Ahrefs vs Majestic SEO – 1 Million Reasons Why Ahrefs Is Better

Ahrefs vs Majestic SEO – 1 Million Reasons Why Ahrefs Is Better [Updated for 2018]

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HUGE NEW UPDATE! If you don’t have time to learn this publish terminate your Majestic account instantly and take out the Ahrefs trial without hesitation.

Back in 2013, I carried out an experiment to see which is the best backlink checker.

Long story brief, Ahrefs gained…

This actually upset the Majestic group on the time and sparked loads of controversy, however they did make some legitimate points-

1. The take a look at was performed with 3 of my private websites I’d not disclose
2. That makes your complete take a look at biased in Majestic’s opinion
3. The knowledge set was very small with simply 3 websites analysed and in contrast
4. The outcomes couldn’t be independently verified

And they had been proper!

So then re-carried out the experiment on an altogether BIGGER scale (1 million domains vs. the unique 3). Ahrefs gained once more.

Now it’s 5 years later.

So I assumed it will make sense to re-run the numbers this 12 months for all 1 million domains AND examine the performance of the instruments.

But…

I’m additionally going to disclose how Majestic important cheat on backlink counts (you gained’t consider this one!)

Ahrefs vs. Majestic SEO – Huge New Update

Before we get to the experiment, let me speak about my knowledge supply.

For people who don’t know, the Majestic group publish what is named the Majestic Million.

The Majestic Million is an inventory of the highest 1 million web site on the earth, primarily based on the variety of referring IP’s discovered for that area of their Fresh index.

So with this, Majestic SEO are outright telling us these are the websites they know probably the most about by way of backlinks.

You can download a copy for yourself freed from cost and it’ll inform you the entire variety of linking subnets (RefSubNets) and the entire variety of linking IPs (RefIPs) for every area within the prime million.

To examine Majestic SEO with Ahrefs, I’m going to lookup the entire variety of linking subnets and IP’s for the entire domains within the Majestic Million.

To provide you with an instance with this blog-

• Majestic SEO – This report reveals 3,533 IP’s & 2,475 subnets
• Ahrefs – This report reveals 3,214 IP’s & 2,438 subnets

So in that particular occasion, Majestic wins the take a look at.

But:

Now think about doing the identical – however for 1 million websites.

That is the take a look at I’ve performed primarily based on what Majestic say are the highest 1 million websites on the earth by way of hyperlinks.

This is what the CSV knowledge seems like in its uncooked form-

And you’ll be able to download a copy of the data that’s used on this take a look at.

The Results

Before I get to the outcomes, I would like to say that each Majestic and Ahrefs keep a number of indexes.

Majestic have two indexes: Fresh and Historic indexes.

Ahrefs have three: Live, Recent, and Historical.

You can study extra about these indexes here.

But for the sake of this text, I’ll be evaluating the next indexes:

1. Majestic’s Fresh index vs. Ahrefs’ Recent index
2. Majestic’s Historic index vs. Ahrefs’ Historical index

Majestic Fresh Versus Ahrefs Recent Index

Let’s begin with a comparability of the Fresh vs. Recent index.

With such an enormous quantity of information, I made a decision to separate the outcomes into 10 teams of 100,000 URLs (by Majestic InternationalRank) after which examine these teams.

This is what the group numbers appear to be (seek advice from by_groups.csv within the knowledge pack)–

Just seems like a bunch of meaningless numbers proper?

What about now-

Wins By IP Address (Majestic Fresh vs. Ahrefs Recent)

Wins By Subnets (Majestic Fresh vs. Ahrefs Recent)

Pretty brutal to take a look at if you’re a present Majestic SEO buyer proper?

Now may be the best time to change to Ahrefs – click here to claim a 7-day trial account.

But earlier than you do let’s have a look at the totals-

Total Wins – Majestic Fresh vs Ahrefs Recent

It’s value noting that Ahrefs has truly pulled even additional forward of Majestic (by ~7% for IP wins, and ~11% for subnet wins) since 2013. Which is after I first ran this experiment.

So these are the outcomes of the Majestic Fresh vs. Ahrefs Recent index comparability, however what about Majestic’s Historic vs. Ahrefs’ Historical?

