Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Google Search Console VS Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Compare Google Search Console VS Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and see what are their differences

Google Search Console logo Google Search Console

Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on...

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools logo Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Optimise your website and get more traffic from Google.
  • Google Search Console Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-28
  • Ahrefs Webmaster Tools Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-11

Google Search Console features and specs

  • Free to Use
    Google Search Console is entirely free, allowing website owners and marketers to use its comprehensive tools without incurring additional costs.
  • Comprehensive Insights
    Provides detailed reports on search traffic, indexing status, and website performance, helping users make informed decisions.
  • Performance Tracking
    Allows users to track their website’s search performance, providing metrics such as clicks, impressions, and average position.
  • Indexing Management
    Enables users to submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling, ensuring that new and updated content is indexed more quickly.
  • Security Features
    Alerts users about potential security issues like hacking and malware, enabling quick action to protect the website and its users.
  • Mobile Usability
    Offers insights into mobile usability issues, helping users optimize their sites for better mobile user experience.
  • Link Analysis
    Provides detailed data on inbound and internal links, helping users understand their link profile and identify potential improvements.
  • Search Appearance
    Helps users understand how their website appears in search results and offers advice on optimizing structured data.

Possible disadvantages of Google Search Console

  • Data Delays
    There is often a delay in data updates, sometimes up to 48 hours, which can affect timely decision-making.
  • Limited Historical Data
    Stores performance data for only the last 16 months, which can be restrictive for long-term analysis.
  • Complexity
    The extensive array of tools and reports can be overwhelming for beginners and requires a learning curve to use effectively.
  • No Real-Time Data
    Unlike some other analytics tools, Google Search Console does not provide real-time data, limiting instant insights.
  • Reliance on Google
    Being a Google product, the data and tools are tailored to Google's search engine, which may limit the scope if optimizing for other search engines is needed.
  • Limited Analytics Integration
    While it integrates with Google Analytics, the integration is not very deep, sometimes requiring manual correlation of data.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools features and specs

  • Comprehensive Backlink Analysis
    Ahrefs Webmaster Tools offers detailed insights into backlink profiles, allowing users to monitor links pointing to their website and understand the quality and relevance of these links.
  • Keyword Insights
    The tool provides valuable keyword data, helping users identify high-performing keywords and potential opportunities to improve search visibility.
  • Site Audit Functionality
    Includes a robust site audit feature that helps users identify technical SEO issues, enabling them to improve site health and performance.
  • User-friendly Interface
    Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is known for its intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface, making it accessible even for users with limited technical SEO knowledge.
  • Free Access
    Offers free access to essential SEO tools that can benefit small businesses and individual website owners looking to improve their site's SEO without incurring costs.

Possible disadvantages of Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

  • Limited Features in Free Version
    While the free version is helpful, it may not provide access to all advanced features available in the paid version of Ahrefs, potentially limiting in-depth analysis capabilities.
  • Data Lag
    There may be some lag in data update times, meaning that the latest changes in backlinks or keyword rankings might not be immediately reflected in the tool.
  • Learning Curve
    Even though the interface is user-friendly, new users may still encounter a learning curve while trying to understand and fully utilize the tool's capabilities.
  • Limited Competitor Analysis
    Compared to the full Ahrefs suite, the webmaster tools offer less in terms of competitor analysis, which might limit strategic insights for some users.

Google Search Console videos

Google Search Console Tutorial - Google Webmasters Tools Tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Google Search Console Review - Beginners Guide PREVIEW by Bizversity.com
  • Review - Monitoring Rich Results in Search Console - Google Search Console Training

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools videos

Ahrefs WEBMASTER TOOLS Tutorial (A Quick Guide for SEO bloggers)

More videos:

  • Demo - Ahrefs Webmaster Tools - Demo and Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools)
SEO Tools
78 78%
22% 22
SEO
81 81%
19% 19
Content Marketing
100 100%
0% 0
Marketing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Google Search Console Reviews

