Find out which one between the two is best - Ahrefs or Majestic SEO but if you don't have time to read this whole post, close your Majestic SEO account right now!

1. mat t hewwoodward.co.uk
http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/experiments/ahrefs-majestic-seo-1-million-domain-showdown/
Matthew Woodward
Update #3: Ahrefs vs Majestic SEO – The 1 Million Domain
Showdown
If you don’t have time to read this post terminate your Majestic SEO account immediately & take out
the Ahrefs trial instead without hesitation.
UPDATE # 1: PLEASE SEE MAJESTIC’S RESPONSE AT THE END OF THIS POST
UPDATE # 2: AHREFS RESPONSE – FIXES APPLIED – NEW DATA
UPDATE # 3: MAJESTIC GO ALL OUT
The which backlink checker is best argument constantly shows up on f orums.
I tried to get to the bottom of this with my Ahref s vs Majestic SEO vs SEOMoz vs Raven Tools vs SEO
Spyglass post at the start of the year.
This highlighted that the top perf ormer Ahref s f ound 2.27% more links than its closest competitor Majestic
SEO.
To be honest the post didn’t go down well with some people.
To f ully enjoy this post you need to listen to this in the background, on repeat. Do it now!
Interesting Background Story
When I published the original comparison post it sparked a lot of controversy. I had just setup a small test to
see which is better based on 3 sites I own and have f ull visibility and control of .
It turned out that lots of customers of the f eatured companies were writing
in and ref erencing my post to see what was going on.
One person that had to deal with this was Viktar Khamianok the CEO of Link
Assistant who make SEO Spyglass. They were ranked bottom of the results
and he published this f ollow up to explain why.
Hats of f to Viktar f or dealing with it in the way that he did! Customers love
transparency but companies are terrif ied by it – kudos sir!
The Majestic SEO team chose to respond very dif f erently with the marketing
CEO Dixon Jones taking the lead.
It started with this comment on the article-
Hi.
I’m a director here at Majestic. Thanks for the study.
It is true that Ahrefs are increasing their index size. However, using resources for “discovery” comes

2. at a cost. The cost is the calculation as to the quality of each link.
It’s hard to comment on a study marked Site A, Site B, Site C. The data is public for all the data sets
except GWT, so I see no reason why studies can’t use verifiable sites.
You also did not specify whether you used Majestic’s Fresh or Historic Index. As you dig into those
data sets you will find some links only one index and some only in the other, however – both
indexes are excellent for different types of analysis.
Dropping into the analysis, however, is where analysis REALLY needs exploring in 2013. Penguin
tells us that it is quality, Not quantity that will count from here on in. Looking at the top 20 links in
each list will probably be plenty to come to a conclusion that may not be the one you suggest.
Anyway – can you list the three sites you used for the analysis?
The f irst line of his response is to instantly discredit the competition – I don’t like that, its not their f ault you
came second no matter how you dress it up.
But he does make some very valuable and critical points, I had used a small dataset that I had chosen to keep
anonymous.
A couple of days af ter Dixons comment on the 14th January 2013 Ann Smarty stopped by to leave a comment!
Yes, Ann Smarty herself !
I was totally stoked because I have f ollowed her f or a number of years, and now here she is on my blog! Wow!
Thanks for the test! I didn’t know Raven and SEO SpyGlass had their own indices. I thought they
were using someone else’s APIs
As for Majestic, have you tried using their “Historic” index as well? It returns much more data in my
experience.
She also makes a valuable point in that those 2 indexes do return dif f erent datasets.
The Twist In The Tale
A couple of weeks later on February 5th Ann Smarty wrote this post – aHref s versus MajesticSEO: The Real
Test
Interesting choice of post name, and very similar to what I had published and she had commented on just a
couple of weeks earlier.
You would have thought that f or the benef it of the readers and to of f er them the braodest look at the debate
she would have ref erenced my post as well – no dice.
Especially when you read this line-
since there have been a few rather vague comparisons recently, here’s the indepth experiment.

