DA or Domain Authority is a ranking score assigned by Moz. The company developed the search engine ranking score to “guess” how a website will perform within the search results pages. Domain authority metric is a score on a scale of one to a hundred. Owners of new websites use the metric as a guide. Those who already have a domain authority metric assigned by Moz sometimes use it to review its search engine optimization strategy. Any dip or improvement in the metric might indicate how search engine optimization is working.

Domain authority metric is not the same as search engine ranking. The ranking relevant for search engine result pages is not accurately predicted or reflected by domain authority. Domain authority metric is ascertained using several elements. Root domains, backlinks, the niche a website operates in and the targeted keywords, the traffic and the assessed quality of the website determine the domain authority metric.

Domain authority and page authority are also different. There are similarities between domain authority, page authority and search engine ranking. All are specific to the chosen niche or category. The domain authority of a website in a particular industry is not comparable with the metric of a site in another niche. The actual implication of domain authority metric also varies from industry to industry. The metric could be substantially higher in some niches. The metric must be studied and implications must be weighed in depending on the niche a particular website operates in.

Domain authority metric is not used by Google or other major search engines. Their algorithms do not factor in any such metric while ranking specific websites.