Tim Soulo 🇺🇦

CMO @Ahrefs // I tweet about our (fairly unconventional) approach to marketing... and a little bit about SEO. 🙂 // Born & raised in Ukraine 🇺🇦.

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

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

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

If you can't justify spending money to promote your content, how did you justify spending time and effort to create it in the first place?

^ this is one of the driving questions of my marketing philosophy.

So when I learned that @amandanat and @randfish spend $0 on advertising the content they produce for @sparktoro , I couldn't resist asking Amanda about it on the Ahrefs Podcast.

It set off a really fun, friendly debate. 🙂 One that didn't end when the cameras stopped: Amanda later wrote a blog post with her counterargument at the SparkToro blog (which was very fair btw).

Here's what else we discussed on the podcast:

🔸 How SparkToro still drives traffic to its blog
🔸 Amanda's "algorithmic capital" concept (and how to cash in on it)
🔸 Why your website matters more in the age of AI search
🔸 My LinkedIn data: posting frequency beats viral hits for follower growth
🔸 "Take your ideas on a tour": webinar it, podcast it, social it, speak about it
🔸 3 great posts or 5 mediocre ones? (we fought about this a little)
🔸 How SparkToro uses SparkToro to grow SparkToro

Watch/Listen here 👇

https://t.co/pj67MHCDGg

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).

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

A few of my favourite photos from @Ahrefs Evolve San Diego 2025. ❤️

I met so many awesome people, who I typically only see online: @Kevin_Indig, @markwschaefer, @emilykramer, @gaetano_nyc, @devinemily, @JHTScherck, @CarrieRosePR and many-many-MANY others.

It was EPIC!!!!

- Did you attend? → Click “Like”
- Wanna join the next one? (12-13th October) → Click “Like” and…

…get your ticket at ahrefsevolve DOT com

[Glen Allsopp 👾 @ViperChill]

Today, Ahrefs is launching a brand-new adaptive model for organic traffic estimates.

We've refreshed the weights we apply to SERP features, including AI Overviews, and the calculations behind those will update on a more frequent basis.

For some sites you'll see only minimal changes, while for others the difference will be more pronounced.

We're taking our time to make sure it performs as we expect, so for now it's opt-in only via Settings in Site Explorer.

If you switch to the adaptive model, you'll see updated stats across Site Explorer, except for backlink reports and the 'Top organic competitors' widget.

Historical data is also affected, though anything earlier than February 2025 uses the state of the model as it was in that month.

You can use the new model in our API by passing the traffic_mode=adaptive parameter.

We're happy with what we're seeing so far, but there may be some oddities, and we would appreciate any feedback as we continue to improve it.

You can DM me here and I can pass it on to the right people, or please feel free to reach out to Ahrefs via the usual channels if you have any comments.

Thank you! 🙌

[andjdavies @andjdavies]

Throwback to when @timsoulo and I chatted about about the time PaddleHQ launched a rocket and collected a payment in space. tl;dr:

1) Maintain a very clear red thread to your core value proposition
2) Build around the areas of affinity with your target audience
3) Create a strong distribution strategy (don’t just run ads)
4) Reduce the I in ROI

Also... he's running https://t.co/ZYFW3P9WzN in San Diego in October - do sign up!

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@andjdavies this was back in the day when I was interviwing my guests for 2+ hours 😅

...which you easily endured 💪

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@lilyraynyc wow!

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

Ahrefs Evolve in San Diego is just a few months away! Here’s how it went last year (..in 50sec). 👇

Now imagine this year we’re spending almost twice as much to take our flagship event to a whole new level!

Am I going to see you there? 👀

𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟮-𝟭𝟯 | 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗮𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝗲𝗴𝗼

Get your ticket here → https://t.co/EQxGHVtAIw

P.S.
What’s the best taco place in San Diego? I need to indulge in some proper Mexican food. 😛

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@serglotz 😅

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

I used to post this thread on r/BigSEO every two years on the same date.

But now with AI things are moving too fast.

So I broke the tradition and came back after just one.

- 5 questions to the community
- a small update from our end
- and the whole Ahrefs team reading the comments

If you're a user of Reddit - please jump in! 😉

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

AI search has a spam problem. → ChatGPT cited 80 spammy websites last month.

Guess how many spammy sites (with no search traffic) Google cited in AI Overviews?

Zero!

