Now, there are lots of other ways to do SEO, but this approach involves making lots of sites on the Internet, trying to make them look like real/popular/official sites, and then have them all link to a site (or sites) ... that you are trying to get to rank higher in Google.
In this case, "The Prompting Company" is a little more overt (most of these SEO farms try to make their different sites look completely independent), but it seems follow the same basic pattern. With a tool like AHrefs (which is expensive so I don't have a subscription) I bet you could see their SEO, and what site they are really promoting, clearly."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"\"The Prompting Company, Inc., All Rights Reserved\""},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+Prompting+Company,+Inc.,+All+rights+reserved%22"}},"_tags":["comment","author_hungryhobbit","story_48153970"],"author":"hungryhobbit","comment_text":"Heh, this is cute, but I suspect it's just SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Now, there are lots of other ways to do SEO, but this approach involves making lots of sites on the Internet, trying to make them look like real/popular/official sites, and then have them all link to a site (or sites) ... that you are trying to get to rank higher in Google.
In this case, "The Prompting Company" is a little more overt (most of these SEO farms try to make their different sites look completely independent), but it seems follow the same basic pattern. With a tool like AHrefs (which is expensive so I don't have a subscription) I bet you could see their SEO, and what site they are really promoting, clearly.","created_at":"2026-05-15T22:13:20Z","created_at_i":1778883200,"objectID":"48154614","parent_id":48153970,"story_id":48153970,"story_title":"\"The Prompting Company, Inc., All Rights Reserved\"","story_url":"https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+Prompting+Company,+Inc.,+All+rights+reserved%22","updated_at":"2026-05-15T22:17:49Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"edgar2828"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"If you\u2019ve ever opened Google Analytics or one of those other big analytics dashboards, you know the feeling: too many numbers, too many charts, and worst of all, most of the data isn\u2019t even actionable. And behind the scenes, these tools are tracking your visitors\u2019 every move and even selling that data for profit.
For small business owners, indie developers, or anyone running a website, it can feel like analytics are working against you. You spend hours trying to decipher the dashboards, paying multiple subscriptions, and still not getting the insights you need.
Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve learned about keeping analytics useful and manageable:
Track only what matters: Focus on core metrics like traffic, top-performing pages, conversions, and campaign performance. Everything else is noise. \nRespect privacy: Collect only anonymous data. Cookie banners, cross-site tracking, and massive scripts not only hurt user trust and slow down your site. \nLightweight scripts = faster sites: Big analytics scripts like GA4 can double or triple page load times. Keeping your tracker minimal keeps your users happy and improves SEO. \nCombine analytics and SEO: Instead of paying separately for Semrush, Ahrefs, and other expensive tools, track your traffic and SEO performance in the same place. Saves money and mental energy. \nMake dashboards readable: Shareable, clean dashboards prevent overwhelm and help teams or clients quickly understand the data. \nCampaign tracking matters: Use UTM parameters to see which channels and campaigns actually drive results instead of guessing.
Tools like Fathom and Plausible solve some of these issues. They're lightweight and privacy-friendly, but they usually focus only on web analytics. Paid SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush are great, but for small businesses or solo entrepreneurs, the monthly costs can add up fast.
That\u2019s why I\u2019m building Statifyo. A privacy-first, lightweight analytics platform that combines web analytics and SEO insights in one simple dashboard. Nothing extra, no upsells, no creepy tracking, and all features included.
If you want to get early access and lock in a discount when we launch, you can sign up here: statifyo.com"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"[dead]"}},"_tags":["comment","author_edgar2828","story_45938469"],"author":"edgar2828","comment_text":"If you\u2019ve ever opened Google Analytics or one of those other big analytics dashboards, you know the feeling: too many numbers, too many charts, and worst of all, most of the data isn\u2019t even actionable. And behind the scenes, these tools are tracking your visitors\u2019 every move and even selling that data for profit.
For small business owners, indie developers, or anyone running a website, it can feel like analytics are working against you. You spend hours trying to decipher the dashboards, paying multiple subscriptions, and still not getting the insights you need.
Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve learned about keeping analytics useful and manageable:
Track only what matters: Focus on core metrics like traffic, top-performing pages, conversions, and campaign performance. Everything else is noise. \nRespect privacy: Collect only anonymous data. Cookie banners, cross-site tracking, and massive scripts not only hurt user trust and slow down your site. \nLightweight scripts = faster sites: Big analytics scripts like GA4 can double or triple page load times. Keeping your tracker minimal keeps your users happy and improves SEO. \nCombine analytics and SEO: Instead of paying separately for Semrush, Ahrefs, and other expensive tools, track your traffic and SEO performance in the same place. Saves money and mental energy. \nMake dashboards readable: Shareable, clean dashboards prevent overwhelm and help teams or clients quickly understand the data. \nCampaign tracking matters: Use UTM parameters to see which channels and campaigns actually drive results instead of guessing.
Tools like Fathom and Plausible solve some of these issues. They're lightweight and privacy-friendly, but they usually focus only on web analytics. Paid SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush are great, but for small businesses or solo entrepreneurs, the monthly costs can add up fast.
That\u2019s why I\u2019m building Statifyo. A privacy-first, lightweight analytics platform that combines web analytics and SEO insights in one simple dashboard. Nothing extra, no upsells, no creepy tracking, and all features included.
