Page Authority is a metric from Moz that estimates the ranking strength of an individual page on a 1 to 100 scale, mostly from link data. It is the page-level companion to Domain Authority. Other tools publish their own versions, such as Ahrefs' URL Rating. These are vendor models, and Google has said it does not use third-party authority scores.
Page versus domain scores
Domain-level scores describe the whole site's link profile. Page-level scores focus on links pointing at one URL, plus some influence from the domain. Because Google ranks pages for queries, page-level scores are often more useful when comparing the specific results you want to compete with.
Useful applications
Page-level scores help with a few practical tasks.
- Comparing the link strength of pages ranking for a target query
- Finding your own pages with the most link value to use as internal link sources
- Prioritizing broken pages with backlinks for redirects
- Choosing which linkable assets have performed best
Limits
Scores depend on the vendor's crawl and model, shift when the model is updated, and say nothing about content quality, relevance or intent match. A low-scoring page can outrank a high-scoring one if it answers the query better. Compare within one tool and treat the number as a rough guide.
Example
Sizing up a SERP
An illustrative contract analytics startup, Termloft, checks the pages ranking for a target query. Most have modest page-level scores and few links, but answer the question well. Termloft decides the query is winnable with a strong page and a few relevant links, rather than a large link campaign.
Common mistakes
Using it as a KPI
Raising a vendor score is not the goal. Rankings, traffic and conversions are.
Questions
No. Page Authority is a Moz metric. Google has said it does not use third-party authority scores.
Vendors recalculate scores when they refresh their link index or retrain their model, and page scores are partly relative to other pages. A change in the number does not mean anything changed in Google.
The scores mostly follow links, so earning relevant links to the page and linking to it well from your own strong pages tends to move them. Focus on the page's usefulness and real links, and let the score follow.
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