3. I can understand why she didn’t include my results though, I mean her dataset f ocuses on 100 random domains
while mine f ocuses on only 3.
You should read that post though so you get a better understanding of the tools.
Then Dixon dropped this comment on the article-
Thanks ever so much for writing this all up Ann. For the record I have a clear and obvious
preference for MajesticSEO.
Jacob: There were (as Link Assistant or Spyglass or someone said) quite a few things found
wanting only the Matthew Woodward post. The most glaringly obvious is that the analysis was done
with three sites he knows well, but will not disclose. Three sites with clear bias vs 100 sites with a
random element is a significant difference.
What wasn’t said was this: I don’t know whether he included his own site in his list of three, but the
objective nature of the analysis gets stretched further when you see that he is blocking Majestic’s
bot but not Ahrefs’: https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer?
folder=&IndexDataSource=F&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.matthewwoodward.co.uk%2F
(You need access to the site explorer to see the block in this link). You also won’t see the robots.txt
file unless you know what you are looking for. Now – we do not need to crawl his site to see links
TO his site, but if he insists on saying one system is better than another, he really shouldn’t make
the claim on a site which shows such obvious bias.
There. I said it. I tried to bite my lip for a few weeks, but good people are reading that review and
not seeing the lack of objectivity.
Seeing as we aren’t biting lips anymore-
Notice how he opens up and highlights his bias which af ter establishing, allows him to start pointing the bias
f inger.
Marketing 101 f olks. Establish, Finger. Prof it.
I actually made a Dixon based meme with those words to go here – but I removed it during editing to be nice. But
if you guys want it…
Either way he has the right approach, I’m doing exactly that with this blog! One day I’ll f inger you with a paid
product – in f act i’m f ingering you right now because this post will probably earn me af f iliate commision.
Anyway as you can tell, that didn’t sit well with me-
Hi,
Dixon I have noted the weaknesses in my initial tests from various sources and while you suggest
my test was done with ‘bias’ because they are 3 of my sites at random is complete bullshit.
I realise I left to much wiggle room for people to come up with justifications as to why Majestic didn’t
win the test.

4. To be honest I didn’t think it would cause this much of a stir!
The follow up test is going to leave no wiggle room and make this ‘random’ URL sample look
insignificant.
And seeing as your doing everything you can to discredit me and my data, I’ll also be highlighting
the relationship between Ann Smarty, yourselves and IMN. I wonder how many people read this
very post and weren’t aware of that?
For a CEO to come out and try to discredit people makes you look very weak – you should take a
leaf out of Viktar Khamianok’s book and handle it like a boss http://www.link-
assistant.com/blog/backlink-checkers-compared-seo-spyglass-ahrefs-majestic-seo-seomoz-raven-
tools/
We’ll see how random those 100 URL’s really were with my follow up – its going to be air tight this
time.
ps. I dont see what in my robots.txt file http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/robots.txt would be
blocking it?
To explain a f ew things here. It turns out that my new host WPEngine blocks Majestic at the server level bef ore
it ever reaches my site – Dixon personally investigated this and conf irmed that to be the case.
The ironic thing about all of this though, is his claim of bias.
What Dixon didn’t know is that the company behind SEO Spyglass had just given me over $2,000 worth of
prizes f or my readers.
They came last in my test.

5. Seeing as Dixon leans on it heavily in his argument, and establishes he is not biased – lets explore that f or a
second and put all of our cards on the table.
The Ahrefs / Majestic SEO / Ann Smarty Relationship
This is where things get interesting.
Ann Smarty is the community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com (IMN) which is a highly successf ul
internet marketing agency.
Actually its the f irst IM agency site I’ve ever come across where I think, they actually know what they are talking
about! Check them out!
IMN also control sites like WebmasterWorld, SEOChat, Crea8aSiteForums, ThreadWatch and so f orth.
Up until the start of February – Ahref s and IMN were in a partnership together. In f act Ahref s linked to IMN in
the f ooter!
On the 1st February 2013 the partnership between Ahref s and IMN ended.
By the 8th of February 2013 IMN had plastered promotions f or Majestic SEO all over their network of sites.