Majestic Historic Versus Ahrefs Historical Index

This take a look at is particulary fascinating because-

Well:

It presents an altogether totally different story.

I feel the outcomes develop into tremendous clear when displayed in graph format:

Wins By IP Address (Majestic Historical vs. Ahrefs Historical)

Wins By Subnets (Majestic Historical vs. Ahrefs Historical)

Based on this knowledge, Majestic completely crush Ahrefs in terms of the historic index take a look at.

This is much more obvious if we have a look at the totals-

So, Majestic clearly wins the historic index comparability.

But what does this actually imply?

Well, historic indexes function data of the backlinks which have existed of their respective instruments index in some unspecified time in the future up to now, however aren’t stay immediately.

When you are taking this under consideration, it comes as no shock that Majestic gained this take a look at.

They’ve been saving (in all probability) hyperlinks to their Historic index since they launched in 2009.

Ahrefs, alternatively, has solely been saving lifeless hyperlinks to their Historical index since 2015, so Majestic has a 6 12 months head begin right here!

Bottomline: Majestic has a bigger index of lifeless hyperlinks than Ahrefs.

That’s all I’m going to say about that one.

I’ll allow you to determine which index is extra vital to you.

A Few Potential Flaws with this Experiment

My methodology for this experiment is much from excellent.

So I assumed I’d briefly clarify what I see as some potential flaws with this knowledge.

Flaw #1 – “Wins” != Absolute Numbers

The graphs above present the variety of “wins” slightly than absolute numbers.

Because of this, the distinction between the bars on the graphs is just not actually indicative of index measurement.

I’ll attempt to illustrate what I imply with an instance:

Let’s say we’ve two websites:

• Site A: 100 Ref.IPs (reported in Majestic); 101 Ref.IPs (reported in Ahrefs)
• Site B: 100 Ref.IPs (reported in Majestic); 200000 Ref.IPs (reported in Ahrefs)

(Yes, it’s an excessive instance, however naked with me!)

Ahrefs “wins” for each of those websites, but it surely’s clear that there’s a a lot bigger distinction between reported numbers from every instrument for Site B.

With Site A, Ahrefs solely wins as a result of they report one further Ref.IP.

This implies that the “variety of wins” doesn’t give any perception into how a lot greater one database is than the opposite.

So what does “variety of wins” inform us?

It tells us that Ahrefs finds extra hyperlinks for any given web site than Majestic, and that it’s uncommon for Majestic to indicate hyperlinks than Ahrefs (hyperlinks = IPs/Subnets).

FYI, should you’re questioning why I selected to match IPs/Subnets over hyperlinks, try this article co-authored by Dixon Jones from Majestic.

Flaw #2 – Each Tool Picks Up Different Links

It’s vital to keep in mind that we’re coping with two completely totally different indexes right here.

Which implies that some hyperlinks that Majestic studies could not exist in Ahrefs’ Index, and vice-versa.

Once once more, let me supply an instance.

This time we solely want one hypothetical web site, for which we’ll assume that each Ahrefs and Majestic report the identical variety of hyperlinks: 3.

Here are the three hypothetical hyperlinks reported by every instrument:

Do you see my level?

Just as a result of we’ve the identical variety of reported hyperlinks from every instrument doesn’t essentially imply that they’re the identical hyperlinks.

You can see in our hypothetical instance that solely two of the hyperlinks are widespread to each indexes.

This brings me on to an vital level:

If you desperately want a full image of your hyperlink profile, you’ll must pay for each instruments and cross-reference knowledge.

BUT!

And it is a BIG BUT!

Even should you do this you want to perceive that Majestic’s backlink stats are nearly at all times inflated.

Why?

Because of the completely absurd means Majestic depend and report backlinks.

I’m going to speak about that extra within the subsequent part, however significantly – ensure you are sitting down for this one as a result of I’m going to indicate you ways Majestic primarily cheats on backlink counts.

Ahrefs VS Majestic: Comparing Features & Functionality

Now we’ve talked about backlink knowledge and whatnot, I wish to make an vital level:

Majestic and Ahrefs are VERY totally different instruments.

