Ahrefs URL Rating (UR): What It Is, How It's Calculated, and What It Means for SEO

What Is URL Rating (UR)?

URL Rating, abbreviated as UR, is Ahrefs' proprietary metric for measuring the link authority of a single page on your website. It is expressed on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, where higher numbers indicate a stronger and more authoritative backlink profile for that specific URL.

The concept is closely analogous to Moz's Page Authority (PA) metric — both attempt to quantify how much authority a given page has accumulated through its inbound link profile. Where UR differs is in its underlying methodology and the particular weighting Ahrefs applies to factors like link type and the authority of the linking page itself.

Unlike Domain Rating (DR), which evaluates the link authority of an entire domain, UR is strictly a page-level metric. A single highly authoritative page on a low-DR domain can still carry a significant UR, making it a valuable signal when you need to understand the specific strength of an individual piece of content rather than a website as a whole.

How Ahrefs Calculates URL Rating

Ahrefs calculates UR by analyzing all the inbound links pointing to a given URL and then weighting those links by the quality and authority of the pages linking to them. The core inputs are:

Dofollow vs. nofollow links. Dofollow backlinks carry the most weight in UR calculations. Nofollow links are counted and do contribute some authority, but at a substantially lower rate. A single high-quality dofollow backlink from an authoritative page will move UR more than dozens of nofollow links from low-authority sources.

The UR of the linking page. UR is calculated recursively — the authority a linking page passes is proportional to its own UR. A link from a page with UR 70 passes far more authority than a link from a page with UR 20, even if both are dofollow. This mirrors the general logic behind PageRank.

The number of links on the linking page. Authority is distributed across all the outbound links on a page. A page that links to 200 external destinations passes less authority per link than a page that links to only three. This is why editorial in-content links from authoritative pages are so valuable — they typically appear on pages with fewer outbound links than directory or footer links.

Internal links. Links from other pages on your own domain also factor into UR. Internal links pass real authority, which is why pages that receive many internal links from high-UR pages tend to score higher than orphan pages with the same number of external backlinks.

The logarithmic scale. Because UR is logarithmic, improvement becomes exponentially harder at higher values. Moving a page from UR 0 to UR 10 is relatively easy and might require only a few solid backlinks. Moving from UR 50 to UR 60 requires many times more authority than that first increment. This is important context when setting link-building goals: a target of "reach UR 70" is vastly more ambitious than a target of "reach UR 30."

URL Rating vs. Domain Rating

UR and DR are the two most commonly referenced Ahrefs metrics, and it is easy to confuse their purpose. They measure fundamentally different things at fundamentally different levels of abstraction.

Domain Rating (DR) measures the overall link authority of an entire website's root domain. It is calculated by looking at all the referring domains pointing to any page across the whole site. DR is a domain-wide number — every page on a site shares the same DR regardless of how many links that specific page has attracted.

URL Rating (UR), by contrast, is granular. It measures only the backlink strength of one specific URL. Two pages on the same high-DR site can have wildly different UR values. The homepage of a major media outlet might carry a UR of 75, while a niche article buried deep in the site's archives might have a UR of 12.

This distinction matters enormously for competitive analysis. When you look at a SERP and see that competing pages are ranking with a DR of 85, you might assume you need a domain of comparable authority. But if those pages have a UR of only 20–30, it signals that they are ranking on the domain's overall authority rather than on the specific link strength of that page. A newer site with a lower DR but a well-targeted link-building campaign could potentially earn a comparable UR and compete directly.

What Is a Good URL Rating?

There is no universal answer to what constitutes a good UR — it is entirely context-dependent and should always be evaluated relative to the pages you are competing against for a specific keyword.

For broad informational queries with low commercial intent, ranking pages commonly fall in the UR 10–25 range. These are often long-form guides on niche topics where few sites have actively built links to that specific URL. You can often compete with a freshly published piece that earns only a handful of quality backlinks over its first few months.

For competitive commercial or financial keywords, you may find that ranking pages carry UR values of 40, 50, or even higher. These are niches where sites actively invest in link building to their money pages, and the bar to entry through link authority alone is considerably higher.

The most reliable method is to use Ahrefs' SERP Overview feature for your target keyword. It displays the UR of every ranking page in the top 10, letting you calibrate your link-building target against actual competitive reality rather than an arbitrary benchmark. A UR that would be strong in one vertical might be entirely insufficient in another.

URL Rating vs. Google PageRank

Ahrefs URL Rating is explicitly designed to approximate Google's original PageRank algorithm. The underlying logic — that pages accumulate authority based on links received, weighted by the authority of linking pages — is structurally similar to the original PageRank paper published by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.

However, UR and Google's internal PageRank are not the same thing. Google's actual PageRank scores are not publicly available and have not been shown in Webmaster Tools since 2016. Google has also significantly evolved its link evaluation systems since the original PageRank formulation, incorporating signals like link velocity, link context, anchor text relevance, topical authority, and many others that Ahrefs cannot fully replicate from external crawl data alone.

What this means in practice: UR correlates meaningfully with search rankings — studies by Ahrefs have shown that pages with higher UR tend to rank better and attract more organic traffic — but correlation is not causation. There will always be pages with low UR that rank well due to strong topical relevance, excellent content quality, or behavioral signals, and pages with high UR that rank poorly because their content does not satisfy search intent. Use UR as a directional signal, not an absolute predictor.

