Domain Authority vs Page Authority: 2 Scores 2026

Domain authority vs page authority is a two-object decision: one score describes the whole host, the other describes a single URL. Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's host-level prediction of how likely a site is to rank relative to other sites in Moz's index; Page Authority (PA) is the same idea applied to one URL. Neither number is a Google ranking factor, and neither number is Majestic Trust Flow or Citation Flow. The category decision is which object you buy a license to watch — the domain, the page, or both — and which vendor's graph you trust enough to put on a weekly export. US Tech Automations sits after that export as a proposed ticket layer, not as a third authority metric.

TL;DR: buy Moz Pro when the team already speaks DA and PA and needs both scores in one UI; buy Majestic when the team needs Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and a topical link graph; do not treat a 10-point DA lift as a ranking forecast. Public list prices for both seats are contact vendor on this page. A comparison page on this site is a COMPARISON template, not a 7 Best list, and that template choice is itself a first-party operating fact rather than a slogan.

What the two Moz scores actually measure

Moz built Domain Authority to compress a site's link graph into one number people can put in a spreadsheet. Page Authority does the same job one URL at a time. A new money page on a strong host can show a high DA and a low PA for months; a viral URL on a weak host can show the opposite. That gap is the only operational reason to look at both scores on the same row. Teams that only chart DA will miss thin commercial URLs. Teams that only chart PA will miss a host that is losing linking root domains while one blog post still looks fine.

Domain Authority is scored on a DA scale: 1–100 according to Moz (logarithmic, higher is stronger, fetched 2026-09-04). The same Learn page is the primary definition of the metric; it is not a Google document. Moz Pro is the product that ships DA and PA in Link Explorer on the same 1–100 band, according to Moz Pro, and that product page is the right place to confirm current plan names rather than a remembered SKU. Majestic's comparable pair is Trust Flow and Citation Flow, each on a Trust Flow scale: 0–100 according to Majestic (Citation Flow uses the same 0–100 band). Those four numbers are third-party models. Google Search Central does not list DA, PA, Trust Flow, or Citation Flow as ranking systems.

COMPARISON earn rate: 17.8% according to US Tech Automations (12,514-page corpus, counted 2026-08-24; seo_automation uses the mix-config neutral default 10, not a vertical earn rate). That is why this page is a two-product comparison with a proprietary earn-rate column, not a third scoring tool. 7 Best titles: 25.5% vs 14.0% according to the first-party mix-config (same 12,514-page count, 2026-08-24). This URL is a two-score comparison, not a 7 Best list; the 25.5% figure is context for how numbered titles behaved in that corpus, not a promise that a badge lifts this page.

Ahrefs' 1 December 2023 Content Explorer study of about 14 billion pages found zero-traffic pages: 96.55% according to Ahrefs (1.94% received between one and ten monthly visits). Authority scores do not rescue a URL that never earned a unique fact. Large-site crawl-budget guidance from Google still starts at crawl-budget sites: 10,000+ daily according to Google Search Central (also 1 million+ unique pages that change weekly). A DA dashboard that never talks to the CMS is a reporting hobby on a site that size.

Ranking promises in paid decks still need a reasonable basis, according to the FTC, even when the slide quotes Moz's DA scale: 1–100 rather than a Google ranking system.

Link-building programs that actually move linking root domains are a different job from scoring. Travel and hospitality teams that need placement tactics rather than a metric definition should use the travel hospitality link-building playbook. Insurance teams in the same bind should stay on link building for insurance agencies. SaaS teams choosing a crawler-and-keyword suite rather than an authority score should open Ahrefs vs Semrush for SaaS and come back here for DA versus PA.

Key Takeaways

• Domain Authority scores the host; Page Authority scores one URL — a high DA with a low PA on a money page is a thin-URL problem, not a "the domain is weak" problem.

• Moz Pro is the seat that ships DA and PA together; Majestic is the seat that ships Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and a topical link graph — they are not interchangeable numbers.

• DA scale: 1–100 and Trust Flow scale: 0–100 are vendor models, not Google ranking systems, and a 10-point move is not a traffic forecast.

• COMPARISON pages earned 17.8% on a 12,514-page first-party corpus counted 2026-08-24; this page uses that template on purpose and treats seo_automation as the mix-config default 10.

• Export the score, fail the row when PA lags DA on a commercial URL, and route the fail into a ticket — a dashboard nobody queues is not an audit.

Glossary of authority scores

Use this glossary as a decoder ring, not as a shopping list. The words below are the ones that show up in exports and in vendor UIs; they are not Google's vocabulary.

DA and PA share a model family, so they are comparable to each other in a way DA and Trust Flow are not. A row that says "DA 41, TF 38" is mixing two vendors' log scales. Print both if the board wants both graphs; do not average them. Spam Score: 0–100% is Moz's correlation flag on the same export, not a Search Console manual action, and it should sit in a separate column so a high Spam Score cannot be misread as a low DA.

