However, Moz Domain Authority and Ahrefs Domain Rating are two similar metrics but. They want us to stop using their API to show you their metrics. Your outreach template is only as good as your content. For now, it’s not possible to filter or sort by UR since we don’t have this metric for all pages in the content index. With either of these tools, all you need to do is just enter in any of your competitor domain names. Ahrefs Domain Authority is a metric that measures the credibility and influence of a website in search engine rankings. Ahrefs domain rank (AR) is the order in which all the websites in Ahrefs database rank in terms of the quality of the website backlink profile. 4% of domains made up the DR 0-20 range. Ahrefs boasts an index of over 12 trillion links and data on 200 million root domains, making it an invaluable repository for SEOs wanting to understand their site’s SEO performance. Google’s aim is to rank the most relevant content for any query. So let’s explore the three main things that impact Domain Rating. We value good design in any tool, but it’s especially refreshing to see this in a data-driven environment. Step 1. Within the definitions lies the answer. The marketing funnel (also known as the purchase funnel or sales funnel) is based on the Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) model, first developed in 1898 by E. Cons of Using Ahrefs * Low limits and restrictions on the $99 plan make that plan not worth itGo to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer; Enter a competitor’s domain; Go to the Top pages report; For example, if you are looking for keywords for an online computer parts store, you may enter newegg. How to measure it. It’s free and allows for integrations with numerous other web analytics tools, including Ahrefs. Plan, create, and optimize content for those keywords. And while criteria for scoring domain authority vary from one tool to another, all these tools measure roughly the same thing – the SEO strength of a domain. But it’s more than just a good color palette. Similarly, domains that have traffic, and good SEO metrics such as DA/PA usually sell at higher price points, as the new owner is getting a nice SEO jump start because of the domain’s history. With this prior knowledge, let’s now check how this domain performs in the key figures of the three SEO tools. 1. Ahrefs is clearly the winner here by a huge margin – a much larger margin than my initial test with just 3 domains highlighted. Broken links. , Domain Rating). The domain rating (DR) metric will be used to determine the AR. 99 monthly for their Lite package, which makes Majestic the more affordable option than Moz, Ahrefs or SEMRush. These two measurements are typically used to help identify the right websites to target for your link-building outreach efforts. Make sure the keyword has “business potential”. In the Overview tab, you can view the Authority Score (which is domain authority). Link building – Get links from other websites so you rank higher. As you’d imagine, the Facebook social media domain is very highly trusted and has a DA of 96: The higher a. Ahrefs Domain Rank Score is a metric used to measure the authority and strength of a website's domain. Moz DA: Moz's Domain Authority - the most popular metric used to determine overall domain strength, however, domain rating can be easily manipulated. That’s because he doesn’t even know what SEO is. If Google cannot find, crawl, and index your pages, it doesn’t matter what SEO tactics you pull out of the hat. It runs on a scale from zero to a hundred. There are several tools available for checking your website load speed. 08 per referring domain (dofollow) Prices for aged domains at auctions like GoDaddy Auctions can vary widely from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousand dollars. Zero-click searches will continue to rise. Find domains with powerful, authority backlinks. Fill your content calendar for weeks, months, or even years in minutes. It lays the foundation for everything else going forward, e. Both Have Strengths in. Select a few top-ranking pages in the SERP overview. 63% of Google searchers click on results from. However, the company decided to add an abundance of new features in the meantime, making Ahrefs a worthy competitor in the SEO research industry. ”. June 1, 2021 9 min read. June 15, 2023 In today’s fast-paced content marketing landscape, it’s crucial to make informed decisions based on concrete data rather than gut feelings. Proprietary Link Metrics: Trust Flow. The free tool above shows your website’s “authority” as calculated by Ahrefs (i. Here is a video from ahrefs on how to increase your domain authority that you can check out after reading: Osprey, 8% commission, 30-day cookie. What is a good or average Domain Authority score? Generally speaking, sites with very large numbers of high-quality external links (such as wikipedia. Go to the Matching terms report. Summary of metrics shown by Ahrefs for your competitor’s backlinks. One could hardly compare the two. Ahrefs has a YouTube channel where they share plenty of SEO material, which is really good for digital marketers. ” The names are different, but they serve the same purpose. Registration and Use of Service. Many people overcomplicate this process, but the reality is that it’s not that hard. Domain authority is about all metrics, so getting a link from a page with lower domain authority doesn’t penalize you. Here’s a step-by-step guide for building a blog strategy that will help you get more traffic to your business and bring new customers your way. Plus, they can take advantage of competitor insights. Enter your domain in the Competitors section. The first is with Google Search Console. It does this by calculating a Keyword Difficulty score from 1 to 100, with 100 being the hardest. 