How to Check URL Rating

There are several ways to check UR for any URL using Ahrefs:

Site Explorer — single URL. Navigate to Ahrefs Site Explorer, enter any URL (make sure you select the exact URL mode rather than domain or subdomain mode), and the UR score appears prominently in the Overview panel alongside DR, organic traffic estimates, referring domains, and backlink counts.

Batch Analysis. If you need to check UR for a list of URLs simultaneously, Ahrefs' Batch Analysis tool accepts up to 200 URLs at once. This is particularly useful when auditing your own site's top pages or when running a competitive gap analysis against a set of competitor pages you have identified as ranking for your target keywords.

SERP Overview. When you search for a keyword in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, the SERP Overview panel shows the UR of each ranking page alongside its DR, traffic estimates, and backlink count. This gives you an immediate competitive benchmark without needing to manually check each URL individually.

Top Pages report. In Site Explorer, the Top Pages report lists your highest-traffic pages sorted by estimated organic visits. Adding the UR column lets you see which of your most valuable pages are link-rich and which are punching above their UR weight through content quality alone — a useful signal for identifying both link-building opportunities and content that may be at risk if competitors invest more heavily in links.

How to Improve URL Rating

Improving UR comes down to two levers: earning better external links directly to the page and channeling more internal authority to it from elsewhere on your site.

Earn quality dofollow backlinks to the specific page. Generic link building that points to your homepage does nothing for the UR of a specific post or product page. Your outreach and content promotion efforts need to generate links directly to the URL you want to strengthen. Editorial links embedded in relevant content on high-UR pages will move the needle far more than link insertions on low-quality sites or directory submissions.

Quality matters more than quantity. Because UR is logarithmic and weighted by the authority of linking pages, one link from a UR-60 page contributes more than twenty links from UR-10 pages. Before pursuing volume, prioritize the authority of the sites and pages you are targeting in your outreach.

Fix broken inbound links. If external sites link to URLs on your site that now return 404 errors, you are losing UR that could be flowing to the page you care about. Use Ahrefs' Broken Backlinks report to identify these lost links and implement 301 redirects from the broken URL to the correct destination. Recovering even a few high-authority broken links can provide an immediate UR improvement without requiring new link acquisition.

Convert nofollow to dofollow where possible. If you have established relationships with sites that link to you with nofollow attributes — perhaps from sponsored content or editorial policies that have since changed — it is worth a direct conversation with the linking site to request a policy review. Not all nofollow links can be converted, but even a few high-authority conversions can provide meaningful UR gains.

Internal Linking and URL Rating

Internal links are the most underutilized lever for improving URL Rating, and they are entirely within your control. Every internal link from one page on your site to another passes some UR — the amount is proportional to the UR of the linking page and the number of other links on that page.

The practical implication is powerful: if you have a high-UR page — say, a cornerstone guide that has accumulated significant backlinks — adding a contextual internal link from that page to a newer page you want to rank will pass real authority to the target page. This is not a manipulative tactic; it is simply how link equity flows through a site, and using it strategically is standard SEO practice.

To implement this systematically, run your site through Ahrefs Site Explorer and pull the Top Pages report sorted by UR. Identify your ten or twenty highest-UR pages. Then review each of them for opportunities to add relevant contextual internal links to the pages you are trying to build UR for. A contextual sentence or two that naturally introduces the linked page and uses a descriptive anchor text is all that is required — forced links with keyword-stuffed anchors are both unhelpful to users and counterproductive as an SEO signal.

Also audit for orphan pages — pages on your site that receive zero internal links. These pages receive no internally distributed authority and are also harder for crawlers to discover consistently. Adding even two or three contextual internal links to a previously orphaned page can produce a measurable UR lift within Ahrefs' next crawl cycle.

UR in Practice: How to Use It for SEO Decisions

URL Rating becomes most actionable when it is used as a decision-making input rather than just a number to monitor. Here are the highest-leverage ways to incorporate UR into your regular SEO workflow:

Prioritize link-building targets by UR gap. Compare the UR of your pages with the UR of the top-ranking competitors for your target keywords. Pages where you have a significant UR deficit are your highest-priority link-building targets. Pages where you already match or exceed competitor UR are ranking on other factors — investigate content quality, topical depth, and technical SEO before assuming link building is the solution.

Assess keyword difficulty realistically. Ahrefs' Keyword Difficulty score is partly informed by the UR and DR of ranking pages. Before targeting a keyword, check the SERP overview to see whether the UR floor is achievable given your current link-building capacity and budget. Some keywords that look attractive based on volume alone are effectively unreachable without years of link acquisition at a significant investment.

Monitor UR trends on key pages monthly. A page with a declining UR trend may be losing backlinks — check the Lost Backlinks report in Ahrefs to see if valuable links have disappeared. A sudden UR drop is sometimes a leading indicator of ranking declines that have not yet appeared in ranking reports, giving you a window to take remedial action before traffic is affected.

Use UR distribution to understand your site's authority architecture. Pull the full Pages by UR report for your domain. If authority is concentrated in five or six pages and the rest of your site sits at UR 5 or below, you have a structural problem — most of your pages are ranking without link support and are vulnerable to any competitor who chooses to actively build links to equivalent content. A deliberate internal linking strategy and a more distributed link acquisition effort will make the overall site more resilient.

Related Guides

• Anchor Text SEO: How to Build Links That Signal Relevance
• Off-Page SEO: Building Authority Beyond Your Website
• Local Link Building: Strategies for Local Authority
• How Google's Crawler Works: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking
• Technical SEO Checklist: Every Fix That Matters
• Domain Authority SEO: What DA Measures and How to Use It