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 — in a single Google Sheet so the slide designer can pull the numbers.
The 40 domains are in column A. They came from a competitive analysis spreadsheet your team keeps. 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, 13 or 14 domains each
- They each produce a different column order because they exported from different Ahrefs report views
- You spend Wednesday morning reconciling three mini-spreadsheets into one
- You find that two analysts pulled backlinks from the Site Explorer overview and one pulled from the backlinks report — the numbers do not match
- The designer gets a sheet with inconsistent data on Wednesday at 7 PM and asks which column to use.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your spreadsheet that reads the full domain list and calls the Ahrefs batch analysis endpoint for all 40 domains at once, so the data comes back consistent and in the right columns.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Run a batch SEO metrics lookup for all 40 domains in column A using Ahrefs. Fill DR in column B, total backlinks in column C, referring domains in column D, and estimated organic traffic in column E. Sort the full table by DR descending when done.
SheetXAI reads all 40 domains, calls Ahrefs, writes the four metric columns, and sorts the table. One consistent dataset, one pass.
What You Get
A ranked competitive matrix with 40 rows:
- Column A — the domain
- Column B — Domain Rating
- Column C — total backlink count
- Column D — referring domain count
- Column E — estimated organic traffic
- Sorted — highest DR competitors at the top
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 has to explain why two analysts got different backlink counts.
Want segmentation? Ask SheetXAI to highlight any domain with DR above 70 in column F with the label "Tier 1" and any below 30 with "Tier 3." The board deck gets a competitive tier structure without a second session.
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. Ahrefs treats these differently.
Normalize all domains in column A to root domain format (no www, no protocol, no trailing slash) 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 some agencies and media sites. The CEO wants to see the pure SaaS players called out.
After fetching DR, backlinks, referring domains, and organic traffic for all domains in column A, add a column F where you label each domain as "SaaS," "Agency," or "Media" based on what you know about each site. Highlight the SaaS rows by sorting them to the top within each DR tier.
When the board wants domains above DR 70 flagged
The CEO considers DR 70 the threshold for "serious authority competition." She wants those rows immediately visible.
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 change column
Your team pulled the same metrics three months ago. The CEO wants to see which competitors gained the most DR in that period.
After fetching current DR for all 40 domains in column A and writing to column B, compare to the values in column G (the DR from 3 months ago pulled previously). 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. The tier labels, the change column, the highlights — all extend the same prompt without leaving the sheet.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any sheet 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 or the Ahrefs in Google Sheets overview.