Majestic is basically one instrument: a backlink checker.

But Ahrefs is a set of instruments. Alongside Site Explorer (for checking backlink knowledge), additionally they have:

• Site Audit
• Rank Tracker
• Content Explorer
• Keywords Explorer
• Alerts

Another huge differentiator is the addition of “Competitive intelligence” in Ahrefs, which is mainly search visitors knowledge.

In different phrases, you’ll be able to see how a lot visitors any area or web site receives from Google, and the key phrases it ranks for.

See my full review of Ahrefs here.

How Majestic Cheat On Backlink Counts

But let’s get again to backlink knowledge for a second…

It’s vital to grasp that index measurement means nothing except you’re capable of extract actionable knowledge and insights from it.

Both Majestic and Ahrefs do have an API for doing this at scale (that is what I used for this research), however most of us don’t pay for entry to that.

So, let’s shortly examine the on-web site backlink analysis options that exist in Ahrefs and Majestic.

Let’s begin by plugging this similar URL (the beginners guide to SEO from Moz) into each instruments to see what sort of insights we will get from them.

NOTE. I’m utilizing the “precise URL” setting, as a result of I solely wish to analyze backlinks pointing instantly at that URL.

A couple of comparable metrics proper off the bat:

• Backlinks: 628,437 (Majestic) vs. 111,000 (Ahrefs)
• Referring domains: 1,840 (Majestic) vs. 11,300 (Ahrefs)

So Majestic studies extra backlinks in complete, however Ahrefs studies (quite a bit) extra referring domains.

That’s a win for Majestic, proper?

Not so quick.

(This is one thing I actually really feel the necessity to spotlight!)

Majestic’s backlink stats are nearly at all times inflated due to the completely absurd means they report backlinks.

Let me illustrate by going to the Referring Domains tab in Majestic.

Majestic is reporting 370K+ backlinks from only one referring area.

That accounts for almost 60% of all reported backlinks!

Let’s see what number of backlinks Ahrefs studies from this domain-

Just 4!

So why does Majestic report 373,004 backlinks from that area whereas Ahrefs solely studies 4?

This occurs as a result of Majestic fail to strip URL parameters from URLs, which ends up in the identical backlink being duplicated a whole lot, typically even 1000’s of instances.

This additionally occurs if you export the information from Majestic.

Take a have a look at this backlink export from my weblog and also you’ll see that digitalphillipines.internet is linking to me almost 700,000 times-

But after we export the information and have a look at the hyperlinks, you’ll see they’re largely duplicate hyperlinks with totally different UTM parameters on the end-

(*1*)

For instance Majestic counts the under as 4 separate backlinks-

1. area.com/web page/
2. area.com/web page/?utm_source=twitter
3. area.com/web page/?utm_source=fb
4. area.com/web page/?utm_source=pinterest

But the truth is they’re only one backlink – however Majestic is reporting them as 4.

In my opinion, that is complete insanity.

Especially when the overwhelming majority of the 700,000 hyperlinks coming from digitalphillipines.internet are duplicates.

Ahref’s alternatively, solely counts 17 links-

Why?

Because Ahrefs understands that these extra URL parameters don’t make all of them distinctive hyperlinks so filter them out accordingly.

Here’s Another Mad Thing!

If you go from the Summary web page in Majestic to their Ref.Domains and Backlinks studies, you’ll discover that the entire numbers of ref.domains and backlinks that you just simply noticed on that “Summary” web page now utterly disappear.

That’s as a result of these studies are restricted to 30k rows of information – 600 pages, 50 outcomes per web page.

This makes each report in Majestic considerably ineffective as a result of you’ll be able to solely see a pattern of the information!

Sure you’ll be able to view the primary 30,000 rows – however after that, they lower you off.

That is a large limitation and I really feel prefer it actually goes in opposition to the grain of Majestic’s core mission.

What’s the purpose of constructing an enormous database of hyperlinks if you’ll restrict entry to it?

It’s the identical if you attempt to export this knowledge too – it defaults to a max of 30K rows.

