Is Moz Domain Authority still relvant when it comes to Google ranking?

[halloranc]

My understanding of Moz DA is that it is predominantly based on external links. Since Penguin I am noticing more and more websites ranking high in Google with a "low" number of links and certainly a low DA but quality and relevancy of content and also of offering.

I understand that there was always more to ranking than DA but is it anymore even relevant to how a site will rank in Google?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

In our last Ranking Factors Correlation study, Domain Authority had a 0.29 correlation, which is one of the stronger correlations we measure.

The strongest metric, Page Authority, showed a .39 correlation.

The idea of Domain Authority is that comparing 2 websites... all other things being equal... one is more likely to rank than the other. A significant portion of the weighting factors in Domain Authority is links. As Google shifts the significance of links, this changes.

But as you've observed, in the real world things are rarely equal. Moz is also working on spam scoring to help us better discount links that Google may likely be ignoring.

Interestingly, with all the talks about links and Google, what's surprising is how important links still are. Metrics like DA and PA haven't changed that much in their ability to gauge ranking potential. Perhaps someday we'll need new signals. For now they are still reliably useful.