Is Ahrefs reliable ?

[macblogger]

Hi guys, I am very confused because I have been using Ahrefs.com for a long long time, I was thinking that they are the best service for backlinks and I even have there monthly subscription.

My problem is that domain name which is having 450k backlinks on Ahrefs is on MajestiSEO with poor 1200 backlinks, wtf ?? Thanks

 

[dcristo]

I found their free tool before going paid to be very inaccurate showing dead/old links as backlinks or links that didn't even exist etc.

I think you are better off with using majestic or OSE.

 

[macblogger]

I am paying $180 per month on inaccurate tool ?!?!?!


EDIT: I have been thinking that they are expensive because crawling billions of website is expensive and some free services cannot afford to crawl so many websites and that's why Ahrefs is showing much more backlinks.

 

[dcristo]

Idk I am just telling you my personal experience with the tool.

 

[Nomzo]

MajesticSEO apparently has the largest links database outside of Google, so I doubt the discrepancies are due to coverage. I've often found (not always) that tools that invest heavily in UI and data visuals are compensating for the lack of something else.

 

[dcristo]

If I am not mistaken ahrefs was sold for a pretty penny a while back so make of that what you will.

 

[macblogger]

But why are so large gaps between Majestic and Ahrefs ? My domain on Ahrefs has 450k backlinks and Majestic just 1200 and another 2000 in the last 5 years ?
If it would be like 1000 on Ahrefs and 1200 on Majestic....but 449.000 backlinks is A HUGE DIFFERENCE.


On my other website is 3000 on Majestic and just 1600 on Ahrefs....now I am confused.

 

[Nomzo]

Are you using consistent filters across all tools? e.g. in MajesticSEO 'Use Fresh Index' or 'Use Historic Index'.

 

[macblogger]

In Majestic and in Ahrefs I use just fresh/live index.

 

[Nomzo]

Try 'historic' in MajesticSEO > then click on 'Backlinks', then select 'remove deleted backlinks'. The numbers might stack up closer.

Due to the disparity (sometimes Majestic is higher, sometimes Ahrefs) it may be that each tool's definitions are confusing the situation.

e.g.

Ahrefs live links - is counting both fresh and historic links
MajesticSEO fresh links - links live within a recent fixed period

So it's not comparing the same data ranges.

The other point to note is that MajesticSEO only update their database on a weekly basis, whereas Ahrefs is daily (I believe - might be confusing with another tool), so if the links went live recently it may be that it's not reflected in Majestic's database.

 

[macblogger]

Well in Historic on Majestic is says just 2000 links and in live just 1200....on Ahrefs 450k...something is wrong here.

I am paying $180 per month to Ahrefs and I am gonna ask them why is this happening.

 

[macblogger]

Hello!

"We have our own crawler which goes all over the Internet to get info for our independent base of backlinks.
New info is added to the index each 30 minutes, complete update of the whole base needs about two months.

In general we are proud of the largest base of LIVE backlinks.
Thus, you may trust that backlinks info we show."


Got response ! What do you think about it ?

 

[BiggieBiggie is verified member.]

I am paying $180 per month to Ahrefs and I am gonna ask them why is this happening.

why are you paying this service $180 a month?


to me this is wasteful spending.


that's money that could be used more productively


imo...

 

[dcristo]

I agree you'd be better off spending the money on content for your site imo.

 

[katherine]

The question is: does ahref earn you enough money to make the subscription worthwhile ?

 

[macblogger]

It's ironic that right today ahrefs updated their database and put there that giant banner informing you about their advantages.
So my domain is not having 450k backlinks anymore but just 20k...back to reality ahrefs !

katherine: yes. every single domain I own and is making money was analyzed first at ahrefs and google keyword tool and then I had bought it.

 

[Theo]

Just blocked those suckers' entire class B network.

The AhrefsBot is a fast content scraper and SEO spybot operated by ahrefs.com from the ukraine. These bots are capable of sucking up thousands of your websites pages without stopping, while wasting your site bandwidth in the process.

On one site where this bot was not banned yet, it managed to scrape over 22,000 pages so far in a short period of time.
The people from Ahrefs.com also sell access to all the information they've collected, offering detailed reports and tools allowing others to 'analyse' your content, and use it for their own purposes.

More info: http://blocklistpro.com/content-scrapers/ahrefsbot-seo-spybots.html

 

[macblogger]

You can still use robots.txt even if you don't like your competition to spy on you and your SERP tactisc.

 

[katherine]

robots.txt does not block anything, the bots are free to ignore it. The rogue bots definitely don't care about it.
Worse, it can draw attention to things you don't want to have indexed.
The solution is IP block through .htaccess or otherwise.

As for the the competitors and parasites I watch them spying me

 

[Theo]

You can still use robots.txt even if you don't like your competition to spy on you and your SERP tactisc.

These so-called SERP services are a joke. All they do is crawl for supposed data, storing every tag and link. This can be damaging for servers that are already busy. Other than Googlebots - maybe Bing - the rest is useless crap.