Domain Authority: Overused and Easily Manipulated

Domain authority has long been regarded as the gold standard for measuring authority against competitors, but aside from incompatibility issues between multiple ‘domain authority’ metrics, a deeper flaw exists. In fact, the flaws are so numerous, our advice for practitioners is to cease using this metric altogether, and for shareholders to dismiss it.

The main ‘flavours’ of ‘domain authority’ are the original metric by Moz, the essentially identical metric by Ahrefs, another similar metric by Semrush, and a more unique, yet still flawed, metric by Majestic. Many other tools have attempted to replicate these metrics, but these are, by far, the four most favoured metrics by practitioners.

Johannes Beaus, the CEO and founder of Sistrix, correctly articulates, and proves by example, that domain metrics lead to wrong decisions. This information isn’t groundbreaking. Practitioners have been aware for years, but the lack of substitute metric keeps the industry paralyzed from acknowledging the harsh reality.

Beaus quotes Peter F. Drucker’s famous saying: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. However, this quote is misplaced in this debate; Google representatives have tirelessly stated for years that no aggregate domain authority exists. The original research by Larry Page and Sergey Brin is rife with mentions of pages and documents, but almost no mention of domains. Likewise, the PageRank patent clearly states it is for ranking documents. Ultimately, this concept of domain authority is not real. Any measurement of something that does not exist is clearly and fundamentally flawed.

The alternative measurement, page authority, is a significantly more reliable metric. It imitates Google’s PageRank algorithm, has a stronger correlation with search performance, and is much harder to manipulate. You might be wondering why the industry hasn’t wholesale moved to this approach, and it’s rather simple - money. The made up measurement of domain authority provides a more compelling argument of value, which in turn helps practitioners more readily sell their service.

To truly measure the relative strength of a website, consider the following; is the brand recognizable? Is it affiliated with, or owned by, a recognizable brand? Does it command a large share of brand search in its market? How many keywords does it appear for in the top positions, and how competitive are those keywords? What is the trajectory of those keywords - has it seen any sudden decreases that might suggest devaluation or demotion? Does the editorial team of the website publish content, with or without fee, from third-party sources?

Creating such qualifications for success is time-consuming, but is ultimately a much more robust measurement for a website’s probable authority.