What Does a Domain Trust Score Really Measure?
A domain trust score measures whichever thing the company selling it decided to measure. Ahrefs DR is link-based only. Semrush blends link strength with estimated organic traffic and spam checks. Majestic scores how close your backlinks sit to a set of sites it trusts.
None of them comes from Google, and one common meaning of the phrase has nothing to do with SEO at all.
So which number should you believe? Why does the same site score 40 on one tool and 25 on another? And what happened to MozTrust?
Key takeaways
- "Domain trust score" gets used for at least three different kinds of score: an SEO backlink metric, a security and reputation score, and structural signals like SSL and domain age.
- No major authority metric is a Google ranking factor. They're vendor estimates built from vendor crawl data.
- MozTrust and MozRank no longer exist. Moz retired both when it launched Link Explorer.
- Ahrefs DR counts followed links only. Semrush Authority Score folds in estimated organic traffic and six spam checks. That's why they disagree.
- Use one score comparatively, against competitors, and never as a target to optimize toward.
What is a domain trust score?
A domain trust score is one of three different things, depending on who's using the phrase. Most pages ranking for it assume one meaning and ignore the rest.
An SEO backlink metric. SE Ranking sells a metric named Domain Trust. Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush and Majestic sell their own versions under different names. All estimate how much authority a site has accumulated through links.
A security and reputation score. This version checks a domain against blacklists, validates its SSL certificate, looks at domain age and WHOIS history, and flags past association with phishing or malware. It answers "is this site a scam", not "will it rank".
Structural trust signals. TLD type, DNS configuration, certificate status, naming structure. If a vendor quoted you a number, establish which of the three they meant.
What does each metric measure?
Five metrics answer five different questions.
Ahrefs Domain Rating is the narrowest and easiest to reason about. Ahrefs defines it as the strength of a backlink profile on a logarithmic scale, driven by how many followed referring domains point at you, how strong those domains are, and how many other sites they link out to. Nofollow links don't pass DR.
Moz Domain Authority answers a different question. Rather than scoring your links, it predicts how likely your domain is to rank. Two sites with similar backlink counts can carry very different DA, because the model weighs the wider profile rather than raw volume.
Semrush Authority Score is the broadest. Semrush describes it as a compound metric from eight weighted factors: link power, organic traffic, and six spam indicators. Those checks look for an unnaturally high share of dofollow domains, referring domains clustered on one IP range, private blog networks, and a mismatch between link volume and traffic.
Majestic splits the question in two on purpose. Trust Flow scores quality by how closely your backlinks connect to a manually reviewed set of trusted seed sites, while Citation Flow scores raw link power regardless of quality. High CF against low TF is the signature of link volume that isn't backed by trusted sources. Majestic also publishes Topical Trust Flow, which breaks the score down by subject category. Ahrefs has no link-based equivalent: its topical authority input derives from the keyword clusters a site ranks for, not from the link graph, and isn't published as a standalone score.
SE Ranking Domain Trust scores backlink quality using PageRank principles, from a database it states holds 2.9 trillion backlinks, and updates multiple times a month. SE Ranking describes the scale as logarithmic from 0 to 100, though its checker page describes the range as 1 to 100.
What happened to MozTrust and MozRank?
Moz retired both metrics. When it rebuilt its link index and launched Link Explorer, Moz dropped MozRank and MozTrust in favor of Domain Authority and Page Authority, saying in its own announcement that it got rid of them because they were old metrics.
MozTrust measured trust by distance from a seed set of trusted sites, much as Majestic's Trust Flow still does. MozRank measured link popularity on a logarithmic 0 to 10 scale. Both ran on the old Mozscape index.
Where the figures still turn up, treat them as historical:
- Old tools and dashboards. Any MozTrust figure in an old report is a snapshot of a metric Moz no longer calculates, however the tool obtained it.
- Expired-domain marketplaces. Listings quoting a minimum MozTrust or MozRank are pricing against a number that no longer exists. Check the backlink profile instead.
- Page score against domain score. Questions about a high page-level MozTrust with a low domain-level one have no live answer. The closest equivalent is comparing Page Authority against Domain Authority.
If you're conflating MozTrust with Trust Flow, they were similar ideas from two companies. Trust Flow is the one that still exists, and it belongs to Majestic.
Why do the scores disagree?
The scores disagree because they measure different things with different data, so agreement would be the surprising outcome.
Different indexes: each vendor runs its own crawler and finds a different set of links, so no two tools score the same profile. Different formulas: Ahrefs scores links, Semrush adds traffic and spam signals, Moz predicts rankings. A site with strong links and thin traffic scores well on DR and worse on AS, by design.
