DR stands for Domain Rating, a metric created by Ahrefs to measure the overall strength of a website's backlink profile. It runs from 0 to 100, where higher scores mean the domain has more high-quality backlinks pointing to it from other authoritative sites. DR is logarithmic, so jumping from DR 20 to DR 30 is easier than going from DR 70 to DR 80. DR correlates loosely with ranking potential because Google uses backlinks as a core ranking signal, but DR itself is not a Google metric. It's Ahrefs' interpretation of link equity. A site with DR 65 generally has more ranking firepower than one at DR 35, but DR alone doesn't guarantee rankings. Content relevance, technical health, and user signals matter just as much. Other tools have similar metrics. Moz uses Domain Authority (DA), and Semrush has Authority Score. None of these are official Google metrics, but agencies and SEOs use them as shorthand for competitive benchmarking. If you're in a competitive vertical like legal or finance in Toronto, you're often competing against sites with DR 50–70+. For local service businesses in Ottawa, DR 20–40 can be enough if your on-page and local signals are dialed in. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we track DR across our 500+ domain portfolio to identify which sites have enough authority to rank for competitive commercial keywords versus which need more link-building work. DR moves slowly, it's not something you fix in a month. Building from DR 10 to DR 40 might take 6–18 months of consistent outreach, guest posts, and earning editorial links. Watch out for artificially inflated DR from PBNs or spammy link schemes. Ahrefs counts links mechanically, it doesn't filter manipulation the way Google does. A site can show DR 50 but still be penalized in actual search results. Always cross-check DR with organic traffic trends in Ahrefs or GSC before assuming a domain is genuinely strong.