Domain Authority – A look at rankings with comparable sites at each ‘level’

I see a lot of questions on here related to domain authority and how to use it.  So instead of explaining an abstract concept, I figured it’s probably best to show what it takes to get to the next ‘level’.

On to our data, provided by SEMrush:

Examples of websites with specific domain authority

Domain Authority	Website	# Backlinks	# Referring Domains	Traffic (Monthly Estimate)
99	Google	71 Billion	24.61 Million	4.5 Billion
95	Facebook	84.3 Billion	29.34 Million	3.5 Billion
95	Reddit	7.5 Billion	1.55 Million	250 Million
89	Medium	1.2 Billion	1.15 Million	38.9 Million
85	Walmart	261.2 Million	237.6 Thousand	311 Million
84	ESPN	350 Million	223.6 Thousand	211 Million
83	USPS	45 Million	130.0 Thousand	62 Million
83	Quora	107.7 Million	301.3 Thousand	190 Million
78	AllRecipes	27.5 Million	157.3 Thousand	79 Million
75	McDonalds	7.4 Million	66.29 Thousand	65 Million
68	BobVila	4.9 Million	89.3 Thousand	12.8 Million
67	PlanetFitness	1.2 Million	12.2 Thousand	3.2 Million
62	Aritzia	269.2 Thousand	9.2 Thousand	1.7 Million
60	GordonRamsey.com	78.2 Thousand	9.7 Thousand	1.5 Million
59	Tiermaker.com	543 Thousand	30.3 Thousand	1.8 Million
55	Mollymaid.com	99.6 Thousand	6.5 Thousand	813 Thousand
55	Grindr.com	116.2 Thousand	7.1 Thousand	973 Thousand
55	WeAndTheColor.com	420 Thousand	6.9 Thousand	33.1 Thousand
52	GlassDoctor.com	184.4 Thousand	3.44 Thousand	532 Thousand
48	BayAreaFastrak.org	47.2 Thousand	2.4 Thousand	600 Thousand
45	Chilimath.com	123.5 Thousand	3.1 Thousand	656.6 Thousand
44	Earthwonders.co	4.2 Thousand	591	3661
41	BarIsabel.com	1.5 Thousand	492	16.5 Thousand
38	Aworkstation.com	6.4 Thousand	783	2.6 Thousand
38	PaiToronto.com	1.4 Thousand	465	27.5 Thousand
32	VancouverIslandAir.com	3.3 Thousand	345	482
30	ThenAndNowToronto.com	4.6 Thousand	378	1.4 Thousand
27	TorontoNightClub.com	69.5 Thousand	628	2.1 Thousand
13	VanCitySeaPlanes.com	249	50	587
9	Paikinkao.com	33	18	382
3	Taipaicafetx.com	30	10	222
1	YourNewSite.com	0	0	0

*Note – You can see outliers in here like USPS where the number of backlinks is much lower than their neighbours. This is because they have a higher quality of backlinks.

When you’re growing a money site the sweet spot where things really start to compound is in the 35-45 range although YMMV. 65+ is where you start to see a majority of the websites becoming ‘household’ names. I’m not saying Gordon Ramsey isn’t a household name, but he’s not exactly known for his website!

What is Domain Authority ?

It’s a general term for the perceived authority of a website that is calculated using a variety of different metrics (40+), but essentially it boils down to:

Backlinks, quality of backlinks, & dofollow vs nofollow links

To add in a little bit of confusion, you’ll find many different versions of domain authority, each with slightly different calculations.  The big 3 are typically Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush.   I would recommend looking at each of their whitepapers as they have slightly different approaches and the Ahrefs one especially has some fun data to motivate you.

Domain Authority is a logarithmic calculation.  So like earthquakes and tornadoes, an increase between each level (10-20-30-40-50-60-70-80-90) is 10X.  A very quick and dirty estimate for both the number of backlinks and monthly traffic is that the first digit of your DA is the number of zero’s that your traffic will have behind it. So 90+ means you’re in the tres comma club with 9 zero’s.

Domain authority is a very general calculation; you’ll see websites like Google, Medium, Quora, and others are have quite high rankings but because of the broad nature of their content you can outrank them EVEN THOUGH they have a higher domain authority – you just need quality content and you’ll get there.