Ahrefs Monthly Organic Traffic Benchmarks (May 2026)
Benchmark your site against the median traffic tables by DR and indexed pages, and track month‑over‑month growth to gauge progress.
Benchmark your site against the median traffic tables by DR and indexed pages, and track month‑over‑month growth to gauge progress.
Summary
Ahrefs released its latest monthly organic traffic benchmark dataset (May 2026) based on anonymized Google Search Console data from 422,421 real websites. The report lists median monthly clicks for 26 industry categories, with news topping the list at 175,115 median clicks and law & government bottoming at 8,607. It also shows a steep exponential rise in median traffic across Domain Rating tiers—from 11 clicks for DR 0‑10 to 126,364 clicks for DR 90‑100, and a similar pattern across indexed‑page ranges, where 0‑10 pages average 18 clicks and 5,000+ pages average 244,772 clicks. The mean values are consistently several times higher than the median, illustrating the power‑law distribution where a handful of giants inflate the average.
The analysis explains that authority and site size compound traffic, and that small‑authority sites in low‑traffic niches can still grow by targeting realistic keywords and building topical authority. It recommends benchmarking against the median tables rather than industry averages, and tracking month‑over‑month growth against your own baseline.
Key changes
- Median monthly clicks per industry: news 175,115, law & government 8,607
- Median traffic rises exponentially with Domain Rating: 0‑10 DR = 11 clicks, 90‑100 DR = 126,364 clicks
- Median traffic rises exponentially with indexed pages: 0‑10 pages = 18 clicks, 5,000+ pages = 244,772 clicks
- Mean values are several times higher than median, indicating a power‑law distribution
- Authority and site size compound traffic; small‑authority sites can grow by targeting realistic keywords
- Benchmarking should use median tables and track month‑over‑month growth against own baseline