How is Ahrefs better than Semrush or Moz?

It’s a fair question and one we can’t answer entirely without bias. So rather than creating another tedious side-by-side comparison of features, we’d share some valuable features that you’ll only find in Ahrefs.

But first, let’s see which platform SEO professionals prefer

Spoiler alert. Ahrefs wins in nearly every major SEO industry poll.

aira screenshotSource:Aira.
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Most active web crawler in the SEO industry

AhrefsBot is the most active web crawler in the “Search Engine Optimization” category on Cloudflare Radar. It’s also the 2nd most active web crawler in the world.

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Rank

Bot

Owner

Category

1

GoogleBot

Google

Search Engine Crawler

2

AhrefsBot

Ahrefs

Search Engine Optimization

3

Qualys

Qualys

Security

4

BingBot

Microsoft

Search Engine Crawler

5

Amazonbot

Amazon

AI Search

Bots ranked by number of requests. Data supplied as of December, 2024

Best-in-class data quality

Ahrefs provides data you can trust. Data many steps ahead of the competition, according to third-party studies and our own research.

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More keywords

Ahrefs shows more keywords than competitors.

Source: Search Engine Land

Better traffic estimations

Ahrefs’ traffic estimations better correlate with Google Search Console (GSC) data.

Source: AuthorityHacker

16 Unique Things Only Ahrefs Can Do

There’s a lot of overlapping functionality between Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz. However, Ahrefs stands out with plenty of unique features.

Get insights into Traffic Potential and Parent Topic for any keyword

Understand your keyword’s traffic potential by looking at how much organic traffic the top-ranking page gets. You can also check if there’s a more popular topic (traffic-wise) that you could go for instead.

Keywords explorer screenshot
Overview report in Keywords Explorer

Prioritize link opportunities based on organic search traffic

Scour your competitor's website for backlinks that are likely moving the needle. According to our study, backlinks from pages with high traffic carry more weight than those with low traffic.

Site explorer screenshot
Backlinks report in Site Explorer
35
T

We store historical data for 35 trillion external backlinks.

Research content and find link prospects

Find thousands of relevant pages that talk about your topic by searching our enormous database of over 13.6 billion web pages. Narrow down your search results to the highest quality pages by filtering dozens of SEO metrics like Organic traffic, Domain rating (DR), Backlinks, and Published date.

Content explorer screenshot
Pages report in Content Explorer
10
M

We add 10 million new pages to Content Explorer every day.

Monitor the performance of multiple URLs

Group a list of URLs into a portfolio to get a comprehensive view of their metrics (organic traffic, organic keywords, backlinks, referring domains, etc.) and aggregated reports in Site Explorer.

Get competitive insights in terms of top pages and keywords, backlink growth, and organic vs. paid breakdown.
Run transparent performance reviews, reward the highest performers, and improve the overall content strategy.
Calculate the percentage of organic traffic and backlinks generated to effectively showcase ROI.
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See a website’s pages and traffic over time

Compare how the number of organic pages on a website correlates (or not) with its organic traffic.

Site Explorer screenshot
Top Pages report in Site Explorer
662
M

We pull traffic estimations from 662 million keywords in 189 locations.

Respond to changes faster

Whether it's organic traffic, referring domains, or organic pages, we update these metrics daily so you can follow your website's organic performance in real time and stay right on top of what's happening to the websites in your industry.

Immediately track organic search performance against Google algorithm updates.
Spot abrupt spikes right away and stop spam attacks early on.
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Compare a website’s current and historical rankings

Pick any two dates for comparing keyword rankings and identify the keywords that caused the most significant changes in traffic over the specified time period.

Site explorer organic screenshot
Organic Keywords report in Site Explorer

Our historical ranking data goes all the way back to 2015.

View top subfolders by search traffic

See with ease which sections of a website drive the most organic traffic, referring domains, and paid traffic—without having to run a crawl.

Site explorer top subfolders
Site Structure report in Site Explorer

Check ranking and ad history for any keyword

Study the SERP volatility for a given keyword using the position history graph. Additionally, uncover websites that have run ads for your target keyword in the past with the Ads history chart.

Position history chart in Keywords Explorer
Ads history chart in Keywords Explorer
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Get internal linking suggestions

Boost underperforming pages and improve the flow of link equity throughout your website via automated internal linking suggestions.

Site Audit
Internal links opportunities report in Site Audit

Compare SERPs side-by-side

Study SERPs for the same keyword on different dates to spot any ranking changes. You can also compare two different keywords to see if Google perceives them as similar (or not).

Site Audit
SERP comparison feature in Keywords Explorer’s Overview report

Discover untapped keyword opportunities at scale

Find keywords where your target website doesn't rank within the top 10 or top 100 search results, while tapping into our massive keyword database of 22.1 billion search queries.

Keywords Explorer screenshot
Matching terms report in Keywords Explorer
22.1
B

We count 22.1 billion keywords across 216 locations in our database.

Inspect backlinks in the source code

See what changed on a referring page after adding or removing a link. Click on the Inspect button to open the HTML snapshots saved by AhrefsBot.

Site Explorer screenshot
Inspect column in Site Explorer’s Backlink report
15
MIN

Our backlink index gets updated every 15 minutes.

Segment site crawls

Isolate issues related to a specific website section, like a subdomain or a subfolder. Segment, save, then return to your crawl section in just a few clicks.

Site Explorer screenshot
Segment dropdown in Site Audit’s Overview report

Compare HTML & page text changes between crawls

Troubleshoot SEO issues with ease. Spot changes in the HTML code and page text of any crawled page, in-between crawls.

Site Audit screenshot
View source tab in Site Audit’s URL details panel

See the web like search engines do

Find all relevant pages indexed by our search engine—Yep.com—for your topic, including similar ones that might have been omitted on purpose by Google. Filter pages by the anchor text and URLs of their backlinks and outlinks.

Site Audit screenshot
Some examples of Web Explorer's use cases
500
B

Yep database counts 500 billion pages.

Get started. Pick a plan that suits your needs, and we’ll see you on the other side.

Marketers love Ahrefs

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