ahrefs.com — domain analysis
ahrefs.com describes itself as "We help marketers drive visibility across AI search, SEO, content, and social – with the largest AI and search databases online.". It was registered in 2010, served from Toronto, Canada. It has a valid HTTPS certificate, 5 of 6 common security headers, 3 tracking scripts.
What is ahrefs.com about?
The words appearing most often on the homepage, excluding common filler, are
a rough indication of subject matter rather than a description of the business:
- marketing ×20
- search ×16
- ahrefs ×11
- conference ×10
- prosthe ×9
- data ×6
- content ×6
- platform ×5
- brand ×5
- reports ×4
Does ahrefs.com publish the usual trust pages?
Found: about, privacy, terms. Not found at the usual addresses:
contact.
These were checked at conventional paths only, so a site using different URLs may
publish them elsewhere.
How does ahrefs.com compare with other domains analysed here?
Measured against the 11 domains in this index. This is a
small, self-selected sample — the domains people happened to look up — not a
representative sample of the web.
| Response time | Faster than 82% of them (median 417ms) |
|---|---|
| Security headers | More than 89% of them |
| Domain age | Older than 36% of them |
Related domains in this index
Analysed domains sharing the same network (AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.):
Sharing a network means sharing a host or CDN. It implies nothing about a
relationship between the sites themselves.
Analysed domains built on a similar stack:
Other analysed domains served from the same country:
When was ahrefs.com registered?
ahrefs.com was registered on 25 November 2010, which makes it about 15 years old.
A registration this old means the domain has been renewed repeatedly, which costs money every year and is not something abandoned or disposable projects tend to do.
The registrar of record is Name.com, Inc..
Registration runs until 25 November 2029.
The domain carries 1 registry lock, which blocks unauthorised transfer or deletion.
| Registered | 25 November 2010 |
|---|---|
| Expires | 25 November 2029 |
| Registrar | Name.com, Inc. |
| Registry status | client transfer prohibited |
Where is ahrefs.com hosted?
The first address resolves to infrastructure in Toronto, Canada.
The network is operated by Cloudflare, Inc. (AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.).
Hosting location describes where the responding server sits, not where the business is. A CDN will report its nearest edge rather than the origin.
What is ahrefs.com running on?
ahrefs.com exposes 2 identifiable technologies: Google Analytics, Cloudflare.
Cloudflare sits in front of the origin, so the server header, IP addresses and response timing describe the edge rather than the machine actually running the site.
Visitor tracking is present (Google Analytics), so this homepage is not cookie-free.
- Google Analytics
- Cloudflare
How does the homepage respond?
The server answered with HTTP 200 over
HTTPS.
At 46ms to first byte this response is fast for a homepage measured from a single European location.
The HTML alone is 1287KB before images, stylesheets or scripts are counted, which is heavy for a document that browsers must parse before anything renders.
The HTML is compressed with gzip.
| Server header | cloudflare |
|---|---|
| Compression | gzip |
| Page size | 1,318,138 bytes |
| Declared language | en |
| Mobile viewport | declared |
What does the homepage say about itself?
The title is 48 characters, inside the range that displays without truncation.
A meta description of 128 characters is present.
24 of 114 images carry no alt attribute, which leaves them unreadable to screen readers and uninterpretable to image search.
| Title | Ahrefs—AI Marketing Platform Powered by Big Data (48 chars) |
|---|---|
| Meta description | We help marketers drive visibility across AI search, SEO, content, and social – with the largest AI and search databases online. (128 chars) |
| H1 | Make your business discoverable—in search, AI, and beyond (1 on the page) |
| Canonical | https://ahrefs.com/ |
| Open Graph title | Ahrefs—AI Marketing Platform Powered by Big Data |
| Headings / images | 2 H2s, 114 images (24 without alt text) |
Is ahrefs.com served over a valid certificate?
The HTTPS certificate is issued by Google Trust Services and is
valid until 2026-12-18, which is 74 days from the date of this check. It covers
2 hostnames.
- ahrefs.com
- *.ahrefs.com
The certificate has 74 days left to run.
It covers 2 hostnames, so it was issued for this site specifically.
Which security headers does it set?
5 of 6 are set (HSTS, Content Security Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy). Absent: Permissions-Policy.
| Header | Set | Value |
|---|---|---|
| HSTS | yes | max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload |
| Content Security Policy | yes | frame-ancestors 'self' |
| X-Content-Type-Options | yes | nosniff |
| X-Frame-Options | yes | deny |
| Referrer-Policy | yes | strict-origin-when-cross-origin |
| Permissions-Policy | no | — |
How is DNS configured for ahrefs.com?
| IP addresses | 104.18.39.141, 172.64.148.115, 2606:4700:440d::ac40:9473, 2606:4700:440b::6812:278d |
|---|---|
| Reverse DNS | 104.18.39.141, 172.64.148.115 |
| Name servers | adam.ns.cloudflare.com, yolanda.ns.cloudflare.com |
| Mail (MX) | aspmx.l.google.com (pri 10), alt1.aspmx.l.google.com (pri 20), alt2.aspmx.l.google.com (pri 30), aspmx2.googlemail.com (pri 40), aspmx3.googlemail.com (pri 50) |
| SPF | v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net include:_spf.google.com include:spf.mail.intercom.io include:servers.mcsv.net include:mg-spf.greenhouse.io ~all |
| TXT records | 21 |
ahrefs.com resolves to 4 addresses, which indicates load balancing or a CDN rather than a single origin server.
