🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 109 (from laksa193)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa109.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs","crawl_time":1774883071,"first_indexed_time":1579442584,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,pcmag!www,\/reviews\/ahrefs s443","src_root_hash":"15303950204440063509","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Ahrefs Review | PCMag","meta_descriptions":["Ahrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"If the name Ahrefs sounds more like a command line entry than a product name to you, you've got a handle on the product's philosphy. While this\nSEO tool\nis fairly full featured, we found that it didn't spend a whole lot of time on worry about end user niceties, especially an intuitive user interface. Starting at $82 per month for its Lite plan (when billed annually), this is a full featured tool aimed mainly at people who know what they're doing when it comes to SEO. For those folks, however, it's a solid choice. For example, Ahrefs maintains one of the largest indexes of\nbacklinks\non the web, currently with more than 12 trillion historical backlinks and 6 billion web pages crawled per day.\nIt also includes a number of other features and capabilities across ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing SEO monitoring and position tracking, content-specific research, and competitive domain comparison. Overall, Ahrefs can do a little bit of everything. While it lacks the keyword management and SEO reporting features of Editors' Choice\nMoz Pro\n(Visit Site at Moz)\n, and its bare-bones user experience (UX) can't match that of the much cleaner Editors' Choice,\nSpyFu\n(33.00 Per Month, Billed Annually at SpyFu)\n, Ahrefs does plenty beyond its signature crawling capabilities to warrant consideration and has invested in interface improvements, more advanced reporting, and better keyword management features since our initial review.\nAhref's pricing is a little on the hgih side, starting at $82 per month for its Lite plan ($99 if you opt for month-to-month billing). This plan gives you one user, five campaigns (the number of sites you can track in the Ahrefs dashboard), 300 tracked keywords per week, 25 domain crawls per day in the Site Explorer tool, and only three searches in the Keyword Explorer per day. There are also caps on the number of alerts, and the number of results you can export from Ahrefs' backlinks and rankings indexes. The $149 per month Standard plan ($179 month-to-month) is the more feasible option for SMBs, upping the platform's capacity to 10 campaigns, 1,000 tracked keywords updated every three days instead of weekly, 100 domains per day, and 50 keyword searches per day.\nThen there's the Advanced plan, priced at $332 per month billed annually ($399 month-to-month). This is where you start getting into premium features. The Advanced tier gives you 25 campaigns, daily updates on up to 4,000 tracked keywords, 200 keyword searches per day, more expansive access to the backlinks and rankings indexes as well as mobile ranking, and up to three user logins. Finally there's the Agency plan, priced at $832 per month billed annually ($999 month-to-month). This tier gives you real-time web mention tracking, hourly backlink reports, and far higher quotas across every Site Explorer, Content Explorer, and Keyword Explorer mention. For most SMBs, we'd recommend going with the Standard or Advanced plans depending on how much data you're looking to research and how frequently you need alerts.\nThe first thing you notice about the Ahrefs dashboard is that it's fairly sparse. Across the top of the screen is a navigation bar with tabs for Dashboard, Alerts, Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and a Tools drop-down. This is where you can access the Ahrefs\napplication programming interface\n(API), the Ahrefs browser toolbar, and other tools like domain comparison and quick batch analysis of multiple backlinks. Below the tabs is a search bar to enter a domain, URL, topic, or keyword. The dashboard itself lists all your current campaigns, which you can click on to enter Site Explorer for that site's latest monitoring data.\nAd-hoc keyword research is what business users will find themselves using most often when identifying the best possible\nsearch engine results pages\n(SERP) to target with an optimization strategy that can help your pages rank higher. As such, I focused my testing largely on the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool.\nFor testing purposes, I used a common set of five keywords for every tool to see how SEO metrics, results, and related keyword recommendations would differ. The five keywords I tested with were: pcmag, digital marketing, online shopping, IT consultant, and small business accounting. This is a fairly typical sampling of terms an SMB might use, including a publishing outift like Ziff Davis. Together they let me see a snapshot of related search results and competitors' spots ripe for targeted optimization.\nI started in Keyword Explorer by entering all five of my test keywords into the search bar. Ahrefs lets you narrow the search by country, but unlike in\nKWFinder\nit doesn't include the ability to drill down by city. The keyword results page was initially the most basic and straightforward of all the tools I tested in terms of metrics returned, but Ahrefs has greatly enhanced its Keyword Explorer tool with a responsive page of interactive\ndata visualizations\n.\nWhere before there was a basic table with metrics on average monthly search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), how many total search results were on the page, and the keyword difficulty score, in the updated Keywords Explorer interface I got an overview page with interactive bar charts on total search volume and clicks, volume distribution, and difficulty distribution. Below that were tables and charts breaking down SERP features, volume-difficulty distribution, top countries by volume, keyword ideas, and traffic share by pages and domains.\nWhen you hit the Metrics tab next to Overview, Keywords Explorer also now uses clickstream data to provide users with more acccurate individual keyword metrics around search volume, clicks (and clicks per search), and return rate (how often people search for the same keyword). Google's\nKeyword Planner now groups keyword volumes for similar queries, and this is especially useful data in that regard. There is also a link to open the SERP breakdown, listing what URLs hold each positon in the search results with deeper metrics on the SEO strength of the page. Ahrefs has enhanced its SERP results as well, now populating a SERP position history chart to track rank changes over time, along with incorporating newer fields like Featured Snippets into the results page.\nFor my online shopping keyword, for instance, I found that it had the highest search volume and a difficulty score of 75. Conversely, digital marketing had a lower but still significant search volume with a keyword difficulty score of 59. For reference, a difficulty score is an all-in-one, 1-100 number used by all the tools I tested that factors Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) SEO metrics together with other data, including keyword search volume, how heavily paid search ads are influencing the results, and how strong the competition is in each spot on the current search results page. Ziff Davis Senior SEO Director, Mike Levin, told me that the ideal difficulty score and PA\/DA target you're looking for is below 50, and that any score higher than 60 is typically a tough nut to crack.\nOn the SERP results page for digital marketing, I was able to identify several URLs with low scores in various\ncustom Ahrefs metrics\n. These include domain rating, URL rating, and the \"Ahrefs rank\" score, as well as how many links were coming from social media sources like Facebook and LinkedIn (potentially valuable data that you can import into any\nsocial media analytics\ntools you might be using). From here, you can take those target URLs and run a Site Explorer search to identify how your business can optimize its page to snag that SERP spot.\nOn the left-hand side of the Keywords Explorer interface is a small menu with a few other options, giving you a list of related keywords with the same metrics as well as a\nphrase match\nlist of longer search terms that match the keywords. Compared to the related keyword suggestions you'll find in Moz, KWFinder, and\nSEMrush\n($99.95 Per Month at SEMrush)\n, Ahrefs doesn't give the average user as much in terms of proactive help and targeted recommendations of the right keywords to target. That said, the platform has greatly improved what was the weakest standalone ad-hoc keyword querying in our initial reviews. Ahrefs has bolstered its keyword database from 300 million to 3.1 billion keywords, and as such the Keywords Explorer now returns 10\ntimes more keyword ideas In \"Phrase Match\" and \"Having Same Terms\" reports. The platform has also added related keyword suggestion options such as\n\"Also rank for\" and \"Search suggestions\" sections to bring up more relevant keywords.\nAhrefs also finally offers basic keyword management to add keyword to a list. On the top right of the keyword results page, you can select a keyword to add to a new or existing keyword list to which you can return later. This is still fairly limited, as you can't take those keywords and add them to an SEO campaign or directly into a lead management module, but it's better than Ahrefs had before, where all you could do was export your keyword results as a CSV file. Moz Pro, SEMrush, SpyFu, and KWFinder all include bettergrouping and list-making capabilities to better organize and refine keyword lists, but Ahrefs is closing the gap.\nOf the three main categories of SEO—ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing search position monitoring, and crawling—Ahrefs is far stronger in the latter two. When typing a URL into the Site Explorer, I got a comprehensive breakdown of the PCMag.com domain spanning all of the Ahrefs custom metrics, a breakdown of organic keywords and traffic, organic and paid search, and a full index of all the crawled pages on the site. In terms of running quick, comprehensive site diagnostics, only Moz possesses the same level of capability of the tools I tested.\nScrolling down the Site Explorer page, I also found interactive data visualizations. These pull in live data on referring domains and pages, backlinks, and a worldwide map of where search traffic is coming from. Below that was also a word cloud of the search terms driving the most traffic. Then in the left-hand navigation column, there were deeper site breakdown options into search and backlinks, paid and organic search, and some new comparison features allowing me to identify competing domains and pages to PCMag. The comparison features broke down how many common and unique keywords my site shared in common with competing sites. Ahrefs and the Kombat comparison tool in SpyFu provided the deepest competitive comparison metrics of the SEO tools.\nFinally, Ahrefs lets you configure email alerts to track backlinks, new keywords, and site\/brand mentions. So when creating a new keyword alert, I simply clicked the add alert button on the top right of the Alerts dashboard, then entered the URL, country, the keyword volume I wanted (less than 1,000, 1,000-10,000, or above 10,000), the email addresses where I wanted the alerts sent, and how frequently those emails should go out. The alerting in Ahrefs is straightforward, easy to set up, and makes it simple to track a website's overall SEO health and monitor targeted keywords.\nIf you're looking for an SEO tool with exceptional crawling and domain analysis that covers all your bases in terms of basic keyword research and ongoing monitoring, Ahrefs is a solid choice. The user experience is nothing fancy and the keyword management and optimization recommendations leave a lot to be desired compared to Editors' Choices Moz Pro and SpyFu, but Ahrefs is on par with\nDeepCrawl\n(Compare Quotes and Save at DeepCrawl)\nand\nMajestic\n(Compare Quotes and Save at Majestic.com)\nas the best crawlers we tested, and includes the most backlink tracking tools of any product in this roundup next to\nLinkResearchTools\n(Compare Quotes and Save at LinkResearchTools)\n. It can be a valuable addition to your business's SEO tool suite.\nAhrefs\n3.5\nPros\nCons\nThe Bottom Line\nAhrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers.\nSTILL ON THE FENCE?\nAhrefs\n                Appears in This Story:\n●\nThe Best SEO Tools\nAbout Our Expert\nRob Marvin\nFormer Associate Features Editor\nExperience\nRob Marvin writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, M&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You can also find his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for Geek.com on movies, TV, and culture. Once a year you can find him on a couch with friends marathoning The Lord of the Rings trilogy--extended editions.\nLatest By Rob Marvin\nRead Full Bio","attrs_markdown":"![](https:\/\/zdbb.net\/l\/z0WVjCBSEeGLoxIxOQVEwQ\/)\n\n[Skip to Main Content](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs#main \"Skip to Main Content\")\n\nMenu\n\n- ![Maggie AI Logo](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/icons\/maggie-logo.svg)\n  \n  ![Maggie AI White Logo](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/icons\/maggie-logo-white.svg)\n  \n  Maggie: AI Product Finder\n- [\\#AmazonBigSpringSale](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/events\/amazon-prime-day)\n- Best Products\n  - [The Best Laptops for 2025](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-laptops)\n  - [The Best PCs (Desktop Computers) for 2025](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-desktop-computers)\n  - [The Best Tablets for 2025](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-tablets)\n  - [The Best Phones for 2025](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-phones)\n  - [The Best Wi-Fi Routers for 2025](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-wireless-routers)\n  - 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[SEO Tools](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/categories\/seo-tools)\n# Ahrefs Review\n[![Rob Marvin](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/authors\/02H6VGDu3KHtKmdb9oPyY6J.fit_lim.size_100x100.v1567806071.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/rob-marvin)\n\nBy [Rob Marvin](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/rob-marvin)\n\nUpdated August 31, 2019\n\n[Threads](https:\/\/threads.net\/intent\/post?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs \"Threads (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[Bluesky](https:\/\/bsky.app\/intent\/compose?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs \"Bluesky (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[Reddit](http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&title=Ahrefs \"Reddit (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nSocial Share\n\n[Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs \"Facebook (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[LinkedIn](https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&title=Ahrefs&source=PCMag \"LinkedIn (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[Pinterest](http:\/\/pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&description=Ahrefs \"Pinterest (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[Flipboard](https:\/\/share.flipboard.com\/bookmarklet\/popout?v=2&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&title=Ahrefs \"Flipboard (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[Twitter](https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&text=Ahrefs&hashtags=PCMag \"X (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nCopied\n\nError\\!\n\n[Copy Link]()\n\nhttps:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs\n\n[Email](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection#fac5898f98909f998ec7bb92889f9c89dc9b978ac198959e83c7928e8e8a89dfc9bbdfc8bcdfc8bc8d8d8dd48a99979b9dd4999597dfc8bc889f8c939f8d89dfc8bc9b92889f9c89dfcabedfcabbdfcabedfcabbb795889fda9c889597daaab9b79b9dc0da928e8e8a89c0d5d58d8d8dd48a99979b9dd4999597 \"Email (Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[Comments](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs#comments)\n\n![Ahrefs](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-13.fit_scale.size_400x225.v1569475340.jpg)\n\n![Ahrefs](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-13.fit_scale.size_400x225.v1569475340.jpg)\n\n3\\.5\n\nWhat Our Ratings Mean\n***\n- 5\\.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking\n- 4\\.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors\n- 4\\.