Free SEO Tools To Improve Your Rankings
Better Google Search Console Insights Free services that connect to your Google Search Console (GSC) data and get you better reports on keywords, content ideas, ranking opportunities & recommendations, check for keyword cannibalization, and more. Make the best of Google's Search Console.
9 Free Keyword Research Tools (That CRUSH Google Keyword Planner)
Google Search Console helps you track your website’s performance in organic search. This means it shows a lot of data about the keywords that you already rank for.
Source: ahrefs.com
73 Best SEO tools 2021 – The Most Epic List You Shouldn’t Miss
Google Search Console is a web service by Google, provided free of charge for webmasters, which allows them to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools Reviews

Free SEO Tools To Improve Your Rankings
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (Free Plan) - Now free for website owners. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) crawl your entire website and check for 100+ common SEO issues, gives an overview on your backlinks profile, keywords that your site already rank for and many more.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Google Search Console seems to be a lot more popular than Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. While we know about 107 links to Google Search Console, we've tracked only 10 mentions of Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google Search Console mentions (107)

  • SEO Considerations When Launching a Website Redesign
    Identify old URLs using Google Search Console or a site crawler like Screaming Frog. - Source: dev.to / 24 days ago
  • Is Your Website Stuck in the Past? Here’s What You Might Be Missing in 2025!
    Need help with SEO? Tools like Yoast SEO or Google Search Console can make a huge difference! - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How I optimized my blog images using Rust
    Since I learned a bit more about SEO and about Google Search Console I decided to check my blog's performance and see what I can do to improve it. Submitted my sitemap and ran a performance check and even if performance was at 100/100 I saw that the images were not optimized. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • SEO tools I used to grow my sites to 20k+ visitors/month
    My adoption of Google Search Console come from what I learned taking Monica Lent's Blogging for Devs course. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • NgSysV2-4.2: SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
    Once you've successfully deployed your sitemap you might find it useful to give Google a "heads-up" by submitting the sitemap to the Google Search Console. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
View more

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools mentions (10)

  • SEO tools I used to grow my sites to 20k+ visitors/month
    I have found ahrefs webmaster tools to be absolutely invaluable in keeping an eye on my sites' content. Once you register a free account and verify that you have control of the sites you want to monitor, ahrefs will kick off a weekly audit of all the pages on your domain. It will check for common pitfalls, and give your site a health score from 0-100. If you're a dev, it may be helpful to think of it as a linter... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Our State of Marketing 2023 Report is Out Now!
    This Process was going to take a long time and hard work, that’s why I reached out to Ahrefs to support my incentive of writing a marketing report that helps everyone from a newbie to marketing to a marketer making huge-decisions. A Quick Shoutout to Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to giving me the freedom to write this report! ​. Source: over 2 years ago
  • What blogging tools are you using in 2023?
    Ahref's Webmaster Tools (link) allows you to see keywords on your own site with rankings, search volume, etc. So not necessarily the best for keyword research but massively valuable for optimizing posts once you start to get traffic/rankings. Source: over 2 years ago
  • How/where did you learn SEO?
    No problem! A lot of people are unaware of them. If you don't have a paid account, you can use the free tools to get an idea of how things work while you're going through the course (https://ahrefs.com/free-seo-tools). If you have your own site, you can also sign up for the free account. It's limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit. https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools. Source: over 2 years ago
  • 5 Tools I add to every new web project for SEO and analytics
    I have found ahrefs webmaster tools to be absolutely invaluable in keeping an eye on my sites' content. Once you register a free account and verify that you have control of the sites you want to monitor, ahrefs will kick off a weekly audit of all the pages on your domain. It will check for common pitfalls, and give your site a health score from 0-100. If you're a dev, it may be helpful to think of it as a linter... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, you can also consider the following products

Ahrefs - Ahrefs is a toolset for SEO and marketing. We have tools for backlink research, organic traffic research, keyword research, content marketing & more. Give Ahrefs a try!

Moz - Backed by industry-leading data and the largest community of SEOs on the planet, Moz builds tools that make inbound marketing easy.

SEMRush - All-in-one Marketing Toolkit for digital marketing professionals.

SimilarWeb - SimilarWeb.com is a website analysis tool that gives you analytics information for any website.

Backlink Monitor - Don't lose backlinks - Manage, monitor & get them indexed

Ubersuggest - Want more traffic? Ubersuggest shows you how to win the game of SEO. Just type in a domain or a keyword to get started.