Ahrefs announced DR4, the fourth version of its Domain Rating metric, on November 5, 2026, in a product post by Glen Allsopp, Head of Marketing Strategy & Research at Ahrefs. The update changes which links count and how subdomains are scored, so many DR numbers will move even when a site's backlinks stay the same. Agencies that report DR, link builders and anyone who prices links by DR will feel it first.
What changes in Ahrefs DR4
Ahrefs names two major changes in its DR4 announcement.
A smaller pool of domains can raise DR
DR is still calculated only from links. What changes is whose links matter. Ahrefs says DR4 puts more weight on links from sites, and from individual subdomains, that it estimates get organic search traffic.
The result is a much smaller rated pool. According to Ahrefs, roughly half as many sites have a DR4 score as had a DR3 score. That also shrinks the set of domains that can push anyone else's rating up.
Every subdomain gets its own score
Under DR3, most subdomains inherited the rating of their root domain. That is why GitHub Pages sites, Blogspot blogs and pages on website builders often sat near the top of link reports sorted by DR, even with weak link profiles of their own. Ahrefs says only a handful of domains had separate subdomain scores before. DR4 scores each subdomain on the backlinks pointing to it.
A selection of Ahrefs' examples:
| Host | DR3 | DR4 |
|---|---|---|
| help.ahrefs.com | 91 | 75 |
| play.google.com | 100 | 96 |
| finance.yahoo.com | 94 | 92 |
| Sample *.hostingersite.com subdomain | 92 | 1.9 |
| Sample *.notion.site subdomain | 92 | 0 |
Source: Ahrefs.
Takeaway: established brand subdomains lose a few points. Free-hosted subdomains that borrowed a platform's DR lose nearly all of it. Ahrefs notes these are real subdomains linking to Ahrefs and do not represent every subdomain on those platforms.
Does DR4 track Google rankings better than DR3?
Overall, yes. Ahrefs tested 10 million domains and hosts and found that DR4 correlates more strongly with top 3 and top 10 Google rankings. Across all hosts, the top 10 correlation rose from 0.140 to 0.359, which Ahrefs calls more than 2.5x stronger.
The detail most coverage will skip is in the same table:
| Subset | Top 10 vs DR3 | Top 10 vs DR4 |
|---|---|---|
| All hosts (10M) | 0.140 | 0.359 |
| Root domains (5.2M) | 0.407 | 0.304 |
| Subdomains (4.8M) | 0.172 | 0.259 |
Source: Ahrefs.
Takeaway: the gain comes from scoring subdomains properly. For root domains alone, DR3 correlated better with rankings.
Ahrefs acknowledges this, noting DR3 was built around root domains. All correlation figures come from Ahrefs' own testing and have not been checked independently.
Who gains and who loses under DR4
Spam domains take the biggest hit. Ahrefs says spam domains with DR3 scores between 30 and 70 saw the largest drops, with a median of roughly 15 to 20 points. Non-spam domains stayed relatively stable, with median changes close to zero across most DR ranges.
Large sites mostly gain. Using its AhrefsTop list of the top 1,000 domains by estimated organic traffic, Ahrefs found:
- 64.3% saw DR go up
- 15.8% stayed the same
- 19.9% went down, by 7.3 points on average (median 4)
The largest named drop is github.io, the GitHub Pages hosting domain, down 32 points. That is separate from github.com, and individual subdomains such as facebook.github.io keep high scores (DR 86).
Allsopp is clear that a lower score says nothing about site quality. DR is not "a reflection of the quality of your content," he writes. It measures the backlink profile only.
How Domain Rating got here
- 2025: Ahrefs adds a Spam label to backlink reports, based on a manually curated list.
- September 26, 2025: Ahrefs recalculates DR and UR. Agencies such as TechWyse reported drops of 6 to 10 points or more, and noted Ahrefs published no blog post at launch.
- January 2026: spam detection moves to a machine learning model.
- November 5, 2026: Ahrefs previews DR4 and opens early access to the scores.
- December 1, 2026: DR4 replaces DR3 in the Ahrefs interface. DR3 stays available through the API for a short period afterward.
This time Ahrefs is announcing the change four weeks ahead and sharing data. After last year's unannounced recalculation, that lead time is the useful part.
What should SEOs do before DR4 goes live on December 1?
Our take: DR4 fixes a real flaw. Subdomain inheritance let link sellers trade on borrowed authority, and anyone who bought "high DR" links on free-hosted subdomains paid for a number that never belonged to those pages. But DR4 is a new ruler, not a new reality. Rankings will not move on December 1 because of it. Only reports will. And for comparing root domains, Ahrefs' own data shows DR4 is not a clear upgrade, so do not read the new number as a better ranking forecast for every use.
Actions for the next three weeks:
- Check your DR3 vs DR4 score now. Allsopp's DR4 demo page on Detailed shows sample changes and lets you search any domain or subdomain. For bulk checks, add
version=dr4to the free Ahrefs Domain Rating API. - Brief clients before the switch. Send old and new scores side by side, with competitors included, so a drop does not read as lost work. Ahrefs makes the same point with its own example: Monday.com goes from 91 to 90, Zoho loses one point to 91, Teamwork.com holds at 82 and Airtable rises slightly to 92.
- Save DR3 values for your key domains and competitors now, so you keep a baseline once the interface changes.
- Review link prospect lists and vendor inventories priced by DR, especially sites on subdomains and anything carrying the Spam label.
- Send disputed scores to Ahrefs through its temporary feedback form.
What to watch after the switch
Watch whether link marketplaces and guest post vendors reprice inventory once DR4 is live, how long Ahrefs keeps DR3 in the API (it has not given a date), and whether scores shift before December 1 as feedback comes in.
DR4 makes Domain Rating stricter and more granular. Many sites will see a new number on December 1, but the links behind it will be the same. Get the explanation to clients before the dashboard does.