Similarweb vs. Ahrefs: Methods to Select The Finest Instrument | JP
If you’re looking for an SEO tool that can help with competitive analysis, keyword research, and traffic insights, Similarweb and Ahrefs are two of the biggest names in the industry. But which one is the better choice for your needs?
Both tools offer powerful features for SEO professionals, marketers, and business owners, but they focus on different aspects of search analysis. Similarweb is known for its market intelligence, competitive analysis, and multi-platform keyword insights, while Ahrefs is a go-to tool for link-building and traditional keyword research.
In this in-depth comparison, we’ll break down the features of Similarweb vs Ahrefs to help you decide which tool is best for you.
Comparing the platforms
What is Similarweb?
Similarweb is a digital intelligence platform that provides businesses with in-depth insights into website traffic, competitor strategies, and market trends. By aggregating data from a wide range of sources, including public data, proprietary partnerships, and web crawlers, Similarweb delivers a comprehensive view of online performance across websites, apps, and entire industries.
Its core value lies in helping businesses understand not only how their digital assets are performing but also how they compare against the competition. Whether you’re analyzing a single website, benchmarking within an industry, or exploring global demand trends, Similarweb equips marketers, analysts, and business leaders with actionable data to drive smarter decisions. You can get a taste of all that data if you use one of their free tools, like their famous Traffic Checker.
What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset designed to help businesses grow their search traffic, monitor keyword rankings, and analyze their competitors. Originally known for its powerful backlink database, Ahrefs has evolved into a comprehensive SEO platform with tools for keyword research, site auditing, rank tracking, and content analysis.
At its core, Ahrefs is built around search engine optimization. It crawls the web much like a search engine, collecting vast amounts of data that allow users to uncover keyword opportunities, track search performance, analyze top-performing content, and evaluate link-building potential. With one of the largest live backlink indexes and deep visibility into Google’s search results, Ahrefs gives SEOs and marketers the intelligence they need to improve organic visibility and outrank competitors.
Which platform is the best for keyword research?
Keyword research is an important part of any SEO strategy. The right tool can help you find high-traffic, low-competition keywords and understand how users search across different platforms.
Let’s take a look at how Similarweb and Ahrefs handle keyword research.
Similarweb
Similarweb’s keyword research tools help businesses find high-performing keywords for both organic and paid search. The suite includes features like a Keyword Generator, which suggests new keyword opportunities based on user intent and industry trends, and Search Ads, which reveal competitors’ paid search strategies, including ad copy, clicks, and landing pages. Users can also access keyword-level SERP snapshots, monitor keyword trends over time, and analyze which terms drive traffic to competing sites. With market-level keyword data and deep competitive insights, Similarweb supports both SEO and PPC strategy development at scale.
Fresh and accurate data: Provides real user search behavior based on data from the last 28 days. Unlike many SEO tools that rely on static databases, Similarweb’s insights are dynamic and continuously updated.
Cross-platform keyword research: You’re not limited to Google. Similarweb provides keyword data for Amazon, YouTube, and other search engines, making it invaluable for ecommerce and video SEO.
Unique SEO metrics: Includes SERP feature analysis, zero-click data, and search intent classification to give you a full picture of how users interact with search results.
Competitive keyword strategy: Allows you to analyze competitors’ keyword performance across multiple platforms, including the specific SERP features they rank for.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs offers a robust keyword research toolkit designed to support SEO and content strategy across multiple search engines. Its flagship tool, Keywords Explorer, provides data on search volume, keyword difficulty, clicks, CPC, and parent topics, giving users a complete picture of a keyword’s value. Users can access related keywords, analyze search intent, explore SERP features, and assess traffic potential. With powerful filtering and keyword grouping capabilities, Ahrefs helps SEOs prioritize the best opportunities for ranking and traffic growth.
Massive keyword database: Ahrefs provides access to billions of keywords, each with search volume, CPC, and difficulty scores to help prioritize your SEO strategy.
Keyword Explorer: This feature helps you find new keyword opportunities and analyze how competitive a keyword is.
Clickstream data for SERP insights: Unlike most keyword tools, Ahrefs estimates the actual number of clicks a search result gets using clickstream data. This helps you determine whether a keyword is worth targeting beyond just search volume.
