Organic traffic increases and DR decreases. How relevant is Ahrefs ranking?

**pgmath** · 27 January 2024, 1:07 am

Over the last two-three months, our organic traffic got doubled from 900 to about 1,600 while the Ahrefs DR got down a few points. The traffic stats show that most of the hits came from Google searches.
Reading what the SEO experts posted in this forum, I explain the decrease of the DR by the fact that no new (relevant) backlinks have been created over that period.
So I would ask: Does the Ahrefs DR metric have any relevance in ranking websites, since it only reflects the backlink profile of a site and not the actual position in searches? The question is legitimate since most of those trading links refer to the DR as either an indicator for the quality/authority of a site or a decision criterion. But Ahrefs ranking has nothing to do with the position in Google searches and anyway there is not an absoute position (like the former Google pagerank), but a position relative to each keyword. Why doesn’t Ahrefs conceive an aggregate measure for the ranking, which to take into account organic traffic as the main indicator?

**wonderpunter** · 27 January 2024, 2:03 am

Simple Ahrefs is not google, you can have a site with 0 traffic and 80 DR don't get sold into too much by these 3rd part piad tools, I would say 15 years ago they were pretty close but now it's just snake oil. the only thing that matters is the traffic google says you get.

**pgmath** · 27 January 2024, 4:23 am

That's right. Then these tools such as Ahrefs should be used just for links analysis and competitors' check, but not for any kind of assessment and ranking.

**casionmark** · 27 January 2024, 4:32 am

Be wary of AHREFs stats related to branded terms too - traffic and traffic value are usually very inflated.

**baldidiot** · 27 January 2024, 5:01 am

Originally Posted by pgmath

So I would ask: Does the Ahrefs DR metric have any relevance in ranking websites

Short answer... no.

All it is is a measure of how much "link strength" ahrefs thinks you have. The fact that it doesn't tally with other metrics (eg: you can have a DR of 1 and a DA of 50 and vice versa) should be a pretty good indicator that none of them are that accurate.

Besides, lots of people block ahrefs et al from their sites, so it's not even a true picture of a sites links. A site could have 1000 links pointing to it, but if ahrefs can't see them then it'll think the site has zero.

It's used by link sellers because they think they need something to base it on, and bigger numbers mean they can ask for more money. It used to be page rank, now it's DA/DR etc.., although most agencies are now also taking into account traffic (DA30 / DR30 / 1k Traffic seems to be the magic number that every one seems to hit these days for links).

**baldidiot** · 27 January 2024, 5:36 am

Also… don’t forget that these metrics can be easily manipulated. You can pay someone on fiverr $10 and have a brand new domain go to DR40. Heck even DR70 is only about $50.

There’s a side effect to this as well. DR is comparative, so the more people manipulate their sites to have high DR, the more your DR will decline without new links.

**dannyx** · 27 January 2024, 5:43 am

DR is what people pay attention to when selling/purchasing links as well as when selling an entire site.

When it comes to ranking, it is not related in any way. There are sites with low DR that have much higher traffic and rankings than their competitors with high DR. Ahrefs itself writes on its blog about such issues and does not consider DR to be some mega key factor.

On the other hand, as you gain links to improve rankings DR naturally increases usually.

Anyway, there is no point in paying attention to it. The only thing that matters is traffic to the site and it's there to grow.

**pgmath** · 28 January 2024, 12:52 am

And it's not only about sites blocking them. Ahrefs does not “see” the links in PDF webpages and pages with user-generated content: https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/...cklinks-report This is a wide range of sites, including major portals like Linkedin, Quora, Scribd, and many other archiving sites. We have just found that Ahrefs does not see a link of ours in the Springer Nature site.

**pgmath** · 28 January 2024, 12:54 am

Indeed, that's the problem. Those trading links are supposed to have some SEO expertise.

**chaumi** · 28 January 2024, 3:26 am

All adding up to the reason why (imo) you can only give some sort of trust around the value of a link if you see it in the GSC links report. Even then, you don't really know for sure but (arguably) it's a reasonable indicator.

Problem is, you don't really know if GSC is telling you the truth. Yes, seeing the link reported there is just about the best sign you'll get (aside from some obvious rankings change that you're confident couldn't be attributed to some other root cause). But not seeing it doesn't mean it's not passing juice.

You can apply some common sense. ofc. Let's take Springer as an example...

Whether your link shows in ahrefs or GSC or neither, you would reasonably expect Google to give it some weight (because Springer is a high-value repository of information). In theory, that would be the case as long as G have crawled the page where the link is. See note* below.

The only way to be 'certain' of that would be to run a controlled test - two new test sites/pages, with 'equal' (but unique) content and structure, 'equal' other inbound links, one with an inbound Springer link and one without. Get them both indexed and see what happens. ofc there are other variables that might have an impact, but that's a sensible approach. Doable, but not for most of us.

All in all, the logical conclusion is that links from the high-profile sites mentioned above should carry some weight. But that's not a scientific conclusion, it's a common-sense conclusion based on most available knowledge.

*****

Note*...until recently I thought that a link would only likely to pass weight if the page the link was on had actually got indexed. But there is some recent (fairly trustworthy) evidence that a link showed up in GSC from a page that didn't appear to be indexed. In other words, there is some evidence that just the process of a page being crawled can pick up the links on it (and 'register' them), even if G for some reason doesn't (obviously) index it.