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls\n- 3\\.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors\n- 3\\.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack\n- 2\\.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution\n- 2\\.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution\n- 1\\.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product\n- 1\\.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product\n\nRead Our [Editorial Mission Statement](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/pcmagcom-mission-statement) and [Testing Methodologies](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/how-we-test-everything-we-review).\n\n### The Bottom Line\nAhrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers.\n\nMSRP \\$82.00\n\n\\$82.00 Per Month, Billed Annually\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=score-card-persistent&element=buy-button&item=offer&position=1&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nPCMag editors select and review products [independently](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/pcmagcom-mission-statement). If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our [testing](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/how-we-test-everything-we-review).\n\n## Pros & Cons\n- Exceptional site-specific and internet-wide crawling capability.\n- Solid ad-hoc keyword research.\n- Comprehensive domain monitoring and comparison.\n- Improved keyword suggestions.\n- In-depth SERP analysis.\n- Basic keyword management.\n\n- Limited SEO reporting.\n- Bare-bones UX.\n\nIf the name Ahrefs sounds more like a command line entry than a product name to you, you've got a handle on the product's philosphy. While this [SEO tool](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-seo-tools) is fairly full featured, we found that it didn't spend a whole lot of time on worry about end user niceties, especially an intuitive user interface. Starting at \\$82 per month for its Lite plan (when billed annually), this is a full featured tool aimed mainly at people who know what they're doing when it comes to SEO. For those folks, however, it's a solid choice. For example, Ahrefs maintains one of the largest indexes of [backlinks](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Backlink \"(Opens in a new tab)\") on the web, currently with more than 12 trillion historical backlinks and 6 billion web pages crawled per day.\n\nIt also includes a number of other features and capabilities across ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing SEO monitoring and position tracking, content-specific research, and competitive domain comparison. Overall, Ahrefs can do a little bit of everything. While it lacks the keyword management and SEO reporting features of Editors' Choice [Moz Pro](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/moz-pro) [(Visit Site at Moz)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=041qOZQol09O0MS1vwSb2MN&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmoz.pxf.io%2Fc%2F10915%2F2127976%2F26520 \"(Opens in a new tab)\") , and its bare-bones user experience (UX) can't match that of the much cleaner Editors' Choice, [SpyFu](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/spyfu) [(33.00 Per Month, Billed Annually at SpyFu)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=018UFPATGYTzIQ4SuB47KbS&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spyfu.com \"(Opens in a new tab)\") , Ahrefs does plenty beyond its signature crawling capabilities to warrant consideration and has invested in interface improvements, more advanced reporting, and better keyword management features since our initial review.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Site Explorer](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Site Explorer](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-1.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n## Pricing and Plans\nAhref's pricing is a little on the hgih side, starting at \\$82 per month for its Lite plan (\\$99 if you opt for month-to-month billing). This plan gives you one user, five campaigns (the number of sites you can track in the Ahrefs dashboard), 300 tracked keywords per week, 25 domain crawls per day in the Site Explorer tool, and only three searches in the Keyword Explorer per day. There are also caps on the number of alerts, and the number of results you can export from Ahrefs' backlinks and rankings indexes. The \\$149 per month Standard plan (\\$179 month-to-month) is the more feasible option for SMBs, upping the platform's capacity to 10 campaigns, 1,000 tracked keywords updated every three days instead of weekly, 100 domains per day, and 50 keyword searches per day.\n\nThen there's the Advanced plan, priced at \\$332 per month billed annually (\\$399 month-to-month). This is where you start getting into premium features. The Advanced tier gives you 25 campaigns, daily updates on up to 4,000 tracked keywords, 200 keyword searches per day, more expansive access to the backlinks and rankings indexes as well as mobile ranking, and up to three user logins. Finally there's the Agency plan, priced at \\$832 per month billed annually (\\$999 month-to-month). This tier gives you real-time web mention tracking, hourly backlink reports, and far higher quotas across every Site Explorer, Content Explorer, and Keyword Explorer mention. For most SMBs, we'd recommend going with the Standard or Advanced plans depending on how much data you're looking to research and how frequently you need alerts.\n\n### Similar Products\n![SEMrush Image](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### SEMrush\n4\\.0\n\nExcellent\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=01ft3gZQd80nrKtleEU4Ymi&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.semrush.com%2Fprices&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=1&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03WhvXTWHvzRqoyFK00Wt7m \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/semrush)\n\n![Moz Pro Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### Moz Pro\n4\\.5\n\nOutstanding\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=041qOZQol09O0MS1vwSb2MN&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmoz.pxf.io%2Fc%2F10915%2F2127976%2F26520&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=2&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=01v0qTT1RaGme4ropn4dorR \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/moz-pro)\n\n![SpyFu Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### SpyFu\n4\\.5\n\nOutstanding\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=018UFPATGYTzIQ4SuB47KbS&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spyfu.com&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=3&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=06J2x6DAWpcZfg5dRxqfv48 \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/spyfu)\n\n![KWFinder.com Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### KWFinder.com\n4\\.0\n\nExcellent\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00hejqJHEexQimfneJL9NNl&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DKWFinder&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=4&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03fR6Cz93hYpjgx9fcxFE6j \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/kwfindercom)\n\n![AWR Cloud Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### AWR Cloud\n4\\.0\n\nExcellent\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=04moHAll8oznavcbXeBjI5X&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DAWR&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=5&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=07qcQOq4u1yLc7rJVGuatbd \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/awr-cloud)\n\n![DeepCrawl Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### DeepCrawl\n3\\.5\n\nGood\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=037AcRCAKts3SoKjXjtVlp0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DDeepCrawl&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=6&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=002bf3EStmIAwHK96TeiiIs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/deepcrawl)\n\n![Searchmetrics Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### Searchmetrics Essentials\n3\\.5\n\nGood\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=04MGz7g2yf3Ee9PENTpTYza&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DSearchmetrics&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=7&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=06qMjhu8l6GFgaW8kpNR3Ej \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/searchmetrics-essentials)\n\n![LinkResearchTools Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### LinkResearchTools\n3\\.0\n\nAverage\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=026fHAq4OFzel8rSaErwBMK&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DLinkResearchTools&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=8&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=002w9FQFqQbmmJGUG2poLDL \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/linkresearchtools)\n\n![Majestic Logo](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)\n\n### Majestic\n3\\.5\n\nGood\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00ykmWuHuPFIJuwKvvnjshX&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DMajestic&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=9&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=02Bqi3eleDHMPfAqpfpkcwX \"(Opens in a new tab)\")  [Read Our Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/majestic)\n\n## Keywords Explorer and User Experience\nThe first thing you notice about the Ahrefs dashboard is that it's fairly sparse. Across the top of the screen is a navigation bar with tabs for Dashboard, Alerts, Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and a Tools drop-down. This is where you can access the Ahrefs [application programming interface](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/encyclopedia\/term\/api) (API), the Ahrefs browser toolbar, and other tools like domain comparison and quick batch analysis of multiple backlinks. Below the tabs is a search bar to enter a domain, URL, topic, or keyword. The dashboard itself lists all your current campaigns, which you can click on to enter Site Explorer for that site's latest monitoring data.\n\nAd-hoc keyword research is what business users will find themselves using most often when identifying the best possible [search engine results pages](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/encyclopedia\/term\/serp) (SERP) to target with an optimization strategy that can help your pages rank higher. As such, I focused my testing largely on the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Updated Keyword Explorer](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Updated Keyword Explorer](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-2.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nFor testing purposes, I used a common set of five keywords for every tool to see how SEO metrics, results, and related keyword recommendations would differ. The five keywords I tested with were: pcmag, digital marketing, online shopping, IT consultant, and small business accounting. This is a fairly typical sampling of terms an SMB might use, including a publishing outift like Ziff Davis. Together they let me see a snapshot of related search results and competitors' spots ripe for targeted optimization.\n\nI started in Keyword Explorer by entering all five of my test keywords into the search bar. Ahrefs lets you narrow the search by country, but unlike in [KWFinder](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/kwfindercom)  it doesn't include the ability to drill down by city. The keyword results page was initially the most basic and straightforward of all the tools I tested in terms of metrics returned, but Ahrefs has greatly enhanced its Keyword Explorer tool with a responsive page of interactive [data visualizations](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-data-visualization-tools) .\n\nWhere before there was a basic table with metrics on average monthly search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), how many total search results were on the page, and the keyword difficulty score, in the updated Keywords Explorer interface I got an overview page with interactive bar charts on total search volume and clicks, volume distribution, and difficulty distribution. Below that were tables and charts breaking down SERP features, volume-difficulty distribution, top countries by volume, keyword ideas, and traffic share by pages and domains.\n\nWhen you hit the Metrics tab next to Overview, Keywords Explorer also now uses clickstream data to provide users with more acccurate individual keyword metrics around search volume, clicks (and clicks per search), and return rate (how often people search for the same keyword). Google's Keyword Planner now groups keyword volumes for similar queries, and this is especially useful data in that regard. There is also a link to open the SERP breakdown, listing what URLs hold each positon in the search results with deeper metrics on the SEO strength of the page. Ahrefs has enhanced its SERP results as well, now populating a SERP position history chart to track rank changes over time, along with incorporating newer fields like Featured Snippets into the results page.\n\nFor my online shopping keyword, for instance, I found that it had the highest search volume and a difficulty score of 75. Conversely, digital marketing had a lower but still significant search volume with a keyword difficulty score of 59. For reference, a difficulty score is an all-in-one, 1-100 number used by all the tools I tested that factors Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) SEO metrics together with other data, including keyword search volume, how heavily paid search ads are influencing the results, and how strong the competition is in each spot on the current search results page. Ziff Davis Senior SEO Director, Mike Levin, told me that the ideal difficulty score and PA\/DA target you're looking for is below 50, and that any score higher than 60 is typically a tough nut to crack.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Improved Keyword Suggestions](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Improved Keyword Suggestions](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-3.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nOn the SERP results page for digital marketing, I was able to identify several URLs with low scores in various [custom Ahrefs metrics](https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/seo-metrics\/ \"(Opens in a new tab)\"). These include domain rating, URL rating, and the \"Ahrefs rank\" score, as well as how many links were coming from social media sources like Facebook and LinkedIn (potentially valuable data that you can import into any [social media analytics](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-social-media-management-analytics-tools) tools you might be using). From here, you can take those target URLs and run a Site Explorer search to identify how your business can optimize its page to snag that SERP spot.\n\nOn the left-hand side of the Keywords Explorer interface is a small menu with a few other options, giving you a list of related keywords with the same metrics as well as a [phrase match](https:\/\/support.google.com\/adwords\/answer\/2407784?hl=en \"(Opens in a new tab)\") list of longer search terms that match the keywords. Compared to the related keyword suggestions you'll find in Moz, KWFinder, and [SEMrush](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/semrush) [(\\$99.95 Per Month at SEMrush)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=01ft3gZQd80nrKtleEU4Ymi&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.semrush.com%2Fprices \"(Opens in a new tab)\") , Ahrefs doesn't give the average user as much in terms of proactive help and targeted recommendations of the right keywords to target. That said, the platform has greatly improved what was the weakest standalone ad-hoc keyword querying in our initial reviews. Ahrefs has bolstered its keyword database from 300 million to 3.1 billion keywords, and as such the Keywords Explorer now returns 10 times more keyword ideas In \"Phrase Match\" and \"Having Same Terms\" reports. The platform has also added related keyword suggestion options such as \"Also rank for\" and \"Search suggestions\" sections to bring up more relevant keywords.