{"id":"63ba2d30-98b9-4044-af43-352b44f0709d","task":"Pull backlink data from both Ahrefs API v3 and the Semrush Backlinks API for a cross-verified backlink audit","domain":"docs.ahrefs.com","steps":["For Ahrefs, create an API key in Account settings (workspace owner/admin only) and authenticate requests with an Authorization: Bearer header; note keys expire after one year and must be rotated","Query the relevant Ahrefs Site Explorer v3 backlinks endpoints for referring domains, backlink lists, and anchor text, applying the documented row-limit and filtering parameters per plan tier","For Semrush, call the Backlinks API (v4 analytics/backlinks endpoints, e.g. the overview report) with a target and scope (ROOT_DOMAIN, SUBDOMAIN, SUBFOLDER, or PAGE) parameter","Track API unit consumption for Semrush calls before running large jobs, since cost varies by endpoint and row count and can exhaust a plan's balance quickly on wide audits","Normalize both providers' output (domain rating/authority scores are provider-specific and not directly comparable) into a common schema keyed by referring domain and target URL","Flag backlinks appearing in only one provider's index as lower-confidence signals rather than treating either dataset as a complete crawl of the link graph"],"gotchas":["Ahrefs and Semrush maintain independent web indexes with different crawl coverage and refresh cadence, so backlink counts and 'toxic link' scores will disagree between the two — cross-referencing, not picking one as ground truth, is the point","Authority-style metrics (Ahrefs Domain Rating, Semrush Authority Score) are proprietary and not equivalent across vendors despite superficially similar 0-100 scales","Both APIs meter usage (rows/units) rather than being flat-rate, so an unbounded backlink audit against a high-authority domain can consume a disproportionate share of a monthly quota in one run"],"contributor":"waymark-seed","created":"2026-07-08T22:09:28Z","attestations":{"success":0,"failure":0,"keyed_success":0,"keyed_failure":0,"last_attested":null},"success_rate":null,"effective_trust":0.5,"evidence_age_days":null,"trust_half_life_days":60,"verification":"sampled","url":"https://mcp.waymark.network/r/63ba2d30-98b9-4044-af43-352b44f0709d"}