What’s new at Ahrefs? (Nov 2023)

Rebekah Bek
Developing content to help you understand, navigate, and love using Ahrefs.
This month we’re introducing Link Intersect 2.0, our first AI feature that lets you generate seed keywords in Keywords Explorer, and more.

Let’s get right into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SpN0-EM4nQ&ab_channel=AhrefsProductUpdates

Link Intersect 2.0

Meet Link Intersect 2.0, our latest release in Competitive Analysis. This tool shows you who’s linking to one or more targets, but not others.

For example, to see who’s linking to competitors but not to us, select referring domains and enter our domain in the top section. Then add a few competing websites in the bottom section and hit show opportunities.

Competitive Analysis – analyze competitors' websites compared to yours

This shows us over 99 thousand domains that link to one or more of our competitors, but not to us.

Domains that link to one or more of our competitors, but not to us

While this was also doable in the old Link Intersect tool, we’ve added some new features and filters to unlock new use cases.

Firstly, you can now see referring pages in addition to referring domains, so you can build more targeted links. Just use this report toggle at the top.

Toggle to see referring domains or referring pages

Secondly, we’ve added a new heatmap at the top, which shows us the number of domains or pages that commonly link to our target website and our competitors. A darker color means a higher number of shared links.

Heatmap in Link Intersect

Thirdly, we’ve added advanced filters. One great use for this is to find listicles to build links from. In referring pages mode, let’s add ConvertKit in the top section, and a couple of its competitors in the bottom. This gives us a list of all the pages that are linking to ConvertKit’s competitors.

From here, I’ll set a DR: from 30 filter and a Domain traffic: from 500 filter. And to make results hyper-relevant, let’s also narrow it down to websites that link to all 3 competitors.

Advanced filters in Link Intersect

Right away, this gives us some listicles that might be great targets to reach out for a mention.

Finally, we’ve also made Competitive Analysis – Content Gap 2.0 and Link intersect 2.0 – available for all legacy plans.

Top Organic competitors in Overview 2.0

We’ve added a new widget in Overview that gives you a handy, visual competitor gap analysis. You’ll now see the top 5 competitors of your target and how everyone matches up against each other in terms of:

  • Organic traffic
  • Organic traffic value
  • Number of pages

The bigger the size of the circle, the more pages a competitor has.

Top Organic competitors in Overview 2.0

Filters in Top pages and Paid pages reports

You can now filter by phrase or partial match in:

  • SERP titles in Top pages
  • Ad titles and descriptions in Paid pages

Here’s a quick use case: search for the word “alternative” in ad titles for a competitor’s site to see comparison pages that might be worth looking into.

Phrase and partial match filters in Top pages and Paid pages reports

Generate seed keyword suggestions with AI

We have something really exciting this month: our first AI feature!

Now, you can generate seed keyword ideas with AI by choosing a preset and typing a seed keyword. Or, just type in your own prompt.

For example, we can ask AI to suggest technical and specialized terms related to golf. This gives us uncommon seed keywords. Since everyone searches using the same seed, it helps us find keyword opportunities that are potentially untapped.

Generate seed keyword suggestions with AI in Keywords Explorer

If the response is not in your preferred language, try entering the language at the end of your prompt.For example: Suggest technical and specialized terms related to buceo (in Spanish).

Available on: All new plans.

Improved search suggestions report

We’ve expanded our list of search suggestions. We now include keywords that aren’t indexed in our database, so you can easily discover emerging trends.

For example, if we search for b2b saas marketing and go to the search suggestions report, we’ll see terms like b2b saas marketing org structure and b2b saas marketing tactics. There’s no data available, but these are emerging trends that you could capitalize early on.

Keywords not indexed in our database now added to search suggestions report

Note: These keywords will be excluded from the report if you apply a filter since we don’t have metrics attached to them.

Access control features 

Before, any workspace user or guest could modify Site Audit issues for the entire workspace. This lead to a lot of back-and-forth issues where users would turn off important issues for all projects.

Now, we’ve implemented access control features as follows:

  • Guests: cannot create custom issues
  • Members: can set issues for accessible projects & modify custom issues they created
  • Workspace admins and owners: can adjust any project’s issues for workspace

Learn more about access control features.

Access control features in Site Audit

Looker connector: Filter by exact keyword 

You can now reproduce the keyword positions history chart directly in Looker Studio, thanks to the new config parameter called “Keyword is”.

Go ahead and enrich your SEO reports!

Looker Studio connector: Filter by exact keyword

Google Search Console keywords in Rank Tracker 

The new GSC keywords report is now live, showing you Google Search Console data for keywords right in Rank Tracker.

This initial release provides basic filtering and shows data for the web search type only. Expect more features in the following release.

Google Search Console keywords in Rank Tracker

Usage monitoring endpoint in APIv3

We’ve added a new usage monitoring endpoint in APIv3 for Enterprise plans, so you can set up automated internal notifications and never exceed them.

You can now monitor API consumption in terms of:

  • Maximum API units consumable via a specific API key
  • API units consumed by this key
  • Dates for usage reset and API key expiration

Learn more in our API documentation.

New usage monitoring endpoint in APIv3

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. Enjoy!