What is URL Rating (UR)?
URL Rating is a page-level link score from the SEO tool Ahrefs. Where Domain Rating measures how strong a whole website's backlink profile is, UR measures one URL: how many pages link to it, how strong those linking pages are themselves, and whether the links are followed or marked nofollow. The result is a number from 0 to 100 on a logarithmic scale, meaning each step up gets harder than the last, and it is designed to mirror the way Google's original PageRank treated links as votes passed from page to page.
UR is specific to Ahrefs. Moz calls its equivalent Page Authority, Semrush has its own page score, and none of them are Google's number; Google does not publish one. They are estimates built from each tool's own crawl of the web, which means the figures differ from tool to tool and matter mostly as comparisons: this page against that page, this month against last.
Why it matters
Why UR matters
Rankings happen at the page level. A site with a strong domain can still fail to rank a page that nothing links to, and a page with strong links of its own can outrank pages on bigger sites. UR is the quickest way to see that. It shows which of your pages carry the most link strength, which competitors' pages you would have to beat for a given keyword, and whether a link-earning effort moved the needle for the page it was aimed at.
It is also a planning tool. Pages with high UR are the ones that should link internally to pages you want to rank, because link strength flows through internal links as well as external ones. A guide that has earned links over years can lift a new product page simply by pointing to it. Without a page-level score, that decision is a guess.
In practice
How UR works in practice
- 01
The score appears in Ahrefs' Site Explorer for any URL, alongside the number of referring domains, the list of backlinks and the anchor text. An SEO typically uses it in three ways. First, to audit a site: sort pages by UR and see where the strength is, which often turns out to be an old blog post or a press page nobody has updated. Second, to size up a keyword: look at the UR of the pages ranking for it and judge whether your page can compete with its current links or needs more. Third, to direct internal linking: route links from high-UR pages to the pages that need help.
- 02
The number moves slowly. Earning a few strong editorial links lifts a page's UR over weeks as the tool recrawls, and losing them lowers it. Redirects pass most of it, which is why site migrations are planned around preserving the URLs with the highest ratings. The score is checked monthly rather than daily, and always alongside the actual rankings and traffic, which are the outcomes it is meant to predict.
Watch out
What people get wrong about UR
Treating it as Google's opinion. UR is Ahrefs' estimate from Ahrefs' crawl, and a page can rank well with a low UR if its content is the best answer, or badly with a high one if it is not. It is a proxy for one ranking factor, not a verdict.
The other mistake is chasing the number. Links built to raise a score rather than to serve a reader tend to be the kind search engines discount, so the UR goes up and the rankings do not. The score should follow good work, not drive it.
A third is comparing scores across tools. An Ahrefs UR of 30 and a Moz Page Authority of 30 are not the same thing, because each is computed from a different crawl with a different formula. Pick one tool, use it consistently and read the trend rather than the figure.