\n\nAhrefs also finally offers basic keyword management to add keyword to a list. On the top right of the keyword results page, you can select a keyword to add to a new or existing keyword list to which you can return later. This is still fairly limited, as you can't take those keywords and add them to an SEO campaign or directly into a lead management module, but it's better than Ahrefs had before, where all you could do was export your keyword results as a CSV file. Moz Pro, SEMrush, SpyFu, and KWFinder all include bettergrouping and list-making capabilities to better organize and refine keyword lists, but Ahrefs is closing the gap.\n\n[![Ahrefs--SERP Overview](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--SERP Overview](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-4.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n## Site Explorer and Alerts\nOf the three main categories of SEO—ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing search position monitoring, and crawling—Ahrefs is far stronger in the latter two. When typing a URL into the Site Explorer, I got a comprehensive breakdown of the PCMag.com domain spanning all of the Ahrefs custom metrics, a breakdown of organic keywords and traffic, organic and paid search, and a full index of all the crawled pages on the site. In terms of running quick, comprehensive site diagnostics, only Moz possesses the same level of capability of the tools I tested.\n\nScrolling down the Site Explorer page, I also found interactive data visualizations. These pull in live data on referring domains and pages, backlinks, and a worldwide map of where search traffic is coming from. Below that was also a word cloud of the search terms driving the most traffic. Then in the left-hand navigation column, there were deeper site breakdown options into search and backlinks, paid and organic search, and some new comparison features allowing me to identify competing domains and pages to PCMag. The comparison features broke down how many common and unique keywords my site shared in common with competing sites. Ahrefs and the Kombat comparison tool in SpyFu provided the deepest competitive comparison metrics of the SEO tools.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Add Alert](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Add Alert](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-5.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nFinally, Ahrefs lets you configure email alerts to track backlinks, new keywords, and site\/brand mentions. So when creating a new keyword alert, I simply clicked the add alert button on the top right of the Alerts dashboard, then entered the URL, country, the keyword volume I wanted (less than 1,000, 1,000-10,000, or above 10,000), the email addresses where I wanted the alerts sent, and how frequently those emails should go out. The alerting in Ahrefs is straightforward, easy to set up, and makes it simple to track a website's overall SEO health and monitor targeted keywords.\n\n## All the Basics Covered\nIf you're looking for an SEO tool with exceptional crawling and domain analysis that covers all your bases in terms of basic keyword research and ongoing monitoring, Ahrefs is a solid choice. The user experience is nothing fancy and the keyword management and optimization recommendations leave a lot to be desired compared to Editors' Choices Moz Pro and SpyFu, but Ahrefs is on par with [DeepCrawl](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/deepcrawl) [(Compare Quotes and Save at DeepCrawl)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=037AcRCAKts3SoKjXjtVlp0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DDeepCrawl \"(Opens in a new tab)\") and [Majestic](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/majestic) [(Compare Quotes and Save at Majestic.com)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00ykmWuHuPFIJuwKvvnjshX&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DMajestic \"(Opens in a new tab)\") as the best crawlers we tested, and includes the most backlink tracking tools of any product in this roundup next to [LinkResearchTools](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/linkresearchtools) [(Compare Quotes and Save at LinkResearchTools)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=026fHAq4OFzel8rSaErwBMK&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DLinkResearchTools \"(Opens in a new tab)\") . It can be a valuable addition to your business's SEO tool suite.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Competing Domains](data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Competing Domains](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-6.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nAhrefs\n\n3\\.5\n\n[![Ahrefs](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 528 297'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=image&position=1&element_label=&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K \"(Opens in a new tab)\")   [Check Price](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=buy-button&position=1&element_label=Check+Price&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nPros\n\n- Exceptional site-specific and internet-wide crawling capability.\n- Solid ad-hoc keyword research.\n- Comprehensive domain monitoring and comparison.\n- Improved keyword suggestions.\n- In-depth SERP analysis.\n- Basic keyword management.\n\nView More\n\nCons\n\n- Limited SEO reporting.\n- Bare-bones UX.\n\n[![Ahrefs](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 528 297'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=image&position=1&element_label=&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K \"(Opens in a new tab)\")   [Check Price](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=buy-button&position=1&element_label=Check+Price&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nThe Bottom Line\n\nAhrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers.\n\n### STILL ON THE FENCE?\n**Ahrefs Appears in This Story:**\n\n- ● [The Best SEO Tools](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-seo-tools)\n\n## About Our Expert\n![Rob Marvin](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/authors\/02H6VGDu3KHtKmdb9oPyY6J.fit_lim.size_100x100.v1567806071.jpg)\n\nRob Marvin\n\nFormer Associate Features Editor\n***\nExperience\n\nRob Marvin writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, M\\&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You can also find his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for Geek.com on movies, TV, and culture. Once a year you can find him on a couch with friends marathoning The Lord of the Rings trilogy--extended editions.\n\nLatest By Rob Marvin\n\n- [Social CRM: Where Social Media Meets Customer Engagement](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/social-crm-where-social-media-meets-customer-engagement)\n- [9 Tips for a Killer Social CRM Strategy](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/8-tips-for-a-killer-social-crm-strategy)\n- [The Dos and Don'ts of Securing Your VoIP Communications](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/the-dos-and-donts-of-securing-your-voip-communications)\n- [Peacock? HBO Max? The New Streaming Giants Explained](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/disney-plus-hbo-max-the-new-streaming-giants-explained)\n- [Are You Worried About Smart Home Devices Listening to You?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/are-you-worried-about-smart-home-devices-listening-to-you)\n- [More from Rob Marvin](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/rob-marvin)\n\n[Read Full Bio](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/rob-marvin)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n### Amazon Big Spring Sale\n[![I've Tested Dozens of TVs. This Is the Best 65-Inch Display Under \\$1,000 During Amazon's Spring Sale](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/opinions\/ive-tested-dozens-of-tvs-best-65-inch-under-1000-amazon-big-spring-sale)\n\n[I've Tested Dozens of TVs. This Is the Best 65-Inch Display Under \\$1,000 During Amazon's Spring Sale](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/opinions\/ive-tested-dozens-of-tvs-best-65-inch-under-1000-amazon-big-spring-sale)\n\nBy [Will Greenwald](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/will-greenwald)\n\n[![Amazon Spring Sale Deal: My Favorite Robot Vacuum Just Hit Its Lowest Price Ever](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/opinions\/amazon-spring-sale-deal-my-favorite-robot-vacuum-deal-lowest-price-ever)\n\n[Amazon Spring Sale Deal: My Favorite Robot Vacuum Just Hit Its Lowest Price Ever](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/opinions\/amazon-spring-sale-deal-my-favorite-robot-vacuum-deal-lowest-price-ever)\n\nBy [Andrew Gebhart](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/andrew-gebhart)\n\n[![I'm PCMag's Laptop Editor. My Top Picks from Amazon's Spring Sale](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/opinions\/laptop-deals-my-favorites-from-amazons-big-spring-sale-2026)\n\n[I'm PCMag's Laptop Editor. My Top Picks from Amazon's Spring Sale](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/opinions\/laptop-deals-my-favorites-from-amazons-big-spring-sale-2026)\n\nBy [Brian Westover](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/brian-westover)\n\n[![The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals We've Found So Far](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/deals\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-sale-airpods-ipads-macbooks)\n\n[The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals We've Found So Far](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/deals\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-sale-airpods-ipads-macbooks)\n\nBy [Cierra Cowan](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/cierra-cowan)\n\n[![I'm Vetting the Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Headphone and Earbud Deals](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-headphones-earbuds)\n\n[I'm Vetting the Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Headphone and Earbud Deals](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-headphones-earbuds)\n\nBy [Juhi Wadia](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/juhi-wadia)\n\n[![The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Apple AirPods Are Here](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-apple-airpods)\n\n[The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Apple AirPods Are Here](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-apple-airpods)\n\nBy [Cierra Cowan](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/cierra-cowan)\n\n[![Stream Everything With This Fire TV Stick Deal at Amazon's Big Spring Sale](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/fire-tv-stick-deal-at-amazons-big-spring-sale-2026-50-off)\n\n[Stream Everything With This Fire TV Stick Deal at Amazon's Big Spring Sale](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/fire-tv-stick-deal-at-amazons-big-spring-sale-2026-50-off)\n\nBy [Carlos Mejia](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/carlos-mejia)\n\n[![Here’s a Kindle Amazon Big Spring Sale Deal We Can’t Put Down](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/kindle-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026-deal-we-cant-put-down)\n\n[Here’s a Kindle Amazon Big Spring Sale Deal We Can’t Put Down](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/kindle-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026-deal-we-cant-put-down)\n\nBy [Carlos Mejia](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/carlos-mejia)\n\n[All Amazon Big Spring Sale Stories](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/events\/amazon-prime-day)\n\n### Further Reading\n[![Never Skip a Workout With This Fitbit Inspire 3 Deal, Now Under \\$70 for Amazon’s Big Spring Sale](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/deals\/fitbit-inspire-3-deal-now-under-70-for-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026)\n\n[Never Skip a Workout With This Fitbit Inspire 3 Deal, Now Under \\$70 for Amazon’s Big Spring Sale](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/deals\/fitbit-inspire-3-deal-now-under-70-for-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026)\n\nBy [Juhi Wadia](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/juhi-wadia)\n\n[![Is Your Browser Handing Out Your Credit Card Info? Check This Setting ASAP](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/is-your-browser-handing-out-your-credit-card-info-check-this-setting-asap)\n\n[Is Your Browser Handing Out Your Credit Card Info? Check This Setting ASAP](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/is-your-browser-handing-out-your-credit-card-info-check-this-setting-asap)\n\nBy [Neil J. Rubenking](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/neil-j-rubenking)\n\n[![Sora Video Generator Reportedly Costs OpenAI \\$1 Million a Day](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/sora-video-generator-reportedly-costs-openai-1-million-a-day)\n\n[Sora Video Generator Reportedly Costs OpenAI \\$1 Million a Day](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/sora-video-generator-reportedly-costs-openai-1-million-a-day)\n\nBy [Jibin Joseph](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/jibin-joseph)\n\n[![Think Different, Fail Sometimes: 21 Times Apple Missed the Mark](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/articles\/apple-50-failures-missteps)\n\n[Think Different, Fail Sometimes: 21 Times Apple Missed the Mark](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/articles\/apple-50-failures-missteps)\n\nBy [Jamie Lendino](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/jamie-lendino)\n\n[![Time Is Ticking on These Massive Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Powerful Tablets Up to 50% Off](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-tablets-day-6)\n\n[Time Is Ticking on These Massive Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Powerful Tablets Up to 50% Off](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-tablets-day-6)\n\nBy [Juhi Wadia](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/juhi-wadia)\n\n[![The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals Still Available on AirPods, iPads, MacBooks, and More](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/deals\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-airpods-ipads-macbooks-day-6)\n\n[The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals Still Available on AirPods, iPads, MacBooks, and More](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/deals\/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-airpods-ipads-macbooks-day-6)\n\nBy [Cierra Cowan](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/cierra-cowan)\n\n[![iOS 26.4 Gives You Even Greater Control Over Liquid Glass. Here's What You Can Do](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/apple-ios-26-4-greater-control-over-liquid-glass-what-you-can-do)\n\n[iOS 26.4 Gives You Even Greater Control Over Liquid Glass. Here's What You Can Do](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/apple-ios-26-4-greater-control-over-liquid-glass-what-you-can-do)\n\nBy [Lance Whitney](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/lance-whitney)\n\n[![Power Up Your Savings With Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Anker Chargers, Headphones, Speakers, and More](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-anker-deals-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026-headphones-chargers-more)\n\n[Power Up Your Savings With Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Anker Chargers, Headphones, Speakers, and More](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/best-anker-deals-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026-headphones-chargers-more)\n\nBy [Juhi Wadia](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/juhi-wadia)\n\nTable of Contents\n\nAhrefs\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=toc-commerce&element=toc-commerce-link&item=toc-commerce-list&position=1&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n### Ahrefs\n![Ahrefs](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-13.fit_lpad.size_238x139.v1569475340.jpg)\n\n[See It](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=toc-commerce&element=toc-commerce-link&item=toc-commerce-list&position=&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n[PCMag Newsletters](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/newsletter_manage)\n\nPCMag Newsletters\n\nOur Best Stories in Your\n\nInbox\n\nFollow PCMag\n\n## Honest, Objective, Lab-Tested Reviews\nPCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.