The SEO industry continues to evolve rapidly, and the tool Ahrefs remains at the heart of that evolution. For example, digital marketing agencies rely on Ahrefs to benchmark backlink profiles and keyword opportunities, while enterprise SEO teams use its massive index to track competitors at scale. In the U.S. and globally, the data compiled here offers a clear snapshot of how Ahrefs’s ecosystem is shifting. Read on to explore the full article.
Editor’s Choice
- Ahrefs generated $149.1 million in annual revenue by 2024.
- As of March 2025, Ahrefs indexed over 456.5 billion pages, a 12.94% increase since late 2024.
- Ahrefs’s keyword database grew from 20.8 billion in 2024 to 28.7 billion by March 2025, 37.98% growth.
- The number of indexed domains climbed to 267.6 million by March 2025, representing a 24.87% boost from late 2024.
- Ahrefs reported its external backlink index reached 35 trillion by 2025, a nearly 10× increase compared to 2022.
- The tool now supports 13 languages as of March 2025.
- Ahrefs added 20,113 new users in a single week during April 2025.
Recent Developments
- Ahrefs’s infrastructure spans 3,600 servers in 2025, up from 2,131 in 2022, a 69% increase.
- The system delivers metrics updates for 300 million pages every 24 hours, up 25% from 2022.
- Ahrefs crawls approximately 10 million new pages daily, compared with 3 million in 2022, a 233% growth.
- A platform upgrade introduced real-time Site Audit reporting with always-on monitoring.
- AhrefsBot ranks as one of the most active crawlers globally, reflecting expanded reach.
- Infrastructure investments reportedly exceed $900 million over three years.
- The tool claims coverage across 217+ regions and 10 search engines for keyword data.
- Actionable keywords account for 26.09% of the total 110 billion tracked.
Top Ahrefs Statistics
- Indexed pages, 456.5 billion as of March 2025.
- Indexed domains, 267.6 million as of March 2025.
- The keyword database size is 28.7 billion keywords as of early 2025.
- External backlinks indexed, 35 trillion by 2025.
- Keyword growth YoY 37.98% from 2024 to 2025.
- Platform support for 13 languages.
- Weekly new user addition of 20,000+ in April 2025.
- 3,600 servers in the infrastructure.
Ahrefs Overview Statistics
- U.S. users represent 60% of Ahrefs’s customer base as of 2025.
- Start-up users (0–9 employees) make up 40.99% of customers.
- Companies with 20–49 employees represent 24.60% of customers.
- Annual revenue reached $149.1 million by 2024.
- Ahrefs operates with a small global team of 141 employees.
- The database pulls from 243 countries and 10 search engines.
- Average review rating on software platforms is 4.7/5.
- Trustpilot rating reports 2.0/5, reflecting differing user expectations.
How Many Pages Are Created/Assisted with AI
- 25.8% of web pages are produced solely through human labor without any form of AI participation.
- Only 2.5% of web pages are crafted completely by fully autonomous AI systems.
- 9.87% of all pages reflect only slight AI involvement, falling within the 1–10% usage range.
- A significant 46.36% of pages depend on major AI assistance, representing 11–70% integration.
- Another 15.51% of pages are constructed with overwhelmingly high AI usage in the 71–99% bracket.
- Altogether, 71.7% of today’s web pages are produced through a combined Human + AI creation process.