Different curves. Several use nonlinear scales, so a ten-point move doesn't represent the same work at every point. Ahrefs makes the point explicitly: DR 70 to 71 is substantially harder than DR 20 to 21.
A DR 40 and a DA 25 can describe the same site without either tool being wrong.
What counts as a good score?
No threshold works across the board, because these scales are nonlinear and typical ranges vary by industry. The benchmark that means something is the range your direct competitors occupy.
A few per-metric notes help you read a number:
- Ahrefs DR. Logarithmic, so the top of the range is compressed. Anything above 70 means a large followed-referring-domain count, which usually reflects years of earned coverage but can also be bought, so check what the links are.
- Moz DA. Also compressed at the top, and because it's a relative score it moves when your index-visible links change, when other sites' scores shift the scale, or when Moz refreshes its index. Occasional model changes, like Domain Authority 2.0 in 2019, reset scores across the board.
- Semrush AS. A low AS against a healthy DR is the signal to investigate, because the spam checks or the traffic component are pulling it down.
- Majestic TF against CF. The ratio matters more than either number alone.
Run your five closest competitors through whichever tool you pick. If they cluster between 30 and 45 and you're at 20, you have a gap to close. If they're at 25 and you're at 30, something else is your constraint.
Are these Google ranking factors?
No. Every metric on this page is a third-party estimate, built by a tool company from its own crawl data, and Google does not use any of them to rank pages.
That deserves precision, because the point gets overstated in both directions. Google doesn't consume Moz's Domain Authority or Ahrefs' Domain Rating, and neither company claims a pipeline into Google's systems. Ahrefs' own framing is careful: it reports a correlation between DR and keyword rankings, which is a correlation and not a mechanism.
What you can't conclude is that site-level evaluation doesn't exist inside Google. Google's documentation describes page-level and site-wide signals, and confirms link-analysis systems including PageRank remain in the core set. The 2024 Search API leak surfaced an attribute called siteAuthority, though the documents don't establish how heavily it's used, and there's no reason to assume it maps onto DR or DA.
Treat these as instruments, not targets. A thermometer correlates with how hot the room is. Holding a lighter under it doesn't warm the room.
Which score should you use?
Pick one and use it consistently. The tool matters less than not switching mid-analysis.
DR is the cleanest read on raw link-profile strength, useful when assessing a prospective linking domain, though Ahrefs itself cautions that Google ranks pages rather than websites and tells you not to chase DR as a goal. Authority Score is best for spotting a manipulated profile, because the spam checks are built in. Trust Flow against Citation Flow checks whether a large link profile is backed by trusted sources. DA works if your team already uses it.
These scores move mostly when other websites link to you. Nothing you change on your own site moves them directly, which is why technical fixes appear in rankings long before they register in DR. Semrush is the exception: because Authority Score incorporates estimated organic traffic, stronger search performance can move AS with no new referring domains.
So scores move slowly, through work that isn't SEO: original research people cite, tools people reference, being the company that gets quoted. Building topical authority is the durable route.
An agency promising a fixed DR increase is selling link acquisition, not ranking outcomes. That number goes up. The value often doesn't.
FAQs
Is domain trust score the same as domain authority?
No. Domain Trust is SE Ranking's metric and Domain Authority is Moz's. SE Ranking builds its score from backlinks using PageRank principles, while Moz uses a ranking-prediction model, so the same site scores differently on each.
Is MozTrust still measured out of 100?
MozTrust isn't measured at all anymore. Moz retired it alongside MozRank when it launched Link Explorer. MozTrust ran on a logarithmic 0 to 10 scale rather than 0 to 100, which is a frequent source of confusion with Majestic's Trust Flow, which does run 0 to 100 and is still published.
Does Google use domain authority as a ranking factor?
No. Domain Authority is Moz's proprietary metric, and Google does not use it as a ranking signal, the same as every other vendor score here. Any correlation with rankings exists because backlinks feed both the vendor models and Google's own link-analysis systems.
Why is my domain rating different on every tool?
Each vendor crawls the web independently and finds a different set of backlinks, then applies a different formula. Ahrefs scores followed links alone while Semrush adds estimated traffic and spam checks, so the same site can score well on one and poorly on another without either being an error.
How do I check my domain trust score for free?
Most major vendors offer a free checker with limited queries. The more useful exercise is running your top three competitors alongside your own so the number has context. Our guide to beating enterprise brands covers what to do when you're the lower number.
Three questions that settle it
Do your competitors score meaningfully higher than you? Is the gap in referring domains rather than content? And is anyone on your team about to be judged on moving the number?
Two yeses and a no means a link-earning problem worth investing in. A yes to the third means you have a measurement problem first, because a score used as a target stops being a measurement.
If you want the number without a sales call, our domain rating checker is free.
