Top all-time · #503
Ahrefs
Company blog · ahrefs.com/blogwebbusiness
Ahrefs is the company blog at ahrefs.com, writing about web and business. Since 2012, 115 different Hacker News readers have linked it 131 times, most often “Google Search Operators: A Complete List (2018)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
We help marketers drive visibility across AI search, SEO, content, and social – with the largest AI and search databases online.
Most-linked posts?
- Google Search Operators: A Complete List (2018)25 people · 25 mentions · first linked 2019-01-24
- Ahrefs Site Explorer and Backlink Checker9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-04-09
- Backlink Checker3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-28
- AI results can be manipulated2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-22
- Ahrefs’ Affiliate Program. We Don’t Have One (& Here’s Why)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-09
- /big-data2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-08
- We Studied over 1M Domains to Find the Most Common Technical SEO Issues2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-01
- AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-20
- /website-authority-checker2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-22
- /pricing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-04
What Hacker News says?
I vaguely recall reading that Google uses time spent on a page/domain as an indicator of the relevance or quality of the search result/content, but I just googled to try to find that source and only found articles stating the opposite [^1],[^2]. Does anyone know if it is indeed used, and if so, why does it not work to demote low-quality SEO-abusing sites? [^1]: https://www.nichepursuits.com/how-important-is-time-on-…
Comment linking /blog/dwell-time/
on “Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories”Submitted Google Search Operators: A Complete List (2018) as a story · 587 points
HN discussionCongrats!! Ahrefs says you reached 3.4mln backlinks and 18k linking websites: https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker/?input=https%3A... How did you achive such incredible numbers? I noticed you localized the landing pages to English/Spanish/German/Portuguese. I did that too when founding polyblog.io and multilocale.com but never got results incredible as yours. I noticed you use Yoast SEO, the sitemap.xml is n…
Comment linking /website-authority-checker/?input=https%3A%2F%2Fvwo.com%2Fen
on “Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today”Submitted Podcast Advertising: What We Learned as a story · 149 points
HN discussionWith web crawlers. They index the web to give you this information: https://ahrefs.com/big-data
Comment linking /big-data
on “The top-ranking HTML editor on Google is an SEO scam”Submitted Google PageRank Is Not Dead as a story · 66 points
HN discussionI think one great and simple skill would be use Google more efficiently. This will give you better access to global knowledge so better generic problem solving abilities. See a complete list of google operator https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
Comment linking /blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
on “Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?”Submitted AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5% as a story · 30 points
HN discussionAhrefs | Devops/On call | REMOTE ok (Americas time zones) | https://ahrefs.com/jobs/devops-oncall We are looking for a Site Reliability Engineer with deep knowledge of Linux and distributed systems to help take care of its distributed crawler and ensure all systems are up and running 24/7. Working experience with bare-metal servers and ability to participate in daily on-call rotation are required. Our system is big…
Comment linking /jobs/devops-oncall
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring right now?”Submitted The Great Decoupling (Or Why Your Clicks Are Down and Impressions Up) as a story · 23 points
HN discussionIt’s definitely a thing https://ahrefs.com/blog/negative-seo/
Comment linking /blog/negative-seo/
on “Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?”Submitted LLMs Don't Reward Originality, They Flatten It as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSee also some context for Google search operators including ones that have been removed: https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/ and changed: https://www.googleguide.com/quote_operator.html (IIRC this was due to Google+ and was an internally unpopular change, but my memory may be faulty).
Comment linking /blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
on “We're improving search results when you use quotes”Submitted Most content gets no traffic from Google as a story · 14 points
HN discussionhttps://ahrefs.com/serp-checker
Comment linking /serp-checker
on “Big media publishers are inundating the web with subpar product recommendations”Submitted Google Says "Links Matter Less"–We Looked at 1M SERPs to See If It's True as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThe article is missing several operators that are useful. Like inurl:, intitle:, allintitle:, etc. The "AROUND" proximity search is neat as well, especially for words with dual meaning. like: bootstrap AROUND(6) cpu Finds "bootstrap" within 6 words of "cpu", which culls out most (not all) of the unwanted results about the bootstrap js library. This article seems to cover most of the ones I'm aware of: https://ahrefs…
Comment linking /blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
on “Get better at Googling”Submitted Google is the third most common search on Bing as a story · 9 points
HN discussionMore? have at it: https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/ "Google Dorking"
Comment linking /blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
on “Get better at Googling”Submitted 74% of New Webpages Include AI Content (Study of 900k Pages) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionAhrefs | OCaml developer | Singapore + San Francisco, CA | REMOTE ok, VISA ok (SG only), https://ahrefs.com/jobs/ocaml-server-side-developer We are looking for a backend developer with a deep understanding of networks, distributed systems, OS fundamentals and taste for simple and efficient architectural designs. Our backend is implemented in OCaml (and some C++), as such proficiency in OCaml is very much appreciated…
Comment linking /jobs/ocaml-server-side-developer
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2017)”Submitted AI results can be manipulated as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAhrefs | Oncall/Devops | Singapore + San Francisco, CA | REMOTE ok (preferably SG TZ), VISA ok (SG only), https://ahrefs.com/jobs/oncall-devops Ahrefs is looking for a oncall/devops to help take care of its distributed backend systems powered by 2000+ servers and ensure all systems are up and running 24/7. We require deep understanding of operating systems and networks fundamentals, practical knowledge of Linux and…
Comment linking /jobs/oncall-devops
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2017)”Submitted Mentioned Domains for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews as a story · 5 points
HN discussionGoogle Search Operators: https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
Comment linking /blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
on “Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?”Submitted Google Search Operators: The Complete List as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAhrefs | OCaml developer / DevOps | Singapore + San Francisco, CA | REMOTE ok, VISA ok (SG only) Ahrefs runs an internet-scale bot that crawls the whole Web 24/7, storing huge volumes of information to be indexed and structured in a timely fashion. Backend system is powered by a custom petabyte-scale distributed key-value storage to accommodate all that data coming in at high speed. The storage system is implemented…
Comment linking /jobs/oncall-devops
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2017)”Submitted Google Search Operators: The Complete List as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAhrefs | OCaml developer | Singapore + San Francisco, CA | REMOTE ok, VISA ok (SG only), https://ahrefs.com/jobs/ocaml-server-side-developer We are looking for a backend developer with a deep understanding of networks, distributed systems, OS fundamentals and taste for simple and efficient architectural designs. Our backend is implemented in OCaml (and some C++), as such proficiency in OCaml is very much appreciated…
Comment linking /jobs/ocaml-server-side-developer
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2017)”Submitted Do Links Still Matter for Rankings? A Study by Ahrefs as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
