Short answer: yes. Press release distribution raises Domain Rating more predictably than almost anything else you can buy at the price.
Longer answer, and the one worth reading: it raises DR for a mechanical reason that has nothing to do with whether you rank. Understand the mechanism and you will stop overpaying for the metric.
How Ahrefs DR is actually calculated
DR is a 0–100 logarithmic score of your backlink profile's strength, and it is built from one input: the number of unique referring domains linking to you, weighted by how strong those domains are and how many sites they link out to.
Three details matter.
- It counts domains, not links. Two hundred links from one site is one referring domain. One link each from two hundred sites is two hundred.
- It follows dofollow links only. Ahrefs' Domain Rating documentation is explicit here — nofollow links do not feed DR.
- Link equity is divided. A domain that links out to a handful of sites passes far more per link than one linking to a hundred thousand.
- The scale is logarithmic. Going from DR 5 to DR 25 is comparatively easy; DR 70 to DR 75 takes an order of magnitude more.
Why press releases move it so efficiently
A distribution does exactly what the formula rewards. One release, one fee, and your story is republished across dozens or hundreds of distinct domains — regional news sites, business portals, finance aggregators, syndication partners.
Where the syndicated copies carry dofollow links, each new domain is a fresh referring domain in Ahrefs' index. Nothing else at this price adds referring domains that quickly.
DR responds to breadth of domains. Syndication is breadth of domains by design.
This is also why the effect is largest on new sites. A site at DR 3 with nine referring domains can jump into the twenties or thirties from one campaign, because the log scale is generous at the bottom. An established DR 60 site will barely register the same distribution.
Why nofollow outlets still matter here
They do not lift DR. Be clear-eyed about that — if the metric is your goal, you want the 100% dofollow backlink package.
But the big nofollow names are what people and journalists actually recognise, and they frequently trigger secondary pickups from smaller sites that link editorially, with no attribute at all. Those pickups do count. It is a slower, less predictable route to the same number.
What DR is worth, honestly
DR is a third-party estimate, not a Google ranking factor. Google does not see it and does not use it. Chasing DR for its own sake is how people end up with a beautiful number and no traffic.
Where it genuinely earns its keep:
- Getting past gatekeepers. Guest post sites, link vendors, affiliate managers and ad networks screen by DR. Below roughly DR 20 many will not reply.
- Affiliate and partnership approvals. A visible authority score shortens the conversation.
- Selling or flipping a site. Buyers price DR whether or not they should.
- Internal benchmarking. Tracking your own trend over time is more useful than comparing yourself to others.
How to get the lift without wasting the budget
- Choose distributions that state their dofollow share — a mixed high authority backlink package at 60/40 or 70/30 does the heavy lifting on referring domains.
- Point some links at deep pages, not just the homepage, so the equity reaches pages that need it.
- Space campaigns out. A profile that gains three hundred domains in one week and none afterwards looks precisely like what it is.
- Recheck after four to eight weeks. Ahrefs has to crawl and index the syndicated copies before the score moves.
- Then spend on links that are hard to buy. DR opens doors; it does not walk through them.
That is the sensible order: use a distribution to clear the authority threshold, then use the access it buys to earn the links that actually rank pages.