What is a good Domain Rating?

A good Domain Rating is one that matches the websites you compete with in search. There is no single number that is good for everyone.

You still want a bar to measure against. So we looked at the 570 verified websites on VerifiedDR on 28 September 2026. The median DR was 21. DR 30 put a website in the top quarter. DR 50 put it in the top 5%.

Want your own number first? Run your website through the free Domain Rating checker and come back with it.

What is a good Domain Rating? Domain Rating (DR) is a 0 to 100 score for backlink strength. Third-party providers calculate it from how many websites link to a website and how strong those websites are. The scale gets steeper as it rises. Going from DR 20 to 30 takes far fewer links than going from DR 50 to 60.

Among the 570 verified websites on VerifiedDR on 28 September 2026, the median DR was 21. One in four scored DR 30 or higher. One in eleven scored DR 40 or higher. Only 24 websites, about 4%, reached DR 50.

So DR 20 to 30 is normal for a small website. DR 30 to 40 is good. DR 50 or higher is rare. The number that decides whether you can rank is different. It is the DR of the pages already in the Google top 10 for your search term. A DR 25 website can win a search term where the top 10 sits at DR 15. A DR 60 website can lose one where it sits at DR 80.

Most websites sit low on the scale. Of the 570 verified websites, 430 scored under DR 30. The bars below count each DR band.

The busiest band is DR 20 to 29. From DR 30 up, each band holds fewer websites than the one below it.

These are websites whose owners verified them on VerifiedDR. Most are indie products, tools and small businesses. Read the bars as what is normal for a website like that, not for the web as a whole.

Your market moves the bar. SEO and directory websites tend to collect links as part of their work, and their median sits near DR 30. Finance and education websites sit closer to DR 10.

The table lists categories with at least 20 verified websites on 28 September 2026. A website can sit in up to three categories, so it counts once in each. A DR in the top quarter of your own category is a good Domain Rating for that market. Each category page ranks its websites so you can see who sits above you.

In this group, age made little difference. Of the verified websites with a known registration date, 411 were under one year old. Their median DR was 21, the same as the whole group. Websites of five years or older had a median of 25.

DR 30 also comes quickly for a new website that earns links. We read the DR history of 130 of the 140 verified websites at DR 30 or higher. 60 of them started at DR 5 or lower when VerifiedDR first recorded them. The middle one crossed DR 30 in 38 days. 55 of the 60 did it within 90 days.

Past DR 30 the climb slows. Only 10 of the 60 reached DR 50. And 35 of the 60 are directories, which often ask the websites they list for a link back.

So for a website under a year old, DR 20 is a fair first target and DR 30 is a good one. To get there, go after links from websites in your market that people visit.

• List your website on directories that fit your topic and still get visitors.
• Trade links with websites in your market through a link exchange. Pick partners that fit your topic and get real visitors.
• Publish something others want to cite. Original numbers work well, like the ones on this page.

DR 0 means third-party providers have not counted a link that carries any weight yet. It says nothing about the quality of your website. Almost every new website starts there.

22 of the 570 verified websites were at DR 0 on 28 September 2026. verifieddr.com was one of them once. It read DR 0 on 25 December 2025, ten days after it was registered. Four days later it read DR 34. On 28 September 2026 it read DR 70.

If your website stays at DR 0 for weeks, check two things. Do other websites link to it at all? And are those links followed? A link marked nofollow does not count toward DR.

A small drop is common. Of 568 verified websites with 30 days of history, 78 had a lower DR than 30 days earlier. The median drop was 2 points. 430 went up and 60 stayed the same.

Big drops are rarer. Of the 130 websites at DR 30 or higher whose history we read, 16 fell 5 points or more below their own peak at some point.

These are the usual causes, the most likely first.

1. You lost backlinks. A page that linked to you was deleted, moved or changed its link.
2. The websites that link to you lost DR themselves. Their drop lowers what their link is worth to you.
3. Other websites grew faster. DR is relative. When the rest of the web gains links faster than you do, your score can slip without losing a single link.

To find the cause, open your website's Trust Map. It shows the websites that link to you and how strong each one is. It is free for any website.

A referring website is a website that links to yours. SEO tools often call them referring domains. We looked at the 22 verified websites between DR 45 and DR 55.

The middle one had about 114 referring websites. Half of them sat between 79 and 178. The full range ran from 45 to 199. These counts come from the live backlink data behind TrueDR on 28 September 2026. Another tool can count a few more or a few less.

The wide range is the point. In this group a website with 45 referring websites sat in the same DR band as one with 199. Count alone does not get you to DR 50. The strength of the websites that link to you counts as much.

DR counts link strength. It does not check whether those links bring visitors or come from spam. That is why VerifiedDR shows TrueDR next to it.

TrueDR is a separate 0 to 100 score. It adds up evidence from real traffic, the number of referring websites, how strong they are, the age of the website and how evenly the links spread. It then discounts spam links, link profiles without visitors and sudden bursts of new links. DR is never an input.

On 28 September 2026 the median TrueDR of the verified websites was 15, against a median DR of 21. 338 of the 570 websites had a TrueDR below their DR. 42 had a TrueDR at least 20 points lower. A high DR with a low TrueDR means the links are there but the evidence behind them is thin. Few visitors or a large share of spam links pull TrueDR down. The most overrated websites list shows where the two scores disagree the most.

Comparing your DR with the median is a start. Comparing it with the pages you want to beat is what counts.

The keyword difficulty checker shows the median DR of the live Google top 10 for a search term and the gap to your own DR. Pick terms where that gap is small. Then build the links that close it.

A 90-day growth program does that work with you. Every link partner is checked on topic, DR and traffic. A new plan each week says which backlink to build next. You get a report on day 90 that compares your DR with day 1. Grow costs $299, paid once.