If you want to get early access and lock in a discount when we launch, you can sign up here: statifyo.com","created_at":"2025-11-15T16:21:59Z","created_at_i":1763223719,"objectID":"45938470","parent_id":45938469,"story_id":45938469,"story_title":"[dead]","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:00:06Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Cenk"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"From personal experience: Yes, correct markup and h1 tags etc (\u201cOn-Page SEO\u201c) all matter. Set everything up correctly, that should take your frontend dev a couple days at most for a small to medium site. But that will do almost nothing unless it\u2019s coupled with loads of backlinks. Get a tool like ahrefs or semrush (they\u2019re expensive because they\u2019re good, but a one-week trial is enough to take a look around in the beginning). There you can then see how many backlinks your competitors have and track your own rankings. Concentrate on 1-2 keywords in the beginning and fill your site with well-written content for those keywords, interlink everything on your own site, and then go get backlinks. Yes, you can buy backlinks on Fiver, but those are terrible and will probably do more harm than good. Make something good and get people to write about it."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://apollodigital.io/blog/seo-case-study"}},"_tags":["comment","author_Cenk","story_22256026"],"author":"Cenk","children":[22257458],"comment_text":"From personal experience: Yes, correct markup and h1 tags etc (\u201cOn-Page SEO\u201c) all matter. Set everything up correctly, that should take your frontend dev a couple days at most for a small to medium site. But that will do almost nothing unless it\u2019s coupled with loads of backlinks. Get a tool like ahrefs or semrush (they\u2019re expensive because they\u2019re good, but a one-week trial is enough to take a look around in the beginning). There you can then see how many backlinks your competitors have and track your own rankings. Concentrate on 1-2 keywords in the beginning and fill your site with well-written content for those keywords, interlink everything on your own site, and then go get backlinks. Yes, you can buy backlinks on Fiver, but those are terrible and will probably do more harm than good. Make something good and get people to write about it.","created_at":"2020-02-06T15:20:57Z","created_at_i":1581002457,"objectID":"22256593","parent_id":22256457,"story_id":22256026,"story_title":"SEO case study: 8k to 200k monthly organic traffic","story_url":"https://apollodigital.io/blog/seo-case-study","updated_at":"2024-09-20T05:41:17Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"adamatcompres"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"Hi HN! After months of coding in my free time, I wanted to share Competitor Research [https://competitoresearch.com], a tool that helps you find and research your competitors.
Problem:\nMost competitor analysis tools are\n1. Time consuming: These tools get you the data, but you still have to do the work of knowing what to look for\n2. Expensive: Most tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush cost $99+/month. Other more niche tools can cost $1000+/month. For enterprise software it can be $100K+, for consultants, it can be ~$2K+\n3. Requires you to know who your competitors are\n4. Not comprehensive: Mostly provides only SEO related info/social media information\n5. No actionable insights
Solution:\nWe tried our best to help startups/solopreneurs/makers get the best possible experience when researching their competitors. Here\u2019s what we ended up making:
1. We help you find your competitors by combining several different sources and ranking the ones most relevant to your business.
2. We use multiple data sources and provide a comprehensive overview of your company:\n 1. SEO Keywords - what keywords do your competitors rank for\n 2. Backlinks - who\u2019s linking to your competitors\n 3. Pricing - what your competitor\u2019s pricing model is\n 4. Traffic - where they get traffic from\n 5. Website performance - how does your competitor\u2019s website perform\n 6. Target audience and messaging
3. We provide you with actionable insights, things you can do to improve your business (get more customers, improve pricing, improve copy)
4. It\u2019s a one time fee of $79, which is a steal compared to other tools
Thanks a lot for reading through this :) We'd love to hear any feedback/comments you might have!
Adam"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: I made a tool that automates competitor research for startups/hackers"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.competitoresearch.com/"}},"_tags":["story","author_adamatcompres","story_40892500","show_hn"],"author":"adamatcompres","children":[40892696,40892726,40892969,40901917,40944006],"created_at":"2024-07-06T19:12:30Z","created_at_i":1720293150,"num_comments":9,"objectID":"40892500","points":7,"story_id":40892500,"story_text":"Hi HN! After months of coding in my free time, I wanted to share Competitor Research [https://competitoresearch.com], a tool that helps you find and research your competitors.
Problem:\nMost competitor analysis tools are\n1. Time consuming: These tools get you the data, but you still have to do the work of knowing what to look for\n2. Expensive: Most tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush cost $99+/month. Other more niche tools can cost $1000+/month. For enterprise software it can be $100K+, for consultants, it can be ~$2K+\n3. Requires you to know who your competitors are\n4. Not comprehensive: Mostly provides only SEO related info/social media information\n5. No actionable insights
Solution:\nWe tried our best to help startups/solopreneurs/makers get the best possible experience when researching their competitors. Here\u2019s what we ended up making:
1. We help you find your competitors by combining several different sources and ranking the ones most relevant to your business.
2. We use multiple data sources and provide a comprehensive overview of your company:\n 1. SEO Keywords - what keywords do your competitors rank for\n 2. Backlinks - who\u2019s linking to your competitors\n 3. Pricing - what your competitor\u2019s pricing model is\n 4. Traffic - where they get traffic from\n 5. Website performance - how does your competitor\u2019s website perform\n 6. Target audience and messaging
3. We provide you with actionable insights, things you can do to improve your business (get more customers, improve pricing, improve copy)
4. It\u2019s a one time fee of $79, which is a steal compared to other tools
Thanks a lot for reading through this :) We'd love to hear any feedback/comments you might have!
Adam","title":"Show HN: I made a tool that automates competitor research for startups/hackers","updated_at":"2025-12-19T09:34:17Z","url":"https://www.competitoresearch.com/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"MyStartupNotes"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"TLDR: Do you think it is useful if there is a tool that can simplify the concepts of SEO for everyone and also make it affordable?
After about 10 years of working in the field of SEO, I can see an opportunity of having a new SEO tool for people who can't afford\n1) an expensive SEO software like SEMRush, Ahrefs, MOZ etc. (with the cheapest subscription plan at about $90/m) or\n2) to have an SEO expert (very expensive solution for lots of SMBs or early stage startups)
I know that there are some WordPress plugins like YOAST or All in One SEO but they are mostly useful for on-site SEO. But this not sufficient. People also need proper Site Audit, Backlink analysis/gap, position tracking, keyword research and so on and so forth.
And not only that, many people still don't know how to use GMB, Google Search Console or Analytics, or even don't know what SEO mean at all :D
I'm thinking of creating a tool that guide users step-by-step how to improve their site's ranking (like a virtual assistant) and offer them on-demand modules based on their needs.
I would love to know your feeling about this startup idea, thanks."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Startup idea: Improving SEO ranking without an expert?"}},"_tags":["story","author_MyStartupNotes","story_30733319","ask_hn"],"author":"MyStartupNotes","children":[30734360,30736191],"created_at":"2022-03-19T12:46:00Z","created_at_i":1647693960,"num_comments":2,"objectID":"30733319","points":2,"story_id":30733319,"story_text":"TLDR: Do you think it is useful if there is a tool that can simplify the concepts of SEO for everyone and also make it affordable?
