URL Rating
Also called: UR
URL Rating (UR) is Ahrefs' 0 to 100 logarithmic score of a single page's backlink strength, where a higher number means a stronger link profile. It counts both internal and external links pointing to that URL and, per Ahrefs, correlates positively with Google rankings.
How UR differs from Domain Rating
UR scores one specific URL, while Domain Rating (DR) scores a whole domain. Because a referring page passes its rating to every page it links to, a single strong page can outscore its own site: Ahrefs notes a high-UR page can sit on a low-DR domain when enough authoritative pages link to it. The scale is logarithmic, so climbing from UR 20 to UR 30 is far easier than UR 70 to UR 80.
Two link types feed the number. External backlinks from other sites carry the most weight, but internal links from your own strong pages also pass equity, which is why linking a new page from your homepage or top guides lifts its UR. Ahrefs cuts “linking loops” (two sites trading scores back and forth) and strips links it judges to be inflating the score artificially, so link schemes do not reliably move it. The HTTP and HTTPS versions of a URL share one rating.
UR is not a Google metric and does not directly cause rankings. Ahrefs reports it correlates with organic positions because it approximates the link authority that PageRank-style signals reward. Read it as a proxy for how much link equity one exact page holds, measured page by page rather than site-wide. Ahrefs recomputed UR with a new model starting August 2022, so history graphs only go back that far.
How it affects your traffic
URL Rating is the page-level number that tells you which of your URLs can actually compete for a keyword. A money page stuck at a low UR tends to struggle in search no matter how good the copy is, because search engines reward the link equity UR approximates. Raising it means earning external backlinks to that specific page and routing internal links into it, which is the heart of a link building program. When a target page's UR trails the pages already ranking, that gap is often the reason it sits on page two instead of page one.
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