\n\n[How We Test](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/how-we-test-everything-we-review)   [Editorial Principles](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/pcmagcom-mission-statement)\n\n### Best Products\n***\n\n[Best Products](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks)\n\n- [3D Printers](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-3d-printers)\n- [Android Phones](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-android-phones)\n- [Android Tablets](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-tablets)\n- [Antivirus Apps](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-antivirus-protection)\n- [Apple iPads](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/whats-the-best-ipad-to-buy)\n- [Apple iPhones](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/whats-the-best-iphone-to-buy)\n- [Apple Watches](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-apple-watch)\n- [Bluetooth Speakers](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-wireless-and-bluetooth-speakers)\n\n- [Car Phone Mounts](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-car-phone-mounts)\n- [CPUs For Gaming](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-cpus-for-gaming)\n- [Ereaders](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-ereaders)\n- [Fastest VPNs](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-fastest-vpns)\n- [Fitness Trackers](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-fitness-trackers)\n- [Gaming Keyboards](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-gaming-keyboards)\n- [Gaming Laptops](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-gaming-laptops)\n- [Gaming Monitors](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-gaming-monitors)\n\n- [Graphics Cards](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-graphics-cards)\n- [Headphones](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-headphones)\n- [Keyboards](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-keyboards)\n- [Laptops](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-laptops)\n- [Laptops For College Students](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-laptops-for-college-students)\n- [Media Streaming Devices](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-media-streaming-devices)\n- [Password Managers](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-password-managers)\n- [Photo Printers](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-photo-printers)\n\n- [Robot Vacuums](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-robot-vacuums)\n- [Smart Thermostats](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-smart-thermostats)\n- [Smartwatches](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-smartwatches)\n- [Soundbars](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-soundbars)\n- [Tablets](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-tablets)\n- [Tax Software](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-tax-software)\n- [TVs](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-tvs)\n- [Video Editing Software](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-video-editing-software)\n\n- [VPN Services](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-vpn-services)\n- [VPNs for Android](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-android-vpns)\n- [VPNs for iPhones](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-iphone-vpns)\n- [VPNs for Mac](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-mac-vpns)\n- [VPNs for Pornhub](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-vpns-for-pornhub)\n- [VPNs for TikTok](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/best-vpns-for-tiktok)\n- [VR Headsets](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-vr-headsets)\n\n### Popular Reviews\n***\n\n[Popular Reviews](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews)\n\n- [Acer Swift X 14 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/acer-swift-x-14)\n- [Alienware Gaming Monitor (AW2725QF) Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/alienware-27-inch-4k-dual-resolution-gaming-monitor-aw2725qf)\n- [AMD Ryzen 7 7700X Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/amd-ryzen-7-7700x)\n- [Beats Studio Buds + Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/beats-studio-buds-plus)\n- [Blink Outdoor 4 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/blink-outdoor-4)\n\n- [Ecobee Smart Thermostat Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ecobee-smart-thermostat-premium)\n- [FreshBooks Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/freshbooks)\n- [Google Pixel 9 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/google-pixel-9)\n- [H\\&R Block 2025 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/hr-block)\n- [Intuit TurboTax 2025 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/intuit-turbotax)\n\n- [Lenovo Legion Go Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/lenovo-legion-go)\n- [NordVPN Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/nordvpn)\n- [Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5080-founders-edition)\n- [ProtonVPN Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/protonvpn)\n- [Samsung Galaxy S25 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/samsung-galaxy-s25)\n\n- [Samsung Galaxy S25+ Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/samsung-galaxy-s25-plus)\n- [Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/samsung-galaxy-s25-ultra)\n- [Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/samsung-galaxy-watch-7)\n- [Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/samsung-galaxy-watch-ultra)\n\n- [Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/samsung-galaxy-z-fold-6)\n- [SimpliSafe Home Security System Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/simplisafe-home-security-system)\n- [Surfshark VPN Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/surfshark-vpn)\n- [Windscribe VPN Review](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/windscribe-vpn)\n\n### Popular Product Comparisons\n***\n\n[Popular Product Comparisons](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons)\n\n- [Apple AirPods 4 vs. AirPods Pro 2](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/apple-airpods-4-vs-airpods-pro-2-whats-the-difference)\n- [Apple iPhone 16e vs. iPhone 16](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/apple-iphone-16e-vs-iphone-16-whats-the-difference)\n- [Apple Watch Series 10 vs. Series 9](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/apple-watch-series-10-vs-series-9)\n\n- [FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/freshbooks-vs-quickbooks-which-is-best-for-your-small-business)\n- [Mac vs. Windows](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/macos-vs-windows-which-os-really-is-the-best)\n- [Meta Quest 3 vs. 3S](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/meta-quest-3-vs-meta-quest-3s-whats-the-difference)\n\n- [Nest vs. Ring](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/nest-vs-ring-which-video-doorbell-is-right-for-you)\n- [OLED vs. QLED](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/oled-vs-qled-whats-the-difference)\n- [Proton VPN vs. NordVPN](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/proton-vpn-vs-nordvpn-which-service-is-better)\n\n- [Sony PlayStation 5 vs. PlayStation 5 Pro](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/sony-playstation-5-vs-ps5-pro-should-you-upgrade)\n- [SSD vs. Hard Drive](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/ssd-vs-hdd-whats-the-difference)\n\n- [Wi-Fi Extender vs. Mesh](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/wi-fi-range-extender-vs-mesh-network-whats-the-difference)\n- [Windows 11 Home vs. Pro](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/comparisons\/windows-11-home-vs-pro)\n\n### Top Explainers\n***\n\n[Top Explainers](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to)\n\n- [How Do Airtags Work?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/apple-airtag-tips)\n- [How Does Starlink Work?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/what-is-starlink-spacex-satellite-internet-service-explained)\n- [How to Organize Tax Documents](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/how-to-organize-tax-documents)\n- [How to Set Up a VPN](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/how-to-set-up-and-use-a-vpn)\n\n- [How to Unblock Netflix With a VPN](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/how-to-unblock-netflix-with-a-vpn)\n- [Is Google Password Manager Safe?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/how-to-master-google-password-manager)\n- [What Is a Proxy Server?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/what-is-a-proxy-server-and-do-you-need-one)\n\n- [What Is Agentic AI?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/what-is-agentic-ai-white-collar-robots-are-here-for-better-or-worse)\n- [What Is an AI PC?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/what-is-an-ai-pc)\n- [What Is an eSim Card?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/what-is-an-esim-card)\n- [What Is Discord?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/what-is-discord-and-how-do-you-use-it)\n\n- [What Is Microsoft Copilot?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/explainers\/what-is-microsoft-copilot)\n- [What Is the Best Browser?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/chrome-edge-firefox-opera-or-safari-which-browser-is-best)\n- [What Is USB-C?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/what-is-usb-c-an-explainer)\n- [What Is Wi-Fi 6E?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/what-is-wi-fi-6e)\n\n- [What Is Wi-Fi 7?](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/wi-fi-7-explained-everything-to-know-about-tomorrows-fastest-wireless-spec)\n- [What To Stream This Weekend](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/news\/what-to-watch-this-weekend)\n- [Why You Need a VPN](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/what-is-a-vpn-and-why-you-need-one)\n\n### Popular Brands\n***\n\n[Popular Brands](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands)\n\n- [Acer](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/acer)\n- [Adobe](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/adobe)\n- [AMD](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/amd)\n- [Apple](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/apple)\n- [Asus](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/asus)\n- [Bitdefender](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/bitdefender)\n\n- [Dell](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/dell)\n- [Facebook](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/facebook)\n- [Google](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/google)\n- [HP](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/hp)\n- [Instagram](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/instagram)\n- [Intel](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/intel)\n\n- [Lenovo](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/lenovo)\n- [LG](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/lg)\n- [Microsoft](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/microsoft)\n- [Motorola](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/motorola)\n- [MSI](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/msi)\n- [Netflix](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/netflix)\n\n- [NordVPN](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/nordvpn)\n- [Nvidia](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/nvidia)\n- [OpenAI](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/openai)\n- [Qualcomm](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/qualcomm)\n- [Samsung](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/samsung)\n- [Sony](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/sony)\n\n- [SpaceX](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/spacex)\n- [Tesla](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/tesla)\n- [X\/Twitter](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/brands\/twitter)\n\n### Series\n***\n\n[Series](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series)\n\n- [All About AI](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/all-about-artificial-intelligence)\n- [Android](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/android)\n- [Apple](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/apple)\n- [Back to School Tech](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/back-to-school-tech)\n- [Best ISPs](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/fastest-isps)\n- [Connected Traveler](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/connected-traveler)\n- [Get Organized](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/get-organized)\n\n- [Holiday Gift Guide](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/holiday-gift-guide)\n- [NextCar](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/nextcar)\n- [Readers' Choice](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/readers-choice)\n- [Rigged Up](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/rigged-up)\n- [SecurityWatch](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/securitywatch)\n- [Weekend Project](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/weekend-project)\n- [Windows 11](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/series\/windows-11)\n\n### Events\n***\n\n[Events](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/events)\n\n- 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All Rights Reserved.\n\nPCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product or service, we may be paid a fee by that merchant.\n\n- [About Ziff Davis](https:\/\/www.ziffdavis.com\/about \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n- [Privacy Policy](https:\/\/www.ziffdavis.com\/ztg-privacy-policy \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n- [Terms of Use](https:\/\/www.ziffdavis.com\/about\/terms \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n- [Advertise](https:\/\/www.ziffmedia.com#contact \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n- [Accessibility](https:\/\/www.ziffdavis.com\/accessibility \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n- [Do Not Sell My Personal Information](https:\/\/dsar.pcmag.com\/ \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\n- ![AdChoices image pixel](https:\/\/c.evidon.com\/pub\/icong1.png) AdChoices\n- [TRUSTe Logo ![TRUSTe Logo](<data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 142 45'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' \/%3E%3C\/svg%3E>)](https:\/\/privacy.truste.com\/privacy-seal\/validation?rid=ce211316-dfd0-4abb-8bfb-9cb70de1e37c \"TRUSTe Privacy Certification 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It](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/trackCommerceUrl\$product.offer%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20.commerceUrl,%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20'Full%20Report%20Product%20Card',%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20productIndex%20+%201\$ \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n***\nPros & Cons\n\nSpecs & Configurations\n\nMy Best Recommendation\n\n![](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/formatImage\$product.image.url,%20325,%20183\$)\n\nWhat Our Ratings Mean\n***\nRead Our [Editorial Mission Statement](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/pcmagcom-mission-statement) and [Testing Methodologies](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/how-we-test-everything-we-review).\n\n[Read Full Review](\"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nat\n\n[See It](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/trackCommerceUrl\$product.offer.commerceUrl,%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20'Top%20Recommendation%20Card',%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20productIndex%20+%201\$ \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nHere's What I Found\n\nMore Recommendations\n\n![](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/formatImage\$product.image.url,%20200,%20113\$)\n\nWhat Our Ratings Mean\n***\nRead Our [Editorial Mission Statement](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/pcmagcom-mission-statement) and [Testing Methodologies](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/about\/how-we-test-everything-we-review).\n\n[Read Full Review](\"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nat\n\n[See It](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/trackCommerceUrl\$product.offer.commerceUrl,%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20'Stacked%20Product%20Card',%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20productIndex%20+%201\$ \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nBased on these stories\n\n[![Product Image](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/formatImage\$content.image,%20160,%2090\$) By ,](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/content.url)\n\n**Here are some examples of the types of questions you can ask:**\n\n- What's the best graphics card for 4K gaming?