3% of all website traffic comes from organic search. And because each of these brands uses its own unique calculation and link indexes, your website’s scores could vary widely for each metric. Ahrefs calculates this score. It’s important to understand what it takes to rank a keyword and this is known as keyword difficulty. Domain Authority is a Moz metric that predicts a website’s performance on search engines. Another key metric returned by Ahrefs’ domain analysis feature is the search volume for a particular phrase — the. The AARRR metrics framework, also called pirate metrics or the AARRR funnel, is a set of metrics used to track and influence critical user behavior that can lead to business growth. Here are more features that make Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker special: See followed and nofollowed links — The more quality followed backlinks a site has, the more trustworthy it is in the eyes of Google. Click the Content Gap report. anwerable-to-none • 1 yr. When it comes to domain authority, high-quality backlinks are king. 3. Now, here’s the good news: These SEO metrics aren’t as frightening as you might think. The concept of UR is similar to Moz’s Page Authority (PA) metric. Keywords Explorer is a keyword research tool that runs on a database of billions of keywords. e. Subject Website Metrics: Below are the basic metrics of the website I used for this analysis. 3. Significantly, your small business website’s backlink portfolio is a primary measure of good domain authority. Ahrefs. A whole lot. For example, many of the top posts on Hey Grill, Hey are “smoked” recipes. Organic search refers to the non-paid search results from a search engine. One of the most widely used and essential traffic analysis tools is Google Search Console. (winners and losers), or new and lost metrics. The valid number of pages should be roughly equal to the number of pages on your site. As is the case with Ahrefs’ backlink analytics tool, Semrush has had more time perfecting its Site Audit tool and hence does a better job at identifying critical on-site errors that are hurting your site’s search visibility. Summary: Check your backlink profile using a tool like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or Moz. SemrushDR is a domain-level metric, and UR is a page-level metric. Core Web Vitals. Survival is another topic jam-packed full of niche site ideas. Create your blog’s identity. To help you determine a site’s domain authority, Ahrefs shows you each site’s Domain Rating (DR). A domain rating is calculated by a website’s backlink profile. An SEO consultant provides several SEO services to improve your website’s online visibility. For example, your Shopify store can be accessible at: example. However, it might not be a good fit for you. Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank. Ahrefs calculates the DR score by analyzing a website's backlink profile, which includes factors such as the number and quality of referring links and the strength. It means we only accept domains that passed through our strict due diligence and are worth listing. Here’s the process: Plug your website into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and go to the Content Gap tool. among Site Audit tool buyers by the end of 2023. Domain authority, website authority, or site authority is a catchall term for the quality signals Google uses in its core algorithm. An average of $15. The above two fallacies have the same root: thinking about content in a business-centric way and not a user-centric one. Our Batch Analysis tool can help you quickly compare the metrics of up to several hundred URLs or domains at a time. This is a measure of the page’s overall authority reflected as a metric out of 100. Description. After all, a website can have 2,000 spammy referring domains! It’s good to use this metric in combination with other metrics like Trust Flow. For now, it’s not possible to filter or sort by UR since we don’t have this metric for all pages in the content index. 