6. It was latest discovered that on the 29th January 2013 this tweet was made on the Ahref s Twitter account.
That Tweet not only promotes Dixon, but if you read the linked posts is all about Majestic SEO – Ahref s main
competitor.
According to the Ahref s team, IMN were in control of Ahref s social media accounts at this time and they did not
make the tweet themselves.
Timeline of events
To make it easy to understand-
11th Jan – I publish my initial comparison post
11th Jan – Dixon is aware and submits a comment
14th Jan – Ann Smarty is aware and submits a comment
29th Jan – IMN (Ann Smarty is a manager) posts a Tweet on Ahref s account promoting Dixon (Majestic)
01st Feb – The relationship between IMN and Ahref s ends
05th Feb – Ann Smarty publishes her 100 random domain comparison
05th Feb – Dixon Jones (Majestic) discredits my posts and says I’m biased
08th Feb – Majestic SEO banners start appearing on IMN properties
08th Feb – Dixon f inally gets in touch with me directly in the correct manner
I’ll let you do the math on that.
I should highlight that since Dixon got in touch with me he has being very f riendly behind closed doors, its a
shame he didnt take that approach in the public domain.
However that doesn’t come bef ore telling it how it is and how this post transpired.
In the public domain he chose to discredit me, competitors and vaguely string together bias, publically. He put
me in a position where I have to def end myself publically.
All the other people in my original test sent me a nice email asking how they could help.
My Relationships
I should also make you aware of my relationships upf ront with each party that is involved-
Majestic SEO
Everything you see here plus a f ew f riendly private emails clearing the air, diagnosing the host issue and

7. discussing my f ollow up. I initially delayed this test f or Majestic to roll out new f eatures so it wasn’t invalidated.
Dixon called me out publically and disputed the original test, this is my air tight response.
Ahrefs
They have provided me with API access to conduct the test f ree of charge and f illed in some of the holes
above. They are also of f ering the same access to any blogger that will independently verif y this test, see the
end of this post f or details. I also use their af f iliate links throughout this post, Majestic do not have an af f iliate
program or I would use theirs as well.
Ann Smarty
I’m a long time reader of her content and a f an.
Internet Marketing Ninjas
It is hard not to know who they are, I know of them – never dealt with them or any employee to my knowledge.
So Which One Is Better?
So all of this has distracted f rom the route question, which is better – Ahref s or Majestic SEO?
Only cold hard data can decide!
In Dixons ef f orts to discredit me and highlight bias, he did raise some valid points that cannot be ignored-
1. The original test was done with 3 of my personal sites I would not disclose
2. That makes the entire test biased in Dixons opinion
3. The data set was very small with just 3 sites analysed and compared
4. The results could not be independently verif ied
I promised that the “The follow up test is going to leave no wiggle room and make this ‘random’ URL sample look
insignificant.”
So with the points above and that promise in mind, I give you-
Ahrefs vs Majestic SEO – The 1 Million Domain Showdown
My original post used 3 of my own sites, Ann Smartys posts used 100 sites.
This post is going to use 1 million sites. No more messing about eh?
The Test Details
This is how this test is put together – you will be able to independently verif y all of these results yourself ,
instructions at the end of the post.
Initial Data Source – The Majestic Million
For those that don’t know, the Majestic SEO team publish what is called the Majestic Million.
The Majestic Million is a list of the top 1 million website in the world, based on the number of ref erring IP’s
f ound f or that domain in the f resh index.
These are the 1 million sites that Majestic SEO has more f resh backlink data on than any others.