\n- Should I get the iPhone 17 or the iPhone 17 Pro?\n- Show me some good VPNs under \\$10 a month.\n\nI'm in Beta. [Help me get better](https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/e\/1FAIpQLSdL9ayCDMigj08oQXjAgDJVX77ti49d9ILHwE--ZFlRtEHOSw\/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=117991066449526760970).\n\nKeep scrolling for next article","attrs_readable_markdown":"If the name Ahrefs sounds more like a command line entry than a product name to you, you've got a handle on the product's philosphy. While this [SEO tool](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-seo-tools) is fairly full featured, we found that it didn't spend a whole lot of time on worry about end user niceties, especially an intuitive user interface. Starting at \\$82 per month for its Lite plan (when billed annually), this is a full featured tool aimed mainly at people who know what they're doing when it comes to SEO. For those folks, however, it's a solid choice. For example, Ahrefs maintains one of the largest indexes of [backlinks](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Backlink \"(Opens in a new tab)\") on the web, currently with more than 12 trillion historical backlinks and 6 billion web pages crawled per day.\n\nIt also includes a number of other features and capabilities across ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing SEO monitoring and position tracking, content-specific research, and competitive domain comparison. Overall, Ahrefs can do a little bit of everything. While it lacks the keyword management and SEO reporting features of Editors' Choice [Moz Pro](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/moz-pro) [(Visit Site at Moz)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=041qOZQol09O0MS1vwSb2MN&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmoz.pxf.io%2Fc%2F10915%2F2127976%2F26520 \"(Opens in a new tab)\") , and its bare-bones user experience (UX) can't match that of the much cleaner Editors' Choice, [SpyFu](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/spyfu) [(33.00 Per Month, Billed Annually at SpyFu)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=018UFPATGYTzIQ4SuB47KbS&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spyfu.com \"(Opens in a new tab)\") , Ahrefs does plenty beyond its signature crawling capabilities to warrant consideration and has invested in interface improvements, more advanced reporting, and better keyword management features since our initial review.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Site Explorer](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-1.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nAhref's pricing is a little on the hgih side, starting at \\$82 per month for its Lite plan (\\$99 if you opt for month-to-month billing). This plan gives you one user, five campaigns (the number of sites you can track in the Ahrefs dashboard), 300 tracked keywords per week, 25 domain crawls per day in the Site Explorer tool, and only three searches in the Keyword Explorer per day. There are also caps on the number of alerts, and the number of results you can export from Ahrefs' backlinks and rankings indexes. The \\$149 per month Standard plan (\\$179 month-to-month) is the more feasible option for SMBs, upping the platform's capacity to 10 campaigns, 1,000 tracked keywords updated every three days instead of weekly, 100 domains per day, and 50 keyword searches per day.\n\nThen there's the Advanced plan, priced at \\$332 per month billed annually (\\$399 month-to-month). This is where you start getting into premium features. The Advanced tier gives you 25 campaigns, daily updates on up to 4,000 tracked keywords, 200 keyword searches per day, more expansive access to the backlinks and rankings indexes as well as mobile ranking, and up to three user logins. Finally there's the Agency plan, priced at \\$832 per month billed annually (\\$999 month-to-month). This tier gives you real-time web mention tracking, hourly backlink reports, and far higher quotas across every Site Explorer, Content Explorer, and Keyword Explorer mention. For most SMBs, we'd recommend going with the Standard or Advanced plans depending on how much data you're looking to research and how frequently you need alerts.\n\nThe first thing you notice about the Ahrefs dashboard is that it's fairly sparse. Across the top of the screen is a navigation bar with tabs for Dashboard, Alerts, Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and a Tools drop-down. This is where you can access the Ahrefs [application programming interface](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/encyclopedia\/term\/api) (API), the Ahrefs browser toolbar, and other tools like domain comparison and quick batch analysis of multiple backlinks. Below the tabs is a search bar to enter a domain, URL, topic, or keyword. The dashboard itself lists all your current campaigns, which you can click on to enter Site Explorer for that site's latest monitoring data.\n\nAd-hoc keyword research is what business users will find themselves using most often when identifying the best possible [search engine results pages](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/encyclopedia\/term\/serp) (SERP) to target with an optimization strategy that can help your pages rank higher. As such, I focused my testing largely on the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Updated Keyword Explorer](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-2.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nFor testing purposes, I used a common set of five keywords for every tool to see how SEO metrics, results, and related keyword recommendations would differ. The five keywords I tested with were: pcmag, digital marketing, online shopping, IT consultant, and small business accounting. This is a fairly typical sampling of terms an SMB might use, including a publishing outift like Ziff Davis. Together they let me see a snapshot of related search results and competitors' spots ripe for targeted optimization.\n\nI started in Keyword Explorer by entering all five of my test keywords into the search bar. Ahrefs lets you narrow the search by country, but unlike in [KWFinder](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/kwfindercom)  it doesn't include the ability to drill down by city. The keyword results page was initially the most basic and straightforward of all the tools I tested in terms of metrics returned, but Ahrefs has greatly enhanced its Keyword Explorer tool with a responsive page of interactive [data visualizations](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-data-visualization-tools) .\n\nWhere before there was a basic table with metrics on average monthly search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), how many total search results were on the page, and the keyword difficulty score, in the updated Keywords Explorer interface I got an overview page with interactive bar charts on total search volume and clicks, volume distribution, and difficulty distribution. Below that were tables and charts breaking down SERP features, volume-difficulty distribution, top countries by volume, keyword ideas, and traffic share by pages and domains.\n\nWhen you hit the Metrics tab next to Overview, Keywords Explorer also now uses clickstream data to provide users with more acccurate individual keyword metrics around search volume, clicks (and clicks per search), and return rate (how often people search for the same keyword). Google's Keyword Planner now groups keyword volumes for similar queries, and this is especially useful data in that regard. There is also a link to open the SERP breakdown, listing what URLs hold each positon in the search results with deeper metrics on the SEO strength of the page. Ahrefs has enhanced its SERP results as well, now populating a SERP position history chart to track rank changes over time, along with incorporating newer fields like Featured Snippets into the results page.\n\nFor my online shopping keyword, for instance, I found that it had the highest search volume and a difficulty score of 75. Conversely, digital marketing had a lower but still significant search volume with a keyword difficulty score of 59. For reference, a difficulty score is an all-in-one, 1-100 number used by all the tools I tested that factors Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) SEO metrics together with other data, including keyword search volume, how heavily paid search ads are influencing the results, and how strong the competition is in each spot on the current search results page. Ziff Davis Senior SEO Director, Mike Levin, told me that the ideal difficulty score and PA\/DA target you're looking for is below 50, and that any score higher than 60 is typically a tough nut to crack.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Improved Keyword Suggestions](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-3.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nOn the SERP results page for digital marketing, I was able to identify several URLs with low scores in various [custom Ahrefs metrics](https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/seo-metrics\/ \"(Opens in a new tab)\"). These include domain rating, URL rating, and the \"Ahrefs rank\" score, as well as how many links were coming from social media sources like Facebook and LinkedIn (potentially valuable data that you can import into any [social media analytics](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-social-media-management-analytics-tools) tools you might be using). From here, you can take those target URLs and run a Site Explorer search to identify how your business can optimize its page to snag that SERP spot.\n\nOn the left-hand side of the Keywords Explorer interface is a small menu with a few other options, giving you a list of related keywords with the same metrics as well as a [phrase match](https:\/\/support.google.com\/adwords\/answer\/2407784?hl=en \"(Opens in a new tab)\") list of longer search terms that match the keywords. Compared to the related keyword suggestions you'll find in Moz, KWFinder, and [SEMrush](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/semrush) [(\\$99.95 Per Month at SEMrush)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=01ft3gZQd80nrKtleEU4Ymi&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.semrush.com%2Fprices \"(Opens in a new tab)\") , Ahrefs doesn't give the average user as much in terms of proactive help and targeted recommendations of the right keywords to target. That said, the platform has greatly improved what was the weakest standalone ad-hoc keyword querying in our initial reviews. Ahrefs has bolstered its keyword database from 300 million to 3.1 billion keywords, and as such the Keywords Explorer now returns 10 times more keyword ideas In \"Phrase Match\" and \"Having Same Terms\" reports. The platform has also added related keyword suggestion options such as \"Also rank for\" and \"Search suggestions\" sections to bring up more relevant keywords.\n\nAhrefs also finally offers basic keyword management to add keyword to a list. On the top right of the keyword results page, you can select a keyword to add to a new or existing keyword list to which you can return later. This is still fairly limited, as you can't take those keywords and add them to an SEO campaign or directly into a lead management module, but it's better than Ahrefs had before, where all you could do was export your keyword results as a CSV file. Moz Pro, SEMrush, SpyFu, and KWFinder all include bettergrouping and list-making capabilities to better organize and refine keyword lists, but Ahrefs is closing the gap.\n\n[![Ahrefs--SERP Overview](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-4.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nOf the three main categories of SEO—ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing search position monitoring, and crawling—Ahrefs is far stronger in the latter two. When typing a URL into the Site Explorer, I got a comprehensive breakdown of the PCMag.com domain spanning all of the Ahrefs custom metrics, a breakdown of organic keywords and traffic, organic and paid search, and a full index of all the crawled pages on the site. In terms of running quick, comprehensive site diagnostics, only Moz possesses the same level of capability of the tools I tested.\n\nScrolling down the Site Explorer page, I also found interactive data visualizations. These pull in live data on referring domains and pages, backlinks, and a worldwide map of where search traffic is coming from. Below that was also a word cloud of the search terms driving the most traffic. Then in the left-hand navigation column, there were deeper site breakdown options into search and backlinks, paid and organic search, and some new comparison features allowing me to identify competing domains and pages to PCMag. The comparison features broke down how many common and unique keywords my site shared in common with competing sites. Ahrefs and the Kombat comparison tool in SpyFu provided the deepest competitive comparison metrics of the SEO tools.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Add Alert](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-5.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nFinally, Ahrefs lets you configure email alerts to track backlinks, new keywords, and site\/brand mentions. So when creating a new keyword alert, I simply clicked the add alert button on the top right of the Alerts dashboard, then entered the URL, country, the keyword volume I wanted (less than 1,000, 1,000-10,000, or above 10,000), the email addresses where I wanted the alerts sent, and how frequently those emails should go out. The alerting in Ahrefs is straightforward, easy to set up, and makes it simple to track a website's overall SEO health and monitor targeted keywords.\n\nIf you're looking for an SEO tool with exceptional crawling and domain analysis that covers all your bases in terms of basic keyword research and ongoing monitoring, Ahrefs is a solid choice. The user experience is nothing fancy and the keyword management and optimization recommendations leave a lot to be desired compared to Editors' Choices Moz Pro and SpyFu, but Ahrefs is on par with [DeepCrawl](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/deepcrawl) [(Compare Quotes and Save at DeepCrawl)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=037AcRCAKts3SoKjXjtVlp0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DDeepCrawl \"(Opens in a new tab)\") and [Majestic](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/majestic) [(Compare Quotes and Save at Majestic.com)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00ykmWuHuPFIJuwKvvnjshX&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DMajestic \"(Opens in a new tab)\") as the best crawlers we tested, and includes the most backlink tracking tools of any product in this roundup next to [LinkResearchTools](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/linkresearchtools) [(Compare Quotes and Save at LinkResearchTools)](https:\/\/cc.pcmag.com\/v1\/otc\/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=026fHAq4OFzel8rSaErwBMK&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DLinkResearchTools \"(Opens in a new tab)\") . It can be a valuable addition to your business's SEO tool suite.\n\n[![Ahrefs--Competing Domains](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/reviews\/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-6.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/reviews\/ahrefs \"(Opens in a new tab)\")\n\nAhrefs\n\n3\\.5\n\nPros\n\nCons\n\nThe Bottom Line\n\nAhrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers.\n\n### STILL ON THE FENCE?\n**Ahrefs Appears in This Story:**\n\n- ● [The Best SEO Tools](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/picks\/the-best-seo-tools)\n\n## About Our Expert\n![Rob Marvin](https:\/\/i.pcmag.com\/imagery\/authors\/02H6VGDu3KHtKmdb9oPyY6J.fit_lim.size_100x100.v1567806071.jpg)\n\nRob Marvin\n\nFormer Associate Features Editor\n***\nExperience\n\nRob Marvin writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, M\\&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You can also find his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for Geek.com on movies, TV, and culture. Once a year you can find him on a couch with friends marathoning The Lord of the Rings trilogy--extended editions.\n\nLatest By Rob Marvin\n\n[Read Full Bio](https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/authors\/rob-marvin)","meta_canonical":null}

