Tim Soulo 🇺🇦

Boostrapped Ahrefs crossed $100M in ARR without these things: No Google Analytics No conversion tracking/optimisation No retargeting No A/B testing No discounts No bidding on competitors’ keywords + discontinued midway: Affiliate program Free trial 1/2

Everything you know about making your brand DISCOVERABLE online is simultaneously correct and outdated. The fundamentals haven't changed. But with AI at our disposal, we now have to rethink every detail of how we apply them. I've been deep in the trenches of this shift. Testing new tools, rethinking old strategies, and doing sanity checks with dozens of the world's top marketers. I don't have ALL the answers yet. But I have a fairly decent grip on the situation. Want to compare notes in person? I'll be sharing my perspective at @Ahrefs Evolve Singapore on 14th May. Tickets here 👉 ahrefsevolve.com/singapore If you're in APAC and care about staying ahead of this shift, this is where the conversation is happening.

@JoeManna we're just starting to promote it.. so we're expecting a lot more signups on the waitlist :)

@timsoulo #999. How many are added per day? Can’t wait to try it out.

The future is coming. Sign up for the waitlist: ahrefs.com/agent-a

@TheCoolestCool I was sceptical of AI's capabilities for a pretty long time.. but now I'm blown away every single day!

@timsoulo I like this Agent move.

The future is coming. Sign up for the waitlist: ahrefs.com/agent-a

I'm recording an "AEO 101" episode for the Ahrefs Podcast in the next few weeks. But here's the thing... AEO/GEO is so new that I don't think anyone has it fully figured out yet (myself included). So rather than pretend I have all the answers, I want to find a guest I can compare notes with and figure things out together on air. Who do you trust on AEO/GEO topics? Please drop names in the comments. I'll pick someone I haven't had on Ahrefs Pod yet and invite them to collaborate on this episode.

Now that tracking your AI visibility is becoming table stakes, we decided to include it in @Ahrefs at no extra cost. Every paid plan (except Starter) now includes custom prompt tracking in Brand Radar: - Lite: 150 checks/mo - Standard: 300 checks/mo - Advanced: 600 checks/mo You can spread those checks across any combination of AI platforms, locations, and tracking frequencies. Daily, weekly, monthly. Your call. Think of it as a built-in trial of AI visibility in Ahrefs. This allowance should be enough to see the value before you commit to more. Go set up your first prompts and see how your brand performs.

My biggest takeaways from Tal Raz, CMO at @ZoomInfo ($1.2B ARR). Tal has been with the company for 9 years, starting from an entry-level analytics role and working her way up through three CMOs to lead the entire marketing org. She rarely does interviews, so this one's a bit of an exclusive. 1. ZoomInfo's growth is almost entirely inbound, despite being the kings of outbound. This genuinely surprised me. The company that literally sells outbound data and tools to the world builds its own revenue on inbound. Their outbound motion exists to fuel inbound: go cold, warm them up, warm them up again, until the prospect comes asking for a demo. That's where the fastest deals and highest conversions happen. 2. The inbound playbook that worked for a decade is now hitting a wall. Buyers are doing discovery in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews instead of visiting vendor websites. The traffic ZoomInfo relied on for 10 years is getting disrupted. Tal's response: invest heavily in smart, targeted outbound coordinated with sales. Not spray and pray. Teams that don't adapt will fall behind. 3. The real killer of campaign ROI isn't bad targeting. It's execution lag. Tal described the old workflow: come up with a campaign idea, ask engineers to download a list, wait for them to scrub it, check for duplicates, align SDR talk tracks. By the time it's ready (weeks later), 60-70% of accounts are no longer relevant. The signal that triggered the idea has gone cold. 4. "Your AI is only as good as the data beneath it." Most teams stitch together 5-6 disconnected data sources, layer AI on top, and wonder why the output is garbage. Tal calls this the "execution gap" and breaks it into three pillars: data consolidation, sales-marketing alignment on signals, and right-sizing your tool stack. Adding more AI on top of fragmented data makes things worse, not better. 5. Measuring marketing on MQLs is a trap. Tal's words: "I can drive 10,000 MQLs like that." But that's meaningless if they don't convert to revenue. ZoomInfo works backwards: start from ACV targets, break down to pipeline, then demos, then MQLs. Each channel gets monthly targets that are constantly recalibrated based on actual conversion rates. The number that matters is revenue, not leads. 6. Brand at ZoomInfo means relationships, not billboards. Henry Schuck (ZoomInfo's CEO) is very performance-oriented. But he personally came up with a billboard campaign where the CEO publicly apologized for bad international data and asked customers for another shot. He also starred in video content and supports creative stunts. The principle: brand is built through customer relationships and accountability, not by putting logos out there. Full episode here 👇 YouTube: youtu.be/72HHI3sZFm0 ... If you enjoy these deep dives, a quick "Like" or comment helps us convince more great guests to come on the show. Thanks! 🙏

Are you tracking visits to your website from AI bots? Because we just added Bot Analytics to @Ahrefs! 🔥 It tracks all kinds of bots across 12 categories: - AI assistants - AI search bots - AI crawlers - search engines - SEO tools - Social media bots - And more The cool part: it collects data server-side via Cloudflare integration. No JS tracking script needed. The tool is FREE while in Beta, so give it a spin and let us know what you think!