8. So with this, Majestic SEO are outright telling us these are the sites they know the most about in terms of
backlinks.
Out of all of their data, these 1 million sites are the most linked to in the world according to them.
So thats the “bias” taken care of upf ront.
You can download a copy f or yourself f ree of charge and it will tell you the total number of linking subnets
(Ref SubNets) and the total number of linking IPs (Ref IPs) f or each domain in the top million.
Making The Comparison
To compare Majestic SEO with Ahref s I’m going to look up the total number of linking subnets and IP’s f or all of
the domains in the majestic million.
To give you an example with this blog-
Majestic SEO – This report shows 209 IP’s & 193 subnets
Ahref s – This report shows 331 IP’s & 288 subnets
So in that specif ic instance, Ahref s wins the test.
Now imagine doing the same – but f or 1 million sites.
That is the test I have done based on what Majestic say are the top 1 million sites in the world in terms of links.
Like I said – no wiggle room this time.
This is what the CSV data looks like in its raw f orm-

9. Don’t be fooled by what you can see in that image though!
Feel f ree to download a copy of the data that is used in this test.
The Test Results
With such a huge amount of data I decided to split the results into 10 groups of 100,000 URLs and then
compare those groups.
This is what the group numbers look like (refer to by_groups.csv in the data pack)-
Group
Ahref Wins
(IP)
Majestic Wins
(IP)
Ahref Wins
(Subnet)
Majestic Wins
(Subnet)
1-100,000 79,487 20,512 72,195 27,804
100,001-200,000 76,273 23,727 70,251 29,749
200,001-300,000 71,848 28,152 65,871 34,129
300,001-400,000 71,135 28,865 64,879 35,121
400,001-500,000 65,936 34,064 59,380 40,620
500,001-600,000 69,528 30,472 62,583 37,417
600,001-700,000 69,718 30,282 63,126 36,874
700,001-800,000 69,085 30,915 62,998 37,002
800,001-900,000 68,856 31,144 61,243 38,757
900,001-
1,000,000
67,806 32,118 60,211 39,713
Just looks like a bunch of meaningless numbers right?
What about now-
Wins By IP Address
Wins By IPs Ahref s MajesticS...020.00040.00060.00080.0001-100000100001-200000200001-300000300001-
400000400001-500000500001-600000600001-700000700001-800000800001-900000900001-1000000
Wins By Subnets
Wins By Subnets Ahref s MajesticS...10.00030.00050.00070.00090.0001-100000100001-200000200001-
300000300001-400000400001-500000500001-600000600001-700000700001-800000800001-900000900001-
1000000
Pretty brutal to look at if you are a current Majestic SEO customer right?
Now might be the right time to switch to Ahref s – click here to claim a f ree account.
But bef ore you do lets look at the totals-
Wins Ahrefs Majestic

10. IP Wins 709,673 291,250
Subnet Wins 642,737 358,186
In wee pretty graph f ormat-
Total WinsAhref sMajesticSEO100.000300.000500.000700.000900.000IP WinsSubnet Wins
Ahrefs Vs Majestic SEO Conclusion
Irrespective of opinion, relationships, bias and discreditation – the data does not lie.
The data never lies, its why I love working with data so much. Want to settle which design is better? Test it.
Want to see which is the best backlink checker? Test it.
Data does not lie.
Ahref s is clearly the winner here by a huge margin – a much larger margin than my initial test with just 3
domains highlighted.
In the Wins by IP test, Ahref s is f inding more than twice the amount than Majestic SEO is – 57% more to be
exact. They are winning on 71% of domains compared to Majestic SEO’s 29%.
In the Wins by Subnets test, Ahref s is still the clear winner f inding 284,551 more links than Majestic SEO. They
are winning on 64% of domains compared to Majestic SEO’s 36%.
So quite clearly, the best backlink checker is Ahrefs PERIOD.
Even if the source data is Majestic SEO’s very own Majestic Million – Ahref s still knows more about them than
Majestic does.
UPDATE # 1: PLEASE SEE MAJESTIC’S RESPONSE AT THE END OF THIS POST
UPDATE # 2: AHREFS RESPONSE – FIXES APPLIED – NEW DATA
UPDATE # 3: MAJESTIC GO ALL OUT
How To Verify The Data For Yourself
In an ef f ort to be unbiased and transparent I have 2 seperate ways f or you to independently verif y the data
yourself .
All of the data used in this test is available to download here.
Verification Method #1 – Easy
This is the easiest way to spot check the data.
1. Download the source data
2. Open the by_domains.csv f ile
3. Select a line at random
4. Enter the domain f rom column A into the search box at Majestic SEO and Ahref s
5. For Majestic SEO look at Referring IP addresses and Referring Class C subnets:

