Authoritasā Market Analysis Tool: Will It Replace Ahrefs?
I saw Authoritas counting down today on AS and thought Iād do a quick test to see if this is aĀ #goodbuyĀ orĀ #goodbye.
After logging in, I notice they have A LOT of featuresĀ (should have tested this earlier).This mini-review only explores the Market Analysis feature of Authoritas. Which basically tells youĀ what keywords you/ your competitors are ranking for.Ā (Iāll check out other features if possible!!)
ā¦So you canĀ optimize the ones you rank forĀ on the 2nd or 3rd page of Google andĀ āstealā potential keywordsĀ away from your competitors.
Most SEO tools do not have this featureĀ because it takes a lot of resources to crawl billions of pages every day. Plus maintaining and updating the database regularly.
I want to know if Authoritas is good enough to cancel my Ahrefs subscription. Letās put it to the testā¦
Authoritas VS Ahref vs MOZ
Since my domain is weak and fairly new, this is a good opportunity to test the power of Authoritas. I mean,Ā they must be good if they can detect a small fly like meĀ and index some of the keywords, right?
Number of keywords for my websiteā¦
Authoritas: 20 Keywords
Ahref: 437 Keywords
MOZ: 65 Keywords
Authoritas was only able to findĀ 5% of the keywordsĀ found by Ahref.
Hmmm not very good.
Maybe because my site is not big enough to be under the radar of Authoritas? And so they did not crawl my site properly and index the keywords?
Letās doĀ another search for Backlinko.com, one of the most popular sites on SEOā¦
Number of keywords found for Backlinkoā¦
Authoritas:Ā 18,106 keywords
Ahref:Ā 161,000 keywords
MOZ:Ā 48,300 keywords
As expected, the percentage hasĀ increased from 5% to 11%Ā because Backlinko is a much more popular site with nearly 400k monthly search traffic.
However, the number of keywords found wasĀ still very lowĀ compared to Ahref.
Now the important questionā¦
Would I trust Authoritas to help me find ranking keywords?
No.
Why should I create my SEO strategies based on 5-10% of Ahref data? TheĀ potential loss from missed opportunities or poor decisions will cost me much more.
What are the chances of Authoritasā visibility explorer getting to Ahrefās level?
At least 3-5 years. AndĀ not likelyĀ be able to catch up.
It takes A LOT of resources to crawl billions of web pages a day, maintain a huge database, and constantly update it to keep it fresh.
MOZ, one of the OG SEO tools with more than 15 years in the business, has only managed to find 15-30% of what Ahref finds.
Mind you, this is a company with over 700k monthly search volume and millions in annual revenue.
So that should tell us how big of a task this is.
Authoritas Market Analysis Tool Rating:
2 out of 5 moos
What about WriterZen, Labrika, or other SEO LTDs? Can they help me figure out what keywords me & my competitors are ranking for?
Unfortunately, no. Finding keywords not only for your site, but also for ALL websites require a lot of crawling and a huge database. Ahref reportedly crawls overĀ 6 billion web pages per dayĀ and updates it every 15-30 minutes to ensure the data is fresh.
This is resource intensive and very difficult to achieve, especially for a startup with limited funds.
Can the Google Search Console (GSC) reveal the same data?
The free GSC is capable of uncovering all the major search queries that visitors use to find your website.
However, these are search queries, not keywords.
A keyword can have multiple search queries that people use to search on Google.Ā You want to know BOTH the keywords and the search terms.
Besides, theĀ GSC can only show search queries for your own website.Ā You will not be able to check what keywords your competitors are ranking for and do a competitor analysis. For that, you still need a tool like Ahref/Semrush.
Their market analysis feature and it was a total dud! Letās check out their rank tracker and keyword research tool to see if they measure up.
Rank Tracking Tool
I added a couple of keywords to test and the data was updated within 1-2 hours. The position tracking was also accurate. Pass
Apart from the usual rank tracking features, such as showing rank position changes and a graph showing your position over time, there areĀ 2 other notable featuresĀ that caught my eye. (As I later discovered, these two were also useful in the keyword research tool).
Serp Features
These areĀ special features that show up on the SERP result. For example ā the people also ask box, video recommendations, Google adsā¦
So even if you rank #3, these additional SERP features can push your position down because they take up quite a bit of space at the top of the screen. With this information, you can either shoot for a less ācompetitiveā keyword first or push even harder to get to the top. Not super important information in this section, but good to know.