However you’ll be able to export greater than 30k rows should you request an “superior report” by clicking the tiny hyperlink highlighted within the screenshot under:

But even if you click on this, you’re taken to fairly a puzzling web page the place you seemingly must tick a bunch of containers to be able to do what you wish to do.

So bottomline-

• You can export greater than 30K rows from Majestic – it’s simply not a enjoyable expertise
• All of Majestics studies are ineffective if you’re engaged on a web site that has greater than 30,000 backlinks
• And thats assuming the backlink numbers arent inflated, it may have 4 hyperlinks however Majestic counts 370K+

In comparability, Ahrefs reveals full knowledge in each their Ref.Domains and Backlinks studies.

And exporting FULL DATA is tremendous straightforward – simply hit the “export” button.

Much nicer!

However, one draw back of that is that studies typically load slower in Ahrefs than Majestic, particularly when analysing huge websites.

This is as a result of Ahrefs has to work to tug all knowledge, whereas Majestic simply has to indicate a cached pattern of 30K pages/ref.domains.

To be trustworthy:

Any additional comparability right here is not sensible as a result of Majestic’s on-web site instruments solely works with a pattern of information whereas Ahrefs permits you to work with FULL knowledge.

However, I do wish to examine and spotlight just a few issues in these studies.

But first, I wish to discuss a bit about indexes.

Majestic Indexes vs Ahrefs Indexes – What Do They Mean?

So you might have seen that Majestic has two totally different indexes for you to select from, whereas Ahrefs has three.

• Majestic: Fresh, Historic
• Ahrefs: Live, Recent, and Historical

You could have seen within the screenshots above that Majestic defaults to their Fresh index, whereas Ahrefs defaults to their Live index.

Let me attempt to clarify the take care of all of those indexes.

Ahrefs Indexes Explained

So Ahrefs Live index is up to date each quarter-hour, and I do know they put loads of effort into re-crawling all hyperlinks of their Live index fairly repeatedly.

But as Ahrefs recrawls hyperlinks, they naturally come throughout some which are not there.

Like, typically the web page will nonetheless be stay, however the hyperlink shall be gone. Or possibly the precise linking web page can not be discovered.

In this case, Ahrefs removes the hyperlink from their Live index, but it surely stays of their Recent index, the place this backlink stays for 90 extra days. Quite usually the pages disappear due to server downtime, so when Ahrefs subsequent re-crawls the web page, they could see that the hyperlink continues to be there.

If this occurs, it will get moved again to the Live index.

If Ahrefs don’t see the hyperlink going stay once more inside 90 days of it being moved to the Recent Index, it will get moved to the Historical index. This is mainly a graveyard for all backlinks that they’ve as soon as seen as stay, however the subsequent recrawls confirmed their demise.

To summarise (for Ahrefs):

• Live = All hyperlinks that had been stay throughout the latest re-crawl
• Recent = Live + hyperlinks that had been “misplaced” throughout the previous 90 days
• Historical = Live + Recent + all hyperlinks that had been ever seen to be “stay”

Majestic Indexes Explained

Unlike Ahrefs, they don’t keep a Live index. They solely have their Fresh index, which is form of the identical as Ahrefs’ Recent index because it comprises all hyperlinks that had been seen stay within the final 90 days, no matter their standing at the moment second.

They even have their Historic Index, which is corresponding to Ahrefs Historical index. However, it’s vastly greater than Ahrefs’ Historic index as a result of they began saving deleted hyperlinks years earlier than Ahrefs did.

To summarise (for Majestic):

• Fresh = All hyperlinks that had been seen as stay throughout the previous 90 days
• Historic = Fresh + all hyperlinks that had been ever seen to be stay

Having used each instruments on and off for few years, I do know that Ahrefs solely began including hyperlinks to their Historic index round mid-2015, whereas I’d say Majestic has been doing that for a minimum of 5 years.

That’s precisely why Majestic’s is greater proper now.

Either means, these instruments historic indexes are primarily graveyard of hyperlinks, so many of the hyperlinks in each Majestic and Ahrefs Historic indexes are not stay.

But anyway, now we’ve tackled the technicalities, I can transfer on to some options.

Before I do this, I wish to stress one thing:

I a lot choose Ahrefs over Majestic.

