What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric created by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search results. It's scored on a 0-100 scale. It is NOT a Google ranking factor — it's a third-party estimation.
DA is calculated based on linking root domains, total number of links, and other factors. A higher DA generally correlates with better rankings, but it's a predictive metric, not a causal one.
Similar metrics: Ahrefs uses Domain Rating (DR), Semrush uses Authority Score. Each uses different algorithms.
Vantacron uses Health Score (0-100) instead — a measure of your site's actual technical health across 200+ factors. Unlike DA, every point in Health Score is tied to specific, fixable issues.
Example
Wikipedia has a DA of 100. A new blog starts at DA 1. Getting from DA 20 to 30 is much easier than getting from 50 to 60. The scale is logarithmic.