After about 10 years of working in the field of SEO, I can see an opportunity of having a new SEO tool for people who can't afford\n1) an expensive SEO software like SEMRush, Ahrefs, MOZ etc. (with the cheapest subscription plan at about $90/m) or\n2) to have an SEO expert (very expensive solution for lots of SMBs or early stage startups)
I know that there are some WordPress plugins like YOAST or All in One SEO but they are mostly useful for on-site SEO. But this not sufficient. People also need proper Site Audit, Backlink analysis/gap, position tracking, keyword research and so on and so forth.
And not only that, many people still don't know how to use GMB, Google Search Console or Analytics, or even don't know what SEO mean at all :D
I'm thinking of creating a tool that guide users step-by-step how to improve their site's ranking (like a virtual assistant) and offer them on-demand modules based on their needs.
I would love to know your feeling about this startup idea, thanks.","title":"Startup idea: Improving SEO ranking without an expert?","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:44:48Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"tofukid"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"ubersuggest has a good backlink and keyword volume database for its price. But ahrefs is still the most comprehensive (just expensive)."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: What\u2019s the best SEO software these days?"}},"_tags":["comment","author_tofukid","story_29297100"],"author":"tofukid","comment_text":"ubersuggest has a good backlink and keyword volume database for its price. But ahrefs is still the most comprehensive (just expensive).","created_at":"2021-11-22T09:16:18Z","created_at_i":1637572578,"objectID":"29304433","parent_id":29297100,"story_id":29297100,"story_title":"Ask HN: What\u2019s the best SEO software these days?","updated_at":"2024-09-20T09:47:45Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"theluk"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"Hey there,
so after overcoming imposter syndrom, I decided to launch one of my products to product hunt. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/videotopage
I started thinking about this project right after Vision came out. I thought how cool would it be to have a product demo you recorded turn into a full interlinked documentation with introductions, getting started, code examples and so on.
So I built it and reached a Prototype where this was possible. But it took quite some time to process, and it started to get expensive. Then I did a little bit of SEO research in Ahrefs and found out that there is not even a search demand for that. Then someone told me "give people what they want" and it seams people just look for transcriptions and to repurpose it. So I ditched the screen vision analytics part for now and focused on just the spoken text. Not sure if this was the right decision and if I now removed the main sauce from it. We will see.
The project was built using a stack that allows me to ship within days. It is based on firebase, react and nestjs and nx. I have everything in Typescript. Even though firestore might be tough to work with, I have wrappers around it that help me solve most of the issues. So this is pretty nice.
One thing I am proud of is a think I called AI islands. Imagine a model, like a actual database model, but from a business layer perspective. So in videotopage every model can be extended with AI capabilities. Each model/repository has certain functionality, like editing, deleting, adding, modifying. Now this per-model functionality is exposed obviously to the UI, so that the user can manage his content. Now, all this capabilities are also exposable to an dedicated AI agent. This still does not sound new, but in this case, each model has actually its own AI assistant history, memory and tool access. This way, when you are navigating through the page, you will always see related ai assistance that is focused only on that you see. Also it updates everything you see as if you would do it. This can be sometimes a magical experience, when you look at your list of items with several features in it, and you just start telling the bot what to change and you see it actually change in front of your eyes.
So this AI Island thing is definitely something I will be shipping in all future products."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Launching VideoToPage \u2013 How I built it and stack"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.videotopage.com/"}},"_tags":["story","author_theluk","story_40369185","show_hn"],"author":"theluk","children":[40373025],"created_at":"2024-05-15T16:37:29Z","created_at_i":1715791049,"num_comments":1,"objectID":"40369185","points":13,"story_id":40369185,"story_text":"Hey there,
so after overcoming imposter syndrom, I decided to launch one of my products to product hunt. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/videotopage
I started thinking about this project right after Vision came out. I thought how cool would it be to have a product demo you recorded turn into a full interlinked documentation with introductions, getting started, code examples and so on.
So I built it and reached a Prototype where this was possible. But it took quite some time to process, and it started to get expensive. Then I did a little bit of SEO research in Ahrefs and found out that there is not even a search demand for that. Then someone told me "give people what they want" and it seams people just look for transcriptions and to repurpose it. So I ditched the screen vision analytics part for now and focused on just the spoken text. Not sure if this was the right decision and if I now removed the main sauce from it. We will see.
The project was built using a stack that allows me to ship within days. It is based on firebase, react and nestjs and nx. I have everything in Typescript. Even though firestore might be tough to work with, I have wrappers around it that help me solve most of the issues. So this is pretty nice.
One thing I am proud of is a think I called AI islands. Imagine a model, like a actual database model, but from a business layer perspective. So in videotopage every model can be extended with AI capabilities. Each model/repository has certain functionality, like editing, deleting, adding, modifying. Now this per-model functionality is exposed obviously to the UI, so that the user can manage his content. Now, all this capabilities are also exposable to an dedicated AI agent. This still does not sound new, but in this case, each model has actually its own AI assistant history, memory and tool access. This way, when you are navigating through the page, you will always see related ai assistance that is focused only on that you see. Also it updates everything you see as if you would do it. This can be sometimes a magical experience, when you look at your list of items with several features in it, and you just start telling the bot what to change and you see it actually change in front of your eyes.
So this AI Island thing is definitely something I will be shipping in all future products.","title":"Show HN: Launching VideoToPage \u2013 How I built it and stack","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:05:32Z","url":"https://www.videotopage.com/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"hankor"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"Problem: Auditing your site and building an SEO strategy is crucial but hiring an SEO manager or consultant is expensive.
Solution: Inpages generates comprehensive SEO reports and provides actionable items for your growth.
Value Proposition: Unlike legacy tools (Ahrefs, Semrush), Inpages not only provides data but also directs your next actions for optimization.
Inpages will be opened within 1 week. Join the waitlist now and stay ahead of the competition!"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: I made your private SEO manager service"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://inpages.ai/"}},"_tags":["story","author_hankor","story_40902878","show_hn"],"author":"hankor","created_at":"2024-07-08T05:42:15Z","created_at_i":1720417335,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"40902878","points":5,"story_id":40902878,"story_text":"Problem: Auditing your site and building an SEO strategy is crucial but hiring an SEO manager or consultant is expensive.