3. Robots.txt Check

Query:

Response:

4. Spam/Ban Check

Query:

Response:

5. Seen Status Check

ℹ️ Skipped - page is already crawled

📄

INDEXABLE

✅

CRAWLED

18 days ago

🤖

ROBOTS ALLOWED

Page Info Filters

Filter	Status	Condition	Details
HTTP status	PASS	`download_http_code = 200`	HTTP 200
Age cutoff	PASS	`download_stamp > now() - 6 MONTH`	0.6 months ago
History drop	PASS	`isNull(history_drop_reason)`	No drop reason
Spam/ban	PASS	`fh_dont_index != 1 AND ml_spam_score = 0`	ml_spam_score=0
Canonical	PASS	`meta_canonical IS NULL OR = '' OR = src_unparsed`	Not set

Page Details

Property	Value
URL	https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs
Last Crawled	2026-03-30 15:04:31 (18 days ago)
First Indexed	2020-01-19 14:03:04 (6 years ago)
HTTP Status Code	200
Meta Title	Ahrefs Review \| PCMag
Meta Description	Ahrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers.
Meta Canonical	null
Boilerpipe Text	If the name Ahrefs sounds more like a command line entry than a product name to you, you've got a handle on the product's philosphy. While this SEO tool is fairly full featured, we found that it didn't spend a whole lot of time on worry about end user niceties, especially an intuitive user interface. Starting at $82 per month for its Lite plan (when billed annually), this is a full featured tool aimed mainly at people who know what they're doing when it comes to SEO. For those folks, however, it's a solid choice. For example, Ahrefs maintains one of the largest indexes of backlinks on the web, currently with more than 12 trillion historical backlinks and 6 billion web pages crawled per day. It also includes a number of other features and capabilities across ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing SEO monitoring and position tracking, content-specific research, and competitive domain comparison. Overall, Ahrefs can do a little bit of everything. While it lacks the keyword management and SEO reporting features of Editors' Choice Moz Pro (Visit Site at Moz) , and its bare-bones user experience (UX) can't match that of the much cleaner Editors' Choice, SpyFu (33.00 Per Month, Billed Annually at SpyFu) , Ahrefs does plenty beyond its signature crawling capabilities to warrant consideration and has invested in interface improvements, more advanced reporting, and better keyword management features since our initial review. Ahref's pricing is a little on the hgih side, starting at $82 per month for its Lite plan ($99 if you opt for month-to-month billing). This plan gives you one user, five campaigns (the number of sites you can track in the Ahrefs dashboard), 300 tracked keywords per week, 25 domain crawls per day in the Site Explorer tool, and only three searches in the Keyword Explorer per day. There are also caps on the number of alerts, and the number of results you can export from Ahrefs' backlinks and rankings indexes. The $149 per month Standard plan ($179 month-to-month) is the more feasible option for SMBs, upping the platform's capacity to 10 campaigns, 1,000 tracked keywords updated every three days instead of weekly, 100 domains per day, and 50 keyword searches per day. Then there's the Advanced plan, priced at $332 per month billed annually ($399 month-to-month). This is where you start getting into premium features. The Advanced tier gives you 25 campaigns, daily updates on up to 4,000 tracked keywords, 200 keyword searches per day, more expansive access to the backlinks and rankings indexes as well as mobile ranking, and up to three user logins. Finally there's the Agency plan, priced at $832 per month billed annually ($999 month-to-month). This tier gives you real-time web mention tracking, hourly backlink reports, and far higher quotas across every Site Explorer, Content Explorer, and Keyword Explorer mention. For most SMBs, we'd recommend going with the Standard or Advanced plans depending on how much data you're looking to research and how frequently you need alerts. The first thing you notice about the Ahrefs dashboard is that it's fairly sparse. Across the top of the screen is a navigation bar with tabs for Dashboard, Alerts, Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and a Tools drop-down. This is where you can access the Ahrefs application programming interface (API), the Ahrefs browser toolbar, and other tools like domain comparison and quick batch analysis of multiple backlinks. Below the tabs is a search bar to enter a domain, URL, topic, or keyword. The dashboard itself lists all your current campaigns, which you can click on to enter Site Explorer for that site's latest monitoring data. Ad-hoc keyword research is what business users will find themselves using most often when identifying the best possible search engine results pages (SERP) to target with an optimization strategy that can help your pages rank higher. As such, I focused my testing largely on the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool. For testing purposes, I used a common set of five keywords for every tool to see how SEO metrics, results, and related keyword recommendations would differ. The five keywords I tested with were: pcmag, digital marketing, online shopping, IT consultant, and small business accounting. This is a fairly typical sampling of terms an SMB might use, including a publishing outift like Ziff Davis. Together they let me see a snapshot of related search results and competitors' spots ripe for targeted optimization. I started in Keyword Explorer by entering all five of my test keywords into the search bar. Ahrefs lets you narrow the search by country, but unlike in KWFinder it doesn't include the ability to drill down by city. The keyword results page was initially the most basic and straightforward of all the tools I tested in terms of metrics returned, but Ahrefs has greatly enhanced its Keyword Explorer tool with a responsive page of interactive data visualizations . Where before there was a basic table with metrics on average monthly search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), how many total search results were on the page, and the keyword difficulty score, in the updated Keywords Explorer interface I got an overview page with interactive bar charts on total search volume and clicks, volume distribution, and difficulty distribution. Below that were tables and charts breaking down SERP features, volume-difficulty distribution, top countries by volume, keyword ideas, and traffic share by pages and domains. When you hit the Metrics tab next to Overview, Keywords Explorer also now uses clickstream data to provide users with more acccurate individual keyword metrics around search volume, clicks (and clicks per search), and return rate (how often people search for the same keyword). Google's Keyword Planner now groups keyword volumes for similar queries, and this is especially useful data in that regard. There is also a link to open the SERP breakdown, listing what URLs hold each positon in the search results with deeper metrics on the SEO strength of the page. Ahrefs has enhanced its SERP results as well, now populating a SERP position history chart to track rank changes over time, along with incorporating newer fields like Featured Snippets into the results page. For my online shopping keyword, for instance, I found that it had the highest search volume and a difficulty score of 75. Conversely, digital marketing had a lower but still significant search volume with a keyword difficulty score of 59. For reference, a difficulty score is an all-in-one, 1-100 number used by all the tools I tested that factors Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) SEO metrics together with other data, including keyword search volume, how heavily paid search ads are influencing the results, and how strong the competition is in each spot on the current search results page. Ziff Davis Senior SEO Director, Mike Levin, told me that the ideal difficulty score and PA/DA target you're looking for is below 50, and that any score higher than 60 is typically a tough nut to crack. On the SERP results page for digital marketing, I was able to identify several URLs with low scores in various custom Ahrefs metrics . These include domain rating, URL rating, and the "Ahrefs rank" score, as well as how many links were coming from social media sources like Facebook and LinkedIn (potentially valuable data that you can import into any social media analytics tools you might be using). From here, you can take those target URLs and run a Site Explorer search to identify how your business can optimize its page to snag that SERP spot. On the left-hand side of the Keywords Explorer interface is a small menu with a few other options, giving you a list of related keywords with the same metrics as well as a phrase match list of longer search terms that match the keywords. Compared to the related keyword suggestions you'll find in Moz, KWFinder, and SEMrush ($99.95 Per Month at SEMrush) , Ahrefs doesn't give the average user as much in terms of proactive help and targeted recommendations of the right keywords to target. That said, the platform has greatly improved what was the weakest standalone ad-hoc keyword querying in our initial reviews. Ahrefs has bolstered its keyword database from 300 million to 3.1 billion keywords, and as such the Keywords Explorer now returns 10 times more keyword ideas In "Phrase Match" and "Having Same Terms" reports. The platform has also added related keyword suggestion options such as "Also rank for" and "Search suggestions" sections to bring up more relevant keywords. Ahrefs also finally offers basic keyword management to add keyword to a list. On the top right of the keyword results page, you can select a keyword to add to a new or existing keyword list to which you can return later. This is still fairly limited, as you can't take those keywords and add them to an SEO campaign or directly into a lead management module, but it's better than Ahrefs had before, where all you could do was export your keyword results as a CSV file. Moz Pro, SEMrush, SpyFu, and KWFinder all include bettergrouping and list-making capabilities to better organize and refine keyword lists, but Ahrefs is closing the gap. Of the three main categories of SEO—ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing search position monitoring, and crawling—Ahrefs is far stronger in the latter two. When typing a URL into the Site Explorer, I got a comprehensive breakdown of the PCMag.com domain spanning all of the Ahrefs custom metrics, a breakdown of organic keywords and traffic, organic and paid search, and a full index of all the crawled pages on the site. In terms of running quick, comprehensive site diagnostics, only Moz possesses the same level of capability of the tools I tested. Scrolling down the Site Explorer page, I also found interactive data visualizations. These pull in live data on referring domains and pages, backlinks, and a worldwide map of where search traffic is coming from. Below that was also a word cloud of the search terms driving the most traffic. Then in the left-hand navigation column, there were deeper site breakdown options into search and backlinks, paid and organic search, and some new comparison features allowing me to identify competing domains and pages to PCMag. The comparison features broke down how many common and unique keywords my site shared in common with competing sites. Ahrefs and the Kombat comparison tool in SpyFu provided the deepest competitive comparison metrics of the SEO tools. Finally, Ahrefs lets you configure email alerts to track backlinks, new keywords, and site/brand mentions. So when creating a new keyword alert, I simply clicked the add alert button on the top right of the Alerts dashboard, then entered the URL, country, the keyword volume I wanted (less than 1,000, 1,000-10,000, or above 10,000), the email addresses where I wanted the alerts sent, and how frequently those emails should go out. The alerting in Ahrefs is straightforward, easy to set up, and makes it simple to track a website's overall SEO health and monitor targeted keywords. If you're looking for an SEO tool with exceptional crawling and domain analysis that covers all your bases in terms of basic keyword research and ongoing monitoring, Ahrefs is a solid choice. The user experience is nothing fancy and the keyword management and optimization recommendations leave a lot to be desired compared to Editors' Choices Moz Pro and SpyFu, but Ahrefs is on par with DeepCrawl (Compare Quotes and Save at DeepCrawl) and Majestic (Compare Quotes and Save at Majestic.com) as the best crawlers we tested, and includes the most backlink tracking tools of any product in this roundup next to LinkResearchTools (Compare Quotes and Save at LinkResearchTools) . It can be a valuable addition to your business's SEO tool suite. Ahrefs 3.5 Pros Cons The Bottom Line Ahrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers. STILL ON THE FENCE? Ahrefs Appears in This Story: ● The Best SEO Tools About Our Expert Rob Marvin Former Associate Features Editor Experience Rob Marvin writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, M&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You can also find his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for Geek.com on movies, TV, and culture. Once a year you can find him on a couch with friends marathoning The Lord of the Rings trilogy--extended editions. Latest By Rob Marvin Read Full Bio
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[SEO Tools](https://www.pcmag.com/categories/seo-tools) # Ahrefs Review [![Rob Marvin](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/authors/02H6VGDu3KHtKmdb9oPyY6J.fit_lim.size_100x100.v1567806071.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/rob-marvin) By [Rob Marvin](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/rob-marvin) Updated August 31, 2019 [Threads](https://threads.net/intent/post?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs "Threads (Opens in a new tab)") [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs "Bluesky (Opens in a new tab)") [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&title=Ahrefs "Reddit (Opens in a new tab)") Social Share [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs "Facebook (Opens in a new tab)") [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&title=Ahrefs&source=PCMag "LinkedIn (Opens in a new tab)") [Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&description=Ahrefs "Pinterest (Opens in a new tab)") [Flipboard](https://share.flipboard.com/bookmarklet/popout?v=2&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&title=Ahrefs "Flipboard (Opens in a new tab)") [Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&text=Ahrefs&hashtags=PCMag "X (Opens in a new tab)") Copied Error\! [Copy Link]() https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs [Email](https://www.pcmag.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#fac5898f98909f998ec7bb92889f9c89dc9b978ac198959e83c7928e8e8a89dfc9bbdfc8bcdfc8bc8d8d8dd48a99979b9dd4999597dfc8bc889f8c939f8d89dfc8bc9b92889f9c89dfcabedfcabbdfcabedfcabbb795889fda9c889597daaab9b79b9dc0da928e8e8a89c0d5d58d8d8dd48a99979b9dd4999597 "Email (Opens in a new tab)") [Comments](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs#comments) ![Ahrefs](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-13.fit_scale.size_400x225.v1569475340.jpg) ![Ahrefs](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-13.fit_scale.size_400x225.v1569475340.jpg) 3\.5 What Our Ratings Mean * - 5\.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking - 4\.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors - 4\.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls - 3\.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors - 3\.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack - 2\.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution - 2\.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution - 1\.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product - 1\.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product Read Our [Editorial Mission Statement](https://www.pcmag.com/about/pcmagcom-mission-statement) and [Testing Methodologies](https://www.pcmag.com/about/how-we-test-everything-we-review). ### The Bottom Line Ahrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers. MSRP \$82.00 \$82.00 Per Month, Billed Annually [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=score-card-persistent&element=buy-button&item=offer&position=1&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K "(Opens in a new tab)") PCMag editors select and review products [independently](https://www.pcmag.com/about/pcmagcom-mission-statement). If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our [testing](https://www.pcmag.com/about/how-we-test-everything-we-review). ## Pros & Cons - Exceptional site-specific and internet-wide crawling capability. - Solid ad-hoc keyword research. - Comprehensive domain monitoring and comparison. - Improved keyword suggestions. - In-depth SERP analysis. - Basic keyword management. - Limited SEO reporting. - Bare-bones UX. If the name Ahrefs sounds more like a command line entry than a product name to you, you've got a handle on the product's philosphy. While this [SEO tool](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-seo-tools) is fairly full featured, we found that it didn't spend a whole lot of time on worry about end user niceties, especially an intuitive user interface. Starting at \$82 per month for its Lite plan (when billed annually), this is a full featured tool aimed mainly at people who know what they're doing when it comes to SEO. For those folks, however, it's a solid choice. For example, Ahrefs maintains one of the largest indexes of [backlinks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlink "(Opens in a new tab)") on the web, currently with more than 12 trillion historical backlinks and 6 billion web pages crawled per day. It also includes a number of other features and capabilities across ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing SEO monitoring and position tracking, content-specific research, and competitive domain comparison. Overall, Ahrefs can do a little bit of everything. While it lacks the keyword management and SEO reporting features of Editors' Choice [Moz Pro](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/moz-pro) [(Visit Site at Moz)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=041qOZQol09O0MS1vwSb2MN&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmoz.pxf.io%2Fc%2F10915%2F2127976%2F26520 "(Opens in a new tab)") , and its bare-bones user experience (UX) can't match that of the much cleaner Editors' Choice, [SpyFu](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/spyfu) [(33.00 Per Month, Billed Annually at SpyFu)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=018UFPATGYTzIQ4SuB47KbS&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spyfu.com "(Opens in a new tab)") , Ahrefs does plenty beyond its signature crawling capabilities to warrant consideration and has invested in interface improvements, more advanced reporting, and better keyword management features since our initial review. [![Ahrefs--Site Explorer](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Site Explorer](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-1.