Backlink Statistics
- Ahrefs reports an external backlink index of 35 trillion in 2025.
- The increase from 2022 to 2025 is nearly 960%.
- Ahrefs claims roughly 500 million referring domains mid 2025.
- Indexed pages reached 456.5 billion, supporting backlink volume scaling.
- Internal backlinks indexed reportedly total 27.2 trillion+.
- Ahrefs operates 3,600 servers to maintain its crawl index.
- The crawler processes 10 million new pages daily.
- High-impact links are typically dofollow from domains with substantial traffic.
- Backlink monitoring remains one of Ahrefs’s top differentiators in 2025.
Keyword Statistics
- The keyword database grew by 37.98%, from 20.8 billion in 2024 to 28.7 billion keywords in 2025.
- 90.63% of web pages receive no organic Google traffic due to targeting low-demand keywords.
- Ahrefs’s keyword database covers 226 geographic regions, the largest among SEO tools.
- Traffic Potential shows the total organic visits a top-ranking page receives from all ranked keywords.
- Ahrefs tracks keyword difficulty, search volume, and click data as core SEO differentiators.
- AI-driven search and zero-click SERPs influence developments in keyword research tools in 2025.
- Precise keyword targeting requires focusing on real traffic potential rather than search volume alone.
- Ahrefs’ database includes keywords from 10 search engines, reflecting global market coverage.
- Over 589 million keywords in Ahrefs’ database generate organic search traffic worldwide.
- The growing keyword database size improves coverage of U.S. and global search markets substantially.
Page Authority & Domain Rating Statistics
- 92% of websites in the top 10 Google results have a Domain Rating (DR) or Domain Authority (DA) of 35 or higher.
- Websites with a DR or DA above 60 rank in the top 5% of all websites globally.
- Sites with a DR or DA of 70+ face increased competition due to index scaling in 2025.
- An increase of 10 DR points on average correlates with a 15% boost in keyword rankings.
- Domains with DR above 30 and 1,000+ organic visits per month are often prioritized in filters.
- Traffic from referring domains shows a stronger correlation to SEO success than DR alone.
- Websites with DR or DA of 80+ receive over 500% more organic traffic than those with scores around 30.
- Pages ranking #1 on Google have, on average, 3.2x more referring domains than lower-ranking pages.
- Referring domains count remains a key SEO metric and feature in domain analysis tools.
- Less than 7% of websites achieve a DR/DA higher than 80, highlighting the elite status of high-authority sites.
Top Linked Domains
- In AI-generated Overviews spanning 76.7 million prompts, Wikipedia dominates domain mentions, securing as much as a 16.3% share.
- YouTube holds a strong position in Perplexity (16.1%) and AI Overviews (9.5%) as a frequently cited domain in Brand Radar data.
- Reddit (7.4%) and Quora (3.6%) feature prominently within AI Overviews.
- Major news outlets, including Reuters and AP (Apple News), emerge in ChatGPT’s most-cited domains with a 2.6% share.

Traffic and Conversion Statistics
- Only 25.8% of new content is fully human-written, influencing traffic drivers.
- 82% of marketers invest in content creation, affecting search visibility.
- Websites using AI publish more content and see higher traffic growth.
- Combined backlink and keyword insights support better conversion forecasting.
- Professional bloggers who use SEO tools see higher YoY traffic expansion.
- Site Explorer enables detailed traffic monitoring for domains and URLs.
- U.S. small teams often pay under $200/month for tool access.
- Conversion evaluation still requires layered analysis beyond backlink counts.
Prevalence of SERP Features
- Related Searches appear most frequently, showing up in 85.15% of results, and they continue to dominate SERP feature visibility.
- Reviews are present in 79.12% of SERPs, making them a highly influential and frequently encountered feature.
- Videos are found in 78.38% of search results, emphasizing the growing importance of multimedia content.
- People Also Ask sections appear in 64.24% of SERPs, underscoring their role in expanding query exploration.
- Image Blocks show up in 45.39% of search results, highlighting the relevance of visual elements.
- Standalone Images are included in 35.49% of SERPs, reinforcing the value of image-based search visibility.
- Shopping Results are visible in 15.19% of queries, indicating their more selective appearance.
- Discussions and Forums show up in 14.39% of SERPs, reflecting the influence of user-generated content.
- Featured Snippets are found in 10.47% of results, positioning them as a less common but impactful SERP feature.
- The Knowledge Graph continues to have minimal representation compared to other SERP features, appearing far less frequently overall.