Solution: Inpages generates comprehensive SEO reports and provides actionable items for your growth.
Value Proposition: Unlike legacy tools (Ahrefs, Semrush), Inpages not only provides data but also directs your next actions for optimization.
Inpages will be opened within 1 week. Join the waitlist now and stay ahead of the competition!","title":"Show HN: I made your private SEO manager service","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:21:26Z","url":"https://inpages.ai/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"damienl"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"I've always found SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to be incredibly useful but prohibitively expensive for many users. That's why I created Theseolabs, a completely free SEO research tool aimed at becoming the "Photopea of SEO."
It's still early and I focused on Keyword research tools, but roadmap include domain and serp data, backlinks to become a global seo tool competing with Ahrefs and SEMrush while remaining completely free"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: I've Built a Free Alternative ToAhrefs and SEMrush (Free SEO Tool))"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.theseolabs.com/"}},"_tags":["story","author_damienl","story_41548313","show_hn"],"author":"damienl","children":[41548344],"created_at":"2024-09-15T16:10:20Z","created_at_i":1726416620,"num_comments":3,"objectID":"41548313","points":2,"story_id":41548313,"story_text":"I've always found SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to be incredibly useful but prohibitively expensive for many users. That's why I created Theseolabs, a completely free SEO research tool aimed at becoming the "Photopea of SEO."
It's still early and I focused on Keyword research tools, but roadmap include domain and serp data, backlinks to become a global seo tool competing with Ahrefs and SEMrush while remaining completely free","title":"Show HN: I've Built a Free Alternative ToAhrefs and SEMrush (Free SEO Tool))","updated_at":"2024-11-06T22:09:48Z","url":"https://www.theseolabs.com/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"linksku"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"A few months ago, I was given a rare opportunity to build a startup in an internal incubator at Amplitude (product analytics, like Google Analytics), here's how it went.
The CEO said I could build anything I wanted related to AI, and I would be given funding and a team. Since I've done a ton of SEO, I considered building something for SEO, but I kept hearing: SEO is dying, people are using ChatGPT. Around the same time, I noticed that the latest YC batch had 2 companies that collected data from ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity and helped brands show up more often and more favorably. This type of tool is known as "AI visibility" or "GEO". In addition, Profound, one of earlier AI visibility tools, had just raised $20M.
I tried out a bunch of these tools and realized they were unhelpful or overly expensive. I figured I could build something better and cheaper, and combine it with Amplitude's existing data. For example, Amplitude already has data on traffic from ChatGPT to our customers' websites and people can run A/B tests using Amplitude to optimize their content.
I built the initial version in a week with a small team during an internal hackathon, which we won. Then, the CEO wanted me to demo it to our existing customers, 5 customers call per week. Since we have great relationships with many customers, I easily found customers willing to see the product and give me feedback. Eventually, I was able to preload each customer's data before the calls, so they could use the product as it was being built. Most customers loved it, one calling it "the highlight of my week". Over the source of a few months, I've talked with 100+ customers, ranging from software engineers to marketing directors to CEOs. I've improved the product after each call (sometimes during the calls with Cursor). We've also hired a small engineering team to build the product, and now we're ready to show it off.
Here's some information I've gathered on the top companies in the space:
- Profound: the current market leader with $60 million in funding. They have a lot of bells and whistles, such as running prompts from different regions or analytics specifically for e-commerce. However, I found the UI and data unintuitive, as if they tried to cram in as much data as possible instead of asking people what they need in their workflows. The pricing is $400/month for the basic plan\n- Ahrefs Brand Radar: popular with existing users of Ahrefs. Several Amplitude customers have tried it, but most of them have said that the prompts they provide aren't relevant to the company, making the analysis useless\n- Peec/Athena/Anvil/Hall AI/etc: I tried a bunch of them, they mostly felt like Profound with fewer features, though slightly cheaper\nSince there's not a big differentiation between these products, it comes down to price and UX. I've spent months improving Amplitude AI Visibility's UX based on customer feedback. In addition, Amplitude's CEO wanted to make it available for free without signing up so as many people as possible can try it out.
Here's a demo with Hacker News' data: https://app.amplitude.com/analytics/share/ai-visibility/Hacker%20News
And you can generate your company's data: https://amplitude.com/try-ai-visibility
I'll answer any questions and debug any issues you come across."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"How and why I built a free AI Visibility / GEO tool"}},"_tags":["story","author_linksku","story_45753156","ask_hn"],"author":"linksku","created_at":"2025-10-29T21:16:51Z","created_at_i":1761772611,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"45753156","points":2,"story_id":45753156,"story_text":"A few months ago, I was given a rare opportunity to build a startup in an internal incubator at Amplitude (product analytics, like Google Analytics), here's how it went.
The CEO said I could build anything I wanted related to AI, and I would be given funding and a team. Since I've done a ton of SEO, I considered building something for SEO, but I kept hearing: SEO is dying, people are using ChatGPT. Around the same time, I noticed that the latest YC batch had 2 companies that collected data from ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity and helped brands show up more often and more favorably. This type of tool is known as "AI visibility" or "GEO". In addition, Profound, one of earlier AI visibility tools, had just raised $20M.
I tried out a bunch of these tools and realized they were unhelpful or overly expensive. I figured I could build something better and cheaper, and combine it with Amplitude's existing data. For example, Amplitude already has data on traffic from ChatGPT to our customers' websites and people can run A/B tests using Amplitude to optimize their content.
I built the initial version in a week with a small team during an internal hackathon, which we won. Then, the CEO wanted me to demo it to our existing customers, 5 customers call per week. Since we have great relationships with many customers, I easily found customers willing to see the product and give me feedback. Eventually, I was able to preload each customer's data before the calls, so they could use the product as it was being built. Most customers loved it, one calling it "the highlight of my week". Over the source of a few months, I've talked with 100+ customers, ranging from software engineers to marketing directors to CEOs. I've improved the product after each call (sometimes during the calls with Cursor). We've also hired a small engineering team to build the product, and now we're ready to show it off.