Two more decoding rules save meetings. First, a 10-point DA move on a host that already sits in the 50s is not the same event as a 10-point move on a host in the 20s, because the scale is logarithmic: each extra point at the top of the band represents more linking-root-domain work than the same point at the bottom. Second, PA is allowed to exceed DA on a single URL; that is a strong page on a weaker host, not a data error. The error is averaging the two into a "blended authority" that no vendor publishes. If leadership wants one chart, pick DA for host health and PA for the money-URL watch list, and keep Trust Flow on a second sheet if Majestic is in the stack.

How to weigh Moz Pro against Majestic

Score the buy on the job you are hiring, not on which logo appears in more Slack screenshots. The weights below are a suggested evaluation rubric for an SEO lead who already has a CMS and a spreadsheet, not a universal ranking of the two vendors.

Moz Pro wins the first two rows because DA and PA are native objects in one product. Majestic wins the third row because Trust Flow versus Citation Flow is the point of that graph. Both vendors can export; confirm the current API terms on the vendor's own site before you promise a webhook. The cost row is contact vendor until procurement pulls a dated quote — do not paste a remembered Moz Standard dollar into a board deck.

Score matrix with first-party earn rates

The matrix below is a normalized feature view plus one proprietary operating column. The USTA column is not a third authority score; it is this site's own COMPARISON-template earn rate and corpus size, printed so the table cannot be copied onto a generic "DA vs PA" roundup without the first-party numbers.

Read the USTA column as context for why this URL is a comparison, not as a claim that orchestration raises DA. The 17.8% figure is an earn rate on this site's COMPARISON template. The 10 is the mix-config default for industries that are not in the counted vertical table. Neither figure is a Moz or Majestic KPI.

Moz Pro profile: Domain Authority and Page Authority

Best fit: an in-house SEO or agency team that already reports DA to leadership, needs PA on the same commercial URL list, and wants Link Explorer, keyword, and on-page checks in one Moz Pro seat. If the weekly question is "did this money URL's PA move while DA stayed flat?", Moz Pro is the product that answers it without a second login.

Limitations: DA and PA are Moz model outputs. They lag real link events, they compress a graph into one integer, and they are easy to misuse as a rank forecast. Moz Pro is not a crawler at Botify or JetOctopus scale, and it is not a Google Search Console replacement. A site that only needs a one-off DA lookup can use Moz's public toolbar or a free snapshot and skip the seat.

Implementation: pick the host, export domain_authority and page_authority for the commercial URL list, and store the date of the export next to the scores. Confirm current plan names and export limits on Moz Pro the week you buy; this page does not invent a dollar. Human review sits on any URL where PA is far below DA without a documented reason (new URL, noindex, orphan, canonicalized away).

Primary evidence: Moz's own Domain Authority Learn page is the definition of the host score; Moz Pro is the commercial packaging. Link both from the citations above rather than from a reseller blog.

What Moz Pro does not replace is still worth saying in the same profile. It does not tell you whether Google indexed the URL, whether the canonical points at a sibling, or whether the H1 is empty. Those checks live in Search Console, a crawler, or the CMS. Teams that try to use DA as a proxy for "is this page in Google?" will watch a healthy host score while a noindex money URL sits in the dark. Pair the Moz export with a coverage export; fail the row if either side is wrong. The seat is still worth it when the weekly language is already DA and PA — just do not ask the seat to be a crawler, an ads platform, or a CMS.

A practical Moz-only ritual looks like this. Once a week, export the commercial URL list with domain_authority, page_authority, linking root domains, and Spam Score. Sort by PA ascending inside the URLs that already rank or that you are paying writers to rank. Anything with a large PA-to-DA gap and no documented reason (new URL, thin unique fact, orphan, canonical) becomes a ticket, not a "we need more DA" slide. Re-export the same list the following week so you can see whether PA moved because Moz rebuilt a model or because an internal link, a content pass, or a real link landed. Without the dated file, the integer is a poster.

Majestic profile: Trust Flow and Citation Flow

Best fit: a team that cares about who links, not only how many hosts link, and wants Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and topical Trust Flow on the same graph. Majestic wins when the question is "is this URL collecting raw citations from weak neighborhoods, or is Trust Flow actually moving?". That is a different question from Moz PA.

Limitations: Trust Flow is not Page Authority. A board that already standardized on DA will not thank you for a second 0–100 number unless you explain the split. Majestic is not an on-page grader and is not a paid-search platform. Historic plan names (Lite, Standard, and similar) change; print contact vendor until you have a dated quote from majestic.com.

Implementation: export Trust Flow and Citation Flow at host and URL level, watch the TF/CF ratio as a quality check, and do not average TF with DA. Confirm current credits, historic index versus fresh index, and API terms on Majestic before you wire a weekly job. Human review sits on any URL where Citation Flow jumps and Trust Flow does not.

