Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO tool for analysing backlinks, keywords, rankings and the technical health of websites, both your own and your competitors'. Its metrics, such as Domain Rating or estimated traffic, come from Ahrefs' own crawler and models: they are estimates, not data from Google.

What Ahrefs shows for linkbroker.io

We work with Ahrefs every day. The Domain Rating, traffic, referring domains and keyword figures you see for every publisher in our marketplace come from Ahrefs, and we checked every main term in this glossary in Keywords Explorer. Here is what the key metrics look like for a real website, our own (Ahrefs, retrieved on 12 November 2026):

• Domain Rating: 39 out of 100. In May 2026 it was 19.
• Referring domains: 969 domains currently link to linkbroker.io at least once. Over all time, Ahrefs has counted 1,501.
• Backlinks: 4,774 links found today, 6,054 over all time.

These three lines already show the most important things about Ahrefs metrics. First, referring domains say more than backlinks, because many links often come from a few sites. Second, Ahrefs separates links it still finds today from all links it has ever seen, and the difference is links it can no longer find. Third, values move: in our case the rise falls into the period of our move from linkbroker.de to the new domain in autumn 2026, which we note as timing, not as a cause.

In our support, 55 chats were about the meaning and reliability of DR and traffic figures, for example "Why does the value you show differ from my own tool?" (out of 2,829 chats with an identifiable question, as of 12 August 2026). The answer is in the section on reliability below.

What Ahrefs is used for: the main tools

• Site Explorer: shows the backlinks, referring domains, anchor texts, organic keywords and top pages of any domain or URL. It is the core of backlink and competitor analysis.
• Keywords Explorer: search volume, Keyword Difficulty, Parent Topic and related terms for keyword research.
• Site Audit: crawls your website and finds technical problems such as broken links, redirect chains or missing meta data.
• Rank Tracker: follows the positions of your keywords over time.
• Content Explorer: finds content on a topic that gets linked or shared especially often.
• Brand Radar: measures how often a brand is named in AI answers. We use it to track our own AI visibility in ChatGPT and Google's AI features.

The key Ahrefs metrics and how reliable they are

• Domain Rating (DR): rates on a scale of 0 to 100 how strong the link profile of a whole domain is compared with all other domains in the database. It is purely link-based, so nofollow links do not raise it. Details under Domain Rating.
• URL Rating (UR): the same idea for a single page. Because Google ranks pages rather than whole domains, the UR of a linking page often tells you more.
• Organic traffic: an estimate of monthly visits from Google Search, calculated from a site's rankings, the search volume of those keywords and an assumed click-through rate per position.
• Referring domains: how many different websites link at least once. Usually the more important figure for the strength of a profile than the number of backlinks.
• Keyword Difficulty (KD): a 0 to 100 estimate of the effort needed to rank among the first ten results for a term, derived from the links of the pages already there.

On reliability: all these values are model calculations based on what the Ahrefs crawler has found. Other tools use their own crawlers and formulas, so their numbers differ, and Ahrefs updates continuously. The values are most useful for comparisons, for example your domain against a competitor in the same tool. The traffic estimate can differ a lot from real numbers, because Ahrefs only knows the keywords in its own database and works with assumed click-through rates. Trends tend to be more reliable than absolute figures. Google uses none of these metrics. That is why, when we assess publishers, a high DR alone never decides: topical fit and real, stable traffic matter more, and a domain with high DR but almost no traffic is a warning sign.

Is Ahrefs free, and what does it cost?

Ahrefs is a subscription service with several plans, and the current prices are on the Ahrefs website because they change from time to time. The free version is called Ahrefs Free, formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: for websites whose ownership you have verified, you get Site Audit, which checks for more than 170 common technical and on-page issues, and Site Explorer with your backlinks and keywords. Analysing other domains, such as your competitors', requires a paid plan. If you only want to see how strong potential link sources are, you can do that without a subscription: the Linkbroker marketplace shows DR, traffic and other metrics for every publisher before you book.

Conclusion

Ahrefs is one of the most comprehensive SEO tools for backlinks, keywords and technical checks, and its metrics have become a common language in the industry. Use the values as a compass for comparisons rather than a verdict on a website, and always check topic and real readers before important decisions. For your own website, the free version is a good place to start, and for judging a whole link profile see backlink profile.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ahrefs free?

Partly. With Ahrefs Free you can analyse your own verified websites at no cost, including Site Audit and your backlinks, while analysing other domains and most other tools requires a paid plan.

What is the difference between Ahrefs and Semrush?

Both are comprehensive SEO tools with backlink, keyword and audit features, but each uses its own crawler and metrics. That is why Ahrefs shows Domain Rating and Semrush an Authority Score, and the values for the same domain differ.

How accurate are Ahrefs traffic estimates?

They are estimates based on rankings, search volume and assumed click-through rates and work best for comparisons and trends. Real visitor numbers for your own site come from Google Search Console and your analytics tool.

Does Google use Ahrefs metrics?

No. Metrics such as Domain Rating and URL Rating are Ahrefs' own calculations, and Google assesses pages with its own systems and does not know these values.

Related terms: Link building · Anchor text · Off-page SEO · Disavow links