Glossary
Domain Authority is a third-party tool's prediction of how likely a site is to rank, expressed as a score. It is a vendor metric, not a search engine one, and no search engine uses it.
A score produced by a company that also sells the tool measuring it is a model of ranking, built from a crawl of the web that is necessarily partial. It correlates with performance because it is built to, not because search engines consult it.
Comparing your score to a competitor's gives a rough sense of relative link profile. Setting a goal of raising it invites buying the links that raise the score, which is precisely the behaviour that carries penalty risk.
A rising score with flat enquiries describes an improved model input, not an improved business.
No. It is a metric produced by third-party tool vendors, modelled from their own crawl of the web. Search engines have their own internal signals and do not consult it.
No. Targeting a modelled score encourages buying the inputs to that model, which is the behaviour carrying the most penalty risk. Target the commercial outcome instead.
Domain Authority is a third-party tool's prediction of how likely a site is to rank, expressed as a score. It is a vendor metric, not a search engine one, and no search engine uses it.
