---
name: seo-data-trust
description: How to treat Ahrefs columns and SEO data (KD, DR, Volume, CPC, Traffic value, SERP features, AI Overviews, Search Console). Load before any work with keyword exports or SEO APIs.
---

# SEO data: what to trust

Source: Max Kiriienko, https://mxkeey.com/playbooks/ahrefs-metrics/ — built from real research
mistakes, Aug–Oct 2026. Free to use and change.

Core principle: **reliability is not completeness.** In one set of 600,000 keywords only 18% had
a CPC, but where it exists it shows roughly what advertisers pay. A sparse column is a sample,
not garbage. A fully filled column can still be fiction. Before drawing conclusions from a
column, read what it means and how it is calculated in the tool's documentation.

## Three levels of trust

1. **Facts — build decisions on these:** who is in the live search results (pulled now),
   a SERP feature or AI Overview *seen on the snapshot date* (a "yes" only), your own data
   (Search Console, analytics, click logs).
2. **Signals with a caveat:** DR ≈ 0 for a site that ranks ("no links, still ranks" —
   caveat: Ahrefs can find new links days or weeks late); the shape of the 24-month search
   volume trend (the curve is compared with itself); order of magnitude of CPC and Volume
   (a million vs ten thousand — yes; 45K vs 52K — no); the lowest DR in the top 10 (exists
   only where Ahrefs captured the results, so filtering by it silently drops every keyword
   without a snapshot; valid on the snapshot date; never replaces looking at the results).
3. **Don't decide on these:** KD; Traffic value (estimate × estimate × estimate);
   Organic traffic as an absolute (an estimate: volume × position × a modeled CTR; Ahrefs'
   own study found a median error of about 50% against Search Console); Traffic potential as
   an absolute (it measures someone else's #1 page); DR in the 15–70 range.

## How to read each Ahrefs metric

| Column | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Volume | 12-month average; order of magnitude only; seasonality and one-month spikes are hidden — look at the monthly curve first |
| SV trend | the most reliable computed metric: read the shape (growing / fading / one spike / suspiciously flat) |
| KD | don't use: links to the top 10 only — no intent, no brands, no content. It fails both ways: 0 with giants in the top, high with a weak top. KD looks too low? Check who ranks. One rough use: sorting thousands of rows |
| DR | a real 0 is informative ("no links, still ranks"); an empty cell is not 0; subdomains of blogging platforms inherit the platform's DR; 15–70 — don't compare and don't pay for links without a manual check |
| CPC | historical snapshot, true on the day it was captured; $1+ vs $0.03 tells whether there is money in the topic; the exact figure doesn't |
| Clicks / CPS | useful zero-click correction; null means "not covered", not "low" |
| Traffic value | don't use |
| Organic traffic | compare sites with each other — yes; absolutes — no; one junk query can make up a site's whole figure |
| Traffic potential | relative only: TP ≫ volume = the #1 page sits on a wide cluster; TP ≪ volume = zero-click or narrow intent; null = no snapshot |
| SERP features / AIO | a fact on the snapshot date; "no AIO" is unreliable — the snapshot may be missing or predate the rollout |
| Last update | **mandatory in every export** — every SERP-dependent field is valid only for this date |
| First seen | when Ahrefs first saw the keyword, not when demand was born |
| Growth 3/6/12 | noisy on small numbers (10 → 30 = +200%) |

## Rules for working with exports

1. SERP data is not captured for all keywords. An empty snapshot date is "not covered",
   not "no feature". Calculate shares (e.g. % with AI Overviews) only on rows that have a
   snapshot, name the base, and treat the result as a lower bound. Dividing by all rows once
   turned a real 1.77× into a reported 5×.
2. Real difficulty is shown by the live results: who is in the top 10 and what kind of
   sites they are. Pull them for the shortlist and save everything you pull, domains and
   positions too.
3. Intent matters more than keyword metrics. Don't cut a list mechanically by metrics
   without looking at intent and the results page.
4. Conclusions only from data. Label each one: confirmed by data / interpretation /
   needs checking.
5. New country: first export 50–100 keywords you know. The share of empty cells and the
   age of snapshots show the real coverage. Compare countries only at similar coverage.
6. Links: look at link growth no earlier than 2–4 weeks later; check "live" links by hand.
7. Ahrefs is first of all a source of keywords in bulk (up to 150K rows per UI export on
   the Enterprise plan; lower plans allow fewer). Use its metrics selectively, by the rules above.
8. Search Console shows organic search only, and not all of it; impressions are not a
   result. Analytics and Search Console will differ — explain the difference, don't force
   them to match.
9. Before trusting a Volume figure, look at its 24-month curve. One month of 12,322 searches
   followed by ~50 a month shows up as "1,200 a month" for a whole year. Curves that repeat the
   same twelve numbers, or that jump for most keywords in the same month, are artifacts of the
   data, not demand.