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") ## Pricing and Plans Ahref's pricing is a little on the hgih side, starting at \$82 per month for its Lite plan (\$99 if you opt for month-to-month billing). This plan gives you one user, five campaigns (the number of sites you can track in the Ahrefs dashboard), 300 tracked keywords per week, 25 domain crawls per day in the Site Explorer tool, and only three searches in the Keyword Explorer per day. There are also caps on the number of alerts, and the number of results you can export from Ahrefs' backlinks and rankings indexes. The \$149 per month Standard plan (\$179 month-to-month) is the more feasible option for SMBs, upping the platform's capacity to 10 campaigns, 1,000 tracked keywords updated every three days instead of weekly, 100 domains per day, and 50 keyword searches per day. Then there's the Advanced plan, priced at \$332 per month billed annually (\$399 month-to-month). This is where you start getting into premium features. The Advanced tier gives you 25 campaigns, daily updates on up to 4,000 tracked keywords, 200 keyword searches per day, more expansive access to the backlinks and rankings indexes as well as mobile ranking, and up to three user logins. Finally there's the Agency plan, priced at \$832 per month billed annually (\$999 month-to-month). This tier gives you real-time web mention tracking, hourly backlink reports, and far higher quotas across every Site Explorer, Content Explorer, and Keyword Explorer mention. For most SMBs, we'd recommend going with the Standard or Advanced plans depending on how much data you're looking to research and how frequently you need alerts. ### Similar Products ![SEMrush Image](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### SEMrush 4\.0 Excellent [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=01ft3gZQd80nrKtleEU4Ymi&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.semrush.com%2Fprices&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=1&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03WhvXTWHvzRqoyFK00Wt7m "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/semrush) ![Moz Pro Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### Moz Pro 4\.5 Outstanding [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=041qOZQol09O0MS1vwSb2MN&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmoz.pxf.io%2Fc%2F10915%2F2127976%2F26520&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=2&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=01v0qTT1RaGme4ropn4dorR "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/moz-pro) ![SpyFu Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### SpyFu 4\.5 Outstanding [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=018UFPATGYTzIQ4SuB47KbS&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spyfu.com&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=3&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=06J2x6DAWpcZfg5dRxqfv48 "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/spyfu) ![KWFinder.com Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### KWFinder.com 4\.0 Excellent [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00hejqJHEexQimfneJL9NNl&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DKWFinder&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=4&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03fR6Cz93hYpjgx9fcxFE6j "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/kwfindercom) ![AWR Cloud Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### AWR Cloud 4\.0 Excellent [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=04moHAll8oznavcbXeBjI5X&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DAWR&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=5&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=07qcQOq4u1yLc7rJVGuatbd "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/awr-cloud) ![DeepCrawl Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### DeepCrawl 3\.5 Good [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=037AcRCAKts3SoKjXjtVlp0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DDeepCrawl&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=6&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=002bf3EStmIAwHK96TeiiIs "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/deepcrawl) ![Searchmetrics Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### Searchmetrics Essentials 3\.5 Good [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=04MGz7g2yf3Ee9PENTpTYza&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DSearchmetrics&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=7&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=06qMjhu8l6GFgaW8kpNR3Ej "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/searchmetrics-essentials) ![LinkResearchTools Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### LinkResearchTools 3\.0 Average [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=026fHAq4OFzel8rSaErwBMK&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DLinkResearchTools&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=8&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=002w9FQFqQbmmJGUG2poLDL "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/linkresearchtools) ![Majestic Logo](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20238%20139'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E) ### Majestic 3\.5 Good [See It](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00ykmWuHuPFIJuwKvvnjshX&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DMajestic&template=review-page&module=similar-products-carousel&element=product-tile&item=buy-button&position=9&element_label=See+It&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=02Bqi3eleDHMPfAqpfpkcwX "(Opens in a new tab)") [Read Our Review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/majestic) ## Keywords Explorer and User Experience The first thing you notice about the Ahrefs dashboard is that it's fairly sparse. Across the top of the screen is a navigation bar with tabs for Dashboard, Alerts, Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and a Tools drop-down. This is where you can access the Ahrefs [application programming interface](https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/api) (API), the Ahrefs browser toolbar, and other tools like domain comparison and quick batch analysis of multiple backlinks. Below the tabs is a search bar to enter a domain, URL, topic, or keyword. The dashboard itself lists all your current campaigns, which you can click on to enter Site Explorer for that site's latest monitoring data. Ad-hoc keyword research is what business users will find themselves using most often when identifying the best possible [search engine results pages](https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/serp) (SERP) to target with an optimization strategy that can help your pages rank higher. As such, I focused my testing largely on the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool. [![Ahrefs--Updated Keyword Explorer](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Updated Keyword Explorer](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-2.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") For testing purposes, I used a common set of five keywords for every tool to see how SEO metrics, results, and related keyword recommendations would differ. The five keywords I tested with were: pcmag, digital marketing, online shopping, IT consultant, and small business accounting. This is a fairly typical sampling of terms an SMB might use, including a publishing outift like Ziff Davis. Together they let me see a snapshot of related search results and competitors' spots ripe for targeted optimization. I started in Keyword Explorer by entering all five of my test keywords into the search bar. Ahrefs lets you narrow the search by country, but unlike in [KWFinder](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/kwfindercom) it doesn't include the ability to drill down by city. The keyword results page was initially the most basic and straightforward of all the tools I tested in terms of metrics returned, but Ahrefs has greatly enhanced its Keyword Explorer tool with a responsive page of interactive [data visualizations](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-data-visualization-tools) . Where before there was a basic table with metrics on average monthly search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), how many total search results were on the page, and the keyword difficulty score, in the updated Keywords Explorer interface I got an overview page with interactive bar charts on total search volume and clicks, volume distribution, and difficulty distribution. Below that were tables and charts breaking down SERP features, volume-difficulty distribution, top countries by volume, keyword ideas, and traffic share by pages and domains. When you hit the Metrics tab next to Overview, Keywords Explorer also now uses clickstream data to provide users with more acccurate individual keyword metrics around search volume, clicks (and clicks per search), and return rate (how often people search for the same keyword). Google's Keyword Planner now groups keyword volumes for similar queries, and this is especially useful data in that regard. There is also a link to open the SERP breakdown, listing what URLs hold each positon in the search results with deeper metrics on the SEO strength of the page. Ahrefs has enhanced its SERP results as well, now populating a SERP position history chart to track rank changes over time, along with incorporating newer fields like Featured Snippets into the results page. For my online shopping keyword, for instance, I found that it had the highest search volume and a difficulty score of 75. Conversely, digital marketing had a lower but still significant search volume with a keyword difficulty score of 59. For reference, a difficulty score is an all-in-one, 1-100 number used by all the tools I tested that factors Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) SEO metrics together with other data, including keyword search volume, how heavily paid search ads are influencing the results, and how strong the competition is in each spot on the current search results page. Ziff Davis Senior SEO Director, Mike Levin, told me that the ideal difficulty score and PA/DA target you're looking for is below 50, and that any score higher than 60 is typically a tough nut to crack. [![Ahrefs--Improved Keyword Suggestions](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Improved Keyword Suggestions](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-3.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") On the SERP results page for digital marketing, I was able to identify several URLs with low scores in various [custom Ahrefs metrics](https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-metrics/ "(Opens in a new tab)"). These include domain rating, URL rating, and the "Ahrefs rank" score, as well as how many links were coming from social media sources like Facebook and LinkedIn (potentially valuable data that you can import into any [social media analytics](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-social-media-management-analytics-tools) tools you might be using). From here, you can take those target URLs and run a Site Explorer search to identify how your business can optimize its page to snag that SERP spot. On the left-hand side of the Keywords Explorer interface is a small menu with a few other options, giving you a list of related keywords with the same metrics as well as a [phrase match](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2407784?hl=en "(Opens in a new tab)") list of longer search terms that match the keywords. Compared to the related keyword suggestions you'll find in Moz, KWFinder, and [SEMrush](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/semrush) [(\$99.95 Per Month at SEMrush)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=01ft3gZQd80nrKtleEU4Ymi&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.semrush.com%2Fprices "(Opens in a new tab)") , Ahrefs doesn't give the average user as much in terms of proactive help and targeted recommendations of the right keywords to target. That said, the platform has greatly improved what was the weakest standalone ad-hoc keyword querying in our initial reviews. Ahrefs has bolstered its keyword database from 300 million to 3.1 billion keywords, and as such the Keywords Explorer now returns 10 times more keyword ideas In "Phrase Match" and "Having Same Terms" reports. The platform has also added related keyword suggestion options such as "Also rank for" and "Search suggestions" sections to bring up more relevant keywords. Ahrefs also finally offers basic keyword management to add keyword to a list. On the top right of the keyword results page, you can select a keyword to add to a new or existing keyword list to which you can return later. This is still fairly limited, as you can't take those keywords and add them to an SEO campaign or directly into a lead management module, but it's better than Ahrefs had before, where all you could do was export your keyword results as a CSV file. Moz Pro, SEMrush, SpyFu, and KWFinder all include bettergrouping and list-making capabilities to better organize and refine keyword lists, but Ahrefs is closing the gap. [![Ahrefs--SERP Overview](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--SERP Overview](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-4.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") ## Site Explorer and Alerts Of the three main categories of SEO—ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing search position monitoring, and crawling—Ahrefs is far stronger in the latter two. When typing a URL into the Site Explorer, I got a comprehensive breakdown of the PCMag.com domain spanning all of the Ahrefs custom metrics, a breakdown of organic keywords and traffic, organic and paid search, and a full index of all the crawled pages on the site. In terms of running quick, comprehensive site diagnostics, only Moz possesses the same level of capability of the tools I tested. Scrolling down the Site Explorer page, I also found interactive data visualizations. These pull in live data on referring domains and pages, backlinks, and a worldwide map of where search traffic is coming from. Below that was also a word cloud of the search terms driving the most traffic. Then in the left-hand navigation column, there were deeper site breakdown options into search and backlinks, paid and organic search, and some new comparison features allowing me to identify competing domains and pages to PCMag. The comparison features broke down how many common and unique keywords my site shared in common with competing sites. Ahrefs and the Kombat comparison tool in SpyFu provided the deepest competitive comparison metrics of the SEO tools. [![Ahrefs--Add Alert](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Add Alert](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-5.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") Finally, Ahrefs lets you configure email alerts to track backlinks, new keywords, and site/brand mentions. So when creating a new keyword alert, I simply clicked the add alert button on the top right of the Alerts dashboard, then entered the URL, country, the keyword volume I wanted (less than 1,000, 1,000-10,000, or above 10,000), the email addresses where I wanted the alerts sent, and how frequently those emails should go out. The alerting in Ahrefs is straightforward, easy to set up, and makes it simple to track a website's overall SEO health and monitor targeted keywords. ## All the Basics Covered If you're looking for an SEO tool with exceptional crawling and domain analysis that covers all your bases in terms of basic keyword research and ongoing monitoring, Ahrefs is a solid choice. The user experience is nothing fancy and the keyword management and optimization recommendations leave a lot to be desired compared to Editors' Choices Moz Pro and SpyFu, but Ahrefs is on par with [DeepCrawl](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/deepcrawl) [(Compare Quotes and Save at DeepCrawl)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=037AcRCAKts3SoKjXjtVlp0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DDeepCrawl "(Opens in a new tab)") and [Majestic](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/majestic) [(Compare Quotes and Save at Majestic.com)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00ykmWuHuPFIJuwKvvnjshX&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DMajestic "(Opens in a new tab)") as the best crawlers we tested, and includes the most backlink tracking tools of any product in this roundup next to [LinkResearchTools](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/linkresearchtools) [(Compare Quotes and Save at LinkResearchTools)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=026fHAq4OFzel8rSaErwBMK&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DLinkResearchTools "(Opens in a new tab)") . It can be a valuable addition to your business's SEO tool suite. [![Ahrefs--Competing Domains](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20740%20416'%3E%3Crect%20fill='%23f7f7f7'%20/%3E%3C/svg%3E)![Ahrefs--Competing Domains](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-6.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") Ahrefs 3\.5 [![Ahrefs](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 528 297'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=image&position=1&element_label=&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K "(Opens in a new tab)") [Check Price](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=buy-button&position=1&element_label=Check+Price&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K "(Opens in a new tab)") Pros - Exceptional site-specific and internet-wide crawling capability. - Solid ad-hoc keyword research. - Comprehensive domain monitoring and comparison. - Improved keyword suggestions. - In-depth SERP analysis. - Basic keyword management. View More Cons - Limited SEO reporting. - Bare-bones UX. [![Ahrefs](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 528 297'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=image&position=1&element_label=&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K "(Opens in a new tab)") [Check Price](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=03SFycqd49Ul0QhsGapfPQd&url=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2F&template=review-page&module=product-cards&element=product-card&item=buy-button&position=1&element_label=Check+Price&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Freviews%2Fahrefs&object_type=review&object_uuid=03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn&product_uuid=03YeIVKuuROiZViz6diPT7K "(Opens in a new tab)") The Bottom Line Ahrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers. ### STILL ON THE FENCE? Ahrefs Appears in This Story: - ● [The Best SEO Tools](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-seo-tools) ## About Our Expert ![Rob Marvin](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/authors/02H6VGDu3KHtKmdb9oPyY6J.fit_lim.size_100x100.v1567806071.jpg) Rob Marvin Former Associate Features Editor * Experience Rob Marvin writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, M\&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You can also find his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for Geek.com on movies, TV, and culture. Once a year you can find him on a couch with friends marathoning The Lord of the Rings trilogy--extended editions. Latest By Rob Marvin - [Social CRM: Where Social Media Meets Customer Engagement](https://www.pcmag.com/news/social-crm-where-social-media-meets-customer-engagement) - [9 Tips for a Killer Social CRM Strategy](https://www.pcmag.com/news/8-tips-for-a-killer-social-crm-strategy) - [The Dos and Don'ts of Securing Your VoIP Communications](https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-dos-and-donts-of-securing-your-voip-communications) - [Peacock? HBO Max? The New Streaming Giants Explained](https://www.pcmag.com/news/disney-plus-hbo-max-the-new-streaming-giants-explained) - [Are You Worried About Smart Home Devices Listening to You?](https://www.pcmag.com/news/are-you-worried-about-smart-home-devices-listening-to-you) - [More from Rob Marvin](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/rob-marvin) [Read Full Bio](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/rob-marvin) Advertisement ### Amazon Big Spring Sale [![I've Tested Dozens of TVs. This Is the Best 65-Inch Display Under \$1,000 During Amazon's Spring Sale](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/ive-tested-dozens-of-tvs-best-65-inch-under-1000-amazon-big-spring-sale) [I've Tested Dozens of TVs. 