Ahrefs DR3 to DR4 Upgrade: After the Bubble Bursts, How Should AI Startups Respond?

Ahrefs published a preview of Domain Rating 4 (DR4) on November 5, 2026. The number most people screenshot inside Ahrefs still says DR3 until December 1. If a domain "crashed" when you looked up the new model, Google did not penalize it. Ahrefs changed which backlinks get to vote.

Glen Allsopp, Ahrefs' head of marketing strategy and research, wrote the source post: Introducing a Preview of DR4. Every figure in the tables below comes from that post. We did not rerun their 10-million-host study. What we did ship is a checker that already calls Ahrefs' free Domain Rating API with version=dr4, including a side-by-side DR3 and DR4 view: DR Checker.

The "bubble" in the title is specific. It is the DR3 habit of letting a subdomain wear its parent's score, plus spam-labeled domains that sat in the 30–70 band on borrowed links. DR4 lets that air out. It is not a new Google ranking system.

What DR4 actually changes

Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0–100 score for how strong a backlink profile looks next to other sites in its database. It is calculated from links. It does not grade the writing, the age of the domain, or whether the product is good. DR4 keeps that definition and changes two mechanics: a smaller set of sites can influence the score, and a subdomain is rated on its own links.

Subdomains no longer inherit the parent score

Under DR3, sorting a backlink report by DR pushed GitHub Pages, Blogspot, and website-builder subdomains to the top. A new example.notion.site could display a score in the 80s or 90s because the platform was strong, not because anyone had linked to that page.

DR4 scores the host from links that point at that host. Ahrefs published these examples:

Ahrefs' footnote matters: those last two rows are real subdomains that link to Ahrefs. They are not a census of every Notion or Hostinger tenant. A real help center on a strong brand can still score well. A fresh public Notion page does not get to wear DR 92 because the platform does.

Among domains Ahrefs ranks by estimated organic traffic, github.io — the free GitHub Pages host, not github.com — drops about 32 points. facebook.github.io still shows DR 86, because that subdomain has links of its own. Your you.github.io is a third host. It might be high, or it might be near zero. You have to look up that exact host.

About half as many sites receive a score

Ahrefs still builds DR from links. DR4 puts more weight on links from sites and subdomains it estimates have organic search traffic. The count of sites with a DR4 score (DR above zero in the new model) is about half the DR3 count. Fewer domains can move someone else's number.

Spam-labeled domains in the 30–70 band fall hardest

Ahrefs added a Spam label to backlink reports in 2025, first from a manual list, then from a machine-learning detector in January 2026. Those domains are already left out of "new link" emails and can be filtered in reports.

Under DR4, spam domains that sat at DR3 30–70 see the largest drops: a median of about 15–20 points. Non-spam domains stay relatively stable. Across most DR3 bands, the median DR4 change is close to zero. A legitimate site that grew on its own links should not expect a cliff. A site whose entire profile was a farm should.

Correlation with Google is stronger across all hosts, and weaker on roots alone

Ahrefs compared both models with Google ranking positions across 10 million domains and hosts. On that full set, DR4 correlates more than 2.5× better than DR3 with top-3 and top-10 results. Split the same test and the story changes:

Read the rows the way Ahrefs wrote them. All hosts: DR4 wins, because weak subdomains are no longer wearing a parent's score. Root domains only: DR3 still correlates better, because DR3 was built around roots. Subdomains: DR4 wins.

If you are choosing a referring host, DR4 is the better sort key. If you were sorting by a company's homepage DR and treating every subdomain as that number, DR3 was flattering you.

On Ahrefs' top 1,000 domains by estimated organic traffic, 64.3% gain DR, 15.8% stay flat, and 19.9% fall. The falls are small: average 7.3 points, median 4. Monday.com moves 91 → 90. Zoho drops one point, to 91. Teamwork.com stays 82. Airtable ticks up to 92. A one-point move beside stable competitors is noise. github.io is the loud exception in that high-traffic set, for the reason above.

DR remains relative and logarithmic. Moving from 84 to 85 is harder than moving from 54 to 55. A two-point drop on a strong root is not the same event as a 90-point drop on a hosted subdomain.