User Intent
This gives you at a glance an understanding of the user intent of the keywords you are ranking for. Not really important in this section. But very useful when we get to the keyword research tool. But I suspect they just want to include it here to beef up the rank tracker a bit
One star is taken away for theĀ below average UI/UXā¦
Rank Tracking Feature (Rating):
4 out of 5 moos!
Keyword Research Tool (Data Accuracy)
Letās compare it toĀ WriterZen, since we know they use the standard Google KPIĀ (like Ubersuggest, Keywordtool.io, & many other KW tools)Ā to get their keyword data, and alsoĀ Ahrefs, which is one of, if not the best on the market.
The first step (and easiest way) to measure data quality is to compareĀ keyword search volume.
And so I ran a few searches for the various keywords belowā¦
āKEYWORD RESEARCHā
AuthoritasĀ ā NA
WriterZenĀ (Google API) ā 5,400
Ahref ā 16,000
āTECHNICAL SEOā
AuthoritasĀ ā 1,600
WriterZenĀ (Google API) ā 1,600
Ahref ā 3,500
āSEO FOR BEGINNERSā
AuthoritasĀ ā 720
WriterZenĀ (Google API) ā 880
Ahref ā 600
āAPPSUMOā
AuthoritasĀ ā NA
WriterZenĀ (Google API) ā 14,800
Ahref ā 22,000
āLIFETIME DEALSā
AuthoritasĀ ā NA
WriterZenĀ (Google API) ā 880
Ahref ā 500
āYOGA FOR BEGINNERSā
AuthoritasĀ ā 40,500
WriterZenĀ (Google API) ā 49,500
AhrefĀ ā 34,000
āSUMO WRESTLINGā
AuthoritasĀ ā 60,500
WriterZenĀ (Google API) ā 60,500
AhrefĀ ā 5,600
My Observations for Authoritasā Keyword Research Tool
I noticed thatĀ Authoritasā search volume is very similar to WriterZenās, in some cases exactly the same.
That tells me they are probablyĀ using the same Google API.
But there were also many cases where they were slightly different. So my guess is that Authoritas is also trying toĀ create their own click estimation modelĀ to make the data more accurate.
But for this reason, it seems like isĀ a bug whereseveral of their searches returned 0 results or NAĀ where there was actually significant search volume.Ā (See above for the keyword āappsumoā, and ākeyword researchā).
3 out of 10 searches I ran had this problem. Hopefully itās a simple error they can fix. (Removal of one star)
Keyword Data Accuracy (Rating):
Ahref:Ā (5/5)
WriterZen: (4/5)
Authoritas: (3/5)
If Authoritas manages to perfect keywordĀ research data with its own model,Ā this investment will pay offĀ (roadmap). Another big plus is the generous limits. We getĀ unlimited keyword research even with Tier 1.
Keyword Research Tool (Features)
As mentioned in the rank tracking section, Authoritas has a unique feature calledĀ āUser Intentā.
Basically, the AI looks at the top results and makes a guess about the userās intent. There areĀ 4 categoriesĀ ā information, navigation, transaction and research.
Here are some examplesā¦
Appsumo Briefcase Login āĀ Navigation
What is Appsumo Briefcase āĀ Informational & Research
Appsumo Briefcase vs Plus āĀ Research
Buy Appsumo Briefcase āĀ Transactional
This will help you determine ifĀ a keyword is worth ranking forĀ and whatĀ TYPE of contentĀ you should write.
For exampleā¦
Would you want to rank for āAppsumo loginā even though it might have a LOT search volume? Nope.
Semrush has that feature, but Ahref does not. I usually have to do it manually. With Authoritas, I can let the AI tell me what the user intent is. Nice!
THE END⦠of the unique features for Authoritas.
Sad but true: the rest of their features pale in comparison to even WriterZen.
Take a look at the comparison chartĀ in the Nimbus note + aĀ quick demoĀ of their features, and youāll seeā¦
Keyword Research Tool Features Rating:
2 out of 5 moos!
(It would be 1 star without the User intent feature)
Conclusion!
Authoritas hasĀ A LOT of other SEO featuresĀ and I only had time to go through the market analysis tool, the rank tracking tool and the keyword research tool.
What is your favourite feature on Authoritas that Iām missing out?
Let me know by joining the discussion on our Facebook group!