**pgmath** · 28 January 2024, 4:49 am

Great tip with the two equal page test, thanks. Another test I did (in a different context, but still related to indexing) was for a page in a user-generated content site that was not appearing as indexed (when searching by that URL Google returned no result); then I placed a link to that page from my site and the page appeared in G searches a couple of weeks later.
Anyway, it's obvious that link building and positioning is not exact science. I wonder if Google have any rational reason for keeping their algorithms hidden - protecting something, preventing unethical actions, etc.?

**baldidiot** · 28 January 2024, 5:38 am

Originally Posted by pgmath

I wonder if Google have any rational reason for keeping their algorithms hidden - protecting something, preventing unethical actions, etc.?

If it were public it would be incredibly easy to manipulate.

Someone at google once said that no one knows the full algo - different departments work on different ranking factors and then they're collated. That's why the results can be a little unexpected.

I wouldn't even put it past them to add some kind of random element to make it harder to figure out what's going on.

**baldidiot** · 28 January 2024, 5:44 am

Originally Posted by chaumi

The only way to be 'certain' of that would be to run a controlled test - two new test sites/pages, with 'equal' (but unique) content and structure, 'equal' other inbound links, one with an inbound Springer link and one without. Get them both indexed and see what happens. ofc there are other variables that might have an impact, but that's a sensible approach. Doable, but not for most of us.

It's tricky because other factors are at play and one link on it's own might not make much of a difference.

There is a neat test to see if a link is being considered, but won't tell you how much comparative value it passes or if it helps. Create a basic page on a site and then create a link to that page using an obscure text string as the anchor (eg: uieuur892u3oiuru230uri203ri23rkh2ohr2o3h). Make sure that the text string doesn't appear on the target page at all.

If the page shows up in the serps for that text string then the link is being seen and counted because it's the only thing that would connect the random text to the page. The down side is that if it doesn't show up, that doesn't mean it isn't being counted. Google might just be ignoring the weird result.

Google did something similar (kind of) to catch bing copying their results: https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/

**chaumi** · 28 January 2024, 6:45 am

Originally Posted by pgmath

Another test I did (in a different context, but still related to indexing) was for a page in a user-generated content site that was not appearing as indexed (when searching by that URL Google returned no result); then I placed a link to that page from my site and the page appeared in G searches a couple of weeks later.

Yeah you were basically just 'helping' the indexing of that UG page. But remember that the indexing of that page could have been activated by several other routes, too. In other words, it just indexed 'naturally' anyway and your effort to help it really had no effect on that.

It is good practice, though, to do what you did wherever and whenever practical. It's extremely unlikely you'd see any negative consequences of such an approach. Unless you do something daft, there's only potential upside.

Originally Posted by pgmath

I wonder if Google have any rational reason for keeping their algorithms hidden - protecting something, preventing unethical actions, etc.?

Yes the traditionally cited reason for keeping algorithmic workings hidden is to prevent (or hamper) people from gaming the system.

There are many reasons you could argue that's an outdated/flawed concept now. Alongside a few good arguments why it's still valuable to hide stuff.

Around links specifically, and whether they show up in GSC, I think that's not a deliberate ploy. it's probably flaws or limitations in the indexing system (or related to G's costs around crawling, storing, and indexing). All semi-educated guesswork, ofc.

**Tribuna** · 29 January 2024, 2:16 pm

I think that all estimates, including Ahrefs, are not very informative. You should look at long-lasting trends in keywords, positions and so on. It is systematic work that will allow you to grow traffic. In general, this is a very useful tool for both beginners and experienced affiliate players.

**DanHorvat** · 30 January 2024, 3:29 am

Ahrefs DR is just the most reliable one of the proxies we use to get an idea of the backlink profile strength of a site.

Because it's most difficult to manipulate (Moz DA is the worst in this regard, PBNs inflate it easily) and you can trust the value and its delta over time. It's pretty robust.

Majestic is decent too but I've seen enough strange results to only use it as a sidekick to Ahrefs DR.

At the moment it's the best thing we've got.

If you want to know if your backlink profile is headed in the right direction, Ahrefs DR is a good proxy.

**casinobonusguy** · 30 January 2024, 11:52 am

Originally Posted by DanHorvat

Ahrefs DR is just the most reliable one of the proxies we use to get an idea of the backlink profile strength of a site.

Because it's most difficult to manipulate (Moz DA is the worst in this regard, PBNs inflate it easily) and you can trust the value and its delta over time. It's pretty robust.

Majestic is decent too but I've seen enough strange results to only use it as a sidekick to Ahrefs DR.

At the moment it's the best thing we've got.

If you want to know if your backlink profile is headed in the right direction, Ahrefs DR is a good proxy.

I was going to purchase AHREFS myself until I ran my own sites and the traffic was way off .Like my money maker site that supports 3 full time employees was valued at $10 or some crazy number and traffic was insanely off. We block a lot of bots so not sure if that affected things or not but if they are wrong about my site they will be wrong about others.

**Niko** · 31 January 2024, 1:38 am

It's just a tool, there are plenty of the things hidden even from ahrefs

**oncajilabo** · 1 February 2024, 2:34 am

Your observation about the increase in organic traffic despite a decrease in Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) raises a significant point about the relevance and limitations of certain SEO metrics, particularly when it comes to understanding a website's performance and authority.

**bon** · 18 February 2024, 5:39 am

You can only use ahrefs for comparison purposes. Because it doesn't see absolutely all links and its metrics are easy to manipulate.
In order to get more data on incoming links I recommend using api google search console.

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