---
title: Domain Authority
description: What the domain_authority score measures, how to read a high or low score, and when the value is null.
---

`domain_authority` is a 0 to 100 score describing how established a domain is: how long it has held a visible presence and how much of a footprint it has accumulated over that time.

The field is returned by the [domain](/docs/api/domain-endpoint) and [email](/docs/api/email-endpoint) endpoints on Pro plans, and is available in Gates as `domain.authority`.

## Reading the score

A high score reflects years of continuous presence rather than anything a domain can arrange quickly. `github.com` scores 96.

A low score is the ordinary state of a registered domain. Most domains have little measurable presence, including plenty of legitimate small businesses, personal domains, and sites that simply do not publish much. A low score means the domain has not accumulated a footprint, not that anything is wrong with it.

## Zero is a real score

`0` is a normal, frequently returned value, not an error or a missing lookup. It means the domain has no measurable online presence: nothing published, nothing linking to it. Plenty of perfectly legitimate domains score `0`, including working company domains whose owners have never built a public website.

Expect to see `0` alongside a `null` `domain_age_in_days`, since a domain with no footprint is often one whose registration date has not been retrieved either. The two are unrelated lookups and neither confirms the other.

## When the value is null

`null` means the score has not been determined. That is different from a score of `0`, which means the domain was assessed and has no measurable presence.

Two situations produce `null`, and they are worth telling apart:

- The domain has not been scored yet. A domain seen for the first time can return `null` and a score on a later lookup.
- The domain is flagged as `disposable`, `relay_domain`, or `spam`. Those are never scored, so `domain_authority` stays `null` for them permanently rather than arriving on a later lookup.