What Is Page Authority? Measuring an Individual Page’s Link Strength

Page Authority (PA) is Domain Authority’s page-level counterpart: the same Moz model and the same 1 to 100 scale, but scoped down to a single URL’s link signals instead of an entire site. DA and PA are closely related but answer different questions: DA estimates the overall strength of a domain, while PA estimates how strongly one specific page within (or outside) that domain is likely to rank, based largely on the links pointing directly at it.

Mixing the two up leads to bad decisions, like assuming every page on a high-DA site will automatically rank well, or assuming a page on a low-DA site can’t compete. Neither assumption holds, which is exactly why Page Authority exists as a separate metric.

How Page Authority differs from Domain Authority

A domain’s overall authority does not distribute evenly across every page on that site. A homepage or a flagship guide that has accumulated links for years can carry a very different authority signature than a product page published last month, even though both live on the same domain and share the same DA.

To illustrate the gap (these numbers are hypothetical, not measured data from any real site): a publisher’s homepage might carry a Page Authority in the 70s thanks to years of accumulated links and internal link equity flowing from the rest of the site, while a brand-new article published on that same domain last week might sit in the 20s or 30s, even though both pages technically belong to a site with one overall Domain Authority score. That gap is the entire reason a page-level metric is useful: it captures variation that a single domain-wide number cannot.

Moz calculates Page Authority using a similar machine-learning approach to Domain Authority, but scoped to a single URL’s link profile, including the number and quality of links pointing directly at that page, rather than the domain as a whole (Moz, “Page Authority”). Like DA, it is a logarithmic, relative score recalculated as Moz’s link index updates, and it is not a Google ranking factor; it is a third-party prediction, not an input Google’s systems actually use (Google Search Central, “Google Search’s guidance on third-party SEO tools & advice”).

What Page Authority is useful for

Because it operates at the URL level, PA answers questions DA cannot:

• Link-target prioritization. When planning internal linking or outreach, PA helps identify which pages already have meaningful link equity and are worth reinforcing, versus which pages are starting from near zero and need a different strategy (internal links, new outreach, or a content refresh) to gain traction.
• Evaluating a specific link opportunity. If a partner site wants to link to you, or you’re vetting a guest-post placement, the authority of the specific page the link will appear on matters more than the domain’s overall DA. A link from a high-DA domain’s thin, buried archive page is a different proposition than a link from that same domain’s well-linked flagship resource.
• Explaining why one page outranks another from a different domain. Two competing pages might sit on domains with similar DA, but if one page has accumulated substantially more page-level link equity than the other, that can help explain a ranking gap that domain-level comparison alone wouldn’t reveal.
• E-commerce and large-site prioritization. On sites with thousands of pages (category pages, product pages, location pages), PA gives a rough way to see which sections of the site are starved of link equity and might benefit from stronger internal linking from already-strong pages.

Page Authority vs. Domain Authority: a side-by-side view

	Domain Authority (DA)	Page Authority (PA)
Scope	Entire domain	A single URL
Vendor	Moz	Moz
Scale	1-100, logarithmic	1-100, logarithmic
Primary signal	Site-wide link profile (linking root domains, link quality)	Link profile of that specific page (referring pages, internal link equity received)
Best used for	Comparing overall site strength against competitors	Comparing or prioritizing individual pages, link targets, or content pieces
Google ranking factor?	No	No

Both metrics are produced from Moz’s link index using comparable modeling approaches; the difference is the unit of analysis, not the underlying philosophy.

Page Authority vs. Ahrefs URL Rating (UR)

Moz isn’t the only vendor with a page-level link metric. Ahrefs publishes URL Rating (UR), which also runs on a 0 to 100 logarithmic scale and also scores a single page rather than a whole domain (Ahrefs, “What is URL Rating (UR)?”). The concepts are similar, but the numbers are not interchangeable. PA and UR come from different link indexes, different crawlers, and different weighting models, so a page that shows PA 35 in Moz and UR 35 in Ahrefs is a coincidence, not evidence that the page sits at “35” on some shared, vendor-neutral scale. Ahrefs also counts only links it classifies as dofollow toward UR, while Moz’s PA model draws on a broader signal set. The practical takeaway: pick one tool’s page-level metric and track it consistently over time, rather than treating a PA score and a UR score for the same page as comparable data points.

Why Page Authority is not a Google ranking factor

The same caveat that applies to Domain Authority applies here: PA is Moz’s estimate of how a page is likely to perform, built from observable link signals, not a number Google calculates or consults. Google’s own ranking systems weigh many signals beyond links, including content relevance, page experience, and query-specific context, and Google has been clear that third-party tools do not have access to its internal ranking data or metrics (Google Search Central, “Google Search’s guidance on third-party SEO tools & advice”). PA can correlate with ranking performance because both are downstream of similar link-related factors, but treating a PA score as something to directly optimize for, rather than a proxy for genuine link equity and content quality, misreads what the number is for.

Practical limits to keep in mind

A few limitations are worth flagging before leaning on PA for decisions:

1. It is link-centric. PA is built overwhelmingly from link signals. It does not directly capture content quality, search intent match, page experience, or freshness, all of which matter for how a page actually performs in search.
2. New pages start low, regardless of quality. A page published yesterday can be excellent and still show a low PA simply because it hasn’t had time to accumulate links or internal equity yet. Don’t read a low score as a verdict on quality.
3. It’s relative to Moz’s index, not absolute. As with DA, a page’s PA can shift when Moz’s crawl or comparison set changes, even if nothing on the page itself changed.
4. It doesn’t replace looking at the actual link profile. Two pages can show similar PA scores while having very different underlying link profiles (one diversified across many relevant referring domains, one concentrated in a handful of less relevant ones). The score alone won’t surface that difference; reviewing the actual referring pages still matters.

Frequently asked questions

Can a page have higher Page Authority than its own domain’s Domain Authority?
Yes, and it happens regularly. PA and DA come from separate models with different inputs: PA is built from the link signals pointing at that one URL, while DA is built from domain-wide signals like the number of unique linking root domains across the entire site. A single page that earns links from a handful of strong, relevant sources, a piece of content picked up by major publications, for example, can post a PA well above the domain’s own DA, especially on a small or newer site where the rest of the pages haven’t accumulated comparable link equity yet.

Does internal linking affect Page Authority?
Yes. Page-level link equity includes signals passed through internal links from other strong pages on the same site, not just external backlinks, which is why internal linking strategy is one of the more directly controllable levers for influencing a page’s PA over time.

Is Page Authority the same as a Google ranking?
No. It is a third-party, link-based prediction from Moz. A page can have a modest PA and still rank well for a query if it strongly matches search intent and content quality signals, just as a page with a high PA can fail to rank if it’s a poor match for what searchers are looking for.

How often does Page Authority update?
It updates as Moz refreshes its link index and retrains its scoring model, on a schedule set by Moz, not in real time as links are built or lost.

Should agencies use Page Authority in client reporting?
It can be a useful supporting data point, particularly for showing which pages are gaining link equity over time, but like Domain Authority, it should sit alongside (not replace) rankings, organic traffic, and conversion metrics that reflect actual business outcomes.