Ahrefs Site Audit: Set Up a Crawl and Verify the Findings

Ahrefs Site Audit is a cloud crawler for technical and on-page checks. Use it to collect repeatable URL-level evidence, then verify the affected templates before creating work. Ahrefs' Health Score summarises its configured checks; it does not measure the whole site's SEO quality.

What Is Ahrefs Site Audit?

Ahrefs documents predefined checks across indexability, links, redirects, content fields, localisation, performance, resources and structured data. It can execute JavaScript, expose raw crawl data through Page Explorer and Link Explorer, and export issue lists. The product sits inside an Ahrefs project, so it is most useful when the team also needs that platform's other datasets.

Set Up Your First Crawl

1. Add or import a project and complete any requested ownership verification.
2. Choose the exact scope: protocol, host, subdomain or subfolder.
3. Select URL sources and set exclusions so calendars, faceted navigation and private paths do not create crawl traps.
4. Choose raw-HTML or JavaScript rendering based on how the important content appears.
5. Set a crawl limit and a considerate speed, then save the configuration with the audit record.

After the crawl, compare discovered URLs with your XML sitemap and a known page inventory. A clean report is incomplete if the crawler never reached a key section.

Understand the Dashboard

Use the dashboard to find patterns, then open the underlying report. Compare the current crawl with the previous comparable crawl and ask: did scope change, did the issue definition change, or did the site change? Prioritise confirmed problems on valuable templates over the largest issue count.

Key Reports to Review

• Indexability: confirm whether canonical and robots signals match the page's intended search state.
• Links and redirects: trace the source URL and final destination, then fix internal links at source where appropriate.
• Content and duplicates: group by template before changing titles, headings or canonicalisation.
• Performance: distinguish Lighthouse lab results from Chrome UX Report field data where both are available.
• Structured data: validate important examples against Google's current eligibility documentation before implementation.

Turn an Issue into a Task

Export the affected URLs and record the observed value, desired value, owner, template or component, acceptance criterion and retest method. Check several examples manually. A flagged 404 may be an intentional removal; a noindex may be correct; duplicate metadata may be expected on non-indexable utility pages.

Use Advanced Settings Deliberately

Ahrefs documents controls for crawl speed, depth, JavaScript rendering, mobile user agents, authentication and segmented analysis. Change one major setting at a time and label the crawl. Otherwise, crawl-to-crawl differences can reflect configuration rather than a website regression.

Ahrefs vs Alternatives

Choose Ahrefs when a stored cloud crawl and the surrounding Ahrefs platform fit the team. Choose Screaming Frog when local control and custom extraction are central, or Semrush when the audit must sit inside a Semrush project and reporting workflow. See the side-by-side workflow comparison.

Free and Paid Access

Ahrefs Free, formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, gives verified websites Site Audit access with a documented allowance. Paid plans extend allowances and access. Ahrefs listed 5,000 crawl credits per verified project per month on 11 September 2026; check the official page before relying on that limit because plans can change.

Product facts checked against Ahrefs' official Site Audit and Ahrefs Free pages on 11 September 2026.