And it's not just ChatGPT:

▪️ Perplexity cited 33 spam sites.
▪️ Copilot, a whopping 122.

These numbers come from a recent analysis by Glen Allsopp (@ViperChill ), who used @Ahrefs’ Brand Radar to study the top 1,000 websites cited by each platform over the past six months.

Now, having zero search traffic (according to @Ahrefs' data) doesn't automatically make a site spammy. So Glen manually reviewed hundreds of domains and many of them were pretty bad:

- Fake authors, or no authors at all
- Thousands of AI-generated articles with no obvious theme
- eCommerce stores stuffed with 100K+ random products

In other words, AI chatbots are suffering from the spam problem that Google solved years ago.

But it’s not that they can't solve it.

ChatGPT seems to be making clear progress with the number of low quality sites in each citations going down every month (see on the attached graph). Others don’t seem to be on the right track at the moment, but I’m sure they’ll get to it.

...

The main takeaway for marketers is pretty simple:

Whatever loopholes work today for getting cited in AI search with low-quality spam sites are going to stop working very soon.

I’m not sure if AI chatbots will introduce penalties for those trying to game them, like Google does. But I'd still recommend playing it safe and not getting carried away with short-term hacks.

...

Follow @ViperChill (and me) for more no-BS data-driven insights about AI search. 😉

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

Last month Olga Andrienko asked her 59k Linkedin followers which tools they were using for AEO/GEO.

Turns out Ahrefs’ Brand Radar is the most popular AEO tool among Olga's followers. 😇

...losing by just a single vote to “vibe coded” tools (which is a dubious choice honestly).

ℹ️ FYI:
A small allowance of prompt checks (150-600/mo) is included for FREE on all Ahrefs paid plans! So if you're a customer of Ahrefs and haven't set up prompt tracking yet - you should go and fix that.

🗣️ Also...
Please don't hesitate to share your feedback about using Brand Radar. We launched this tool just a little over a year ago and there's A TON of things which are still on our roadmap for it. Your feedback can help us make the right calls.

P.S.
Next poll, we're coming for that #1 spot. No more losing to these vibe-coded tools. 😤

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

Here’s a cool way to use our (FREE) Domain Rating API endpoint 👇

You likely do some form of lead scoring, whether in a simple spreadsheet or in your own vibe-coded CRM.

Well, @Ahrefs' Domain Rating metric is a great proxy for how big and authoritative your leads' websites are.

So pull the DR for websites of your leads, and use it to push the more promising ones to the top of your list.

...like I did in my personal vibe-coded CRM (see the attached screenshot).

–––
Reminder:

Domain Rating (or DR) is a simple score from 0 to 100 that indicates the quantity and quality of links pointing at a given website. Typically, the more websites link to you, the more authoritative you are.

(The scale is logarithmic, which means the distance between 1 and 20 is much smaller than between 80 and 81.)
–––

What signals are you currently using to score your leads?

And does anyone already use our DR metric for this?

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

Missed @Ahrefs Evolve last year?
Check out my 2-minute tour of how it went. 👇

…and get your tickets for Evolve 2026 in sunny (hopefully) San Diego here:

https://t.co/MqtIzjgh8Q

I'll see you there! 😉

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@GabrielNolo @Pauline_Cx you guessed it!

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

I don't mind catching up on work stuff during vacation, but only if the view from my "office" looks like this. 😇

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@nickgraynews Congrats, mate! 🥳

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@nickgraynews @nevmed thanks a lot for the shoutout, Nick! 🙏 🙂

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@lkr @helloitsolly a book with an entire chapter about it coming very-very soon!

...and you're featured in that book with a small story from our podcast interview 😉

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

Even on short notice, I managed to pull together a few very cool folks for my mastermind dinner in Austin yesterday:

- Peep Laja @peeplaja — CEO @ Wynter. 3x Founder.
- Nick Christensen @NickAC1 — Head of Growth @ AppSumo
- Nick Gray @nickgraynews — Founder of Museum Hack and Best-Selling Author
- Neville Medhora @nevmed — Founder of SwipeFile & Kopywriting

I'm genuinely stoked about bringing Ahrefs Evolve to Austin in 2027, and getting to meet more of the local marketers and tech entrepreneurs along the way.

Live in or around Austin and wanna join the next one? Tag yourself below — I'm keeping a list. 🙂

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

@gregisenberg they're manifesting 😆