AI Can’t Change web optimization Instruments. However It Can Use Them

Lately, a LinkedIn submit claimed that you can exchange paid web optimization instruments with only a handful of ChatGPT prompts and save $8,400 yearly.

The submit exploded. 500+ likes, 400+ feedback, and persons are loving it.

However SEOs didn’t.

I can’t consider we’re nonetheless speaking about this on the finish of 2025. I wish to consider it’s ragebait. However whether or not he’s antagonising on function, right here’s the reality: ChatGPT doesn’t, and may’t, do web optimization. It could possibly solely discuss it.

It could possibly sound like an knowledgeable, drop the appropriate phrases, and even generate a plausible desk of “low-competition, high-intent” key phrases with CPC and search quantity.

However these numbers are utterly fictional. They’ll’t see the information that powers web optimization. They’ll solely approximate it.

If you happen to’re okay with this, then that’s completely advantageous.

What’s not okay is believing the numbers generated by ChatGPT to be true and different folks telling you you may merely belief what ChatGPT is producing.

To grasp why the poster is improper, it’s important to take a look at how LLMs truly work.

LLMs are skilled on large datasets of written language, studying patterns about how phrases usually observe one another. All they do is predict textual content.

ChatGPT isn’t pulling information from a reside search index or a key phrase database. In truth, there’s a “arduous cease” when their coaching information ends. For instance, GPT-5’s cut-off was September 2024.

LLMs can’t monitor how rankings shift, how search volumes fluctuate, or how backlinks develop over time both.

After they offer you a key phrase with “1,200 month-to-month searches” or an issue rating of “43,” these aren’t metrics. They’re merely guesses. The mannequin has no actual visibility into Google’s index or necessary web optimization information.

As my pal Matti Ljungberg says, “In fact it will probably “estimate month-to-month search quantity”. Identical to I can estimate there are 47 million penguins residing in your fridge. Pure guesswork, nevertheless it sounds convincing!”

However, at Ahrefs, we gather, course of, and retailer giant quantities of necessary search information. We now have the second most energetic net crawler on this planet and we crawl and re-crawl trillions of pages, consistently updating these pages and their backlinks in our index.

We even have billions of key phrases (28 billion, to be precise) in our key phrase database.

We use all of those information to calculate metrics that matter to SEOs: Area Score, search quantity, natural search site visitors, key phrase issue, backlink profile, search developments, and extra.

So whereas ChatGPT can describe web optimization completely, it will probably’t carry out it. You continue to want web optimization information to do good evaluation.

The excellent news: the issue isn’t with AI. It’s the disconnect between LLMs and web optimization information.

So, if you happen to can join ChatGPT and different LLMs to reside web optimization information, you can get actionable web optimization insights as if you happen to have been speaking to a pal.

Guess what? You may. As a result of that’s precisely what the Ahrefs MCP (Mannequin Context Protocol) does.

In easy phrases, the Ahrefs MCP is a bridge, an ordinary that permits AI assistants like ChatGPT or Claude to attach on to Ahrefs’ information. As an alternative of counting on their coaching information, your favourite AI assistant can now make reside API calls to Ahrefs and pull in actual key phrase metrics, backlinks, and website efficiency information.

Now, as a substitute of utilizing a immediate like this and having ChatGPT hallucinate key phrase information for you…

You may join your Ahrefs account with ChatGPT or Claude, then use this immediate:

Inform me in regards to the rankings [Competitor] has on the primary web page of Google that [My Site] doesn’t have first-page rankings for.

To find content material gaps between your web site and your rivals.

Cool proper? In truth, when you join Ahrefs with the AI assistant of your alternative, the poster’s prompts now do make sense. Since you’re now not asking ChatGPT to hallucinate. You’re asking it to name Ahrefs’ database and return actual metrics from our reside database.

Need extra use circumstances on the right way to use our MCP with AI assistants? Try this submit on the 15 greatest use circumstances from web optimization legend Glen Allsopp.

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