11. 6. For Ahref s look at Referring IPs and Referring subnets
You can manually spot check these at random!
Verification Method #2 – Hard
What if you want to verif y the data f or all million domains though?
Well f or that you will need a linux server with shell access, an Ahref s API key and these f iles.
WARNING: Bef ore you do this be aware that 1,000,000 API credits with Ahref s costs $10,000.
For f ull transparency’s sake Ahref s gave me an API key with 1,000,000 credits so I could run this test.
If any established bloggers want to confirm these results themselves and publish on their blog then
please get in touch with me.
To try and remove any doubt around this test I asked the Ahref s team if there was a way people could verif y
the results in bulk independently which isn’t possible.
So they suggesteed that they will provide API keys to other established bloggers to conf irm and publish the
results themselves.
This should help remove any wiggle room f or discreditation of the test or data.
Anyway here is how to do it-
1. Download this & you will f ind 2 f iles, get_stats.php and load.sh
2. Open get_stats.php and update it with your Ahref s API key on line 3
3. Download the Majestic Million CSV
4. Upload get_stats.php, load.sh & majestic_million.csv to your server
5. Make sure all of the f iles are in the same f older
6. Connect to your server with an SSH client and execute the load.sh script
7. Wait a f ew hours
8. This will output a f ile called by_domains.txt, rename to by_domains.csv
Signing Off
Remember f olks regardless of all of the controversy the data does not lie.
The simple f act is Ahref s knows 57% more about Majestic SEO’s Majestic Million than they do.
You can sign up f or a f ree Ahref s account here.
If I ever meet Dixon at a conf erence hopef ully he won’t drop kick me through a table. Perhaps I would let him
write Majestic SEO across my head in permanent marker f or an hour though =D
Next time you see this topic in a forum – feel free to use this post to instantly win the argument.
Download A Printable PDF Of This Post
Just share this post to download a printable PDF of this post f or you to keep f orever & ever!

12. google +1
like
Update #1: Majestic SEO’s Initial Response
Alex Chudnovsky the Majestic SEO managing director submitted this in a comment but it is only f air this is
highlighted and made part of the post.
Here is what he had to say-
It’s nice to see that Majestic Million data that we offer for free would cost $10000 elsewhere.
Data does not lie, but it can be wrong/bogus/false and a good analyst would always keep an eye for
anomalies before jumping to big conclusions.
We are pretty busy right now setting up new hardware, so we’ll get back to you on this in detail next
week, in the meantime I think you should double check your key numbers – ahrefs appears to be
the only backlink provider which somehow shows MORE referring IPs/subnets than number of
referring domains (that’s like 2+2=5).
Using your own example listed in the post above –
http://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/matthewwoodward.co.uk
Referring IPs: 331
Referring subnets: 288
Referring domains: 282
Naturally at least one of those numbers is incorrect.
We can’t easily get list of those IPs, but the referring domain count is confirmed by External links tab
using 1 link per ref domain limit –
https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks/subdomains/matthewwoodward.co.uk/unique-domains/all-
all
This shows 282 matches, the same as on the overview page… the same but potentially misleading.
How many of you know that ahrefs counts hostnames as referring domains? It’s easy to check –
https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/refdomains/subdomains/matthewwoodward.co.uk/substring-
blogspot.com
There are 3 referring domains shown there when limiting them to blogspot.com:
1) seojunkis.blogspot.com
2) 1chicagocarpetcleaner.blogspot.com
3) ongoogleadsense.blogspot.com
It’s the same root domain (blogspot.com) and Majestic counts it as 1 referring domain. Every major
back link provider does the same as otherwise numbers will be artificially inflated and likely to
mislead those who’d trust them blindly.

