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.
------
FAQs:
Q1: "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)
With that said, UR is not a direct replacement for PageRank. Google’s PageRank formula has evolved a lot since its inception, while the formula for Ahrefs’ UR remains more simplistic.
Q2: “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.
------