So many of the stuff I focus on under shall be the explanation why that’s the case.

But let’s begin with a quick comparability of the abstract/overview studies in Ahrefs and Majestic.

Summary / Overview Report Comparison

To begin, I’ll spotlight a few tremendous helpful graphs that I completely love on the Overview tab in Ahrefs Site Explorer: Referring Domains and Organic Traffic.

These present how the variety of referring domains and quantity of natural visitors has modified to a web site (or URL) over time.

Here’s the referring domains graph:

Here’s the natural search visitors one:

Unfortunately, Majestic don’t have any such graph for backlink knowledge, and so they don’t have any knowledge on search visitors in any respect.

They do present you two graphs that they name “URL backlink historical past” and “Referring domains” – however these are solely totally different.

In Majestic’s personal phrases, these charts present “the variety of Referring Domains [or backlinks] reviewed day by day.”

So this graph largely refers to how briskly Majestic crawls the online, slightly than displaying how briskly your goal acquired backlinks.

As a outcome, these graphs don’t inform you something about how a goal’s backlink profile has modified over time, so I don’t actually perceive why they’re helpful.

If anybody does occur to have use case, be at liberty to let me know within the feedback!

And it’s additionally a picture, it’s not an interactive graph. So I can’t hover my mouse over a selected date and get the exact quantity, like I can in Ahrefs.

As for the opposite numbers you could see in Ahrefs “Overview” report and in Majestic “Summary” report, they’re roughly comparable.

Pretty customary stuff, no placing variations there.

I’d say the one main distinction is the truth that every instrument reveals their proprietary metrics.

In Majestic’s case, these are TF/CF.

And in Ahrefs these are UR/DR.

Comparing them is a unique story, so I’m not even going to aim that however I do use each units of metrics to guage expired domains.

Let’s transfer on to the referring domains studies.

Comparing Referring Domain Reports

Majestic has fairly just a few knowledge factors of their Ref.domains report, so that they needed to introduce just a few totally different views.

Here’s the one they default to: Links.

For me, probably the most helpful knowledge factors listed here are:

• Trust Flow / Citation Flow
• Backlinks
• Referring domains

I feel it’s actually cool how they embody the variety of ref.domains and backlinks to every ref.area – that’s one thing Ahrefs doesn’t do.

I additionally like their Geo report.

This reveals issues just like the area language(s), TLD, IP, IP location (cool!), TF/CF.

In truth, loads of these studies are fairly cool – I like to recommend taking part in round with them.

But what about filtering and sorting choices?

Unfortunately, these don’t actually exist (I assume their totally different studies form of depend of filters?) however they do have “Order by” and “Then” sorting choices, that are fairly complicated.

I feel the most important letdown right here is that many of those studies find yourself being form of pointless, merely on account of the truth that Majestic solely permits you to work with pattern knowledge.

Sure, you’ve 30K rows to play with, which admittedly is lots for most websites. But for some websites it simply doesn’t lower it.

Here’s one other factor:

Although Majestic have a column with a quantity displaying the quantity backlinks, they don’t differentiate between dofollow and nofollow hyperlinks.

This means it’s solely doable to type by the variety of backlinks from a ref.area – you’ll be able to’t type by the referring domains with probably the most dofollow backlinks, for instance.

Ahrefs, alternatively, completely shines in terms of filtering and sorting.

For a begin, there’s a column highlighting dofollow/nofollow hyperlinks, and it’s straightforward to type an inventory of referring domains by that metric.

And as soon as once more, Ahrefs will type your complete checklist of ref.domains – not only a pattern of the information like in Majestic.

Here’s one other notable function Ahrefs has on this report:

You can simply filter referring domains by the backlink kind, and may immediately see what number of referring domains of every kind there may be.

So if you wish to export dofollow ref.domains solely, merely filter and click on export. Easy as that.

Back to Majestic, it seems just like the area with probably the most backlinks to this Moz information is ryangum.com.

It has nearly 378K backlinks. Let’s click on on that quantity and see what they’re.

Aaaannnndddd… I see solely 10.

Useless.

It’s a very totally different story in Ahrefs, as they present every part – it’s even downloadable.