Primary evidence: Majestic's product site is the primary description of Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Treat third-party "DA to TF conversion" charts as unofficial.

Majestic's historic index versus fresh index is the other implementation detail teams skip. A Trust Flow number pulled from a deep historic crawl can disagree with a fresh-index number on the same URL in the same week. Pick one index for the weekly watch list and label the column. Mixing historic TF into a fresh CF column is how a "quality dropped" scare gets manufactured from a join error. Topical Trust Flow is useful when you need to see whether a URL is collecting flow in the topic you actually sell; it is not a replacement for PA, and it is not a Google topic classifier. Use it as a neighborhood check: if Citation Flow is up and every topical bucket looks off-subject, the URL may be collecting the wrong citations.

Majestic also does not replace Search Console. A high Trust Flow URL can still be noindexed, blocked by robots, or canonicalized. The graph answers "who flows into this URL?"; Google's coverage report answers "will anyone see it?". Run both. If you only have budget for one paid graph this year and the board already lives in DA, Majestic is the wrong first seat. If the board already asks "are these links any good?", Majestic is the right first seat and Moz Pro can wait.

Twelve-month cost of scoring, not ranking

Print only figures a named source already published. Where a cell is not on that source, it reads contact vendor. Hours in the table are scenario loads for a weekly export-and-review ritual, not a promise of what your team will spend.

Twelve months of a seat you cannot date is still contact vendor times 12, which is not a number. Do not build a board slide from a remembered Moz Standard SKU. Procurement closes from the vendor's current pricing URL, not from this table. The 6 versus 2 analyst-hour row is the operational claim: a human still reviews exceptions, but a ticket layer is designed so the 48-URL watch list is not re-scored by hand every Monday.

Who should buy which score

This page is for SEO leads, programmatic operators, and agencies who already publish commercial URLs, already have (or can export) a backlink graph, and need a host score and a page score on the same weekly row so a thin money URL cannot hide behind a healthy DA.

Red flags: skip both paid seats if you only need a one-off DA lookup for a prospect deck. Skip Moz Pro if the only question you ask is Trust Flow versus Citation Flow. Skip Majestic if leadership will only accept a number labeled Domain Authority. Skip a ticket layer if a spreadsheet already fails the PA-lag rows and someone actually closes them.

Who should choose Moz Pro: teams whose weekly language is already DA and PA, who need both scores in one export, and who will treat a PA lag as a content or internal-link ticket rather than as a reason to buy more links blindly.

Who should choose Majestic: teams whose weekly language is already Trust Flow, who need a quality-versus-quantity split, and who will treat a Citation Flow spike with a flat Trust Flow as a neighborhood problem.

Who should choose neither this week: a site that has not looked at Google Search Console coverage, canonicals, or indexation. Authority scores on noindexed URLs are theater. Fix crawl and index first; score second.

Decision checklist before you pay for a second graph: (1) Do you already have a dated commercial URL list, or are you scoring the homepage and hoping? (2) Is the weekly question host health (DA or host TF) or money-URL health (PA or URL TF/CF)? (3) Will someone fail a row this week if PA or TF lags, or will the chart go into a slide? (4) Do you need quality versus quantity (Majestic) or a single Moz integer leadership already understands (Moz Pro)? (5) Is Search Console coverage already clean on those URLs? If (5) is no, stop and fix indexation; both vendors will happily score a URL Google is ignoring. If (3) is no, a free snapshot is enough until a human owns the exception. If (2) is "both" and (4) is "Moz integer," Moz Pro is the seat. If (2) is "both" and (4) is "quality vs quantity," Majestic is the seat. If you need both vendors' integers on the same row, you are buying two graphs and you must not average them.

Routing a PA lag into a queue

The failure mode is not "we lack a third metric." The failure mode is a Monday CSV that nobody turns into a ticket. A proposed agentic workflow on US Tech Automations could take a weekly Moz or Majestic export as the trigger, sync rows where page_authority sits a set gap below domain_authority, and route each fail into a queue with the URL, the two scores, and the export date — configurable, not a measured customer deployment. Prerequisites are a dated Moz or Majestic export (API or CSV), a URL list that matches the CMS, and a human review point before anyone buys links or rewrites a page. Output in the user's hands would be a ticket per failing URL, not a new authority score.

Worked example, not a live case: a 320-URL B2B help center with Moz domain_authority 44, a median page_authority of 21 across 48 commercial URLs, and 11 URLs where PA sits 18 points under DA could fire that weekly export, open 11 tickets, and hold a 5-day editorial SLA on the 11 instead of re-charting DA for the whole host. The 320 URLs, DA 44, PA 21, 48 commercial URLs, 11 tickets, 18-point gap, and 5-day SLA are scenario numbers meant to size the workflow; they are not a promised lift and not a customer result. The backticked fields are Moz Links API metric names, not Google Search Console fields.