Last week I got an outreach email congratulating me on our Series D. Ahrefs has never raised a single dollar. We're bootstrapped. So someone's AI agent pulled the wrong data, mashed it together, and confidently sent me a "personalized" message that was completely made up. And this is exactly the problem with the AI outbound craze right now. Everyone's rushing to add more AI, more agents, more automation on top of their outbound. But nobody's fixing the broken data underneath. Tal Raz, CMO at @ZoomInfo, nailed it during our conversation on Ahrefs Podcast: "Your AI and your AI agents are only as good as the data beneath what they are working on." And she would know. ZoomInfo does $1.2B in ARR. Tal has been there for 9 years, starting from an entry-level analytics role and working her way up to CMO. She rarely does interviews, so this one's a bit of an exclusive. Here's what we covered: 🔸 Why ZoomInfo's growth is almost entirely inbound, despite them being the world's most popular outbound platform. 🔸 How they coordinate outbound across LinkedIn, YouTube, SDR emails, and AE outreach with a single workflow. 🔸 How Tal went from finding "bugs in the funnel" as a junior analyst to running the entire marketing org. 🔸 How she manages a ~100-person US marketing team from Israel. 🔸 Why the future marketer looks more like a product manager than a traditional marketer. 🔸 How the CMO of a $1B+ company ended up in a Labubu costume at Dreamforce, and why it worked. 🔸 Henry Schuck's "No Leaders Leaders" principle and why every exec at ZoomInfo stays hands-on. Watch/Listen here 👇 YouTube: youtu.be/72HHI3sZFm0 ... P.S. If you're enjoying Ahrefs Podcast, don't forget to click "Like 👍" here and on YouTube (and subscribe to the channel if you're feeling extra generous).

Early Bird tickets to @Ahrefs Evolve Singapore (14th May) are SOLD OUT! 🥳 But you still have (plenty of) chance to be in the room. Regular tickets are just $439 -- and if the Early Birds are any indication, these will likely be sold out too. 👉 ahrefsevolve.com/singapore Here's what you get: → Full access to every session → Curated networking with 200+ top marketers across APAC → Catered lunch, coffee breaks, and happy hour One day. One room. The sharpest digital marketers in the region all comparing notes on what's actually working right now. If you waited on Early Bird, don't wait on this.

@nevmed @ahrefs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@timsoulo @ahrefs Whoa!

Now that everyone is suddenly a (vibe) coder, we decided to make @Ahrefs API available on (almost) all paid plans! 🥳 So if you're on a Lite plan or higher - go grab your API key in Account Settings and plug it into your Claude Code. Happy building!

@ApogeeIS @ahrefs google doesn't like our domain name :)

@timsoulo @ahrefs Are you an attacker? :D

Nearly 90 million search visits wiped out in the last 9 months. And traffic from AI didn't replace even 5% of it. (across ~75k websites connected to free @Ahrefs Web Analytics) Here's how other traffic sources held up: ▪️ Paid traffic is UP 13.8% (188M → 214M) ▪️ Social stayed flat (103M → 105M) ▪️ AI chatbot traffic? Just 4M at its peak Full data breakdown here 👉 chatgpt-vs-google.com Now the big question is: Does search traffic stabilize from here, or do we lose another 15-20% by the end of the year? What's your prediction? ... P.S. Learn more about FREE Web Analytics: ahrefs.com/web-analytics?…

Holy ship. 🚢 Genuinely never thought Ahrefs would do this. API access is now available on all plans. No extra fees. 🥳 It's something I always wanted as a customer, and I had no involvement in this going live, so my surprise is genuine. Limits apply depending on your account, but I'm super happy more people can now play with this.

A free web mentions API? - Yes, please! @Ahrefs just launched Firehose. And it's kind of a big deal. 👉 firehose.com It captures updates from across the web, filters them using rules you define, and delivers results via API (for bots and agents) or a frontend UI (for humans). Under the hood, it's powered by @Ahrefs' massive crawler infrastructure (one of the largest on the web), so the coverage is legitimately impressive. Now that AI has made coding accessible to everyone, there's no excuse not to spin up a free Firehose account and start experimenting. Track brand mentions, monitor competitors, catch keyword trends — whatever you want. Want more ideas? Just feed the API docs to Claude Code and ask it what to build: 👉 firehose.com/api-docs Happy building! P.S. Firehose is free until further notice.

We just launched what I believe is the best pricing structure for custom prompt tracking (in @Ahrefs Brand Radar). Here's why: → Starts at just $50/mo → Pricing is based on "checks," not prompts → Pick the cadence that fits your needs: daily, weekly, or monthly → Every AI platform included at every tier → Spread your checks across as many projects as you want How does that sound? 🙂 ... Oh, and one more thing. We're planning to give every paying Ahrefs customer a FREE 3-month trial of custom prompt tracking in Brand Radar. Stay tuned for the announcement. This should be fun. 😉

Just a year ago, I couldn't code. So whenever our team at @Ahrefs shipped something API-related, I'd scroll right past it. Not my world. But these days I spend multiple hours a day vibe-coding handy little tools and automations using Claude Code and Lovable. And all of a sudden APIs are kind of a big deal to me. That being said... We just made all Web Analytics data in Ahrefs available via API! 🔥 And it's 100% free! (It's also available as an MCP server, so you can query your Web Analytics data directly from chatbots.) Here's how to get started: Every Web Analytics report now has an "{} API" button that generates a ready-to-use query for your current view (filters and all). Just copy the code and pass it to your AI agent. If you still think APIs are "for developers only"... that era is over. Happy building! 😉

I'm hosting a small private dinner for ~6 marketing/growth leaders in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 17th. But here's a problem... I don't know many people in SF. The one person I did reach out to — Udi Ledergor (ex-CMO at Gong) — is away that week. 🥲 So who are some cool marketing leaders in the area that I should try my luck with? Please drop names in the comments, or tag someone directly. 🙏 P.S. Dinner is on @Ahrefs ofc.