Proof Metrics like TF Are a Complete Waste of Time

Majestic's TF has become a complete joke. It's gotten so useless that I don't bother to factor it into domain buying decisions even the slightest.

People really need to understand just how little they mean.

Just to really hit this point home..

There is a domain currently at auction.. It has 2 days left. Current bid is $5100.

Best TF? 15. TF on the root domain is 11 and http:// is 15. LOW. Very low. You'd think, uh it must be junk.


It has 5k backlinks from 960 RDs on Ahrefs(DR is also mostly junk, but a bit better btw)

It has

Forbes
nytimes
behance.net
techcrunch
washingtonpost
bloomberg
businessinsider
cnn
stripe
businessinsider.fr
entrepreneur.com
fastcompany.com
fortune.com
marriott.com
aol.com
buzzfeed
timeout.com
nymag.com
bostonglobe.com
news.com.au
uber.com

We are still at DR90+

You see just how utterly ridiculous TF is?

This domain is a monster. Anyone filtering TF20+ would miss this. Those customers of mine who demand only TF30+ domains would consider this a junk domain.

Moz's DA is actually ok. I don't recall ever seeing a DA < 40 on a monster domain. It's usually a good guideline, but within reason. A DA 23 could be better than a DA 35. You just usually won't see amazing domains with a DA less than 40, or good domains with a DA less than 15-18


And what about Ahrefs DR?

A DR40+ is almost always going to be good. It's reliable at the higher levels.

However.. It has labelled some very strong domains DR10-20. It's a bit skewed towards authority links.

It's great to have a bunch of DR80+ authority links, but a domain with 100+ really solid contextual links from DR10-70's is VERY good. I have a domain like that which is DR10, but it has dozens and dozens of links from mid-level sites. Real contextual links. This is what google looks for. I would rather have a domain with 50 contextuals from DR10-60 than 3-4 DR90+ contextuals. Of course, if you have both, then you have a killer domain.

Anyway..

As for this domain. I won't post it here, because someone is going to buy it, for a lot of money and it wouldn't be very pleasant if their domain was plastered on the public forum, but if anyone wants to see the auction page/url they can pm me and I'll disclose it in private. It just absolutely destroys any credibility TF has. I personally filter on TF7+ and the amount of powerful TF9-13 domains I find is crazy.

Who cares about this shit these days? Only sellers who want to impress

I stopped using it for anything other than screenshots for those who still use it.

Nice info though.

Interesting normally I would have ignored this claim about TF but considering your experience i had to read it till the end, will keep this in my mind from now on.

Good point!

Nice post. Serves as a reminder that TF, or any third party domain metrics, are not the be all and end all when it comes to measuring the power of a domain. They're based on fixed algorithms so they aren't always going to get it right. Further more, neither do they neccesarily bare any relation to what Google thinks of the domain. So number, and quality, of referring domains are always going to be a more trustworthy guide.

Nice share, will keep this in mind.

Imagine the tons of great domains just sitting there being ignored as their TF is less than a certain benchmark

Interesting study mate. Its all boiled down to all the people trust some numbers , thats why.

Meddie said:

Who cares about this shit these days? Only sellers who want to impress

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Sadly it hurts the sellers who are trying to actually get people to use good domains.

MisterF said:

I stopped using it for anything other than screenshots for those who still use it.

Nice info though.

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Yeah, Majestic has some nice features. Their index is just a bit wonky these days and TF has gotten very very bad. I like the new context tool it has though.

Mr Positive said:

Interesting normally I would have ignored this claim about TF but considering your experience i had to read it till the end, will keep this in my mind from now on.

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Yeah, be very very wary of TF. It's way way off. I have TF10 domains here that I paid $500 for, and I've seen TF35's that I wouldn't even pay $200 for.

DR too. There's really no metric now that's useful other than an initial filter. Beyond the initial filter it plays no part in my decision. This is how you assess a domain :-

1) Root domains. Ahrefs. Solid first indicator. 50-100, 100-200, 200-500, 500+. This is my initial grade. Doesn't mean much by its self, but the more RDs it has the better chance of there being more good links, and high RDs is a factor in ranking/domain strength.
2) Contextuals. DR20-80. How many actual, real contextual links does it have? Not just a page with a little content, but an article. 10-20? Decent. 10-20 contextuals, RD50, I'll take it. Entry level pbn domain. 50+ contextuals = EXCELLENT domain. 100+ contextuals = Gimme!
3) Contextuals: DR80+ These are bonuses. I don't value a domain based on these alone. Does it have 10-20 contextuals from DR20-80, but no DR80+'s? No problem. Still a solid little domain. If we have 2-3 DR80+ contextuals here, then it just improves what we already have from check 2. If it's got dozens of these like that one going for $5k, then it's a real monster.

