Domain Authority, DR and Yandex SQI: What These Metrics Mean
Basics3 minInnovialabs editorial team
In short
DR and DA are third-party estimates of a link profile that search engines do not use for ranking, while Yandex SQI reflects site usefulness; all three are for rough comparison, not for predicting rankings.
The short answer
DR, DA and SQI each try to express a website's "weight" as a single number, but they are built differently:
- DR (Domain Rating) is an Ahrefs metric. It scores the strength of a domain's backlink profile from 0 to 100.
- DA (Domain Authority) is a Moz metric. It predicts how likely a site is to rank, also on a scale up to 100.
- SQI (ИКС, site quality index) is Yandex's own indicator, shown in Yandex Webmaster.
The key point: Google does not use DR or DA. They are products of third-party tools built on their own link databases. SQI belongs to Yandex, but the company says it is not a direct ranking factor either.
How each metric is calculated
| Metric | Provider | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| DR | Ahrefs | Number and strength of referring domains |
| DA | Moz | A model built on Moz link data |
| Authority Score | Semrush | Links plus traffic estimates and spam signals |
| SQI | Yandex | Audience size, user satisfaction, Yandex's trust in the site |
DR and DA are logarithmic. Moving from 10 to 20 is far easier than from 70 to 80, so comparing "points gained" at different levels makes little sense.
SQI looks beyond links. Yandex considers how many people use the site, how satisfied they are and how the site appears across Yandex services. It is recalculated periodically, not in real time.
Limits to keep in mind
- Different databases, different numbers. Each tool crawls its own sample of the web, so one site can have noticeably different DR and DA.
- Domain-level, not page-level. A strong domain does not guarantee that a specific article will rank.
- Links can be gamed. DR rises from mass links on site networks even when those links carry no real value.
- Topic is ignored. A high-DR film site does little for a building supplies store buying a link there.
- SQI depends on audience. A young but useful site may keep a low SQI simply because it has few visitors yet.
How to use the metrics without mistakes
Treat them as a first-pass filter, not a verdict:
- Compare sites within one niche. It shows how strong competitors are in terms of links.
- Vet link sources before placement. Low DR is a reason to look closer; high DR is not a reason to pay without checking.
- Check traffic and topic. Does the site have a real audience, a matching subject, indexed pages?
- Track your own trend. A sharp drop may signal lost backlinks.
Common mistakes
- Making DR growth the goal of SEO instead of traffic and leads.
- Buying links by the number alone, ignoring donor quality.
- Drawing conclusions about Google rankings from SQI, or the other way round.
- Treating one tool's DR and another tool's DA as equal values.