720, then SimilarWeb. The backlink profile is a. Treating SEO as a one-time thing. Here’s a step-by-step guide for building a blog strategy that will help you get more traffic to your business and bring new customers your way. You can find out what these words are by doing keyword research. It helps to rank websites much better and quicker. However, keep. KeySearch's keyword research tool is refreshingly simple to use. 1. What Is A Good Domain Authority Score? Clickhub reports the average domain authority score as being between 40 – 50. The higher your DR score, the more dofollow backlinks you have. Set your preferred domain. Age: Age of the domain from the time it was first registered. It also 301 redirected several expired domains with high DR to its domain. Some SEOs and webmasters boost the DR of their site specifically in order to sell links. If you like a competitor’s site structure, you can hit the “Export” button in the top right-hand corner to analyze it. ” To calculate, Ahrefs counts the number of referring domains linking to the top-ranking pages. The idea being that a link from a website with a higher Domain Rating (DR) will typically be more valuable. Go to the Matching terms report. Domain Authority and Domain Rating are almost similar, but they still have some significant differences. It’s free and allows for integrations with numerous other web analytics tools, including Ahrefs. According to Ahrefs:. Ahrefs is the closest you can get to an ‘essential’ tool if you are a serious content marketer or SEO. The UR of these sites is all over the place as you go down the rankings. This tool allows you to check DA and spam metrics for up to 10 URLs at a time. To check this, plug the domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and go to the Overview report. For example, a popular keyword that is updated once in a few days will get timely monthly data. The free tool above shows your website’s “authority” as calculated by Ahrefs (i. 4 Check on-page SEO. In the Wins by IP test, Ahrefs finds 216% more than Majestic SEO. Use Google Ads data. com. Let's go over some of these pros before we get to the cons. Not doing keyword research. Filter for keywords with a monthly search volume up to 300. You can check these metrics of any site by plugging it into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to get a quick overview. High-paying affiliates. Find relevant and high-quality link prospects. Domain names are often overlooked when choosing a new web address. Here is the bottom-line-up-front: Obtain traffic without many backlinks: 5. In-Depth Site Analysis. Step 3. Google Search Console – Performance data from Google. See moreDomain Rating (DR) is an Ahrefs metric that shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. These are the most interesting SEO stats we think you should know: 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. In this Ahrefs guide, we will explore the many features Ahrefs offers and more! Ahrefs an SEO tool that helps you get organic traffic to your website. It runs on a scale from zero to a hundred. ago. Domain authority is a search engine ranking metric developed by Moz. Here at Ahrefs, we have a website authority metric of our own called Domain Rating. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer; Enter a competitor’s domain; Go to the Top pages report; For example, if you are looking for keywords for an online computer parts store, you may enter newegg. By 301 redirecting an irrelevant domain, you’re asking Penguin to slap your site. Rather than being a metric, it’s shorthand for a collection of signals that Google interprets as being common to authoritative websites. Sure, it’s still not at the same level as Ahrefs. SEMrush is a popular tool among many SEO professionals and it also provides data about the domain authority of a website. The free tool above shows your website’s “authority” as calculated by Ahrefs (i. Organic traffic Keyword rankings Search visibility Traffic value Organic traffic conversions Referring domains Indexed pages Index coverage errors Core Web Vitals Website health Followed by these four metrics that are popular but actually don’t matter: Bounce rate Exit rate Pages per session Average session duration / time on page Ahrefs Domain Rank Score is a metric used to measure the authority and strength of a website's domain. It’s worth pointing out that the availability of data from such a wide range of search engines is one of Ahrefs’ strongest selling points. You will see a variety of metrics on the dashboard such as the number of backlinks and referring domains, the website’s domain rank (Ahrefs equivalent of DA),. You’ll want to track most of these regardless of the area of marketing you’re. ), you’ll find a. To get started all you need to do is enter a seed keyword in the search box. com. There are a number of SEO tools that can help you achieve better results in search engine queries. Earn 1% to 20% referral fees when affiliates share links that lead to sales. Understanding Ahrefs Metrics and Data. Ahrefs is a software company that develops online SEO tools and free educational materials for marketing professionals. While experts use the term “domain authority” as though it were a general principle, in reality, it’s a metric created by SEO software company Moz. Since the metrics are good, I could easily get a link on either site and many clients. 