And once more, I’ll reiterate the purpose I touched on earlier – among the backlink numbers are completely loopy in Majestic because of the duplicated backlinks with URL parameters.

Case in level:

• Majestic reveals 376K backlinks
• Ahrefs reveals 4 backlinks

(I assume Majestic doesn’t care about URL parameters?)

But anyway… let’s transfer on.

Ahrefs vs Majestic Backlink Reports

Let’s begin with Majestic.

In the Ref.domains report, there was a minimum of some sorting choices – right here there are none.

All they provide you is possibility to indicate/cover deleted hyperlinks and show 1/3/10/all backlinks per area.

I can see how one backlink per area is helpful, however three and ten… c’mon!

It nearly looks like somebody was determined to provide you with some form of helpful performance right here, however failed miserably.

Regardless, none of those restrictions matter anyway as a result of this report (like the remainder) solely reveals a pattern of 30k rows out of just about 100k. That means Majestic are hiding 70% of the hyperlinks they learn about from you.

Luckily, issues are extra logical in Ahrefs.

First issues first, their Backlinks report doesn’t present sampled knowledge – it’s full knowledge.

You also can select to indicate both Similar hyperlinks, One hyperlink per area, or All hyperlinks.

This report defaults to Group related hyperlinks. This is sensible, because it teams sitewide and duplicated hyperlinks, however nonetheless reveals distinctive hyperlinks from distinctive pages of the identical area. Which is fairly cool.

Is this report excellent? No. I’ve seen just a few bugs right here and there, however the usability and comfort of this filter nonetheless beats Majestic’s ineffective “3/10 hyperlinks per area” filter by a large margin.

You in all probability already noticed these different filters too – Link kind, Platform, and Language.

I like to recommend taking part in round with these – they’re actually cool!

There are additionally some sorting choices, together with:

• Sort by DR
• Sort by UR
• Sort by variety of exterior hyperlinks on the web page

Combining sorting AND filtering is if you actually begin to do some cool stuff.

For instance, you possibly can filter by dofollow hyperlinks solely, from English websites solely, after which type by DR.

Seriously, mess around this this report – you are able to do TONS.

Here’s one closing report I wish to briefly spotlight (this one is restricted to Ahrefs):

The Best Report That Majestic Doesn’t Have…

Ahrefs is MUCH MORE than only a backlink checking instrument. They have world-class search visitors knowledge too.

Yes, there are different instruments have one of many two (e.g., Majestic with their backlink knowledge) however Ahrefs does an incredible job of merging backlink and search visitors knowledge collectively.

I don’t suppose there’s a greater instance of this than of their Top Pages report.

This reveals the “prime pages” on a website by search visitors.

But this report is tremendous cool as a result of it additionally reveals:

• The share of all search visitors that goes to that web page
• Referring domains
• Top key phrase (the key phrase that drives probably the most search visitors to that web page)
• The search quantity for the highest key phrase
• The present rating place for the highest key phrase

There’s additionally a key phrases dropdown which unveils ALL the key phrases every web page is rating for.

Majestic has nothing like this, so there’s nothing to match right here.

Where Else Do These Tools Shine?

I discussed earlier that Ahrefs is rather more than a backlink checking instrument.

It’s truly a set of SEO instruments.

Content Explorer is one instrument I wish to spotlight right here – it is a database of just about a billion internet pages full with backlinks and visitors knowledge.

Basically, you enter a key phrase and it’ll return any content material containing (in both the title or physique of the article, relying in your choice).

Here are the outcomes for “SEO”:

The highlighted area reveals among the cool knowledge that Content Explorer reveals for each outcomes – there’s Domain Rating, referring domains, and natural visitors.

I’m not conscious of every other instrument that may do that and truthfully, it’s tremendous-helpful! And let’s not overlook the “who tweeted” button which is helpful for any content material entrepreneurs on the market.

But what about Majestic? Where does that shine?

Well there are some cool issues that I like, resembling their Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics.

If you’ve learn my guide to finding expired domains, you’ll already know that I have a look at a ratio of those two metrics to search out respectable domains.

I’m additionally a fan of Majestic’s Topical Trust Flow metric, which is tremendous helpful for getting a way of how related a backlink profile is.