Here's some information I've gathered on the top companies in the space:
- Profound: the current market leader with $60 million in funding. They have a lot of bells and whistles, such as running prompts from different regions or analytics specifically for e-commerce. However, I found the UI and data unintuitive, as if they tried to cram in as much data as possible instead of asking people what they need in their workflows. The pricing is $400/month for the basic plan\n- Ahrefs Brand Radar: popular with existing users of Ahrefs. Several Amplitude customers have tried it, but most of them have said that the prompts they provide aren't relevant to the company, making the analysis useless\n- Peec/Athena/Anvil/Hall AI/etc: I tried a bunch of them, they mostly felt like Profound with fewer features, though slightly cheaper\nSince there's not a big differentiation between these products, it comes down to price and UX. I've spent months improving Amplitude AI Visibility's UX based on customer feedback. In addition, Amplitude's CEO wanted to make it available for free without signing up so as many people as possible can try it out.
Here's a demo with Hacker News' data: https://app.amplitude.com/analytics/share/ai-visibility/Hacker%20News
And you can generate your company's data: https://amplitude.com/try-ai-visibility
I'll answer any questions and debug any issues you come across.","title":"How and why I built a free AI Visibility / GEO tool","updated_at":"2026-03-05T22:58:11Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"txscdn"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"Free services popping up overnight and offering everything large SaaS companies do for 1/10th the cost - or free.
I\u2019ve been paying hundreds of dollars per month for services like Ahrefs and SEMRush for 10 years.
Mind blown at the pace these new tools are launching.
Does anyone else have examples of killer new, free services they are using to retire expensive SaaS?"},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["expensive"],"value":"Examples: Replacing expensive SaaS with free tools?"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.measureboard.com"}},"_tags":["comment","author_txscdn","story_47949268"],"author":"txscdn","comment_text":"Free services popping up overnight and offering everything large SaaS companies do for 1/10th the cost - or free.
I\u2019ve been paying hundreds of dollars per month for services like Ahrefs and SEMRush for 10 years.
Mind blown at the pace these new tools are launching.
Does anyone else have examples of killer new, free services they are using to retire expensive SaaS?","created_at":"2026-04-29T14:51:38Z","created_at_i":1777474298,"objectID":"47949269","parent_id":47949268,"story_id":47949268,"story_title":"Examples: Replacing expensive SaaS with free tools?","story_url":"https://www.measureboard.com","updated_at":"2026-04-29T14:54:04Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"input_sh"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"> This is very generous of you!
No it's not, it's a sales pitch that intentionally ignores some of the things pointed out in the article. The author has invested time into proper SEO optimization, legit websites already link to it et cetera, it's all explained in the article.
From the perspective of a spammer: They need like 2 million MAU to earn below minimum wage. You're never getting those figures by doing something legit and actually useful to a tiny subset of people. You either need a vague site beyond any point of usefulness to anyone or you need a network of knockoff sites. The reason you can't compete with these shitty SEO spam version of your site is because they already have a network of "authoritative" (in Google's eyes) sites and all they have to do is to link from them to a new one to expand their shitty network.
From the perspective of SEO agencies: They can't guarantee results. They can tell you vague, easily-googleable best practices and give you an output of some SEO SaaS that's far too expensive for an individual to purchase. Ahrefs(.com) is the prime example of this, the cheapest paid version costs $129/month. Do you care about SEO that much? No, so you go to these agencies and give them money for them to give you the output of such a tool. But that SaaS also only contains vague and nebulous "things to fix" to follow "best practices" because they also cannot know what drives traffic to your competitor from the outside perspective.
My best suggestion would be to start a website from day one. Doesn't matter how good the website is at first, Google favours sites that exist for longer. If you're creating a website after the knock-off version already exist, you might as well give up immediately, it's gonna be near impossible to recover from that."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"I'm losing the SEO battle for my own open source project"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://twitter.com/Gavriel_Cohen/status/2028821432759717930"}},"_tags":["comment","author_input_sh","story_47232158"],"author":"input_sh","children":[47234886,47306143],"comment_text":"> This is very generous of you!
No it's not, it's a sales pitch that intentionally ignores some of the things pointed out in the article. The author has invested time into proper SEO optimization, legit websites already link to it et cetera, it's all explained in the article.
From the perspective of a spammer: They need like 2 million MAU to earn below minimum wage. You're never getting those figures by doing something legit and actually useful to a tiny subset of people. You either need a vague site beyond any point of usefulness to anyone or you need a network of knockoff sites. The reason you can't compete with these shitty SEO spam version of your site is because they already have a network of "authoritative" (in Google's eyes) sites and all they have to do is to link from them to a new one to expand their shitty network.
From the perspective of SEO agencies: They can't guarantee results. They can tell you vague, easily-googleable best practices and give you an output of some SEO SaaS that's far too expensive for an individual to purchase. Ahrefs(.com) is the prime example of this, the cheapest paid version costs $129/month. Do you care about SEO that much? No, so you go to these agencies and give them money for them to give you the output of such a tool. But that SaaS also only contains vague and nebulous "things to fix" to follow "best practices" because they also cannot know what drives traffic to your competitor from the outside perspective.
My best suggestion would be to start a website from day one. Doesn't matter how good the website is at first, Google favours sites that exist for longer. If you're creating a website after the knock-off version already exist, you might as well give up immediately, it's gonna be near impossible to recover from that.","created_at":"2026-03-03T15:39:19Z","created_at_i":1772552359,"objectID":"47234014","parent_id":47233392,"story_id":47232158,"story_title":"I'm losing the SEO battle for my own open source project","story_url":"https://twitter.com/Gavriel_Cohen/status/2028821432759717930","updated_at":"2026-03-09T09:34:38Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"openplatypus"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"As a founder in this space, it not as bad as you think. There are niches in this crowded yet broad space.
Plausible - good for self-hosting, but their SaaS is very expensive and FOSS vs SaaS offering differ.
Ahrefs - they will use your traffic to improve your competitor research, you really should use them cautiously.
Matomo - feature rich but can be overwhelming.
Posthog - its SaaS is US based so dismissed early by EU customers.
Clarity, like GA has serious privacy issues.
Our product, Wide Angle Analytics, has its own gotchas compared to competitors - its opinionated and there are folks who do not agree with our opinions, but the landscape of websites is so vast that you find your client nevertheless.
That said, we are still in business after 4 years, and we saw few competitors disappear or get acquired and extinguished.