1. Free features of the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar include: Metrics: Displays website and page-level SEO metrics like Domain Rating, URL Rating, Ahrefs Rank, referring pages, referring domains, search traffic, and keyword rankings. Featured tool: Ahrefs . For example, the below Domain Rating vs Domain Authority scatter plot compares Ahrefs DR and Moz DA scores approximately 9,700 domains. 6. In the same way, the statistical reality Ahrefs is facing is stacked towards a small percentage of domains in their index. However, i have noticed something weird in Ahrefs, when i find a few keywords with a 4 value keyword difficulty when i check the same keyword in Kwfinder i get a keyword difficulty of around 30-45. Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) is a metric that evaluates the strength of a website’s backlink profile on a scale from 0 to 100. To help you focus on the right metrics — regardless of what your business is about — here are the top nine SEO metrics and how to track them. | Increase Ahrefs Domain Rating or Increase Domain Ratingat a Huge Discount!Increase your website's Domain Rating Today! with Guarantee 30 Days WorkA High Domain Rating ultimately | FiverrDomain Authority is a score (on a 100-point-scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. 7 Technical SEO. Pages need to be crawlable and indexable to even have a chance at ranking, but many other activities will have minimal impact compared to content and links. Ahrefs shows you the complete picture of followed vs nofollowed links for any target. Ahrefs Cons. Some of the key use cases: Find content gaps between you and your competitors to get new content ideas. 8. Ahrefs. Domain Rating (DR) shows the strength of a website's backlink profile compared to the others in our database on a 100-point scale. Republishing your post is the easy part. ( Backlinko) 53. Just make sure the “all words” tab is selected, so both words are included. 1. Repeat this for the other operators in the sheet. In the search bar, change Exact URL to Domain and hit search. These metrics proport to calculate a website’s “authority” based, for the most part, on the quantity and quality of its backlinks. Ahrefs nor Moz seem to consider domain age (correct me if I'm wrong) and content quality, latter of which is understandable tho considering what kind of. Another point for Ahrefs . Content marketing helps nurture and convert leads. Similar to Ahref's UR metric. 1% (62) websites had a AHREFs DR of less than 3 Quality over quantity backlinks: 8. Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Step 1. So the first step is to make sure Google can do all of the above for your site. Here are a few examples of the most common services they provide. Note: The number of referring domains is not a good indicator of domain quality by itself. Semrush is one of the top digital marketing tools to perform site analysis, keyword research, competitor analysis, content marketing, and marketing campaign management for businesses. If you're looking for a quick and easy way to pull Ahrefs' backlink metrics for up to 200 individual URLs, Batch Analysis is the tool you're looking for. If we use “smoked” as our “seed” keyword as we did above, we see thousands of other popular topics that we could create content about. If people searching for your topic want fresh information, you’ll lose traffic and rankings if you don’t update your page. Toggle the metrics bar with a keyboard shortcut: Cmd+Ctr+A (MacOS) Alt+A (Windows)AhrefsTo find a good niche, you first have to know what you’re looking for. And hit the ‘Add to Chrome' button. Enter a common “seed” keyword. 6. Look at which domains link to your site the most, as well as which pages earn the most links. That’s how we come to our total domain count of ~175 million. For example, if you run an e-commerce store, you may want to link to your best-selling or seasonal products directly from your homepage. If you’ve been in SEO for a while or you’ve already done some. Google Search Console. SEMrush uses an Authority Score that measures the overall quality and performance of a domain or. Ideally, a good affiliate niche has these: Your own interest*. Meaning – if you focused primarily on building up your PageRank, there was a pretty damn good chance that your website would place highly if you had other elements done correctly. Choosing the right niche is absolutely crucial to starting a profitable niche website. Here’s how to use it to find long-tail keywords: Search for an industry-defining word or phrase. Define your “why”. What’s A Good Domain Authority For Backlinks. Search for ‘Moz' in ‘Extensions'. Website health. Use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Go to the Matching terms report. That’s where some good old fashioned email spam and a little light fraud come in. For deeper analysis of historical trends, the system can become cumbersome, making it hard to do full work without exporting and reformatting the data. Check if this is the case for your site by installing Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar, visiting a few faceted URLs, and checking the “Indexability” tab. In the end,. For beginners and intermediates, a simple option is to canonicalize faceted URLs to their master category or subcategory. Toggle the “Any word. “Sell” to find other general ideas. Use the product feedback technique. Having technical errors on your website can significantly impact. 