Mail is handled by 5 exchangers.
An SPF record is published, giving receiving servers a rule for which hosts may send as this domain.
Reverse DNS resolves to 104.18.39.141, 172.64.148.115, which usually names the hosting provider.
Who runs DNS and mail for ahrefs.com?
DNS is operated by Cloudflare rather than self-hosted name servers.
Mail is handled by Google Workspace.
The domain publishes AAAA records and accepts connections over IPv6.
What else is worth noting about ahrefs.com?
2 of 4 externally hosted scripts carry no subresource integrity hash. If one of those hosts were compromised, the replacement script would run with full access to the page.
1 email address appears in the homepage markup, where address-harvesting crawlers will find it.
Can ahrefs.com be spoofed in email?
DMARC is set to quarantine, so mail failing authentication is sent to spam rather than the inbox.
CAA records restrict certificate issuance to 6 named authorities (issuewild comodoca.com, issuewild digicert.com; cansignhttpexchanges=yes, issuewild letsencrypt.org, issuewild pki.goog; cansignhttpexchanges=yes), so no other CA should be able to issue for this domain.
The zone is not DNSSEC-signed. That is still the norm for most domains, but it means DNS answers cannot be cryptographically verified.
What does robots.txt allow?
robots.txt is 908 bytes and names
1 user-agent group.
It does not blanket-disallow general crawlers.
No sitemap is declared in robots.txt.
AI crawler policy
robots.txt names no AI crawlers specifically, so they fall under whatever rule
applies to User-agent: *.
What structured data does the homepage publish?
- Organization
- PostalAddress
The homepage publishes 2 structured data types: Organization, PostalAddress.
What does ahrefs.com load from third parties?
The homepage pulls resources from 4 third-party hosts (cdn-cookieyes.com, facebook.com, googletagmanager.com, px.ads.linkedin.com). Each one sees the visitor IP and user agent on every page load.
1 cookie is set before any interaction (__cf_bm).
The page links or refers to X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube.
| Cookie | Secure | HttpOnly | SameSite |
|---|---|---|---|
| __cf_bm | yes | yes | none |
Does ahrefs.com settle on one address?
Plain HTTP redirects to HTTPS, so visitors who type the bare address still land on the secure version.
The www address redirects to https://ahrefs.com/, so the site settles on one canonical hostname.
How easily can ahrefs.com be crawled?
A sitemap index is served at https://ahrefs.com/sitemap.xml listing 6 entries.
A deliberately invalid URL correctly returns HTTP 404, so missing pages will not be indexed.
What tracking does ahrefs.com run?
3 tracking scripts detected: Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, LinkedIn Insight.
A consent platform is in place (CookieYes), so in the EU and UK these should only fire after the visitor agrees.
How does ahrefs.com look when shared?
All five social preview tags are present, so links shared to social platforms and chat apps will render with a title, description and image.
The page declares 14 hreflang alternates (x-default, de, en, es, fr, id, it, pl, pt, tr, uk, zh), so it targets more than one language or region.
How are images, fonts and scripts handled?
114 images on the homepage, 2 of them lazy-loaded (2%).
All image references use JPEG, PNG or GIF. WebP or AVIF typically cut image weight substantially at the same visual quality.
The page pulls 6 external stylesheets and 5 external scripts, with 3 carrying defer or async.
Responses carry Cloudflare edge headers, so content is served from a CDN rather than straight from the origin.
Is ahrefs.com accessible and current?
The page uses 2 landmark elements and 28 ARIA attributes.
No skip-to-content link was found, which keyboard users rely on to bypass navigation.
Can search engines index ahrefs.com?
Nothing on the homepage prevents indexing: no noindex is set in the robots meta tag or the X-Robots-Tag header.
The homepage carries 77 internal and 14 external links across 6 outside hosts.
Visible text is only 1% of the HTML, which indicates the page is assembled in the browser rather than served as content.
How is ahrefs.com delivered?
The HTML is served with Cache-Control: public, max-age=900, must-revalidate, no-store.
HTTP/3 is advertised via alt-svc, so modern browsers will upgrade to QUIC after the first visit.
A web app manifest is declared, so the site is installable as a progressive web app.
Frequently asked questions
Does ahrefs.com set the usual HTTP security headers?
It sets 5 of 6. The ones not present are: Permissions-Policy.
Does ahrefs.com allow AI crawlers?
robots.txt names no AI crawler specifically, so they fall under the wildcard rule, which does not disallow them.
What is ahrefs.com built with?
The homepage exposes these fingerprints: Google Analytics, Cloudflare. A site behind a CDN or rendered server-side may use more than it reveals.
Where does this data come from?
Every figure was measured by our own server on 4 October 2026: DNS lookups, one HTTPS request to the homepage, a TLS handshake and a request for robots.txt. No third-party SEO API is involved.
Is any of this traffic or authority data?
No. Traffic, authority and ranking figures cannot be measured by inspecting a domain, only modelled. Everything here is a direct observation.
I own ahrefs.com and want this page removed.
Ask through the contact page on this site, from an address at the domain, and the report will be taken down. It only ever shows what the domain already serves publicly.
Analysed 4 October 2026.
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