And that's it. That's how you pick domains that will be shit hot. (I still do a LOT of checks on past owners, how many times its changed, who owned it, what they did with it etc, but for linking power, these 3 things are all you want)

If I have a DR10, with TF8 that meets those 3 criteria, I'll take it and I'll bid based on those 3 criteria, not the metrics.

davids355 said:

Nice post. Serves as a reminder that TF, or any third party domain metrics, are not the be all and end all when it comes to measuring the power of a domain. They're based on fixed algorithms so they aren't always going to get it right. Further more, neither do they neccesarily bare any relation to what Google thinks of the domain. So number, and quality, of referring domains are always going to be a more trustworthy guide.

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Yep. Google is so so far ahead of majestic/ahrefs. It's like a world class mathematician vs a high school student. Ahrefs revenue is around $30-$40mil per year. Google did 40 BILLION in the 3rd quarter of 2019. Google earn, in 2 hours, what Ahrefs earns all year. Plus Google has been doing this for what, 22-23 years?

Almighty Pull said:

Nice share, will keep this in mind.

Imagine the tons of great domains just sitting there being ignored as their TF is less than a certain benchmark

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Sadly they're not. Like that one at $5100 and TF15. The auctions are hyper competitive. A few years ago you could get strong 200RD+ pbn domains for $50-$200 easily. Now, you'll be lucky to get one under $300 and many are going for $500-$700 depending on niche.

Awesome post man! Recently i bought 100+ great domains (DA 20/35) and 80% of them have TF 0-10...

Used 30% of them on a big keyword website (1.5M organic ahrefs) and in 3 months went 1st (still there after 2 months)

So TF is shit, DA is good enough.. confirmed!

The problem is that when you have a list with >20.000 domains... it's extremely difficult to filter it out without investing hundreds of hours. So these metrics became highly practical to filter a bit.
But they are so overused nowadays that if you are trying to fetch some domains from auctions they will always end on a highly competitive result that will end too expensive to be worthy at all.

Since that domain you mention it's already in the bidding process, can you share it here?

what software you are using when searching for domains?

SirLouen said:

The problem is that when you have a list with >20.000 domains... it's extremely difficult to filter it out without investing hundreds of hours. So these metrics became highly practical to filter a bit.
But they are so overused nowadays that if you are trying to fetch some domains from auctions they will always end on a highly competitive result that will end too expensive to be worthy at all.

Since that domain you mention it's already in the bidding process, can you share it here?

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I'll pm it to you. Not good to share in public. The forum is too big and it'll be permanently here. Imagine you just spent, $5k+ on a domain and found people talking about it here. I would be worried and pretty gutted.

For actual fully expired domain filtering you can just do TF8+, but there's no good expired domains left. There hasn't been for a long time. I guess they're fine if you're doing some low comp stuff, but the cost of setting up content/hosting isn't really worth it. You can get domains at auction for $50 that are far far better than any expired you'd find. 1 $500 auction domain will give you more of a boost than 25 expired domains with 5-15 RDs

I never used it anyway.. I use subnets>100 and tf>5

Then high and good ratio between DR and UR for manual checking

Majestic is garbage:

1. You can buy fiverr gigs to boost it to TF30.
2. I too have seen high quality sites with TF 15
3. I started a new site with 10 very high quality DR60+ links and had TF 28. Then I got 4 more relkevant links that were DR 40+ and my TF dropped to 14. WTF?

Also, Ahrefs is questionable as well.

Out of all of them I have found SEMrush authority score to be somewhat more reliable.

Majestic in general is shit, honestly a waste of money at this point...

It's the same price as Ahrefs, with half the data and 10% of the available features.

Great post buddy. Most of the people thinking still TF is good. But this post will help to change their mind. DA is always ultimate.

Web Rider said:

DA is always ultimate.

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DA is garbage also, Moz's dataset is too small.

If SEO's were smart we would be using the freely available page rank algorithm (via the patent) and all contributing crawl data to a central source that can calculate the actual page rank that Google still (highly likely) uses internally.

Thanks for your sharing

BTW ahrefs dataset is also not too big but after google conlose - i'd trust ahrefs for backlinks data.