2. Exit rate. Content analysis. These metrics along with the corresponding graphs are pulled from different tools within Ahrefs to give you an overall idea of your projects' performance. Install Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar. com, which has a DR of 82. This is a great tool to get you started. For example, DA is used along with DR; they are alternatives to each other. This saves you lots of time looking up what page ranks #1 for that keyword and how much search traffic it gets in total. In the future, zero-click searches will only continue to. You get instant insight into any website URL you enter into the specified field. Click the Content Gap report. 1. The very first thing you should do to calculate your website’s worth is create a spreadsheet, which includes your profit and loss, add-backs, and net profit. It also measures website authority in a range of 0 to 100 with higher DR means more authoritative website. That’s hardly surprising. What It Is & What It’s Good For. Does it get consistent search traffic? If a website gets organic traffic, Google must see it as at least a somewhat valuable resource. The first section you’ll see are the four metrics that fall under the heading “Backlink profile. We’ve now revamped Referring domains – the report that shows you which unique websites are pointing to a domain, URL, or subdomain. However, when many SEO professionals use the term “keyword difficulty,” they’re referring to the broader concept of. Technical SEO is the most important part of SEO until it isn’t. Eventually, Google's own analyst John Mueller has confirmed this by saying that they “don't have anything like a website authority score”. This metric was developed by the SEO consulting firm Moz and aligns with Google’s algorithm called PageRank. This applies to the ratio of TF and CF, which are in demand no less than Domain Rating and Domain Authority. com or google. These are metrics that are unique to Majestic. When trying to discern the value of a backlink you just acquired, organic traffic is a good metric to explore. Go to Google Chrome Web Store. (We exclude homepages and filter 1 per domain here to get a good list). Don’t forget you can use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to get free access to tons of their tools and data. Obviously, Citation Flow is basically “Domain Authority” in Moz Pro and “Domain Rating” in Ahrefs. Skyscraper link building. Step 1. Click the “Export CSV” button on the Ahrefs overlay in the search results. ( BrightEdge) 0. Know that you will “fail. They determine the actions you take, so you should choose the KPIs wisely. Add “the” to your domain name —“ the flowers. Although incredibly similar, there are some differences from backlinks, which are 1 hyperlink pointing back at your domain, from other domains. For example, many of the top posts on Hey Grill, Hey are “smoked” recipes. Introducing Referring domains 2. Keywords Explorer helps you determine how hard it would be to rank in the top 10 search results for a given keyword. Generally speaking, a week domain authority score will fall somewhere between 0-20. For building a search list without specific domains in mind, then auctions, web scrapers, and marketplaces are great go-to's. com”. Anywhere between 20-30 is getting there and between 30-50 is good. SEO best practices related to search volumes 1. This is the number of websites that link to a page or. To find a good niche, you first have to know what you’re looking for. It tries to mimic Google’s Pagerank algorithm. Add location information —“ nyc flowers. However, beware that this metric can be easily manipulated and should not be used alone to make a buying decision. It represents the strength of the website’s backlink profile on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, with the latter being the strongest. Some of the characteristics this tool helps you evaluate include: Domain capabilities. Ahrefs is a well-respected tool in the SEO community and a high ranking on their SEO metrics can indicate that a domain has strong backlinks and search engine. Evaluate your backlink profile. Rakuten – The Rakuten network includes affiliate programs for popular retailers such as Macy’s, Lego, and Wayfair. The root of the problem. It has all the key features of Ahrefs including rank tracking, backlink profile analysis, keyword research, site audit, competitor analysis, and SEO reports. Some metrics are actively used in close cooperation. Get SEO metrics of any website or URL. Spy on your competitor’s organic traffic and rankings. First seen: 6 months to remove old pages people don’t care about updating. If a user puts a website into Ahref's Site Explorer, then he can check its UR. Step 3. Track your success. Moz’s Domain Authority Checker and Ahrefs’ Website Authority or Domain Rating checker will provide you the same insights into how your site is. Ahrefs Content Explorer allows you to