Ahrefs is changing Domain Rating: what DR4 is and what it means for your links
Ahrefs has introduced the fourth version of Domain Rating. Subdomains get their own DR and links from sites without traffic count for less. The numbers and what a site owner should do.
On 5 November 2026 Ahrefs introduced DR4, the fourth version of its Domain Rating metric. The metric is still built on links alone: it ignores domain age and content quality. DR4 is already available in the free Domain Rating API with the parameter version=dr4 (DR3 remains the default for now). The Ahrefs interface switches to the new version on 1 December, and DR3 stays available in the API for a short time after that.
What changes in DR4
- Traffic matters. Links from sites and subdomains that get organic search traffic now carry more weight. As a result, the number of sites with a DR4 score is about half of what DR3 had.
- Subdomains get their own DR instead of inheriting the root domain's score. Ahrefs' examples: help.ahrefs.com went from 91 to 75, blogs.microsoft.com from 96 to 87, a site on *.hostingersite.com from 92 to 1.9, and a page on *.notion.site from 92 to 0.
- Spam filter. A machine-learning model has been labelling spam domains since January 2026. Domains labelled as spam with DR3 between 30 and 70 fell the most, by a median of about 15–20 points. For non-spam domains the median change is close to zero.
- Big sites. Among the 1,000 domains with the most traffic, 64.3% went up, 15.8% stayed the same and 19.9% went down (average drop 7.3 points, median 4). github.io lost 32 points, while facebook.github.io keeps DR 86.
Correlation with Google rankings
Ahrefs compared both versions with Google rankings across 10 million hosts. The higher the number, the more closely the metric tracks the results.
| Sample | DR3 | DR4 |
|---|---|---|
| All hosts, top 3 | 0.128 | 0.332 |
| All hosts, top 10 | 0.140 | 0.359 |
| Root domains only | 0.382 | 0.295 |
| Subdomains only | 0.126 | 0.225 |
For root domains alone DR3 still correlates better. DR4 wins overall because subdomains no longer borrow the authority of their parent domain.
What this means if you buy links
Links from pages and sites without organic traffic will count for less in DR4. A donor's DR3 number can overstate it. Before you pay for a placement, look at the donor's own search traffic, not only at its DR.
What this means for cascades
PromoPilot cascades are built in tiers, and their job is to get your target page crawled, indexed and moving in search. That is why in cascades we look not at the DR of the placement site but at whether the publication got indexed and whether your page moved. Judge the result by the page itself: clicks, impressions and position in Search Console, and the Pulse metric in your PromoPilot dashboard. DR itself is a side indicator. On 1 December it may go up or down without any change in your links. If you compare, compare with competitors on the same date and remember that the DR scale is logarithmic.
What to do now
- Check your DR4 in the free Domain Rating API with
version=dr4or in the preview at detailed.com. Note both numbers for your site and for 3–5 competitors. - Go through the domains that link to you and see which of them get organic traffic. Those links keep their weight in DR4.
- Track results at page level: Search Console for the target page and Pulse in the dashboard. A drop in DR is not a verdict on your content, and Ahrefs says so itself.
Source: Ahrefs blog, "Introducing a Preview of DR4" by Glen Allsopp, 5 November 2026. Retold by the PromoPilot team.
