CrawlCheck

Directory · SEO suite

Ahrefs — what a crawler receives from ahrefs.com

Website measurement, not a product review. This page records what machine clients received from ahrefs.com. It does not evaluate Ahrefs software, features, pricing or support.

84
Cgrade

Answer engines can reach and read this site. It needs more it can quote.

AI visibility 84/100, measured 2026-10-18 15:10 UTC from outside its network, as each named AI and search crawler and as a browser. An engine can reach and read this site. What is left is giving it something specific to say.

Held at C A medium-severity finding sets the letter.

Open the full report ahrefs.com ↗

911. ReachCan a named answer-engine crawler get your pages at all?732. ReadOnce it has the bytes, can it find the words?853. QuoteIs there a specific fact it can state and attribute?

9

findings

✗

llms.txt on its host

✗

entity map on its host

24

scans on record since 2026-08-18

The three stages, in the order an engine hits a site

Each stage gates the next: an engine that cannot reach a page never reads it, and one that cannot read it never quotes it.

91

Stage 1 · 40% of the score

Reach

Can a named answer-engine crawler get your pages at all?

Every named crawler was served the same page a browser gets.

73

Stage 2 · 30% of the score

Read

Once it has the bytes, can it find the words?

The content is buried in markup, or the files that guide a crawler are missing.

85

Stage 3 · 30% of the score

Quote

Is there a specific fact it can state and attribute?

The facts an assistant is asked for are declared and consistent.

The stage to fix first is read, because the three run in order.

What to fix

9 findings on this site, 4 of them scored serious. Every one is named below; the top one is shown in full, free. What we saw, why each matters, how to fix it and the bytes behind it are what a licence buys — or we implement the whole list for you.

4 Medium 1 Low 4 Note

1robots.txt declares no sitemapNo Sitemap: directive present.MediumSetting

What we saw

No Sitemap: directive present. /robots.txt

Why it matters

Adding one Sitemap: line lets crawlers enumerate the site instead of guessing at it.

How to fix it

Add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt pointing at the full sitemap URL, so crawlers find it without guessing.

Setting: a setting on the server, CDN, DNS or a plugin — no code and no writing

In Cloudflare (this site is behind it)

  1. If Cloudflare's managed robots.txt is on (Security → Bots, or AI Crawl Control → robots.txt), Cloudflare adds its own lines above yours. Turn it off, or keep it knowing those lines are there.
  2. Robots.txt is cached at the edge: purge it (Caching → Configuration → Custom purge → the robots.txt URL) after you change it.

Paste this

Add this line anywhere in robots.txt.

Sitemap: https://ahrefs.com/sitemap.xml

The whole corrected robots.txt for ahrefs.com · built from the live file, every change listed at the top.

Fix it with a coding agent

Paste into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex, opened on the code that serves this site.

Show prompt
You are working in the codebase (or server/CDN configuration) that serves ahrefs.com. A crawler audit found the problem below. Fix it at the source, keep the change as small as possible, and do not change anything a visitor sees unless the fix requires it.

Finding: robots.txt declares no sitemap (ROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP, medium severity)
Page: https://ahrefs.com/robots.txt
What was measured: No Sitemap: directive present.
Why it matters: Adding one Sitemap: line lets crawlers enumerate the site instead of guessing at it.
How to fix it: Add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt pointing at the full sitemap URL, so crawlers find it without guessing.

Rule and examples: https://crawlcheck.io/rules/ROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP
Full report (markdown): https://crawlcheck.io/r/r2fbjwexyq.md

When you are done:
1. Tell me which files or settings you changed and why.
2. If the fix is a server, CDN or cache setting you cannot change from the code, say exactly where it is set.
3. After deploying, re-scan at https://crawlcheck.io/?url=ahrefs.com . The fix counts when ROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP is gone from the new report.
Why this was decided
RuleROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP · rule pack sv32 · scope core
Evaluated2026-10-18 15:10:35 UTC
Decisiond1:a31dbaf2b54fb60cf778 · finding f1:485665fdf2cf460f21dd resolve either at /api/graph/<id> with a key
Observercrawlcheck-worker build b3cf8c17 · audit v4

What it rests on

IdentityStatusBytessha256Kept
read: /robots.txt20090801fc1026b5daalready_held

23 more in the manifest.

Artifacts: manifest:39243a17723b228d13fb45a2cf8da127b92d5b49cd6c19f0fded2d7af2a64a5a

Grade effect Caps the letter at C together with 3 other medium-severity findings; the letter rises only when all of them are gone. Moves no points.

Rule ROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP under scoring rules v32 · fingerprint ROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP|/robots.txt · persisting (32 scans)

Verify the fix Re-scan after the change. This finding is cleared when ROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP is no longer reported at /robots.txt; if it comes back after clearing, it is marked a regression, not a new finding.

ROBOTS_NO_SITEMAP · full transcript

2The homepage depends on files this site's own robots.txt disallows/robots.txt🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Medium
3Almost nothing a machine receives from this page is readable text🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Medium
4Visitors and crawlers are being served an old copy of this page🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Medium
5The sitemap does not say when anything changed/sitemap.xml🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Low
6The homepage is reached through a chain of redirects🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note
7No llms.txt/llms.txt🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note
8A missing agent file answers with a full page🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note
9A business record gives an address but no coordinates🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note

Open the other 8

What we saw, why it matters, how to fix it, and the evidence bytes for every finding — on this report and every re-scan. From $29 a month.

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The chain a crawler follows

The chain breaks at llms.txt. Everything after that point is only reachable by a crawler guessing the conventional path.

✓robots.txtEvery crawler reads this first
✓sitemapNamed in robots.txt and resolves
✗llms.txtPoints onward, links stay on this host
✗entity graphParses as JSON and points home

A machine file that does not parse is worth less than one that is absent, because it looks present. Rows behind this.

Where the bytes go

Of the 1,276,317 decompressed bytes the homepage delivers, 1% is text a reader or a model can actually use. Most of what a crawler downloads here is not words.

  • Readable text 1% · 12,625 B
  • Markup & attributes 94.8% · 1,209,399 B
  • Structured data (JSON-LD) 0.1% · 1,063 B
  • Inline CSS 0.1% · 1,271 B
  • Inline JavaScript 0.6% · 7,398 B
  • Inline SVG 3.5% · 44,399 B
  • HTML comments 0% · 162 B

What changed

  1. 2026-10-18a new finding appeared: the sitemap does not say when anything changedappeared
  2. 2026-10-18the homepage began taking more than one redirect to reachappeared
  3. 2026-09-24a new finding appeared: an entity is missing geographic coordinatesappeared
  4. 2026-09-17resolved: this origin refused crawlcheck, so the site was never measuredresolved
  5. 2026-09-17a stale edge copy was served againreturned
  6. 2026-09-17robots.txt no longer named a sitemap againreturned
  7. 2026-09-17a render resource was blocked to crawlers againreturned
  8. 2026-09-17the homepage read as mostly markup againreturned
  9. 2026-09-17no llms.txt was found againreturned
  10. 2026-09-17a new finding appeared: the machine files cost more than the page againreturned
  11. 2026-09-16robots.txt named a sitemapresolved
  12. 2026-09-16the blocked render resource clearedresolved

24 scans on record, first 2026-08-18. Score movements are shown only between readings taken under the same score version; finding codes are comparable across all of them.

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