Ahrefs.com Review

Ahrefs is a link research tool used by digital marketers around the world. Find out everything you need to know about Ahrefs today in our Ahrefs.com review!

What is Ahrefs.com?

Ahrefs is one of the newer link research tools on the internet today. The site uses its own unique search algorithm to identify links around the internet.

According to Ahrefs.com, that algorithm creates its own unique index based on “a trillion” different website connections. To make the website even more powerful and accurate, the index is updated every 30 minutes.

Users can access this up-to-date link building data 30 minutes after each refresh. So it’s not quite immediate: but it’s surprisingly close.

The Ahrefs.com site itself is made up of four core services:

— Site Explorer
— SERPs Analysis
— Reports
— Labs/Tools

According to the Ahrefs.com website, there are currently 481,279 registered users from 100+ countries.

How to Use Ahrefs

Ahrefs is very similar to Majestic’s Site Explorer and Moz’s Open Site Explorer. The link exploration interface is very straightforward: just enter the domain into the search bar and then click “Explore Links.” That’s it.

You can search for all backlinks pointing to the domain, or choose to look at a domain without subdomains (or with all its subdomains).

You can also view an overview of the last 45 days of Ahrefs’s crawl history. This can show you how many backlinks you had a month ago and how many you had today, for example, which is helpful if you’re looking at growth over time.

You’ll also be able to see specific information about each backlink, which is obviously important. Here are some of the things you can learn about your backlinks:

— Total Number Of Backlinks
— Number Of Unique Reference Pages
— Number Of Unique Reference IPs
— Number Of Unique Reference Subnets
— Number Of Unique Reference Domains
— Number Of Unique Reference .gov And .edu Domains
— Types Of Backlinks, Including Text, Nofollow, Redirect, Image, Frame, Form, .gov, And .edu

You can also view your anchor text profile and a breakdown of all the domains that referred to you.

The anchor text profile looks similar to most other anchor text reports. You see the exact anchor text along with the number of reference pages that feature the anchor text.

One of the most valuable tools on Ahrefs is the “Lost Links” section. This section lets you see which links dropped off over the past few days. If you just paid somebody a lot of money for a PR8 domain, then you can use this tool to avoid continuously checking that link every day for the rest of the year. It’s also useful for determining how many links “stick” after a recent linkbuilding blast.

You can also open a calendar and see how many new links were discovered on specific days of the week. So if you want to see if any links stuck from linkbuilding you did a few weeks ago, you can go back in time to check if they’re still around – or see how long they took to index.

Another feature worth mentioning is the SERP positioning tool. This tool provides estimated ranking data for keyword sets on Google, Bing, and Yahoo for 9 different countries around the world, including the United States, Australia, Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, and Russia. You can view all of the following information about each keyword/keyword set:

— Your Position

— Keyword

— Cpc And Estimated Cost

— Ranking Url

— Global Search Value

— Advertiser Competition

— Perceived Value Rating (Estimated Visitors Per Month Based On Estimated Traffic Distribution).

— Change In Traffic And Value Over Time, Which Is Helpful If You Want To See If A Keyword Is On The Rise Or On The Decline

Once you’re done collecting data from the site, you can export it in CSV format or Excel.

Monthly Allowances

You can only create a certain number of reports each month. Depending on your plan, that number ranges from 15 to 600.

Each “report” is a single domain. So even on the smallest account, you can run 15 different website reports per month.

The report includes a total backlink report for your site, including the top referring domains, top anchors, and top subdomains. You also have a wealth of search tools at your hand that you can use to filter out various information from the report. If you only want to view backlinks from domains with certain keywords in their name, for example, or only view backlinks from American websites, then you can do that.

Ultimately, if you’re sick of scrolling past hundreds of poor-quality backlinks from India before getting to information about your good backlinks, then these filters can save you a lot of time.

What Do Customers Have to Say About Ahrefs?

Ahrefs aims to undercut some of the bigger players on the market – like Moz Analytics – with lower pricing. Customers appreciate the good deal, but acknowledge that the more powerful tools – like Majestic SEO – tend to provide greater depth with their services.

Majestic SEO and Ahrefs are fairly close in price, with Ahrefs being more expensive at the higher level plans, but cheaper at the lower levels.

One of the criticisms about Ahrefs is that it has certain crawling guidelines. These crawling guidelines prohibit the tool from crawling certain low-quality spammy websites. Ultimately, that means your links on high-quality websites appear in the tool more frequently than links on low-quality, spam-filled websites.

One of the best tools, however, is the dropped links feature. As mentioned above, that tool lets you see the exact day on which a link was dropped. If you’re tracking a linkbuilding service you just paid for, or want to keep tabs on a certain high-PR link, then this tool can be exceptionally helpful.

Another nifty feature on Ahrefs.com is the Ahrefs Top tool. This tool tracks the top 1 million domains across the entire internet based on their total number of backlinks. It’s completely searchable, so you don’t have to scroll through all 1 million websites.

How Much Does Ahrefs.com Cost?

Ahrefs.com comes with four different packages. You can save 20% by paying for your subscription on an annual basis instead of month-to-month. Here’s how each price breaks down:

Lite

Ahrefs claims this is the best package for those who work with small businesses. It does not offer any advanced features.

— $39.50 Per Month
— 5 Million Total Data Rows Limit (Backlink Reports)
— 1 User
— 15 Crawl Reports
— Twitter, Facebook, And Google+ Social Metrics
— Site Explorer
— Backlink Analysis

Standard

Ahrefs calls this its most popular plan. It says it’s the best option for small to medium websites. It includes all Ahrefs.com features:

— $89.50 Per Month
— 30 Million Total Data Rows Limit (Backlink Reports)
— 1 User
— 60 Crawl Reports
— Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest Social Metrics
— Content Explorer With 10 Alerts
— Site Explorer
— Backlink Analysis
— Broken Backlinks & Links
— Content Analysis

Plus

“The best for medium to big websites”, this plan includes up to 180 crawl reports per month along with more alerts than the plans below it:

— $249.50 Per Month
— 125 Million Total Data Rows Limit (Backlink Reports)
— 1 User
— 180 Crawl Reports
— Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest Social Metrics
— Content Explorer With 40 Alerts
— Site Explorer
— Backlink Analysis
— Broken Backlinks & Links
— Content Analysis

Premium

This package offers up to 1 billion backlink reports per month and includes all features. It’s for power users:

— $1,299 Per Month
— 1 User
— 1 Billion Total Data Rows Limit (Backlink Reports)
— 600 Crawl Reports
— Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest Social Metrics
— Content Explorer With 100 Alerts
— Site Explorer
— Backlink Analysis
— Broken Backlinks & Links
— Content Analysis

You order each package from the official Ahrefs.com website.

Who Should Use Ahrefs?

Ahrefs.com is one of the most powerful link explorer tools on the market today. It has many of the same features as other top services – like Moz Analytics and Majestic – but also has some additional unique features.

You can browse through a list of the top 1 million domains based on the number of backlinks, for example. The tractable calendar of linkbuilding is also very helpful, as it shows you exactly when new links have been indexed or old links have been dropped.

All of this has been combined into one easy, searchable, customizable, and exportable interface. If you need to track complete backlink profiles for multiple clients or websites, then Ahrefs may be worth a try.