink data. Authority Score also uses backlink data, but it factors in a site’s organic search traffic and six specific checks for spam and manipulation.
A site with a large but manipulated backlink profile, or one with plenty of links but no real search traffic, will score lower with Authority Score than it would with a backlink-only metric. That makes it harder to game and more reflective of how a site actually performs.
You can check any website’s Authority Score using the free tool above. No login or account required.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Website Authority Checker free to use?
Yes, the Website Authority Checker is free to use. You can check a domain’s authority for free, with a limited number of searches per day and no account required.
For more flexibility, deeper insights, and higher usage limits, you can create a free Semrush account or upgrade to a paid plan for full access to advanced features and data.
How often are Authority Scores updated?
Authority Scores are updated every two weeks. This means the score reflects relatively recent changes to a domain’s backlinks, traffic, and overall SEO performance.
If a website gains or loses backlinks, or its traffic changes, those updates will usually be reflected in the next update cycle.
How accurate are Authority Scores?
Authority Scores are very accurate at measuring the balance between backlinks, organic traffic, and spam factors. They are designed to reflect how these signals work together to indicate a domain’s overall SEO strength.
They are also a reliable way to compare one domain against another, benchmark competitors, and track changes over time. While no single metric can capture everything, Authority Score provides a strong, data-driven estimate of relative authority.
Why is my website’s Authority Score lower than I expected?
Your website’s Authority Score may be lower than you expected because it reflects a combination of factors, not just one signal. It takes into account backlink quality and quantity, organic traffic, and potential spam indicators.
Differences can also come from how other tools measure authority, recent changes to your site that have not been reflected yet, or stronger competitors in your niche.
How is Authority Score different from Google’s ranking?
Authority Score is different from Google’s ranking because it is a third-party metric, not a factor used directly by Google to rank pages.
Google uses its own complex systems and signals to rank search results, many of which are not publicly disclosed. Authority Score, on the other hand, combines data like backlinks, organic traffic, and spam signals into a single number to estimate a domain’s overall strength.
While a higher Authority Score often aligns with stronger search performance, it does not guarantee higher rankings. It is best used for comparing websites and tracking SEO progress over time.