What this does to an AI startup

Google traffic does not move because a third-party column did

Google does not use Ahrefs DR in its ranking systems. A lower DR4 is not a penalty, and it is not a forecast that organic traffic falls tomorrow. Ahrefs says a lower score is not a judgment on the content or the product. It means their model does not see enough of the links it now treats as quality.

If the pages already rank because they answer the query, they do not lose that because a vendor shipped a new formula. Check Search Console if you want the traffic story. Check DR if you want a backlink-profile story.

Until December 1, the Ahrefs UI is still DR3

Site Explorer, and the screenshot in most decks, stays on DR3 until December 1, 2026. DR4 is already on the free Domain Rating API: add version=dr4. After the UI switches, Ahrefs will keep DR3 on the API for a short window so the two can be compared. Do not put a November DR3 and a December DR4 in the same cell and call the gap a trend.

The DR Checker requests DR4 for a normal lookup. The DR3 → DR4 tab on that page asks Ahrefs for both versions of the same host. Use it on the host that will actually receive the link. blog.example.com is no longer example.com's score. Domain Rating data on that page is Domain Rating by Ahrefs, under their Domain Rating license.

A free-host landing page stops wearing a borrowed DR

Notion, Medium, Substack, and GitHub Pages are still reasonable places to show an MVP this week. They are no longer a way to display a high Domain Rating. The old number belonged to the platform. Register the brand on a domain you control, make that the canonical host, and only then spend a month on partner links.

If the name is not locked yet, check it with the domain generator and the handle checker. Before you buy or point DNS at a name, look at domain history, DNS, and SSL. A custom domain with a bad past is a different problem from DR, and it is cheaper to see it before launch.

Link swaps need the new number, on the page that will contain the link

A partner quoting "DR 50+" from a DR3 screenshot may be a scraper, a private network, or a subdomain that was borrowing a platform score. Open the URL where the href will live. If that URL is sites.partner.com or partner.notion.site, score that host, not the brand root.

Run it through the DR Checker first. If you are comparing several partners, the Link Exchange Evaluator pulls Ahrefs DR with version=dr4 and looks at whether the pages are about the same topic. A higher DR is still not a reason to trade links. DR4 only makes the weak hosts easier to spot. Buying a bulk "guaranteed DR" package against the old model pays for the hosts this update just discounted.

What to use on NewName while the model switches

NewName.ai is a curated list of AI companies that have actually shipped. A listing is a factual product page: what the company does, and a link a reader can open. It is not a DR package, and being listed is not a promise that a keyword will move.

Founders can submit for free. The public queue is three free listings a day, and a free review takes about 7–15 days. Placing the "Listed on NewName.ai" badge on the company homepage shortens that to about 1–2 days once the badge is visible, and domain verification is how a founder claims the page. The badge is how we speed review and attribute the listing. It is not a tactic for purchasing a score.

While Ahrefs is still on DR3 in the product UI, these are the pages that already speak DR4:

• DR Checker — one domain, a competitor set, or DR3 and DR4 on the same host. Open this before a DR goes into an investor update.
• Link Exchange Evaluator — several potential partners, scored on DR4, with a reason on each pair.
• Domain generator and handle checker — leave *.vercel.app, *.notion.site, and *.github.io once the name is actually free.
• DNS, SSL, and domain history — the technical checks around the domain you are about to make canonical.

The company behind the metric is a separate story: Ahrefs sells a crawler, not a dashboard.

Three things to do before December 1

1. Write down both scores. In the DR Checker, record DR3 and DR4 for your canonical host and for two close competitors, and date the row. If the category dropped and you held, your relative position improved. If only a hosted subdomain collapsed, you were reading the platform's DR.

2. Drop packages priced on a guaranteed DR3. Fiverr-style bulk links sold as "DR 50+" were often the spam-labeled 30–70 band, or subdomains wearing someone else's score. DR4 is the model that marks those down. The budget is better spent on a domain you own and on pages people link to because the product is useful.

3. Ship on your own host, then tell people it exists. When a product or a major feature is live, submit it where a person browses a list of companies, not where a script collects hrefs. On this site that list is newname.ai/list. Keep the canonical URL on your domain.

DR3 to DR4 is a cleanup of a third-party score: fewer hosts get to vote, and subdomains stop inheriting a parent. Teams that already earned links to their own domain have less to explain on December 1.

Just shipped? Submit the company, or read the current number on the DR Checker.