The Scenario
You are a VP of Growth at a B2B SaaS company. The board deck is due Thursday. Your CEO wants a competitive matrix — 40 rival domains, DR, backlink count, referring domains, and estimated organic traffic — all in one Excel workbook so the designer can pull the numbers directly.
The 40 domains are already in column A of the Competitors tab. You need columns B through E filled by Wednesday evening.
The bad version of Tuesday:
- You divide the 40 domains among three analysts
- Each analyst runs their batch through Ahrefs manually
- They produce different column orders because they exported from different report views in Ahrefs
- You spend Wednesday morning reconciling three sub-workbooks into one
- Two analysts pulled backlinks from different report pages and the numbers do not match
- The designer gets a workbook with inconsistent data on Wednesday at 7 PM and asks which column to trust.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads the full domain list and calls the Ahrefs batch analysis endpoint for all 40 at once, so the data comes back consistent and in the correct columns.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Run a batch Ahrefs metrics lookup for all 40 domains in column A of the Competitors tab. Write DR to column B, total backlinks to column C, referring domains to column D, and estimated organic traffic to column E. Sort by column B descending when done.
SheetXAI reads all 40 domains, calls Ahrefs, fills the four columns, and sorts the tab. One consistent dataset, one pass.
What You Get
A ranked competitive matrix with 40 rows in the Competitors tab:
- Column A — domain
- Column B — Domain Rating (sorted descending)
- Column C — total backlink count
- Column D — referring domain count
- Column E — estimated organic traffic
Consistency is the whole point. Every number came from the same API call with the same methodology. The designer pulls the columns, the slide builds cleanly, and nobody debates which analyst's numbers to trust.
Want segmentation? Ask SheetXAI to add a column labeling each domain as Tier 1 (DR 70+), Tier 2 (DR 40-70), or Tier 3 (DR below 40). The board slide gets a competitive tier structure in the same prompt.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Competitive domain lists assembled over time have inconsistencies. SheetXAI cleans and enriches in the same prompt.
When some domains have www and some do not
The list is inconsistent — some entries are example.com, some are www.example.com.
Normalize all domains in column A of the Competitors tab to root domain format before running the Ahrefs batch lookup. Then write DR to column B, backlinks to column C, referring domains to column D, and organic traffic to column E.
When the CEO wants only SaaS companies highlighted
The 40 domains include agencies and media sites. The CEO wants the pure SaaS players called out.
After fetching the four metrics for all domains in the Competitors tab, add a column F labeling each domain as "SaaS," "Agency," or "Media" based on what you know about each site. Sort so SaaS rows appear first within each DR tier.
When the board wants domains above DR 70 flagged
The CEO considers DR 70 the threshold for serious authority competition.
After running the batch lookup and sorting by DR descending, add a column F that says "High Authority" for any domain with DR 70 or above, and leave it blank for all others.
When the matrix also needs a month-over-month DR change column
Your team pulled these same metrics three months ago. The CEO wants to see who gained the most authority since then.
After fetching current DR for all 40 domains in column A and writing to column B, compare against the previous DR values in column G (pulled three months ago). Calculate the change and write it to column H. Sort by column H descending to show the fastest-growing competitors first.
The pattern: the batch lookup is one prompt. Tier labels, change columns, authority flags — all extend the same prompt without leaving the workbook.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Excel workbook with a list of competitor domains, then ask it to run a batch Ahrefs lookup. The Ahrefs integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to pull DR and referring domains for a competitor list in Excel or the Ahrefs in Excel overview.