However, I’ve discovered that this isn’t at all times significantly correct.

You can see within the screenshot above that mythemeshop.com (an internet site promoting premium WordPress themes together with my theme) falls into the ‘Health’ class when taking a look at Topical Trust Flow.

That doesn’t appear proper to me.

So as you’ll be able to see, the instrument that’s most helpful for you’ll rely upon the form of knowledge that you just’re attempting to entry.

I’ve to be trustworthy although:

For me, Ahrefs is my go-to tool for almost everything these days. I’d say Majestic does possibly 10-20% of what Ahrefs does, and that’s being beneficiant!

Ahrefs VS Majestic SEO Conclusion

Irrespective of opinion, bias and discreditation – the information doesn’t lie.

The knowledge by no means lies, its why I like working with knowledge a lot. Want to settle which design is healthier? Test it.

Want to see which is the best backlink checker? Test it.

Data doesn’t lie.

Ahrefs is clearly the winner right here by an enormous margin – a a lot bigger margin than my preliminary take a look at with simply 3 domains highlighted.

In the Wins by IP take a look at, Ahrefs finds 216% greater than Majestic SEO. They are profitable on ~76% of domains in comparison with Majestic SEO’s ~24%.

In the Wins by Subnets take a look at, Ahrefs can be the clear winner discovering 306% extra hyperlinks than Majestic SEO. They are profitable on ~80% of domains in comparison with Majestic SEO’s ~20%.

So fairly clearly, the best backlink checker is Ahrefs. PERIOD.

Even if the supply knowledge is Majestic SEO’s very personal Majestic Million – Ahrefs nonetheless is aware of extra about them than Majestic does.

Unless you solely care about who has the most important database of lifeless hyperlinks after all.

And let’s not overlook about the entire different superior instruments Ahrefs has – it’s so rather more than a backlink checker.

BONUS – How To Verify The Data For Yourself

In an effort to be unbiased and clear, I’ve 2 seperate methods for you to independently confirm the information your self.

All of the information used on this take a look at is out there to download here.

Verification Method #1 – Easy

This is the simplest strategy to spot verify the information.

1. Download the supply knowledge
2. Open the by_domains.csv file
3. Select a line at random
4. Enter the area from column A into the search field at Majestic SEO and Ahrefs
5. For Majestic SEO have a look at Referring IP addresses and Referring Class C subnets:
6. For Ahrefs have a look at Referring IPs and Referring subnets

You can manually spot verify these at random!

Verification Method #2 – Hard

What if you wish to confirm the information for all million domains although?

Well for that you will want a linux server with shell entry, an Ahrefs API key and these files.

WARNING: Before you do that remember that 1,000,000 API credit with Ahrefs prices $10,000.

For full transparency’s sake Ahrefs gave me an API key with 1,000,000 credit so I may run this take a look at.

If any established bloggers wish to affirm these outcomes themselves and publish on their weblog then please get in contact with me.

Anyway right here is the way to do it-

1. Download this & you will see that 2 information, get_stats.php and cargo.sh
2. Open get_stats.php and replace it together with your Ahrefs API key on line 3
3. Download the Majestic Million CSV
4. Upload get_stats.php, load.sh & majestic_million.csv to your server
5. Make positive the entire information are in the identical folder
6. Connect to your server with an SSH consumer and execute the load.sh script
7. Wait just a few hours
8. This will output a file known as by_domains.txt, rename to by_domains.csv

Wrapping It Up

Remember people no matter the entire controversy the information doesn’t lie.

The easy truth is Ahrefs is aware of 216% extra about Majestic SEO’s Majestic Million than they do (in comparison with 57% after I first ran this take a look at in April 2013)

And should you haven’t checked out Ahrefs for a whilst you may be stunned, as a result of it has developed from a easy backlink checker to an entire SEO instrument.

You can join for a free Ahrefs account here to test it out for your self.

Next time you see this subject in a discussion board – be at liberty to make use of this publish to immediately win the argument.

Ahrefs vs Majestic SEO – 1 Million Reasons Why Ahrefs Is Better [Updated for 2018] was initially printed on Matthew Woodward