This month we’re introducing a bunch of new features: a HTML source and history viewer in Backlinks report, word count in SERP overview tables, and more.
Let’s get right into it.
HTML source and history viewer in Backlinks report
You can now click on the magnifying glass in this new Inspect column to view that backlink in the source code of a referring page and see HTML snapshots saved by Ahrefsbot.
The orange dots next to each crawl date tell you when there were changes in the source code.
What’s cool here is comparing the source code on two different days. For example, this link was first seen by Ahrefsbot on February 3, 2023. But the referring page was clearly created in 2022.
To see what happened, inspect the backlink, click on Compare and compare the current date with a time in January, 2023. Then run a search for the link in the current version.
As we can see, the link was swapped out.
This feature is available for new Advanced plans and higher.
Average search volume in Organic keywords
A while ago, we added average search volume mode to the Top Pages report. We’ve now added that same mode in Organic keywords.
A quick recap: monthly volume is more volatile, but helps you monitor seasonal search trends and popular topics.
On the other hand, average volume is based on the last known 12 months of data. It’s more consistent and helps you troubleshoot traffic drops.
This addition should help explain discrepancies in volume and traffic data across our tools.
New metrics in Organic keywords report and Paid keywords report
We’ve added a new paid traffic column in the Organic keywords report.
And also, a new organic traffic column in the Paid keywords report.
Having both organic and paid traffic data can be useful, especially when you’re working in different teams.
For example, if a URL ranks on page 2 for a keyword in organic results, but your ad spend is high, then your organic team may want to work on improving rankings to get free organic traffic.
On the other hand, if a keyword has high paid traffic and a high organic position, your paid team may want to consider decreasing spend or pulling that keyword from your campaign.
New word count metric in SERP overview tables
We’ve replaced the Ahrefs Rank metric from the SERP overview tables in Site Explorer and Keywords Explorer with a word count metric. This shows you the total number of words present in the HTML of a web page.
Our parser stores the total number of words present in the whole HTML web page, so expect a marginal difference between the number of words on the whole page vs. the main content.
New sign-in email notification
To enhance account security, you’ll now receive an email when someone logs into your account from a new device. Different browsers and incognito sessions both count as a new device.
New endpoints for API v3 (Enterprise only)
We’ve added a bunch of new endpoints to API v3 for Enterprise plans:
Read more about the endpoints in our API documentation, and generate sample requests in the reports themselves using the API button.
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That’s all for this month. If you have any feature requests, you can leave them on our Canny or in our subscribers-only Ahrefs Insider community, which we’ve just relaunched.
Enjoy!