Brand Visibility Statistics
- Ahrefs’ external backlinks increased by 960.61% from 3.3 trillion in 2022 to 35 trillion in 2025.
- The internal backlinks tracked by Ahrefs rose by 112.5% to 27.2 trillion in March 2025.
- Ahrefs indexed over 456.5 billion pages by March 2025, a growth of 12.94% since early 2025.
- Brand name anchors represent 23% of all Ahrefs backlinks, signaling overt brand visibility.
- Ahrefs holds the largest backlink index among major SEO competitors as of 2025.
- Independent reviews rate Ahrefs with an average of 4.7/5 across multiple business software platforms.
- Ahrefs publishes frequent AI and SEO research, enhancing its brand recognition and industry visibility.
- Agencies consider Ahrefs a standard tool for backlink strategy in competitive intelligence and enterprise SEO.
- Ahrefs’ brand web mentions have a high correlation coefficient (0.664) with AI overview brand visibility.
- AI-driven studies show Ahrefs’ branded anchors correlate with SEO visibility at 0.527 strength, boosting brand presence.
Ahrefs Content & Publishing Statistics
- 82% of marketers invest in content marketing.
- 71.7% of new content includes some AI involvement.
- 25.8% of new web content is fully human-authored.
- 90.63% of pages generate no organic traffic, according to Ahrefs’ research.
- Content publishing supports the brand’s visibility growth.
- Websites using AI grow 5% faster.
- Ahrefs’s data-rich publications distinguish it from competitors.
- Frequent data posts drive inbound backlinks.
- Ahrefs’s content strategy enhances both authority and tool usage.
Market Share & Reviews Statistics
- The global SEO market is valued at $72.31 billion in 2025 and projected to reach $106.15 billion by 2030.
- In 2023, the market value was $82.3 billion, with projections up to $143.9 billion by 2030.
- Many SEO platforms have an average rating of 4.7/5 in 2025.
- Some platforms report ratings as low as 2.0/5, indicating mixed sentiment.
- Ahrefs ranks among the top-rated tools for backlink indexing and research.
- U.S. small agencies represent 41% of Ahrefs’s customer base.
- Ahrefs’s backlink index continues to reinforce market perception.
- 91% of marketers report that SEO positively impacts business outcomes.
SEO Industry Statistics
- 91% of marketers say SEO positively impacts performance.
- SEO ROI by industry ranges from 3.65× in e-commerce to 15.1× in real estate.
- 68% of online experiences begin with search engines.
- Mobile accounts for 59% of global online traffic.
- Local SEO software is forecast to reach $59.72 billion by 2032.
- European SEO software markets are projected 12.6% CAGR through 2034.
- Top-ranking pages average 1,447 words.
- 49% of marketers report organic search delivers the best ROI.

Ranking Statistics
- The #1 ranking page receives 27.6% of all clicks.
- 60% of top-ranking pages are over 3 years old.
- Results with 1,447 words tend to perform better.
- Featured snippets appear in 10–12% of queries.
- Updating older content can increase traffic by 10%+.
- Zero-click searches continue rising due to SERP changes.
- Domain authority and relevance remain essential ranking factors.
- Mobile-friendly pages rank more reliably in top positions.
Search Engine Statistics
- Google holds 90.04% of the global search market share.
- In the U.S., Google holds 86.83%, Bing 7.56%, and DuckDuckGo 2.23%.
- Google’s mobile search share is 93.88%.
- 79% of internet users rely on search engines regularly.
- Search engines drive 68% of all website traffic.
- The top Google result has a CTR of 27.6%.
- Google processes 8.5 billion searches daily.

Technical SEO Statistics
- IndexNow is adopted by 60 million+ websites, submitting 1.4 billion URLs daily.
- Fixing broken links improves crawl efficiency by 30%.
- A 1-second load delay can reduce conversions by 7%.
- HTTPS adoption among top sites exceeds 95%.
- JavaScript-rendered pages are increasing by 40% YoY.
- Schema markup adoption among high-ranking pages is 57%.
- Mobile-first indexing applies to 90%+ of new domains.
Local SEO Statistics
- The local SEO tools market is projected to $59.72 billion by 2032.
- 46% of all Google searches have local intent.
- 88% of consumers visit or call a business within 24 hours of a mobile search.
- “Near me” searches, including “open now”, increased 200%+ over two years.
- Claimed Google Business Profiles receive 70% more clicks.
- Businesses with 4.5★+ ratings get 17% more clicks than those with 3★.
- Consistent NAP data improves search visibility by 20%.
AI and SEO Statistics
- The AI SEO software market is projected to reach $4.97 billion by 2033, up from $1.99 billion in 2024.
- AI Overviews appear in 7.6% of searches in 2025.
- 65% of businesses report improved SEO results when using AI.
- Only 25.8% of new content is fully human-written.
- GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation, is becoming a core search strategy.
- AI-driven zero-click searches may reduce organic traffic by 15–25%.
- Schema-enhanced, data-rich content is 30–40% more likely to be selected in AI-generated answers.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
71.7% of all new web content includes generative AI.
It grew by 37.98%, from 20.8 billion in 2024 to 28.7 billion by March 2025.
Ahrefs holds an estimated 14.83% market share in the SEO-SEM tool category.
Ahrefs increased from 3 million new pages discovered per day in 2022 to 10 million per day in 2025, a growth of 233%.
Conclusion
The landscape of SEO and digital search continues to transform. From the dominance of traditional engines like Google to the rapid rise of AI-assisted content and search paradigms, tools such as Ahrefs are navigating a complex ecosystem. As practices evolve, with local SEO growth, technical crawling improvements, and AI-driven visibility, professionals and businesses must stay agile.
By understanding the statistics above, marketers can hone strategies across backlinks, keywords, technical setups, and emerging AI channels. The data here sets a foundation; now it’s time to turn insights into action.