13. Perhaps you should ask ahrefs why their ratio of IPs/RefDomains is over 1 (this is just wrong),
whereas more typical ratio is a lot less, for example Open Site Explorer (OSE) shows 85 linking C
blocks (subnets) and 174 ref domains – ratio of 0.48 and in our case it is 193/287=0.67. For big
domains such as google.com this ratio will be a lot lower – 0.024 in Majestic’s case and 0.032 in
OSE. Homework – calculate same ratio for ahrefs and spot another anomaly shown for google.com!
We’ll get back to you on this next week with a more detailed answer but I hope that you’ll get
explanation from ahrefs on their innovative counting of referring IPs that can be greater than the
number of referring domains.
cheers
Alex
Alex Chudnovsky
Managing Director
Majestic SEO
We’ll see what the Ahref s team say tomorrow, I’m going to sleep its late here. Get a f eeling I’m going to wake
up to war!
Update #2 – Ahrefs Bites Back
The Ahref s team have just sent me this update through. I’m uber busy at the moment but this update and new
set of data is going to take some time to digest and turn into graphs.
Will probably do that across the weekend, but here is what they had to say-
First of all, thank you, Matt, for such a high-quality approach to comparison and data verification.
Really, there is nothing surprising in the fact that Ahrefs won this test. At the moment, our index is
25% larger in size and our crawler runs 2-3 times faster. With this initial parameters under our belt,
Ahrefs will win any objective test held on a large sample of domains.
With regard to the comments made by Alex Chudnovsky.
1. The fact that Ahrefs counts hostnames instead of referring domains – this is not true. We count
the actual domains but there are exceptions, there are domains the subdomains of which are
considered as separate domains, and I can explain why.
For example, blogspot.com. On this domain, all subdomains represent someone’s blogs, that is,
every subdomain has its owner who controls it. In fact, subdomains of blogspot.com do not differ
much from regular domains in the .com zone.
Large quantity of ref domains is treated by search engines as a good sign – but why? Because they
are more difficult to obtain! But if we are talking about blogspot, it is difficult to get links from
different subdomains over there.
In other words, we believe that Google and other search engines treat every blog on blogspot.com
as a separate domain, because it is reasonable to do so. Therefore, we also show each blog as a
separate domain. Due to this, on the Referring Domains tab at Ahrefs you can see every blog
separately instead of one and the same blogspot.com which renders little information. It is important