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My Top Picks from Amazon's Spring Sale](https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/laptop-deals-my-favorites-from-amazons-big-spring-sale-2026) By [Brian Westover](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/brian-westover) [![The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals We've Found So Far](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/deals/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-sale-airpods-ipads-macbooks) [The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals We've Found So Far](https://www.pcmag.com/deals/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-sale-airpods-ipads-macbooks) By [Cierra Cowan](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/cierra-cowan) [![I'm Vetting the Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Headphone and Earbud Deals](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/news/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-headphones-earbuds) [I'm Vetting the Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Headphone and Earbud Deals](https://www.pcmag.com/news/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-headphones-earbuds) By [Juhi Wadia](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/juhi-wadia) [![The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Apple AirPods Are Here](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/news/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-apple-airpods) [The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Apple AirPods Are Here](https://www.pcmag.com/news/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-apple-airpods) By [Cierra Cowan](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/cierra-cowan) [![Stream Everything With This Fire TV Stick Deal at Amazon's Big Spring Sale](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/news/fire-tv-stick-deal-at-amazons-big-spring-sale-2026-50-off) [Stream Everything With This Fire TV Stick Deal at Amazon's Big Spring Sale](https://www.pcmag.com/news/fire-tv-stick-deal-at-amazons-big-spring-sale-2026-50-off) By [Carlos Mejia](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/carlos-mejia) [![Here’s a Kindle Amazon Big Spring Sale Deal We Can’t Put Down](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/news/kindle-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026-deal-we-cant-put-down) [Here’s a Kindle Amazon Big Spring Sale Deal We Can’t Put Down](https://www.pcmag.com/news/kindle-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026-deal-we-cant-put-down) By [Carlos Mejia](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/carlos-mejia) [All Amazon Big Spring Sale Stories](https://www.pcmag.com/events/amazon-prime-day) ### Further Reading [![Never Skip a Workout With This Fitbit Inspire 3 Deal, Now Under \$70 for Amazon’s Big Spring Sale](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/deals/fitbit-inspire-3-deal-now-under-70-for-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026) [Never Skip a Workout With This Fitbit Inspire 3 Deal, Now Under \$70 for Amazon’s Big Spring Sale](https://www.pcmag.com/deals/fitbit-inspire-3-deal-now-under-70-for-amazon-big-spring-sale-2026) By [Juhi Wadia](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/juhi-wadia) [![Is Your Browser Handing Out Your Credit Card Info? Check This Setting ASAP](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/is-your-browser-handing-out-your-credit-card-info-check-this-setting-asap) [Is Your Browser Handing Out Your Credit Card Info? Check This Setting ASAP](https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/is-your-browser-handing-out-your-credit-card-info-check-this-setting-asap) By [Neil J. Rubenking](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/neil-j-rubenking) [![Sora Video Generator Reportedly Costs OpenAI \$1 Million a Day](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/news/sora-video-generator-reportedly-costs-openai-1-million-a-day) [Sora Video Generator Reportedly Costs OpenAI \$1 Million a Day](https://www.pcmag.com/news/sora-video-generator-reportedly-costs-openai-1-million-a-day) By [Jibin Joseph](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/jibin-joseph) [![Think Different, Fail Sometimes: 21 Times Apple Missed the Mark](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/articles/apple-50-failures-missteps) [Think Different, Fail Sometimes: 21 Times Apple Missed the Mark](https://www.pcmag.com/articles/apple-50-failures-missteps) By [Jamie Lendino](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/jamie-lendino) [![Time Is Ticking on These Massive Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Powerful Tablets Up to 50% Off](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/news/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-tablets-day-6) [Time Is Ticking on These Massive Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals on Powerful Tablets Up to 50% Off](https://www.pcmag.com/news/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-deals-tablets-day-6) By [Juhi Wadia](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/juhi-wadia) [![The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals Still Available on AirPods, iPads, MacBooks, and More](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/deals/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-airpods-ipads-macbooks-day-6) [The Best Amazon Big Spring Sale Apple Deals Still Available on AirPods, iPads, MacBooks, and More](https://www.pcmag.com/deals/best-amazon-spring-sale-2026-apple-deals-airpods-ipads-macbooks-day-6) By [Cierra Cowan](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/cierra-cowan) [![iOS 26.4 Gives You Even Greater Control Over Liquid Glass. Here's What You Can Do](<data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 400 225'%3E%3Crect fill='%23f7f7f7' /%3E%3C/svg%3E>)](https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/apple-ios-26-4-greater-control-over-liquid-glass-what-you-can-do) [iOS 26.4 Gives You Even Greater Control Over Liquid Glass. 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Readable Markdown	If the name Ahrefs sounds more like a command line entry than a product name to you, you've got a handle on the product's philosphy. While this [SEO tool](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-seo-tools) is fairly full featured, we found that it didn't spend a whole lot of time on worry about end user niceties, especially an intuitive user interface. Starting at \$82 per month for its Lite plan (when billed annually), this is a full featured tool aimed mainly at people who know what they're doing when it comes to SEO. For those folks, however, it's a solid choice. For example, Ahrefs maintains one of the largest indexes of [backlinks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlink "(Opens in a new tab)") on the web, currently with more than 12 trillion historical backlinks and 6 billion web pages crawled per day. It also includes a number of other features and capabilities across ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing SEO monitoring and position tracking, content-specific research, and competitive domain comparison. Overall, Ahrefs can do a little bit of everything. While it lacks the keyword management and SEO reporting features of Editors' Choice [Moz Pro](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/moz-pro) [(Visit Site at Moz)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=041qOZQol09O0MS1vwSb2MN&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmoz.pxf.io%2Fc%2F10915%2F2127976%2F26520 "(Opens in a new tab)") , and its bare-bones user experience (UX) can't match that of the much cleaner Editors' Choice, [SpyFu](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/spyfu) [(33.00 Per Month, Billed Annually at SpyFu)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=018UFPATGYTzIQ4SuB47KbS&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spyfu.com "(Opens in a new tab)") , Ahrefs does plenty beyond its signature crawling capabilities to warrant consideration and has invested in interface improvements, more advanced reporting, and better keyword management features since our initial review. [![Ahrefs--Site Explorer](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-1.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") Ahref's pricing is a little on the hgih side, starting at \$82 per month for its Lite plan (\$99 if you opt for month-to-month billing). This plan gives you one user, five campaigns (the number of sites you can track in the Ahrefs dashboard), 300 tracked keywords per week, 25 domain crawls per day in the Site Explorer tool, and only three searches in the Keyword Explorer per day. There are also caps on the number of alerts, and the number of results you can export from Ahrefs' backlinks and rankings indexes. The \$149 per month Standard plan (\$179 month-to-month) is the more feasible option for SMBs, upping the platform's capacity to 10 campaigns, 1,000 tracked keywords updated every three days instead of weekly, 100 domains per day, and 50 keyword searches per day. Then there's the Advanced plan, priced at \$332 per month billed annually (\$399 month-to-month). This is where you start getting into premium features. The Advanced tier gives you 25 campaigns, daily updates on up to 4,000 tracked keywords, 200 keyword searches per day, more expansive access to the backlinks and rankings indexes as well as mobile ranking, and up to three user logins. Finally there's the Agency plan, priced at \$832 per month billed annually (\$999 month-to-month). This tier gives you real-time web mention tracking, hourly backlink reports, and far higher quotas across every Site Explorer, Content Explorer, and Keyword Explorer mention. For most SMBs, we'd recommend going with the Standard or Advanced plans depending on how much data you're looking to research and how frequently you need alerts. The first thing you notice about the Ahrefs dashboard is that it's fairly sparse. Across the top of the screen is a navigation bar with tabs for Dashboard, Alerts, Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and a Tools drop-down. This is where you can access the Ahrefs [application programming interface](https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/api) (API), the Ahrefs browser toolbar, and other tools like domain comparison and quick batch analysis of multiple backlinks. Below the tabs is a search bar to enter a domain, URL, topic, or keyword. The dashboard itself lists all your current campaigns, which you can click on to enter Site Explorer for that site's latest monitoring data. Ad-hoc keyword research is what business users will find themselves using most often when identifying the best possible [search engine results pages](https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/serp) (SERP) to target with an optimization strategy that can help your pages rank higher. As such, I focused my testing largely on the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool. [![Ahrefs--Updated Keyword Explorer](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-2.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") For testing purposes, I used a common set of five keywords for every tool to see how SEO metrics, results, and related keyword recommendations would differ. The five keywords I tested with were: pcmag, digital marketing, online shopping, IT consultant, and small business accounting. This is a fairly typical sampling of terms an SMB might use, including a publishing outift like Ziff Davis. Together they let me see a snapshot of related search results and competitors' spots ripe for targeted optimization. I started in Keyword Explorer by entering all five of my test keywords into the search bar. Ahrefs lets you narrow the search by country, but unlike in [KWFinder](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/kwfindercom) it doesn't include the ability to drill down by city. The keyword results page was initially the most basic and straightforward of all the tools I tested in terms of metrics returned, but Ahrefs has greatly enhanced its Keyword Explorer tool with a responsive page of interactive [data visualizations](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-data-visualization-tools) . Where before there was a basic table with metrics on average monthly search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), how many total search results were on the page, and the keyword difficulty score, in the updated Keywords Explorer interface I got an overview page with interactive bar charts on total search volume and clicks, volume distribution, and difficulty distribution. Below that were tables and charts breaking down SERP features, volume-difficulty distribution, top countries by volume, keyword ideas, and traffic share by pages and domains. When you hit the Metrics tab next to Overview, Keywords Explorer also now uses clickstream data to provide users with more acccurate individual keyword metrics around search volume, clicks (and clicks per search), and return rate (how often people search for the same keyword). Google's Keyword Planner now groups keyword volumes for similar queries, and this is especially useful data in that regard. There is also a link to open the SERP breakdown, listing what URLs hold each positon in the search results with deeper metrics on the SEO strength of the page. Ahrefs has enhanced its SERP results as well, now populating a SERP position history chart to track rank changes over time, along with incorporating newer fields like Featured Snippets into the results page. For my online shopping keyword, for instance, I found that it had the highest search volume and a difficulty score of 75. Conversely, digital marketing had a lower but still significant search volume with a keyword difficulty score of 59. For reference, a difficulty score is an all-in-one, 1-100 number used by all the tools I tested that factors Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) SEO metrics together with other data, including keyword search volume, how heavily paid search ads are influencing the results, and how strong the competition is in each spot on the current search results page. Ziff Davis Senior SEO Director, Mike Levin, told me that the ideal difficulty score and PA/DA target you're looking for is below 50, and that any score higher than 60 is typically a tough nut to crack. [![Ahrefs--Improved Keyword Suggestions](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-3.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") On the SERP results page for digital marketing, I was able to identify several URLs with low scores in various [custom Ahrefs metrics](https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-metrics/ "(Opens in a new tab)"). These include domain rating, URL rating, and the "Ahrefs rank" score, as well as how many links were coming from social media sources like Facebook and LinkedIn (potentially valuable data that you can import into any [social media analytics](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-social-media-management-analytics-tools) tools you might be using). From here, you can take those target URLs and run a Site Explorer search to identify how your business can optimize its page to snag that SERP spot. On the left-hand side of the Keywords Explorer interface is a small menu with a few other options, giving you a list of related keywords with the same metrics as well as a [phrase match](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2407784?hl=en "(Opens in a new tab)") list of longer search terms that match the keywords. Compared to the related keyword suggestions you'll find in Moz, KWFinder, and [SEMrush](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/semrush) [(\$99.95 Per Month at SEMrush)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=01ft3gZQd80nrKtleEU4Ymi&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.semrush.com%2Fprices "(Opens in a new tab)") , Ahrefs doesn't give the average user as much in terms of proactive help and targeted recommendations of the right keywords to target. That said, the platform has greatly improved what was the weakest standalone ad-hoc keyword querying in our initial reviews. Ahrefs has bolstered its keyword database from 300 million to 3.1 billion keywords, and as such the Keywords Explorer now returns 10 times more keyword ideas In "Phrase Match" and "Having Same Terms" reports. The platform has also added related keyword suggestion options such as "Also rank for" and "Search suggestions" sections to bring up more relevant keywords. Ahrefs also finally offers basic keyword management to add keyword to a list. On the top right of the keyword results page, you can select a keyword to add to a new or existing keyword list to which you can return later. This is still fairly limited, as you can't take those keywords and add them to an SEO campaign or directly into a lead management module, but it's better than Ahrefs had before, where all you could do was export your keyword results as a CSV file. Moz Pro, SEMrush, SpyFu, and KWFinder all include bettergrouping and list-making capabilities to better organize and refine keyword lists, but Ahrefs is closing the gap. [![Ahrefs--SERP Overview](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-4.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") Of the three main categories of SEO—ad-hoc keyword research, ongoing search position monitoring, and crawling—Ahrefs is far stronger in the latter two. When typing a URL into the Site Explorer, I got a comprehensive breakdown of the PCMag.com domain spanning all of the Ahrefs custom metrics, a breakdown of organic keywords and traffic, organic and paid search, and a full index of all the crawled pages on the site. In terms of running quick, comprehensive site diagnostics, only Moz possesses the same level of capability of the tools I tested. Scrolling down the Site Explorer page, I also found interactive data visualizations. These pull in live data on referring domains and pages, backlinks, and a worldwide map of where search traffic is coming from. Below that was also a word cloud of the search terms driving the most traffic. Then in the left-hand navigation column, there were deeper site breakdown options into search and backlinks, paid and organic search, and some new comparison features allowing me to identify competing domains and pages to PCMag. The comparison features broke down how many common and unique keywords my site shared in common with competing sites. Ahrefs and the Kombat comparison tool in SpyFu provided the deepest competitive comparison metrics of the SEO tools. [![Ahrefs--Add Alert](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-5.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") Finally, Ahrefs lets you configure email alerts to track backlinks, new keywords, and site/brand mentions. So when creating a new keyword alert, I simply clicked the add alert button on the top right of the Alerts dashboard, then entered the URL, country, the keyword volume I wanted (less than 1,000, 1,000-10,000, or above 10,000), the email addresses where I wanted the alerts sent, and how frequently those emails should go out. The alerting in Ahrefs is straightforward, easy to set up, and makes it simple to track a website's overall SEO health and monitor targeted keywords. If you're looking for an SEO tool with exceptional crawling and domain analysis that covers all your bases in terms of basic keyword research and ongoing monitoring, Ahrefs is a solid choice. The user experience is nothing fancy and the keyword management and optimization recommendations leave a lot to be desired compared to Editors' Choices Moz Pro and SpyFu, but Ahrefs is on par with [DeepCrawl](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/deepcrawl) [(Compare Quotes and Save at DeepCrawl)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=037AcRCAKts3SoKjXjtVlp0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DDeepCrawl "(Opens in a new tab)") and [Majestic](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/majestic) [(Compare Quotes and Save at Majestic.com)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=00ykmWuHuPFIJuwKvvnjshX&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DMajestic "(Opens in a new tab)") as the best crawlers we tested, and includes the most backlink tracking tools of any product in this roundup next to [LinkResearchTools](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/linkresearchtools) [(Compare Quotes and Save at LinkResearchTools)](https://cc.pcmag.com/v1/otc/01r1WRIAJykbQgN4oGQ8FSi?merchant=026fHAq4OFzel8rSaErwBMK&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mvfef.com%2F2MD5D1H%2F2315G8B%2F%3Fsource_id%3DLinkResearchTools "(Opens in a new tab)") . It can be a valuable addition to your business's SEO tool suite. [![Ahrefs--Competing Domains](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/03LH2OIsXFyeMgE8i9ynOOn-6.fit_lim.size_740x416.v_1569469943.jpg)](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ahrefs "(Opens in a new tab)") Ahrefs 3\.5 Pros Cons The Bottom Line Ahrefs is a professional-grade SEO tool with powerful features across everything from keyword management to competitive analysis. While its interface isn't geared for beginners, it's a solid choice for experienced digital marketers. ### STILL ON THE FENCE? Ahrefs Appears in This Story: - ● [The Best SEO Tools](https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-seo-tools) ## About Our Expert ![Rob Marvin](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/authors/02H6VGDu3KHtKmdb9oPyY6J.fit_lim.size_100x100.v1567806071.jpg) Rob Marvin Former Associate Features Editor *** Experience Rob Marvin writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, M\&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You can also find his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for Geek.com on movies, TV, and culture. Once a year you can find him on a couch with friends marathoning The Lord of the Rings trilogy--extended editions. Latest By Rob Marvin [Read Full Bio](https://www.pcmag.com/authors/rob-marvin)
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