Domain authority
Domain authority is a score from an SEO tool that estimates how strong a website is, mostly from the links pointing to it.
Domain authority is a score that estimates how strong a whole website is, worked out by an SEO tool, mostly from the links pointing to it. The name comes from Moz's Domain Authority, and other tools have their own versions, like Ahrefs' Domain Rating.
Marketers use it to size up a site quickly: is this blog worth pitching, is this directory worth being in? It's handy for that, as long as you remember where the number comes from.
Where the number comes from
Each tool works out its own score from its own crawl of the web, so the same site gets different numbers in different tools. Each score is the SEO tool's own estimate of how a site looks in links, worked out from outside.
So a high score is a hint that a site is well linked and probably well read. It doesn't tell you whether an AI platform reads that site for your questions.
Domain authority vs being cited
For AI search, a better question than "how strong is this site?" is "do the answers in my category use it?" Those can point to different sites.
For example, a national newspaper might have a much higher score than a small specialist coffee blog. But if the blog's buying guide is cited in a third of the answers about espresso grinders and the newspaper never comes up, the blog is the one shaping what people hear about grinders.
Use domain authority to sort a long list of possible targets. Then check which of them the platforms actually cite before you spend your time.
In AnswerOrbit
Sources shows which domains the answers to your prompts used, how often, and on which platforms. The Gaps tab scores each source by how often answers use it and how many of your competitors it names.