use any word or phrase (i. Find low-competition keywords. Click “Open in” and choose “Content gap”. They discontinued their trial offer, which is a bummer. , that are similar to the Site Explorer Overview page with the addition of stats for total number of HTML pages, internal and external links. I made a sheet with the rest of the issues if you just want the data. I wouldn't judge any tool based on the results from one site. Google’s Penguin algorithm nails websites with irrelevant, spammy link profiles. It calculates the rating by considering various factors, such as backlinks and social shares. Domain Rating is an organic metric that shows the overall strength of a website’s backlink profile. This makes it arguably the best tool on the planet for backlink research—a crucial everyday task for. These tools estimate the total amount of traffic from all sources. That can hurt your rankings. View source: R/rah_metrics. S. Traffic. 5. Between 2016 and 2019, the number of zero-click searches rose from 43. Ahrefs DR is based on the number and quality of. Run a giveaway. Let’s take a closer look at what happened. We’ve added the URL rating metric to Content Explorer. Most Ahrefs users know the importance of Domain Rating (DR) in Ahrefs. Domain rating is a crucial SEO metric developed by Ahrefs to assess a website's authority and strength. “I am a huge fan of Ahrefs. Ahrefs’ crawler is the second most active after Google’s, and our backlink index contains over 3 trillion live backlinks. Go to the Matching terms report. 05th March 2023 (Update): We have brought back the Ahrefs metrics for DomCop customers. com. Keep. Ahrefs Pricing ExplainedIn Ahrefs, there are a couple of metrics you can use to help figure out whether a zero-volume keyword is its own topic or a long-tail variation of a popular keyword. Receive daily domain lists from your custom filters. URL rating metric. In this Ahrefs guide, we will explore the many features Ahrefs offers and more!. Few remarks: 1. , . ” The first result, Yelp, has an incredibly high domain rating and over 91 million backlinks according to Ahrefs. Domain Rating (DR) is an Ahrefs metric that shows the relative strength of a website's backlink profile. But Trust Flow and Topical Trust Flow are both 100% unique to Majestic SEO. Ahrefs uses a website’s backlink profile to determine their DR. Ahrefs metrics. This lists every page that links to your site, including metrics like Domain Rating (An Ahrefs proprietary metric similar to Domain Authority; this hints at the quality of the link), traffic, anchor text, target URL and date first seen. General metrics. Founded in 2010 by Dmitry Gerasimenko, it is now one of the best-known SEO solutions available — and used by millions of companies around the world, including big brands like Shopify, eBay, LinkedIn, Uber, Adobe, Zoom and Facebook. Check traffic. Do a tweetstorm. One page per domain to remove duplicate websites. Otherwise, you need to find a page that could rank higher for its target keyword. Ahrefs API Unlock the full potential of Ahrefs data Documentation - metrics Contains metrics about the target, such as total number of backlinks, referring pages, etc. Slow sites have high bounce rates, which is a big red flag to Google and the other search engines. The first point of call here could be the WHOIS database. In fact, DR is their most prominent metric. Competitive Benchmarking: Semrush is my personal favorite in this category, even though Ahrefs also provides almost similar capabilities. Mangools. On a scale of 0-100, a website’s domain authority score predicts how relevant that website is for a given niche and how reliable and trustworthy the domain is itself. Once analyzed, you will be able to see a number of SEO metrics like organic traffic, number of referring domains, backlinks, etc. It reflects the amount of “link juice” that a site has and is able to pass onto another site through links. 1. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a free extension for Chrome and Firefox that provides valuable SEO data about the pages and websites you visit. Organic traffic. ”. On the bright side, this traffic is usually easy to reclaim. Elmo Lewis, an advertising advocate. It also displays information such as disavow links, URL ratings, Domain Ratings, and referring domains for any website. He will get the scores of the homepage alone. Many website owners randomly create content and expect to get search. com. This is helpful for assessing the top-ranking pages and understanding why these pages are ranking where they are. If you are looking to enhance your SEO efficiency, why not check out SEMRush?Check your domain or other websites’ SEO metrics to get a reliable indication of the domain ranking potential and trust. DR is measured on. In the Organic keywords chart, we used to only have position ranges for 1–3, 4–10, and 11. Both Semrush and Ahrefs are really good competitor analysis tools out there. To look at the backlink on the site where it’s located, click the icon alongside the source URL. The key phrase here: “when done well. The higher the metric score the more difficult it is to rank.