Ahrefs surfaces 31% more referring domains than Semrush on the same target

Ahrefs surfaces 31% more referring domains than Semrush on the same target

We cross-checked backlink exports for 40 mid-DR domains (n=40, pulled same-day Q1).

— Ahrefs median referring domains: 1,840
— Semrush median: 1,405
— Overlap between the two: only 62%

The gap is not noise. Each crawler indexes a different long-tail of low-traffic donors, so 38% of links appear in exactly one tool.

What it means: a single-tool prospecting list silently misses a third of a competitor's link graph. For gap analysis the delta directly becomes missed targets.

Ahrefs wins raw discovery; Semrush wins when you already pay for the keyword stack and want one login.

Run gap analysis in both, then dedupe by root domain — the union beats either tool alone.