Which platform’s site audits are the best for you?
A strong SEO site audit helps you uncover technical issues that could be hurting your website’s rankings. From broken links and slow load times to missing metadata, both Similarweb and Ahrefs provide tools to diagnose and fix SEO issues.
Let’s compare how Similarweb and Ahrefs handle technical SEO auditing.
Similarweb
Similarweb’s Site Audit tool helps businesses identify and fix technical SEO issues that may be affecting their search performance. It performs a comprehensive crawl of a website to detect problems related to crawlability, indexability, duplicate content, internal linking, page experience, and more. The audit results are organized into actionable categories such as availability, uniqueness, discoverability, and rankability, making it easy to prioritize and resolve issues. With clear metrics and visual reports, Similarweb empowers teams to maintain a healthy, search-friendly site.
Covers 300+ SEO factors: The audit scans for broken links, duplicate content, page speed issues, structured data errors, and more to give you a complete picture of your website’s health.
Secure, cloud-based crawling: Unlike some desktop-based SEO tools, Similarweb’s audits run on secure servers, meaning they won’t slow down your website or PC during analysis.
Prioritized issue resolution: SEO problems are ranked based on their impact on your search performance, so you can focus on the fixes that will drive the biggest improvements.
Competitive technical insights: Compare your website’s technical health to competitors, identifying opportunities to improve site speed, indexability, and overall SEO performance.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool is a crawler that scans your website for over 100 technical and on-page SEO issues. It provides a detailed health score and includes reports like internal pages, link explorer, internal link opportunities, and more. The visual interface highlights key metrics like crawl depth, indexability, internal linking structure, and site structure. With customizable crawl settings and scheduled audits, Ahrefs makes it easy to monitor site health over time and resolve issues that could hinder search performance.
Full technical SEO analysis: The audit scans for broken links, missing meta tags, slow-loading pages, and other technical SEO problems.
SEO Health Score: Ahrefs assigns an SEO health score based on your website’s technical issues and overall performance, making it easy to track improvements over time.
Actionable recommendations: Ahrefs provides detailed suggestions for fixing SEO errors, helping site owners and developers optimize their websites efficiently.
Which platform has the best rank tracker?
Tracking keyword rankings is essential for understanding how your SEO efforts impact search visibility over time. A strong rank tracker should provide accurate position tracking, SERP feature analysis, and competitor benchmarking.
Let’s compare how Similarweb and Ahrefs handle rank tracking.
Similarweb: Daily Rank Tracking with SERP Insights
Similarweb’s Rank Tracker allows businesses to monitor their keyword rankings and measure search visibility and traffic over time. It provides detailed insights into keyword positions, share of voice, click data, and SERP feature ownership, including emerging features like AI Overviews. Users can segment tracked keywords by topic, analyze ranking trends, and compare performance against competitors. With visual reports and customizable tags, Similarweb helps SEO teams stay on top of their visibility, identify ranking opportunities, and track the impact of optimization efforts.
Daily rank tracking: Monitor your core organic keywords with daily updates, ensuring you stay on top of fluctuations in search rankings.
SERP feature reporting: Get insights into Google’s evolving search landscape, including AI Overviews, Featured Snippets, and other SERP elements. This helps you identify whether competitors are gaining visibility through new features and where you can capture traffic opportunities.
Keyword trends and AI Overview tracking: Monitor keywords that appear in Google’s AI Overviews, track their performance, and analyze your ranking position within them.
Competitor strategy insights: Compare your ranking performance against competitors, including their visibility in SERP features and AI-generated search results.
Ahrefs: Rank Tracker with historical trends
Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker lets you monitor your keyword rankings over time and measure visibility against competitors. It tracks rankings on desktop and mobile across multiple locations, offering metrics like average position, traffic potential, and SERP feature presence. Users can set up keyword segments, track movement trends, and view performance charts that highlight progress. With competitor comparison, historical data, and scheduled reports, Ahrefs makes it easy to stay informed about how your keywords are performing and where to focus your SEO efforts.
Monitors keyword positions across multiple locations: Track how your rankings change in different countries and regions, making it useful for international SEO strategies.