So, all the best to the OP. Hope you find your niche :)"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://github.com/rybbit-io/rybbit"}},"_tags":["comment","author_openplatypus","story_43918620"],"author":"openplatypus","children":[43920899,43921466,43922167,43922237,43922627,43922879,43923260,43925447,43927607],"comment_text":"As a founder in this space, it not as bad as you think. There are niches in this crowded yet broad space.
Plausible - good for self-hosting, but their SaaS is very expensive and FOSS vs SaaS offering differ.
Ahrefs - they will use your traffic to improve your competitor research, you really should use them cautiously.
Matomo - feature rich but can be overwhelming.
Posthog - its SaaS is US based so dismissed early by EU customers.
Clarity, like GA has serious privacy issues.
Our product, Wide Angle Analytics, has its own gotchas compared to competitors - its opinionated and there are folks who do not agree with our opinions, but the landscape of websites is so vast that you find your client nevertheless.
That said, we are still in business after 4 years, and we saw few competitors disappear or get acquired and extinguished.
So, all the best to the OP. Hope you find your niche :)","created_at":"2025-05-07T21:08:20Z","created_at_i":1746652100,"objectID":"43920577","parent_id":43920040,"story_id":43918620,"story_title":"RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement","story_url":"https://github.com/rybbit-io/rybbit","updated_at":"2025-05-14T20:25:28Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"fancythat"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"I will use an opportunity to confirm that cloud is ill-suited for almost all but niche business cases and majority of users were dragged into cloud platforms either by free credits or (my suspicion) some grey kick-back schemes with C-level guys.
At my current project (Fortune 500 saas company, was there for both on-prem to cloud and then cloud-to-cloud migration):
a) Resources are terribly expensive. Usual tricks you find online (spot instances) usually cannot be applied for some specific work related reason. In our estimates, in contrast to even the hw/sw list-prices, cloud is 5x-10x more expensive, of course depending on the features you are planning to use.
b) There is always a sort of "direction" cloud provider pushes you into: in my case, costs between VMs and Kubernetes are so high, we\nget almost weekly demands to make the conversion, even though Kubernetes for some of the scenarios we have don't make any sense.
c) Even though we are spending 6 figures, now maybe even 7 figures on the infrastructure monthly, priority support answer that we receive are borderline comical and in-line with one response we received when we asked why our DB service was down, quote: "DB has experienced some issues so it was restarted."
d) When we were having on-prem, some new features asked from ops side, were usually implemented / investigated in a day or so. Nowadays, in most cases, answers are available after week or so of investigation, because each thing has its own name and lingo with different cloud providers. This can be solved with specific cloud certifications, but in real-world, we cannot pause the business for 6 months until all ops are completely knowledgeable about all inner workings of the currently popular cloud provider.
e) Performance is atrocious at times. That multi-tenancy some guys are mentioning here is for provider's benefit not for the customer. They cram ungodly amount of workload on machines, that mostly works, until it doesn't and when it does not, effects are catastrophic. Yes, you can have isolation and dedicated resources, but a)
f) Security and reliability features are overly exaggerated. From the observable facts, in the last year, we had 4 major incidents lasting several hours strictly related to the platform (total connectivity failure, total service failure, complete loss of one of the sites, etc).
In the end, for anyone who wants to get deeper into this, check what Ahrefs wrote about cloud."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Why Companies Are Ditching the Cloud: The Rise of Cloud Repatriation"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://thenewstack.io/why-companies-are-ditching-the-cloud-the-rise-of-cloud-repatriation/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_fancythat","story_42054813"],"author":"fancythat","comment_text":"I will use an opportunity to confirm that cloud is ill-suited for almost all but niche business cases and majority of users were dragged into cloud platforms either by free credits or (my suspicion) some grey kick-back schemes with C-level guys.
At my current project (Fortune 500 saas company, was there for both on-prem to cloud and then cloud-to-cloud migration):
a) Resources are terribly expensive. Usual tricks you find online (spot instances) usually cannot be applied for some specific work related reason. In our estimates, in contrast to even the hw/sw list-prices, cloud is 5x-10x more expensive, of course depending on the features you are planning to use.
b) There is always a sort of "direction" cloud provider pushes you into: in my case, costs between VMs and Kubernetes are so high, we\nget almost weekly demands to make the conversion, even though Kubernetes for some of the scenarios we have don't make any sense.
c) Even though we are spending 6 figures, now maybe even 7 figures on the infrastructure monthly, priority support answer that we receive are borderline comical and in-line with one response we received when we asked why our DB service was down, quote: "DB has experienced some issues so it was restarted."
d) When we were having on-prem, some new features asked from ops side, were usually implemented / investigated in a day or so. Nowadays, in most cases, answers are available after week or so of investigation, because each thing has its own name and lingo with different cloud providers. This can be solved with specific cloud certifications, but in real-world, we cannot pause the business for 6 months until all ops are completely knowledgeable about all inner workings of the currently popular cloud provider.
e) Performance is atrocious at times. That multi-tenancy some guys are mentioning here is for provider's benefit not for the customer. They cram ungodly amount of workload on machines, that mostly works, until it doesn't and when it does not, effects are catastrophic. Yes, you can have isolation and dedicated resources, but a)
f) Security and reliability features are overly exaggerated. From the observable facts, in the last year, we had 4 major incidents lasting several hours strictly related to the platform (total connectivity failure, total service failure, complete loss of one of the sites, etc).
In the end, for anyone who wants to get deeper into this, check what Ahrefs wrote about cloud.","created_at":"2024-11-06T07:14:42Z","created_at_i":1730877282,"objectID":"42057766","parent_id":42054813,"story_id":42054813,"story_title":"Why Companies Are Ditching the Cloud: The Rise of Cloud Repatriation","story_url":"https://thenewstack.io/why-companies-are-ditching-the-cloud-the-rise-of-cloud-repatriation/","updated_at":"2024-11-06T17:59:49Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"tuttyboy"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"It sends you to Ahrefs (an external site) after you click on a keyword generated by your tool. It would be cool to bake additional keyword recommendations from Ahrefs into your app to improve UX. Of course, this would be expensive. To access their API you need to pay at least $15k per year. That said, nice little MVP for a free keyword tool.
