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Honestly, I think DA obsession is mostly a distraction at this point. The whole “high DA backlink” chase made sense maybe 5-7 years ago when it was easier to game, but Google’s gotten way better at understanding actual relevance and authority beyond just domain metrics. I’ve seen sites with a ton of high DA backlinks stuck in mediocre rankings because the links were irrelevant or obviously bought.
What seems to matter more now is whether the backlink is from a site that actually has topical authority in your niche and whether it’s contextually relevant. A link from a DR 45 industry blog that your target audience actually reads is going to move the needle more than some DR 80 generic news site that has nothing to do with your space.
That said, DA isn’t completely useless – it’s a decent shorthand for “is this domain spam or legit?” But yeah, people definitely get stuck chasing the metric instead of asking, “will this link actually send qualified traffic or signal relevance to Google?”The Semrush leak stuff basically confirmed what a lot of us suspected – Google cares way more about the actual authority signals (traffic, user engagement, topical relevance) than third-party metrics like DA. So if you’re building links, focus on relevance first, then look at DA as a tiebreaker!!! Hope this helps!
