Ahrefs Statistics – things to know about the leading digital marketing intelligence platform

At Embryo, we are one of just a few UK SEO agencies to have an Ahrefs enterprise account. This shows just how much we value Ahrefs. Statistics are also something that we love. So why not combine the two?!

Did you know that…

1. Every day Ahrefs updates the metrics for 420 million pages – and counting!
2. Approximately 30 million pages are added to the Ahrefs index each day.
3. India uses Ahrefs the most, followed by the USA, and then the UK.
4. Ahrefs has found that around 12% of links are to external sites, with 88% being internal links.
5. 215 million domains are indexed by Ahrefs.
6. Ahrefs currently employs around 90 people.
7. Ahrefs servers have over 2 Petabytes of RAM (are you listening, Apple?).
8. Ahrefs uses over 250 Petabytes of data storage!
9. The crawler for Ahrefs is called AhrefsBot – look for it in your server logs!
10. At least 189 countries have data crawled by AhrefsBot.
11. Around 27 billion (with a ‘b’) keywords are indexed by Ahrefs.
12. Ahrefs currently tracks ten search engines – watch out Google!
13. With 3.3 trillion backlinks tracked, it is easy to see why Ahrefs has become one of the dominant digital search platforms.
14. 27 trillion internal links have also been catalogued.

Why does Embryo use Ahrefs rather than Semrush, Moz, or similar tools?

It was around 2011 that I first discovered Ahrefs, and fell in love. At the time, Majestic was a leading platform, and so was Moz. I associated people that used Moz as not particularly great, as I saw it more of a learning platform and tool for people new to SEO.

I remember there being a battle between myself and another team member who really like Moz. But having shown him what great things that Ahrefs had up its sleeve, he relented, and became a staunch convert – and he still is to this day.

In 2011 (and today, still), Ahrefs just seemed to fit the mindset of a link-focused SEO. Over time, it has greatly improved its suite of tools into something that content-focused SEOs can also use on a daily basis. I would imagine that the interface would scare some ‘SEO newbies’ away, leaving them to find solace in Moz. Whilst Ahrefs doesn’t have as many PPC-focused tools as Semrush does, it more than makes up for it with tools that allow you to go more in-depth in trying to find a solution to a problem.

The auditing feature is very useful for time-poor SEO teams. You can see an example summary above (embryo.com site, Jan 25), which is a great guide for SEOs to know what to try and work on from a technical SEO perspective.

Content Explorer is a hidden gem

I think that perhaps the most underrated aspect of Ahrefs is the Content Explorer section of the site. As you can see from the image below. there are 411 pages on .gov.uk sites that mention cheese but NOT bacon!

When used correctly, and not frivolously like in my example, some wonders can be had. For example, a recent search that i made found several useful opportunities for sponsoring regional government initiatives, which gave excellent link opportunities. The content explorer tool is also very useful for seeing topic trends, how much content is written per page, and which content gains the most traffic and links, to name just a few highlights.

I know people that swear by Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper, some the competitor analysis tool, but another tool that I personally like, and used a lot in the formative years of Embryo was (and is) the Batch Analysis tool. You get to see some of the most useful information about a site within a second or two, and you can easily list several sites at the same time to get a combined overview that gives you very simple instructions as to what and where problems may lie for one or several sites.

Anyway, that’s enough about Ahrefs for now, how about some more stats?

Link Building Statistics

And now for some bonus statistics about link building and links (in terms of SEO)…

1. Search experts think that link building is the 3rd most important ranking factor in SEO.
2. Guest posts are still a leading form of link building in 2024 and beyond.
3. 35% of companies outsource link building (and SEO).
4. 40% of companies believe that link building will only increase in cost going forward.
5. Only 44% of SEO experts are sure that link building actually works.
6. Over half (54%) of link builders think that no-follow links are valuable.
7. ‘What’ and ‘Why’ blog posts gain 25% more links than ‘How-to’ blog posts.
8. Experts think that it takes 1-3 months for the impact of link building to take place.
9. 69% of expert link builders believe that paid-for links positively affect rankings.
10. Eric Ward was the best link builder that ever lived (if you know, you know).