Backlink checker pagerank or DR: what to store in a field
Your content model needs one number, one date and one note. This page shows the field design and a worked example with the DR formula.
Contentin research team ·
Why PageRank is not a field option
People still search for a backlink checker pagerank tool, but the public number is gone. Google removed the toolbar PageRank display in 2016, and no replacement ever came from Google itself.
What remains are vendor scores. Ahrefs has DR, Moz has DA, and we publish our own Domain Rating with an open formula. Pick one and stay with it. Mixing two in a column makes every later comparison meaningless.
A practical rule for headless teams: store what you will display or filter on, and nothing else. Every extra field is one more thing for an editor to misread, one more column in an export, and one more mapping that breaks when you migrate from one CMS to another.
Naming matters. Call the field link_dr, not authority. The first says whose number it is. The second invites someone to swap in a different vendor's score a year from now.
Worked example: the formula on five invented domains
Referring-domain counts are made up for illustration. Formula: round(100 · log(ref_domains+1) / log(2·10^7)).
Invented domain
Referring domains
DR
Suggested band
tiny-docs.example
10
14
Low
small-saas.example
50
23
Low
mid-blog.example
1,000
41
Middle
big-publisher.example
100,000
68
High
theoretical-top.example
20,000,000
100
High
What the table says about field design
The scale is logarithmic. Ten domains and 1,000 domains are 27 points apart, while 1,000 and 100,000 are the same distance again. So store the integer, but read it in bands.
A band field often helps an editor more than the raw number. Nobody can act on 41 versus 43. They can act on a label that says middle. Keep it plain.
Dates matter as much as scores. A stored score with no date looks like a live reading, and a year later someone will quote it in a meeting as if it were. Stamp it, and refresh it on a schedule you can name, such as the nightly bulk_dr sweep from the cost table.
Keep the note field boring. One sentence is enough. Its job is to remind the reader that the index moves about monthly and that Google Search Console holds Google's own view.
A content model sketch
Field names are ours for illustration. Contentful, Sanity, Strapi and Payload each declare fields in their own way, so translate.
Run overview on a known domain and read the JSON by eye. Check the real field names in the response, because this page does not list them for you.
2
Pick the DR value
Copy the 0 to 100 score into an integer field. Reject anything outside that range so a malformed response cannot reach the entry.
3
Derive the band in your own code
Under 20 is low, 20 to 50 is middle, above 50 is high. The thresholds are a suggestion and belong to your team, not to the API.
4
Stamp the date
Write today's date next to the score. The index refreshes about monthly, so the date is part of the data.
Fields to leave out
Raw backlink rows: they age badly and bloat the entry
Anchor lists, unless a human reviews them (see the runbook)
A pass or fail boolean: it invites a hard block
Vendor scores from two tools in one column
One caveat on the example
The five domains above do not exist, and the counts are chosen only to make the arithmetic visible. For real numbers, run the free DR checker on your own site.