Ahrefs Organic Traffic vs. Semrush Total Visits: Key Differences

What’s the difference between Ahrefs’ Organic Traffic and Semrush’s Total Visits?

In the Backlink Marketplace, you’ll notice two key traffic metrics for websites: Ahrefs Organic Traffic and Semrush Total Visits. While both give you an idea of a site's performance, they represent very different types of data — and come from two different sources.

Here’s what each metric means.

Ahrefs: Organic traffic

• Definition: An estimate of how many monthly visits a website receives from search results (like Google or Bing).
  

• How it’s calculated: Based on the site’s keyword rankings and expected click-through rates for those keywords.
  

• Covers: Only organic search traffic
  

• Source: This data is pulled directly from Ahrefs.

This is useful for understanding how well a website is performing in search engine rankings.

Semrush: Total visits

• Definition: An estimate of the total number of monthly visits a website gets, across all channels.
  

• How it’s calculated: Based on traffic modeling using clickstream data from third-party providers.
  

• Covers: Organic, paid, direct, referral, and social traffic
  

• Source: This data is pulled directly from Semrush.

It gives a broader view of a website’s total online visibility, not just in search.

Why the numbers may differ

These two metrics are calculated using different methods and focus on different types of traffic. That’s why you might see significant variations between the two for the same domain.

In the Backlink Marketplace, both are shown to give you a more complete picture — from search-specific performance (via Ahrefs) to overall traffic trends (via Semrush).

Final note

The traffic data in the Backlink Marketplace is sourced from trusted third-party platforms — Ahrefs and Semrush — and displayed to help you evaluate websites more effectively before building backlinks. While the numbers are estimates, they offer valuable directional insight into a domain’s authority and reach.