How do you plan to productize it (if at all)?"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: LowKDFinder \u2013 AI Tool for Low-Competition Keyword Discovery"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.lowkdfinder.com/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_tuttyboy","story_40484027"],"author":"tuttyboy","comment_text":"It sends you to Ahrefs (an external site) after you click on a keyword generated by your tool. It would be cool to bake additional keyword recommendations from Ahrefs into your app to improve UX. Of course, this would be expensive. To access their API you need to pay at least $15k per year. That said, nice little MVP for a free keyword tool.
How do you plan to productize it (if at all)?","created_at":"2024-05-26T18:19:15Z","created_at_i":1716747555,"objectID":"40484215","parent_id":40484027,"story_id":40484027,"story_title":"Show HN: LowKDFinder \u2013 AI Tool for Low-Competition Keyword Discovery","story_url":"https://www.lowkdfinder.com/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:08:22Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"nunez"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"i don't buy it.
first of all, ahrefs discounts the "people" cost, but that's a huge cost to ignore!
the biggest advantage that AWS and the like confer is being able to reduce interactions with literally every piece of infra you consume from them down to APIs.
having physical hardware means you need a team who knows how to rack/provision/configure/update hardware *along with* administrating operating systems and everything that comes with *along with* the automation needed to hold everything together.
finding people who had all of those skillsets was super challenging before The Cloud appeared, and is especially hard now since everyone who would have those skillsets prefers to work with cloudy things (because everything's an API).
second of all, they made the classic mistake of doing a one-to-one comparison of running their business on EC2. ofc that's going to cost a ton! you're basically just renting VMs from them at a huge premium. that can be done anywhere else (Hetzner is popular) for much cheaper.
that's not why you move to the cloud.
when AWS or Azure says they help companies save money, they usually mean taking an app that runs really well on-premise on a fixed set of compute that's a whole process to scale and making it run even better on smaller, but more distributed, compute that should be less expensive due to economies of scale.
Do web crawlers like these _need_ to run entirely on huge EC2 instances that run hot all of the time? Could they take advantage of more fractional compute from things like EC2 spot autoscaling groups or "serverless" compute? Ahrefs uses local NVMe storage for everything, which is definitely cheaper than EBS. Could they use data archival pipelines to compact and move less-used data onto slow networked storage? Could they benefit from using more aggressive caching for sites that don't change very often?
finally, for every company like Ahrefs who runs lots of compute hot 24x7, there are at least 20,000 companies who spend big money operating datacenters for apps that don't justify the cost. they _could_ save significant amounts of money by moving to the cloud AND re-architecting their apps to spend compute more efficiently."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ahrefs"],"value":"Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by Not Going to the Cloud (2023)"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ahrefs"],"value":"https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-saved-us-400m-in-3-years-by-not-going-to-the-cloud-8939dd930af8?gi=10fa74faaed3"}},"_tags":["comment","author_nunez","story_39798569"],"author":"nunez","children":[39799757,39803116],"comment_text":"i don't buy it.
first of all, ahrefs discounts the "people" cost, but that's a huge cost to ignore!
the biggest advantage that AWS and the like confer is being able to reduce interactions with literally every piece of infra you consume from them down to APIs.
having physical hardware means you need a team who knows how to rack/provision/configure/update hardware *along with* administrating operating systems and everything that comes with *along with* the automation needed to hold everything together.
finding people who had all of those skillsets was super challenging before The Cloud appeared, and is especially hard now since everyone who would have those skillsets prefers to work with cloudy things (because everything's an API).
second of all, they made the classic mistake of doing a one-to-one comparison of running their business on EC2. ofc that's going to cost a ton! you're basically just renting VMs from them at a huge premium. that can be done anywhere else (Hetzner is popular) for much cheaper.
that's not why you move to the cloud.
when AWS or Azure says they help companies save money, they usually mean taking an app that runs really well on-premise on a fixed set of compute that's a whole process to scale and making it run even better on smaller, but more distributed, compute that should be less expensive due to economies of scale.
Do web crawlers like these _need_ to run entirely on huge EC2 instances that run hot all of the time? Could they take advantage of more fractional compute from things like EC2 spot autoscaling groups or "serverless" compute? Ahrefs uses local NVMe storage for everything, which is definitely cheaper than EBS. Could they use data archival pipelines to compact and move less-used data onto slow networked storage? Could they benefit from using more aggressive caching for sites that don't change very often?
finally, for every company like Ahrefs who runs lots of compute hot 24x7, there are at least 20,000 companies who spend big money operating datacenters for apps that don't justify the cost. they _could_ save significant amounts of money by moving to the cloud AND re-architecting their apps to spend compute more efficiently.","created_at":"2024-03-23T12:30:52Z","created_at_i":1711197052,"objectID":"39799453","parent_id":39798569,"story_id":39798569,"story_title":"Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by Not Going to the Cloud (2023)","story_url":"https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-saved-us-400m-in-3-years-by-not-going-to-the-cloud-8939dd930af8?gi=10fa74faaed3","updated_at":"2024-09-20T16:43:15Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ed"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"Thanks tomcam! This is probably the weirdest project I\u2019ve launched so far.
I can share that the strategy here is to rank for \u201cmaternity photoshoot.\u201d Obviously. But it will take a while to get backlinks and rank.
According to ahrefs the phrase has great volume (25k/mo in the US) and low competition (difficulty of 2, on a scale of 0-100). Which is an opportunity I haven\u2019t seen before.
The low price is to incentivize initial sales and prove to people that it actually works.
This essentially follows Danny postma\u2019s playbook, here: https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1646368426246680579
The alternative (a physical photoshoot) is expensive, and a luxury most moms can\u2019t even consider, so it would be cool if the idea works out!"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Use SDXL fine tunes to make pro-quality maternity photoshoots at home"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.maternityphotoshoot.com/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_ed","story_39649205"],"author":"ed","comment_text":"Thanks tomcam! This is probably the weirdest project I\u2019ve launched so far.
I can share that the strategy here is to rank for \u201cmaternity photoshoot.\u201d Obviously. But it will take a while to get backlinks and rank.
According to ahrefs the phrase has great volume (25k/mo in the US) and low competition (difficulty of 2, on a scale of 0-100). Which is an opportunity I haven\u2019t seen before.
The low price is to incentivize initial sales and prove to people that it actually works.
