URL Rating(UR)
URL Rating (UR) is Ahrefs's per-page authority score, on a logarithmic 0-100 scale. It's the page-level analog to Domain Rating, computed from the quantity and quality of internal and external backlinks pointing at a specific URL. Useful for comparing individual pages, not whole sites.
Long definition
URL Rating is a proprietary metric from Ahrefs that scores any single URL on a 0-100 logarithmic scale based on its backlink profile. Where Domain Rating (DR) summarizes the link strength of an entire domain, UR isolates the strength of one page — including credit passed through internal links from other pages on the same site.
The score is logarithmic, so the gap between UR 30 and UR 40 is far larger than the gap between UR 70 and UR 80. A homepage of a mid-sized brand often sits at UR 40-55. A canonical hub page on Wikipedia can clear UR 80. New pages start at the floor and climb only as links accumulate.
Two practical uses:
- Comparing internal pages. When you're choosing which page to point a new internal link to, UR reveals which targets already carry the most equity. Pruning links from a UR 8 orphan toward a UR 35 money page concentrates juice where it can rank.
- Vetting backlink targets. When prospecting for a guest post or broken-link replacement, the UR of the specific page you'd be linked from matters more than the DR of the host domain. A UR 50 article on a DR 60 site beats a UR 5 archive page on a DR 85 site.
UR is not a Google signal. Google does not see Ahrefs's index, score, or formula. UR is a model of what Google might see, useful only insofar as Ahrefs's link graph approximates Google's.
Common misconceptions
- "Higher UR equals higher rankings." UR correlates with rankings because both correlate with backlink strength — but Google ranks on hundreds of signals, including content quality, query intent match, and freshness. A UR 40 page with strong topical match often outranks a UR 60 page that's off-topic.
- "UR is the same as Page Authority." Different vendors, different link graphs, different formulas. Moz's Page Authority and Ahrefs's URL Rating both measure page-level link strength on 0-100 logarithmic scales, but the numbers aren't comparable.
- "Internal links don't affect UR." They do. A page with strong internal links from high-UR pages on the same domain accumulates UR even without external backlinks. This is how brand-new pages on established sites can rank quickly.
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