Ahrefs, one of the most popular and widely used SEO tools, has declined to comment on why it failed to adequately address an update by Google which has made its traffic and rankings data “unusable.”
Google recently confirmed it rolled out a change to how search results links work, swapping direct URLs for a server-side redirect through google.com/goto — a move widely seen as the search giant’s latest attempt to choke off scraping by SEO tools and AI companies.
The shift, first spotted in testing back in July, has now been widely rolled out across residential IPs.
Most SEO tools and rank trackers, including Adobe-owned SEM Rush and other smaller platforms, were able to “patch” the google.com/goto encryption almost immediately.
Ahrefs, one of the most expensive SEO tools on the market, has said it is rolling out a solution, but the reality is its data and various SEO tools are virtually useless for the time being.
“All SEOs should completely ignore Ahrefs data and estimates until they get on top of this issue, as most of their rivals have already done,” a Seattle-based SEO agency founder told Foreign Policy Journal.
“Their data is woefully incorrect and until they fully roll out a patch, it is completely unusable for in-house and agency SEOs.”
Ahrefs’ data is now especially inaccurate for news sites, as the platform is attributing all traffic coming from Top Stories/Google News carousel features to Google.com, rather than the respective publishers.
As a result, many news sites have lost 99% of their traffic in the space of a week, according to Ahrefs’ estimations. In reality, their traffic has remained stable and Ahrefs is simply unable to track traffic or ranking keywords with any level of accuracy.
“It’s a woeful oversight from Ahrefs, as other SEO platforms began patching this issue back in July, when Google first started rolling out the encryption,” an SEO freelancer said.
“They really should have paused all updates in site explorer and keyword explorer until they found a solution and fully rolled it out.
“And it’s not too late for them to resolve this: they should immediately roll back their traffic data for all sites to their August data, back when it was at least somewhat accurate and useful.”
Ahrefs’ PR team did not respond to a request for comment sent by Foreign Policy Journal, querying why they have failed to adequately address the issue, while most of their rivals were able to find a solution almost immediately.
Ahrefs CEO and founder Dmytro Gerasymenko also did not respond to a request for comment.
Furthermore, Ahrefs did not respond when asked why they didn’t freeze traffic and ranking updates until they had found a solution, rather than allowing updates – which simply took traffic away from publishers and attributed it to google.com – to happen.
Ahrefs and other SEO tools have always been quite inaccurate, as their estimated traffic data is based on shaky methodology. But following Google’s latest move to block scrapers, Ahrefs’ data is no longer just inaccurate – it’s truly unusable and serves no purpose to SEO professionals.
