30%
Domain quality
Authority, organic visibility, backlink health, spam evidence, and the credibility of the publication itself.
Scoring methodology
A prospect scoreyou can inspect.
Three weighted evidence layers explain why a publisher fits your project, before it can enter a campaign.
80-100
Strong Match
Compelling project and placement evidence
66-79
Good Match
Useful fit with manageable evidence gaps
45-65
Conditional Match
Review context before qualification
0-44
Weak Match
Insufficient fit for this project
One score. Three distinct questions.
The model explains each component. Code clamps the values, applies fixed weights, and assigns the final match label.
45%
Project fit
Exact topic overlap, adjacent use cases, shared audience, shared problem context, market, owner rules, and the project visibility goal.
25%
Placement fit
Whether an observed backlink or editorial page can naturally support a useful in-content mention for this project.
final score = (domain quality × 0.30) + (project fit × 0.45) + (placement fit × 0.25)
Evidence before opinion.
Scoring begins with the project brief and observed provider, website, and source-page evidence.
Project context
Niche, topics, audience, market, differentiator, visibility goal, and owner qualification rules.
Domain signals
Ahrefs DR plus DataForSEO traffic, rank, referring-domain, backlink, and spam evidence.
Site content
Crawled homepage content, metadata, ranked keywords, and discoverable editorial pages.
Placement context
Representative source pages, anchors, semantic location, link type, and page archetype.
The goal changes the lens.
The formula stays fixed. The selected visibility outcome changes what strong evidence looks like.
Google rankings
Prioritizes topical authority, real organic visibility, editorial standards, natural in-content placement, and useful dofollow links.
AI citations
Prioritizes credible, crawlable sources with factual reference content, clear structure, and attributable editorial ownership.
Both outcomes
Balances organic authority with sources that search engines and answer engines can understand, trust, and cite.
Confidence follows the page evidence.
Missing placement context lowers confidence. It does not turn an unknown into a false negative.
High confidence
Observed backlink page
A real competitor source page provides URL, anchor, placement type, semantic location, and dofollow evidence.
Medium confidence
Observed editorial page
A public page or title on the prospect site shows plausible placement context, but not an existing competitor link.
Low confidence
No representative page
Placement fit stays neutral and the missing evidence is recorded instead of becoming a confident rejection.
Two scores. Two different decisions.
Prospect fit evaluates a publisher for one project. Link Audit measures the link profile of your own site.
Prospect fit score
Answers: should this publisher be considered for this project? It ranks research in the Prospect library and explains the evidence.
30% quality + 45% project + 25% placement
Link Audit score
Answers: where is your own link profile strong or exposed? It tracks authority gap, anchor health, money-page coverage, and link velocity.
40% authority + 20% anchor + 20% pages + 20% velocity
A score informs. It never sends.
Qualification and outreach remain explicit campaign actions controlled by the owner.
The score does
- Order project research by fit
- Preserve reasons and evidence gaps
- Support an owner qualification decision
- Refresh when the project rubric changes
The score never
- Add a prospect to a campaign by itself
- Authorize or send publisher outreach
- Guarantee a placement, rank, or citation
- Hide missing evidence behind certainty
Scoring questions
Is Domain Rating the prospect score?
No. Ahrefs DR is one domain-quality signal and may also act as a minimum gate. The final fit score combines domain quality, project fit, and placement fit.
Can I add my own qualification rules?
Yes. Project settings accept additional plain-language rules. LinkIntel includes them in the project rubric and fingerprints the rule set so changed criteria can trigger a fresh evaluation.
Does a high score start outreach?
No. A scored domain enters the project Prospect library. An owner must explicitly add it to an active campaign before any outreach workflow can begin.
Does a fit score guarantee rankings or AI citations?
No. The score ranks the quality and relevance of a link opportunity from observed evidence. It does not predict or guarantee a search, traffic, placement, or citation outcome.
Start with evidence