Can you trust the site authority metric?
Well, to put it bluntly, if you’re making any decisions based solely on Domain Authority, you’re building your strategy on a lie.
DA is not real authority, it’s a made-up number created by Moz to estimate what Google might think. It’s guesswork.
DA is just a sales weapon for shady link vendors and lazy marketers who don’t understand how search actually works.
If you’re relying on DA to judge a site, a backlink, or your own progress, you’re being misled, and you’re doing it wrong.
Domain Authority Is Not a Google Metric
Domain Authority (DA) is not part of Google’s algorithm. Never has been.
It’s a third-party score invented by Moz to estimate a domain’s potential to rank, which based on their own backlink data and models.
Ahrefs uses Domain Rating (DR). SEMrush uses Authority Score.
None of these are real ranking signals. They’re proxies, at best.
If you’re treating DA as gospel, you’re building strategy on something Google doesn’t even look at.
Google still uses PageRank, a real, internal trust metric based on complex link structure, topical signals, and much more.
You don’t get access to it anymore, those days are gone, and that’s why tools invented their own scoring systems.
With these scores, remember, you’re seeing a simulation.
A guess.
A thermometer pointed in the general direction of your domain.
DA is like trying to measure muscle mass with a bathroom scale.
Wrong tool.
You Can Easily Fake DA
DA can be manipulated, fast.
People buy expired domains, build spammy link networks to pump up the score, and sell “high-DA” guest posts that offer zero SEO value.
Simply put, you can buy enough high DA links from these sites that have faked a high DA, which will then turn your site into a fake high DA website.
See? And what if I told you, that your new fake DA won’t gain you any boosts in Google eye’s, at all?
You pay $$$ for a link from a site with no traffic, no trust, and no real authority, but it looks good on a report, That’s how people get scammed.
Or worse, you buy backlink packages from Fiverr and wonder why your site doesn’t go anywhere except for backwards.
And link sellers cash in.
They sell you a DA 60 blog with zero rankings, zero organic traffic, and articles indexed in /trash/ subfolders.
And people buy them, thinking they’re “high quality.”
They’re not. They’re digital landfill.
Agencies Use DA to Inflate Value – And It Works
Plenty of agencies and link sellers still pitch link building packages with “DA guarantees.” They know it sells. It sounds quantifiable. It sounds important.
But It’s neither.
You’ll get:
- Guest posts on irrelevant sites
- Links buried in content nobody reads
- Pages that don’t get crawled or indexed
- Traffic-less domains with propped-up metrics
But it hits the DA number, so it must be good, right?
Wrong.
Here’s what Google actually values:
- Relevance — topical alignment between linking and linked pages
- Context — natural link placement within useful, readable content
- Traffic — signals that the linking site is alive and used by humans
- Indexation — if Google doesn’t index it, it doesn’t count
- Crawlability — links that Googlebot can access and interpret properly
A DA 5 link on a website with actual traffic and some rankings will outperform a fake DA 80 sidebar link.
Every time.
Track What Actually Matters
If you’re serious about SEO, drop the vanity metrics, now.
Focus on:
- Keyword rankings (real movement, tracked regularly)
- Organic traffic (Google Search Console, not guessware)
- Crawl stats (how often Google visits your site)
- Backlink quality (from sites that rank, have traffic, and aren’t selling links)
- User engagement (because bad pages don’t stick in SERPs)
This is the stuff that gets results.
And if you are buying backlinks, these are the 2 things you will actually want to want to look at to see whether it’s worth your time and money.
- How much traffic does the site get?
- What does the site rank for?
This is how you know whether Google trusts it, and how much it trusts it.
Build Authority the Right Way
Want real domain authority? Then earn it.
- Publish content that solves real problems
- Get cited by trusted sources in your industry
- Build backlinks through relationships and by having good content, not transactions
- Stay relevant and consistent
- Don’t chase shortcuts
Authority comes from gaining legitimate backlinks from trusted sources, not some number a tool made up that can be easily faked.
At best, Domain Authority is a useful ballpark estimate as a very quick initial filter, and it’s a dangerous distraction at worst.
If you’re chasing it, you’re not doing real SEO.
You’re gaming a metric that Google doesn’t care about, to impress clients or bosses who don’t know better.
Don’t play that game.
Build something real.