14. separately instead of one and the same blogspot.com which renders little information. It is important
whether it is 1, 10, or 1000 blogs that links to you.
Other examples of services which we consider to be an exception: livejournal.com, wordpress.com,
tumblr.com, webs.com.
The fact that we do not put all domains in the same row blindly, that we look at their features and try
to be closer to the interpretation of a domain similar to the one by search engines – I think it’s our
advantage.
2. Speaking about the cost of data of $10,000. I wonder how much it costs to users to make
1,000,000 API requests to get these stats from MajesticSEO? I mean the API which allows to further
distribute the data. I did not find any prices on the website. Maybe someone knows and can drop
me a line about it in the comments?
3. Number of IPs and referring domains. Thanks to your comments, we now have found a couple of
small bugs in the calculation of IPs. The first one – the old IPs were not always disposed, and the
second one – the query for the number of referring domains for popular domains could fail with a
timeout (this is what happened to Google.com). The problems have been fixed already, as you can
see – one of them worked in favor of Ahrefs, the second one – in favor of Majestic SEO. I used the
scripts that Matt shared to get the stats again and to check whether those issues were significant.
The result:
By IPAhrefs wins 70% domains Majestic SEO 30%
By Subnets Ahrefs wins 63% domains Majestic SEO 37%
As I mentioned in the beginning, Ahrefs has an objectively larger index and a faster crawler, so it is
not surprising at all that we will win any test; minor errors will not change the overall picture.
I will send Matt the archive with these files so anyone could double-check the data.
By the way, thank you guys for your attention to these discrepancies. This is cool to get a bug report
from the competitors, I do not think that we could have gained it under any other conditions
I do not want to be in debt and, in turn, will tell you about a few situations when 2 +2 = 5 when
it comes to domains and IPs.
There are at least two reasons why there can be more Referring IPs than Referring Domains.
The first case:
The same domain can have multiple IP addresses. Usually this is done to spread the load. More
information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin_DNS
The second case:
Let’s suppose, X is the domain for which there are only three backlinks from these pages:
http://subdomain1.domain.com/index.html is located on the server with IP 1.1.1.1
http://subdomain2.domain.com/index.html is located on the server with IP 2.2.2.2
http://subdomain3.domain.com/index.html is located on the server with IP 3.3.3.3
It turns out that Domain X has only one referring domain (domain.com) but 3 referring IPs (1.1.1.1,
2.2.2.2, 3.3.3.3)
In any case, I am glad that you have started to actively improve your index.
We enjoy competition and look forward to having a strong opponent in this field.

15. Dmitry Gerasimenko
CEO
A very interesting response that directly deals with all of the issues raised.
It seems that Majestic did uncover some f laws with the Ahref s data and highlight 2 bugs that caused data
issues but these are resolved within 24 hours of them being identif ied.
This hasn’t had much of an impact f or Majestic though, previously Ahref s won on 71% of domains by IP which
is now reduced to 70%.
Wins on subnet were previously 64% and is now residing at 63%!
I haven’t had time to verif y the new data yet but if you want to do so you can download it here.
Update #3 – Majestic Goes All Out
Majestic have now published a f ull response on their blog.
It is pretty hard to digest so stick with it but it does touch on some good points.
Our full response to the points raised in your original piece can be found
on our blog.
I hope this serves as a useful summary of our position for your readership:
We welcome comparisons between aspects of our product offering and those of
our competitors. We believe that the best comparisons will follow the model
set by the SeoMoz Open Site Explorer / Majestic SEO shoot out ( link to
http://www.stonetemple.com/majestic-seo-open-site-explorer-shootout/ ) -
comparing various aspects of the product offering in order to achieve a
balanced review. Naturally, different people have different needs from their
link intelligence toolset, and we respect that for some, regardless of data
size and quality, Ahrefs may be a better match for their particular needs at
present.
We believe that the evidence from Ahrefs – which we first became aware of
from your blog, for which we are grateful, demonstrates that they calculate
IP, and Domain counts in a manner that we believe exaggerates the size of
their index, certainly when used in comparison of size against our Fresh
Index. We also present evidence that suggests that our Fresh Index is likely
to be larger than Ahrefs – based on an update of the test you described
after we fixed a bug in our system. We haven’t tested our Historic index as
we are confident it would “win” by a significant margin.
Both Ahrefs and Majestic have sufficiently large index’s ( in terms of our
“Fresh” product ) that we do not feel that size alone provides a realistic
comparison. Comparisons of crawl rate are also meaningless – our crawl has
undergone a massive upgrade – and is far more intelligent, crawling sites
more sensitively than ever before, whilst achieving a deeper crawl rate. We

16. don’t want our bots crashing around like a bull in the china shop – it isn’t
good for us and it isn’t good for the industry as a whole. That’s why we
have invested in innovating with tools like flow metrics, and link profiles,
and continue to do so.
I’ll close with the same conclusion as in our post – Competition is good, it
serves the market well, and forces all involved to invest in innovation. The
real winners in this battle for market share are the end users. It’s an
exciting time to be an SEO.
Alex Chudnovsky,
Majestic SEO Managing Director
What do you think? Have we got an answer to the core question of which one is best yet?