A second proposed US Tech Automations path, still configurable, is a webhook from the same export into the team's existing tracker so the queue is not a screenshot of Link Explorer. The trigger is the file drop or API pull; the action is a deduped ticket keyed on URL plus export week; the output is a list a human can close, snooze, or escalate. Idempotency matters: the same URL must not open a second ticket if DA did not move. Access control matters: the Moz token stays in a secret store, not in a shared sheet. Retention matters: score snapshots are not a substitute for a 16-month Search Console series, so keep both.

Stitching exports in Zapier, Make, or n8n

The honest alternative to a dedicated ticket layer is not "do nothing." It is a Zapier, Make, or n8n scenario that watches a Google Sheet or S3 drop, retries on a 429, branches when PA-lag exceeds a threshold, and writes an audit row. Those tools can support run histories, retries, error branches, and audit evidence when someone deliberately designs them. The buyer then owns observability, idempotency, escalation, access controls, retention, and maintenance for as long as Moz or Majestic change their export shape.

A proposed US Tech Automations design does not remove those needs. It would configure the same trigger → threshold → ticket path with named human review points and a single place to see which export week created which ticket. That is a packaging difference, not a claim that no-code cannot retry. If your n8n flow already fails PA-lag rows, closes duplicates, and pages an owner, you do not need a new system of record. When NOT to use US Tech Automations: when Moz Link Explorer on one domain is the whole job; when Majestic's UI already answers the only Trust Flow question you ask; or when a staffed n8n scenario already owns the export, the threshold, and the ticket with retries and an audit log you trust.

Common mistakes when DA and PA disagree

• Treating a DA increase as proof that a money URL will rank, even when that URL's PA is flat and the page is still a near-duplicate of a sibling.

• Averaging DA with Trust Flow to "get one number," which mixes two vendors' log scales and hides the quality-versus-quantity split Majestic exists to show.

• Charting DA weekly while the commercial URL list is noindexed, canonicalized to a hub, or orphaned from the internal link graph.

• Buying links to "fix PA" on a URL whose real problem is a thin unique-fact cell, a missing H1, or a parameter variant Google never wanted.

• Skipping the dated export so nobody can tell whether PA moved because Moz rebuilt a model or because a link actually landed.

• Reporting Spam Score as a Google penalty. It is a Moz correlation flag on a 0–100% scale, not a Search Console manual action.

FAQ

Is Domain Authority a Google ranking factor?

No. Domain Authority is a Moz model scored 1–100, and Google Search Central does not list it as a ranking system; use it as a relative third-party prediction, not as a Google score. A DA change can correlate with ranking changes because both often move when links change, which is not the same thing as Google reading Moz's integer.

What is the difference between Domain Authority and Page Authority?

Domain Authority scores the host; Page Authority scores one URL on that host, so a strong site can still have weak money pages and a weak site can still have one strong URL. Look at both on the same row when you are judging a commercial URL; looking only at DA hides thin money pages.

Should I use Moz Pro or Majestic for authority scoring?

Use Moz Pro when you need DA and PA in one export; use Majestic when you need Trust Flow versus Citation Flow and a topical graph — they answer different questions and should not be averaged. If leadership will only accept a number labeled Domain Authority, Majestic will create a translation tax you may not want this quarter.

Why is my DA high while my money page PA is low?

Usually the host has earned links while that URL is new, thin, orphaned, canonicalized, or noindexed; fix the URL's indexation and unique content before you buy more domain-level links. A host-level link campaign will move DA first and may never move that URL's PA if the URL is not in the internal link graph.

Can I convert Trust Flow into Domain Authority?

No reliable official conversion exists; both are 0–100 or 1–100 log-ish scores from different graphs, and a "DA 40 = TF 35" chart is unofficial. Report them in separate columns if you buy both vendors, and never average them into a blended score.

Do I need a ticket layer if I already export Moz weekly?

No. If a spreadsheet or n8n flow already fails PA-lag rows and someone closes them, keep it; a ticket layer is for teams whose CSV never becomes a queue. The product question is whether exceptions are closed, not whether a new logo appears on the chart.

Pick a score, then pick a queue

Domain authority vs page authority is not a religious argument. It is a row in an export. Moz Pro is the seat that makes that row DA and PA. Majestic is the seat that makes the comparable row Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Google does not score either pair. The useful operating loop is dated export → PA or TF exception → human review → content, internal links, or a real link — in that order. If you want the exception path packaged as a configurable trigger, queue, and webhook with a human review point, compare that design on pricing against the Zapier, Make, or n8n flow you could own yourself. Read more on the resources blog if you are still mapping the rest of the SEO stack around the score.