{"id":5389,"date":"2023-03-23T07:06:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T12:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keyword.com\/?post_type=blog&p=5389"},"modified":"2025-07-16T04:59:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T09:59:14","slug":"domain-authority-authority-score-and-domain-rating-seo-metrics","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/keyword.com\/blog\/domain-authority-authority-score-and-domain-rating-seo-metrics\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussing Misleading SEO Metrics\u2014Domain Authority, Authority Score, and Domain Rating"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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In 2019, a Twitter user asked John Mueller if a drop in traffic was from a drop in domain authority score. <\/span>He replied, “We don\u2019t use domain authority; that\u2019s a metric from an SEO company.”<\/span><\/p>

In 2020, another user asked him if Domain Authority was essential to crawl web pages faster. <\/span>He responded, “Just to be clear, Google doesn\u2019t use Domain Authority *at all* when it comes to Search crawling, indexing, or ranking.” So, based on these responses, it’s pretty clear that <\/span>domain authority, authority score, and domain rating are not ranking factors on SERPs. <\/span><\/p>

… but then, are these metrics irrelevant?<\/p>

How do these SEO metrics from these tools correlate with Google\u2019s crawling, indexing, and ranking practices? This article will discuss how Google search works and how these metrics fit. <\/span><\/p>

In addition, we will discuss a crucial way to track the progress of your site.<\/span><\/p>

How Does Google Search Work?<\/b><\/h2>

Every day, Google <\/span>processes over eight billion searches<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>

People go to the search engine for answers to all kinds of questions. <\/span><\/p>

Let\u2019s say you published an article, and you need an SEO ranking tool to track the positions of your keywords on SERPs. You probably add \u201ckeyword rank tracking tools\u201d to the search box, and the result provides a list of sites that answer your query. <\/span>What\u2019s the secret behind this? <\/span><\/p>

According to Google Search Console, <\/span>Google Search <\/span><\/a>is a fully-automated search engine that uses web crawlers that explore the web regularly to find pages to add to their index. <\/span><\/p>

Since its inception, Google has had a giant library where they sieve through millions of possible pages that provide answers to a search term. So when you input the query keyword rank tracker, Google goes through its library (index) to figure out relevant sites that answer your question. Please note Google doesn\u2019t automatically add a page to its index. It has a lot of bots that crawl sites on the internet and afterwards are added to the index if they pass the requirements.<\/p>

Let\u2019s explain this process in detail.<\/span><\/p>

Google Search works in three stages. They include:<\/span><\/p>