DR4 just repriced earned media. We scored 222 outlets PR teams pitch.

By Zac Hunter, Founder, Thelemata. Scores as of November 10, 2026.

Ahrefs replaces its Domain Rating model on December 1, 2026. The new version, DR4, is stricter about which links count, and it scores subdomains on their own instead of letting them borrow the parent site's number.

Most of the coverage so far looks at what that means for websites and link sellers. I wanted to know what it means for the outlets PR people actually pitch, because DR shows up in coverage reports, agency pricing tiers and client decks.

So we pulled the old (DR3) and new (DR4) score for 222 outlets across national news, business, tech, lifestyle, health, trade media, wires and local press. Here's what moved.

The short version

  • More outlets now look like Tier 1. 139 of the 222 outlets score DR 90 or higher under DR4, up from 107 under DR3.
  • The middle caught up with the top. Outlets that sat between DR 80 and 89 gained 1.5 points on average, and 82 of those 101 went up.
  • Consumer media won. Health and wellness outlets gained 2.4 points on average, food and travel 2.1, and lifestyle and entertainment 1.6. None of the 30 lifestyle outlets went down.
  • Subdomains lost. Subdomains in the list dropped 2.8 points on average, while main domains gained 0.9.
  • The top of the market held. The New York Times and Forbes held at 94. Reuters, the Guardian, CNN and the BBC held at 93.

Overall, 120 outlets gained, 76 stayed the same and 26 dropped.

Average DR change by beat under DR4: health and wellness +2.4, food and travel +2.1, lifestyle and entertainment +1.6

1. Tier 1 by DR now covers most of the media list

Under DR3, 107 of our 222 outlets scored 90 or above. Under DR4, 139 do. Thirty-six outlets crossed into the 90s, including the Miami Herald, the Dallas Morning News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Barron's, Real Simple, Esquire, GQ, Allure, Men's Health, Serious Eats and Travel + Leisure.

Four dropped out of the 90s: MIT Sloan Management Review, Knowledge at Wharton, U.S. News Money and Eater.

If your agency sorts placements into tiers by DR band, Real Simple and the Miami Herald now sit in the same band as the Washington Post. DR can't separate the top tier anymore. Audience, reach and fit with the client's buyer have to do that work.

2. Consumer outlets got a lift

  • mindbodygreen: 85 to 90 (+5)
  • Livestrong: 85 to 90 (+5)
  • E! Online, Delish: 85 to 89 (+4)
  • Serious Eats, The Kitchn, Thrillist: 86 to 90 (+4)
  • Shape: 82 to 86 (+4)
  • Allure, Real Simple, Esquire, The Cut, Vulture, Men's Health, Women's Health: 87 to 90 (+3)

mindbodygreen and Livestrong posted the biggest jumps of any active outlet in the study. Health and wellness gained 2.4 points on average, with 13 of 14 outlets up. Food and travel gained 2.1, with 12 of 13 up. Lifestyle and entertainment gained 1.6, with 22 of 30 up and none down.

These sites get a lot of search traffic, and DR4 gives more weight to links from sites that do. For consumer brands, placements already on the books will look a little stronger in reports after December 1, with no new coverage behind the change.

3. The biggest drops: subdomains, university publications and PR software

  • MIT Sloan Management Review: 93 to 86 (-7)
  • Knowledge at Wharton: 91 to 84 (-7)
  • Cision: 87 to 81 (-6)
  • Esports Insider: 83 to 78 (-5)
  • Yahoo News: 94 to 90 (-4)
  • Meltwater: 87 to 84 (-3)
  • Yahoo Finance: 94 to 92 (-2)
  • U.S. News Money: 91 to 89 (-2)

Under DR3, a subdomain inherited its parent's score. Under DR4, it earns its own. The two business school publications show what that does: both used to carry their university's score and now sit in the mid-80s on their own links.

If a client's coverage report lists a Yahoo or university placement at the parent's score, that number will be wrong after December 1. Fix it before the client spots it.

4. PR trade press mostly climbed

PRWeek rose from 80 to 83, PR Daily from 78 to 80, Ragan from 77 to 78 and PRovoke Media from 75 to 76. PR News slipped from 75 to 74 and O'Dwyer's from 70 to 68. Adweek (91) and Ad Age (90) held.

5. Press release wires stayed put

Business Wire, PR Newswire and GlobeNewswire all held at 92. A high DR on a wire was always a weak signal, since links in press releases are generally nofollow. DR4 doesn't change that.

6. Local news edged up

The Denver Post went from 87 to 89, the Colorado Springs Gazette from 80 to 82 and 9News from 81 to 83. Local outlets with real local readership held up well under a model that rewards sites people actually visit.

What I'm telling clients

  • Warn them before December 1. Every report with a DR column will show changes that have nothing to do with the coverage. Explain it before they ask.
  • Define Tier 1 by audience. With 139 of 222 outlets at 90 or higher, the label doesn't separate much anymore.
  • Rescore anything on a subdomain. Business school publications, Yahoo verticals and newsletter platforms now need their own check.
  • Use DR as a first-pass filter. It's still a fast way to screen out junk. Relevance, real traffic and whether an outlet shows up in AI search answers decide whether a placement was worth it.

How we did this

We built a list of 222 outlets and subdomains PR teams commonly pitch, across 12 beats, and pulled each one's DR3 and DR4 score from the Ahrefs DR4 preview on November 10, 2026. It's a curated sample of a working media list, so it doesn't cover every outlet. Preview scores can move a few points before the December 1 launch. One domain on the list, csbj.com, now resolves to a parked page, so its score is counted in the totals but left out of the findings. Domain Rating is a metric by Ahrefs.

Want to talk through what DR4 means for your media list? Book 20 minutes with Zac.