Page Authority

Page Authority (PA) is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). Page Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.

Page Authority is based on data from our web index and takes into account dozens of factors. Like Domain Authority® (DA), it uses a machine learning model to identify the algorithm that best correlates with rankings across the thousands of SERPs that we predict against, then produces Page Authority scores using that specific calculation.

You can find the PA of any page on your website for free. Go to Moz Link Explorer and enter the website address of any page you want to explore. In the above example, we’re entering the URL of the men’s clothing page on Patagonia.com. Click the button next to the search box. If you’ve not yet created a free Moz community account, you’ll be prompted to do so, and once you’ve signed in, you’ll be able to quickly receive useful data like this from Link Explorer on any URL you enter.

For more advanced client pitching and prospecting, Moz Pro provides a Domain Overview tool that enables you to compare other authority metrics like Domain Authority and Brand Authority™ so you can see the complete story of a website's ranking capabilities and online reach. Sign up for a free trial to get started.

Moz's Page Authority on a 100-point logarithmic scale. Meaning it is significantly easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it is to grow from 70 to 80. We constantly update the algorithm used to calculate Page Authority, so you may see your score fluctuate from time to time.

PA takes dozens of factors into account, including but not limited to:

• linking URLs

• linking root domains

• linking subdomains

• MozTrust + MozRank

• followed links

• nofollowed links

• link anchor text distribution

• 301 and 302 status

• new vs. old links

• top level domains (TLDs)

• domain names

• branded mentions

• Spam Score

• and many other factors

As is clearly seen from this partial list, PA is a link-centric metric.

Page Authority has value as a metric for seeing opportunities, researching competitors, measuring growth over time, and comparing one page against another. Like all SEO metrics, there are many use cases in which having a score can help you establish a baseline, engage in an action, and then see if it has produced the desired result. Over time, repeating this process can help you prove the value of your work to your organization or clients and help you create a strategy that prioritizes actions that produce meaningful gains.

More technically speaking, Page Authority is calculated in the same way as Domain Authority but at the individual page level. It is based on data from our robust Link Explorer web index and includes link counts and dozens of other factors (more than 40 in total).

It’s important to know that PA does not take into consideration specific on-page elements like keyword use or content optimization.

Like Domain Authority and Brand Authority, Page Authority is calculated using a machine learning algorithm and will fluctuate as the data fed into the algorithm changes. For this reason, it's best to use Page Authority as a relative metric to compare against other pages rather than an absolute value "scoring" the rankability of any one page.

This frequently asked question is an important one. Because of how Page Authority is calculated, it's best used as a comparative metric (rather than an absolute, concrete score) when doing research in the search results and determining which pages may have more powerful or important link profiles than others. Because it's a comparative tool, there isn't necessarily a "good" or "bad" Page Authority score. But we can arrive at a more practical answer to this common question by considering three of the main scenarios in which you’d be researching PA.

There may be many times in which you’ll want to know the authority of a specific page, but these are three of the commonest scenarios:

PA in competitive research

You will frequently look at the PA of a competitor’s page to predict how your page might perform against it. Logically, your goal here will be to learn how high the PA of your own page must become to match and surpass the metrics of the competitor.

However, the actual numbers will be different for every case based on your unique competitive scenario. Therefore, rather than aiming to earn a specific PA authority number as though your page exists in a vacuum, it’s a better goal to look at the PA of a page against which you’re competing to get a sense of where your own number should be. The page you’re competing against could have a PA of 10, or 50, or 70!

PA in link research

Again, the actual numbers will vary, but PA can help you determine whether it will be more valuable to earn a link from one page vs. another. For example, if your organization had sponsored an event, and the event host offered you the chance of being featured and linked to from a page on their website with a PA of 49 or a page with a PA of 91, in most cases, you’d opt for the latter.

By this same token, PA can help you prioritize which pages across multiple websites to prioritize in your link building outreach. If site A doesn’t have any pages with a PA higher than 15 but site B has multiple pages with a PA above 50, chances are, you’d make the earring a link from site B more of a priority on your to-do list.

PA can also help you with your internal linking prioritization. Let’s say your organization has just launched a new guide and you need to find the strongest pages on your own website from which to link to it. Knowing the PA of your own pages will help you estimate which pages can convey the most authority to a newly-published asset.

PA in reporting

If you are an SEO or marketer or an in-house employee, including PA in your reporting can help decision-makers understand the results of your efforts. If you’re tasked with building inbound links or improving internal linking practices, Moz Link Explorer and other Moz Pro tools that track PA can show how your work is, resulting in a gradual, month-over-month increase in this metric over time. It can also help you pinpoint drops in PA for troubleshooting, as in the event of having lost links from a particular source. Again, do bear in mind that fluctuations in actual numbers are expected due to the machine learning process, but over time, tracking PA can help you demonstrate growth.

No, PA is not an acknowledged Google search engine ranking factor. While it is the business of SEOs to speculate on factors that appear to influence positioning in the search engine results, only Google is privy to all of the metrics that make up its algorithms. As mentioned above, PA is a metric invented by Moz – not a factor created or acknowledged by Google or any other search engine.

Consumers of SEO software should practice caution when encountering products that claim to have definitively identified a search engine ranking factor or that promise any type of guaranteed results. Legitimate SEO observes patterns of factors that appear to positively or negatively influence search engine visibility, but only Google knows its own algorithms and controls its own SERPs.

That being said, many of the link-based factors that are the foundation of the Page Authority metric have long been considered among the top factors that impact search engine rank. Meanwhile Google’s own representatives regularly speak about the degree to which links do and don’t impact rankings, which is an acknowledgement that aspects of links do play a role in SERP visibility. Thus, metrics like PA can be said to be measuring factors which Google has shared are included in their algorithms.

Whereas Page Authority measures the predictive ranking strength of a single page, Domain Authority measures the strength of entire domains or subdomains. The metrics are, however, calculated using the same methodology — so in many ways, they're more alike than they are different.

In the Moz ecosystem, you can check Domain Authority using Link Explorer, MozBar, Moz's free SEO toolbar, or the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer. Authority metrics are also incorporated into all Moz Pro campaigns,

Moz's Page Authority is incorporated into dozens of SEO and online marketing platforms across the web to integrate SEO insights into wider digital marketing dashboards. If you're playing around with creating a dashboard, you can start using Moz's API, which includes a range of endpoints like backlink metrics, keywords, and more!

Page Authority is a holistic score that is difficult to influence directly. It is made up of an aggregate of metrics that each impact the score. This multi-factorial dependence is intentional: Since Google takes many factors into account when ranking a page, a metric that tries to calculate it must incorporate many factors as well.

The best way to influence a page's Authority is to improve its link profile. This can be accomplished by getting external links from other high-authority pages, which in turn act as "votes of confidence" for the authority of your page. The Linking Domains section of Moz Link Explorer will help you discover which domains and pages are currently linking to a page on your site, and you can use this same tool to plug in the page of a competitor to discover the most authoritative sources linking to it, helping you create a plan for earning more links from stronger pages over time.

Page Authority depends on many factors and can fluctuate for a wide range of reasons. The “Why did my Authority change?” section here provides more information about why page authority changes and a model for interpreting those fluctuations.

Written by Miriam Ellis, edited by Jo Cameron, July 24, 2024