This essentially follows Danny postma\u2019s playbook, here: https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1646368426246680579
The alternative (a physical photoshoot) is expensive, and a luxury most moms can\u2019t even consider, so it would be cool if the idea works out!","created_at":"2024-03-09T07:31:26Z","created_at_i":1709969486,"objectID":"39650116","parent_id":39649818,"story_id":39649205,"story_title":"Show HN: Use SDXL fine tunes to make pro-quality maternity photoshoots at home","story_url":"https://www.maternityphotoshoot.com/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T16:37:44Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"brunosutic"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"Hi HN! I'm Bruno, the founder of https://linkok.com. linkok.com is a modern broken link checker.
I got the idea before the Covid pandemic: at the time I was looking for a better senior developer job. I sent a couple dozen job applications with my resume website, and I only got a couple job interviews, and no offers. I gave up and stayed at my old job. A couple months later I was optimizing my website. I checked for broken links and the results were bad: from 12 links total, 4 were broken. That's more than 30% broken links - no wonder I couldn't find a new job!
Since then I realized broken links are a problem for pretty much every website out there. If you have a website, you likely have broken links too. And the existing solutions don't cut it. Most online broken link checkers are old, and have outdated interface. Advanced SEO tools (ahrefs, semrush etc) can do broken links checking, but are too complex and expensive for regular people.
Under the hood linkok.com crawls sites using Async Ruby, which has proven great for this type of work. I love how easy it is to work with (when compared to threads). It also made some advanced features easy, like request retries. Async is a somewhat underused in the Ruby community. If someone has more questions about it, I'd be glad to answer.
My goal for linkok.com is that it should be easy to use (think: blogger moms), and it should be accurate and powerful enough for enterprises. linkok.com is free forever for small sites (up to 100 internal pages) and charges a fee for bigger sites. It's also completely free for open source, educational and non-profit websites. This is not automated yet, reach out at bruno.sutic@linkok.com and I'll set you up.
You may find this interesting: I worked on this project for 3 years! By far the hardest part was billing - integrating with Stripe properly took me almost 1 year (Stripe is very hard). I also shaved a couple of yaks, highlights: implemented postgresql and redis high availability, I run things bare metal servers (Hetzner).
I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback and ideas! Looking forward to your comments."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Linkok.com \u2013 modern broken link checker I've been working on for 3 years"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://linkok.com"}},"_tags":["comment","author_brunosutic","story_39240508"],"author":"brunosutic","children":[39240991],"comment_text":"Hi HN! I'm Bruno, the founder of https://linkok.com. linkok.com is a modern broken link checker.
I got the idea before the Covid pandemic: at the time I was looking for a better senior developer job. I sent a couple dozen job applications with my resume website, and I only got a couple job interviews, and no offers. I gave up and stayed at my old job. A couple months later I was optimizing my website. I checked for broken links and the results were bad: from 12 links total, 4 were broken. That's more than 30% broken links - no wonder I couldn't find a new job!
Since then I realized broken links are a problem for pretty much every website out there. If you have a website, you likely have broken links too. And the existing solutions don't cut it. Most online broken link checkers are old, and have outdated interface. Advanced SEO tools (ahrefs, semrush etc) can do broken links checking, but are too complex and expensive for regular people.
Under the hood linkok.com crawls sites using Async Ruby, which has proven great for this type of work. I love how easy it is to work with (when compared to threads). It also made some advanced features easy, like request retries. Async is a somewhat underused in the Ruby community. If someone has more questions about it, I'd be glad to answer.
My goal for linkok.com is that it should be easy to use (think: blogger moms), and it should be accurate and powerful enough for enterprises. linkok.com is free forever for small sites (up to 100 internal pages) and charges a fee for bigger sites. It's also completely free for open source, educational and non-profit websites. This is not automated yet, reach out at bruno.sutic@linkok.com and I'll set you up.
You may find this interesting: I worked on this project for 3 years! By far the hardest part was billing - integrating with Stripe properly took me almost 1 year (Stripe is very hard). I also shaved a couple of yaks, highlights: implemented postgresql and redis high availability, I run things bare metal servers (Hetzner).
I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback and ideas! Looking forward to your comments.","created_at":"2024-02-03T14:14:43Z","created_at_i":1706969683,"objectID":"39240509","parent_id":39240508,"story_id":39240508,"story_title":"Linkok.com \u2013 modern broken link checker I've been working on for 3 years","story_url":"https://linkok.com","updated_at":"2024-09-20T16:16:29Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"alexzhues"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["ahrefs","expensive"],"value":"\u201c While Ahrefs uses AWS benefits for hosting our frontend in different parts of the world, the vast majority of Ahrefs\u2019 infrastructure iceberg hides in the colocation with owned hardware\u201d
They use the cloud when scalability is a concern. Most people recognize that cloud services are more expensive than managing their own infra when utilization is high and usage is predictable. Kudos to Agrefs for making the right decisions for their needs."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ahrefs"],"value":"Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by Not Going to the Cloud"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ahrefs"],"value":"https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-saved-us-400m-in-3-years-by-not-going-to-the-cloud-8939dd930af8"}},"_tags":["comment","author_alexzhues","story_36674601"],"author":"alexzhues","comment_text":"\u201c While Ahrefs uses AWS benefits for hosting our frontend in different parts of the world, the vast majority of Ahrefs\u2019 infrastructure iceberg hides in the colocation with owned hardware\u201d
They use the cloud when scalability is a concern. Most people recognize that cloud services are more expensive than managing their own infra when utilization is high and usage is predictable. Kudos to Agrefs for making the right decisions for their needs.","created_at":"2023-07-10T23:55:22Z","created_at_i":1689033322,"objectID":"36674722","parent_id":36674601,"story_id":36674601,"story_title":"Ahrefs Saved US$400M in 3 Years by Not Going to the Cloud","story_url":"https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-saved-us-400m-in-3-years-by-not-going-to-the-cloud-8939dd930af8","updated_at":"2024-09-20T14:38:22Z"}],"hitsPerPage":20,"nbHits":28,"nbPages":2,"page":0,"params":"query=Ahrefs+expensive&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":41,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"queue":2,"roundTrip":14},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":3,"total":3},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":12,"total":12},"total":16},"total":16},"fetch":{"query":21,"scanning":2,"total":24},"total":41},"query":"Ahrefs expensive","serverTimeMS":47}