What is URL Rating (UR)?

Find out what URL Rating (UR) is and how it is calculated

Rebekah avatar
Written by Rebekah
Updated over a week ago

URL Rating (UR) shows the strength of a page's link profile on a 100-point scale. The bigger the number, the stronger a page's link profile is. 

Important notes:

  • UR is a page-level metric, whereas DR is a domain-level metric. So if you put a website into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and check its UR, the number you get will be for the homepage alone.

  • The scale is logarithmic, which means that it’s a lot easier for a page to go from UR 20 to UR 30 than it is to go from UR 70 to UR 80.

  • Both internal and external links are taken into account.

  • Our algorithms spot and cut off "linking loops" — the exchanging of rating scores again and again in a loop between two websites.

  • Our algorithm also removes some links which can artificially increase UR.

  • There is no difference between the HTTP and HTTPS version of a URL. Both http://ahrefs.com/ and https://ahrefs.com/ have same rating.


FAQs:

Is UR similar to Google's PageRank?

We use the same basic PageRank principles to calculate URL Rating (UR).

  • We count links between pages;

  • We respect the “nofollow” attribute;

  • We have a “damping factor”;

  • We crawl the web far and wide (which is a critical component when calculating an accurate link‐based metric)

Why should I use UR, then?

Nobody knows exactly how PageRank is calculated except Google themselves. But: high UR pages tend to rank higher in organic search results.

Since the formula for UR is based off basic PageRank principles, it correlates well with Google rankings and is a near-perfect way to gauge a page's link profile strength.

Why is the UR shown in new reports different from legacy reports?

At the moment, we've got 2 UR metrics. Legacy reports still show the older UR metric that had some drawbacks and was hence completely reworked. So both UR metrics are expected not to match.

1. Legacy UR (for legacy reports):

2. New UR (for new reports):

Is URL history available?

Yes. We started computing the new UR at the start of August 2022. That's why historical UR graphs are only available since August.

Is URL history also available via API v3?

Yes. URL history is available as an API endpoint under API v3. Read documentation.

NOTE: API v3 is currently available only for Enterprise subscriptions.



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