Ahrefs Domain History

The Ahrefs Domain History node reads how a domain's Domain Rating, referring domains and organic traffic moved over a date range, with the first-to-last change computed per metric.

What does the Ahrefs Domain History node do?#

The Ahrefs Domain History node reads how a domain moved over a date range: its Domain Rating, its referring domains and its estimated organic traffic, one series per metric.

A snapshot says what a domain is worth today; only a series says whether that is good news. Ahrefs exposes three history endpoints — domain-rating-history, refdomains-history and metrics-history — all keyed by the same date range and grouping, and none of them joined. This node runs them together and adds a change block comparing the first point of each series to the last.

That comparison is computed server-side on purpose. It is the thing every report reads first, and getting it wrong is easy: a first point of zero has no meaningful percentage growth, and two series rarely have exactly the same number of points.

Common use cases:

• Measuring the effect of a link campaign over several months.
• Reporting a trend rather than a single figure.
• Detecting when a traffic drop or a backlink loss started.
• Comparing the growth rate of a site against a competitor.
• Feeding a chart with a ready-made series.

Quick setup#

Configuration parameters#

Required fields#

Optional fields#

What does the node output?#

Five anchors, so a node that wants the deltas does not receive three full series:

Anchor	Contents
Change	First-to-last comparison per metric
Domain Rating history	The DR series
Referring domains history	The referring-domains series
Traffic history	The traffic series
History	The whole payload, including the cache report

{
  "target": "example.com",
  "mode": "domain",
  "date_from": "2026-01-01",
  "date_to": "2026-10-21",
  "history_grouping": "monthly",
  "domain_rating_history": [
    { "date": "2026-01-01", "domain_rating": 71.2 },
    { "date": "2026-10-01", "domain_rating": 76.5 }
  ],
  "refdomains_history": [
    { "date": "2026-01-01", "refdomains": 4210 },
    { "date": "2026-10-01", "refdomains": 5120 }
  ],
  "traffic_history": [
    { "date": "2026-01-01", "org_traffic": 240100 },
    { "date": "2026-10-01", "org_traffic": 328400 }
  ],
  "change": {
    "domain_rating": {
      "from": 71.2, "from_date": "2026-01-01",
      "to": 76.5, "to_date": "2026-10-01",
      "absolute": 5.3, "percent": 7.44
    },
    "refdomains": {
      "from": 4210, "from_date": "2026-01-01",
      "to": 5120, "to_date": "2026-10-01",
      "absolute": 910, "percent": 21.62
    },
    "org_traffic": {
      "from": 240100, "from_date": "2026-01-01",
      "to": 328400, "to_date": "2026-10-01",
      "absolute": 88300, "percent": 36.78
    }
  },
  "retrieved_at": "2026-10-21T16:04:11Z",
  "source": "Ahrefs API v3 (Site Explorer)",
  "cache": { "hits": [], "misses": ["domain-rating-history"], "units_cost": 86 }
}

Usage examples#

Example 1: Twelve-month trend report#

Workflow:

1. Ahrefs Domain History with Start date 2026-01-01, Grouping monthly, Cache window 7d.
2. The History anchor feeds a Merge With Template node.
3. The result is written to a Google Docs document.

Example 2: Campaign measurement#

Workflow:

1. Ahrefs Domain History over the campaign window, Grouping weekly, Organic traffic switched off.
2. The Change anchor — four numbers rather than three full series — feeds an LLM asked to explain what moved.

Example 3: Traffic-drop alert#

Workflow:

1. Ahrefs Domain History with only Organic traffic on and Traffic columns limited to org_traffic. One series, one column: the cheapest possible version of this node.
2. A Conditional Node tests the traffic change against a threshold.
3. An Email Sender notifies the team when it is breached.

Example 4: Competitor growth comparison#

Workflow:

1. A Text node lists the competitors.
2. A Loop Node feeds the Target input.
3. Ahrefs Domain History returns each series.
4. The Change anchor is appended to a Google Sheets tab, one row per competitor.

Common issues#

`The Ahrefs start date must be a date in YYYY-MM-DD format`

Cause: The start or end date is empty, or written in another format.

Solution: Use 2026-01-01. Ahrefs would reject the value for free, but its message names the parameter and not the format, so the node checks it locally and names both.

`The Ahrefs start date is after the end date`

Cause: The range runs backwards, usually because an upstream node supplied the dates in the wrong order.

Solution: Swap them, or leave End date empty to run up to today.

A metric is missing from the change block

Cause: Its series has fewer than two usable points — a range too short for the chosen grouping, or a domain Ahrefs has little history on.

Solution: Widen the date range, or switch the grouping to weekly or daily so the range contains more than one point.

`The Ahrefs refdomains-history endpoint returns a fixed set of metrics and ignores a column selection`

Cause: Column selection applies to the traffic series only. The other two endpoints return a fixed shape.

Solution: Leave Traffic columns to the traffic series; there is nothing to narrow on the other two.

Best practices and pitfalls#

How does it fit into a workflow?#

graph LR
    Date[Date<br/>campaign start] --> History[Ahrefs Domain History]
    History -->|Change| LLM[LLM<br/>explain the movement]
    History -->|Traffic history| Sheets[Google Sheets<br/>chart data]
    LLM --> Docs[Google Docs<br/>report]

Related nodes#