Historical ranking trends: Ahrefs stores historical ranking data, allowing you to see how your keyword positions evolve over time. This is helpful for measuring the impact of SEO updates and algorithm changes.
Which backlink analysis tool is the best?
Backlinks remain one of the most important ranking factors in SEO. A strong backlink analysis tool should help you evaluate your link profile, track new and lost backlinks, and identify high-quality link opportunities.
Let’s see how Similarweb and Ahrefs compare in backlink analysis.
Similarweb: Clean Visualizations & Competitive Insights
Similarweb’s Backlink Analysis tool gives businesses visibility into their backlink profile and competitor link strategies. It provides insights into referring domains, anchor text, link types (dofollow vs. nofollow), and the authority of linking pages. Users can monitor new, lost, and broken backlinks to maintain a healthy link profile and identify high-quality opportunities for link building. While Similarweb doesn’t specialize in backlinks alone, its backlink data complements a broader digital intelligence platform, giving SEO teams additional context for how links contribute to overall visibility and performance.
Comprehensive backlink tracking: Get a clear visualization of your backlink profile, including where links are gained and lost over time.
Quantity and quality assessment: Analyze any website’s entire backlink profile and get metrics that help you evaluate link quality, helping you understand which pages attract the best backlinks.
Competitive link insights: Identify the top-performing pages for backlinks, allowing you to see which content attracts the highest-quality links from authoritative domains.
Backlink acquisition opportunities: Find relevant and high-authority domains to target for link-building efforts, improving your site’s SEO authority and rankings.
Ahrefs: Industry-Leading Backlink Database
Ahrefs is widely recognized as a leader in backlink analysis. Its backlink database is one of the largest in the industry, allowing users to explore detailed information on referring domains, anchor text, link attributes, and link growth over time. With tools like Site Explorer, users can see exactly which pages link to their site or competitors, assess link quality with metrics like Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR), and monitor new and lost backlinks daily. For link building and off-page SEO, Ahrefs offers a deep and trusted view of the backlink landscape, making it a go-to tool for SEOs focused on authority and link strategy.
Extensive backlink database: One of the largest backlink databases in the industry, with detailed metrics on referring domains, anchor text, and page authority.
New and lost backlink tracking: Monitor which backlinks you gain or lose over time, helping you assess the effectiveness of your link-building efforts.
Domain authority and anchor text analysis: Get insights into the strength of linking domains and the anchor text used in backlinks, helping you fine-tune your link-building strategy.
Link intersect tool: Find common backlinks among competitors to identify where they’re getting links from and where you might be missing out.
Which Tool Is Right for You?
Choosing between Similarweb and Ahrefs depends largely on your goals, your team’s needs, and the depth of insight you require.
If you’re primarily focused on SEO execution, such as backlink analysis, simple rank tracking, and basic keyword research, and you want a cost-effective, easy-to-use solution, Ahrefs is a solid choice. It’s a popular, self-serve platform that offers strong foundational tools, especially for small teams or solo marketers focused strictly on search engine visibility.
However, if your goals extend beyond SEO into strategic growth, competitive benchmarking, and multi-channel marketing intelligence, Similarweb offers a more comprehensive platform. Unlike Ahrefs, which relies heavily on backlink-driven data, Similarweb uses actual user behavior, search activity, and engagement signals to deliver a broader and more accurate view of digital performance. From advanced keyword insights and trend detection to market-level data and enterprise-grade site audits, Similarweb enables teams to move from tactical execution to informed strategy.
It’s also worth considering that Similarweb includes features that many users don’t realize it offers, like rank tracking, technical site audits, and even backlink analysis, all built on a data foundation trusted by competitive intelligence professionals and enterprise brands.
In this comparison, Similarweb comes out on top with its big picture metrics coupled with more granular insights.
FAQs
Which tool is better for competitive intelligence?
Similarweb is widely regarded as the gold standard for competitive intelligence, offering insights into traffic sources, audience behavior, and digital marketing strategies across any website or industry.
Which tool is easier to use for beginners?
Ahrefs has a self-serve interface designed for quick onboarding. While Similarweb may require a short learning curve but it also comes with dedicated customer support and onboarding for teams that need it.