I’ve been in the SEO field since 2019.
Most of the time, I used Semrush and Ahrefs because they’ve always been the top tools for SEO work.
They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but since there weren’t many good alternatives, almost everyone stuck with them.
However, SEO moves fast, and things don’t stay the same for long.
Around February 2024, I started seeing ads from Search Atlas popping up on Facebook and all over the Internet.
Their bold slogan, “Cancel Ahrefs and Semrush,” caught my eye.
That’s how my story with Search Atlas started.
Now that it’s July 2025, I’m excited to finally share my full Search Atlas review with you. I’ve used their Community Edition plan for $29 a month, which they now seem to no longer offer.
If you’re curious about what Search Atlas does, how accurate its data is, and if it’s worth trying out, I’ll do my best to answer all your questions in this detailed review.
Oh, and I’ll keep updating this review as I learn more, so stay tuned!
What’s Search Atlas?
Search Atlas is an AI-powered SEO automation platform built for agencies.
To me, it feels like a budget-friendly blend of Semrush and Ahrefs, which makes sense, since its founder, Manick Bhan, was likely inspired by them.
Some of the Search Atlas features even share the same names. For example, Search Atlas has its own Keyword Magic tool, which works just like Semrush’s tool. You type your seed keyword, and it’ll generate thousands of keyword ideas.
If you’ve used Ahrefs before, you’ll probably notice that the reports and layout feel very similar, too.
Overall, I see Search Atlas as a powerful and affordable AI SEO tool that provides a similar experience without the price tag. Now, let’s see how well it actually works.
Search Atlas SEO features
Before we dive into how accurate Search Atlas is, let me quickly run through the features you’ll get.
When you start your 7-day free trial, you’ll land on the dashboard. On the right side, you’ll see a sidebar with different toolkits.
1. Projects
This is where you add your own website or your clients’ domains as separate projects. You can also connect OTTO SEO (I’ll explain that in a bit), link your Google Search Console, and add keywords to track.
2. OTTO & Audit
This is a technical SEO toolkit, where you can run site audits powered by Search Atlas, review your website’s health page by page, and set up OTTO SEO for your website (I’ll explain this feature more in a bit).
3. OTTO & PPC
This toolkit lets you manage your Google and Meta paid ad campaigns, review their performance and efficiency based on the Ad Group and Ad Copy.
I don’t run paid ads on my site, so you won’t see any in my screenshot below. But if you do have paid campaigns, they’ll show up in this report.
4. Content
This is a collection of content-related tools. You can use them to mimic your own writing style, check your content for on-page SEO, build topic clusters, rewrite what you already have, and much more.
There’s also a content planner where you can set up editorial calendars to organize your SEO content strategy.
Plus, the AI Content Writer can help you create all kinds of content from images and social media posts to Amazon product descriptions, blog outlines, FAQs, listicles, video scripts, titles, and more.
If you work in content SEO like me, this toolkit is super useful because it offers way more features than most other SEO content writing tools I’ve tried.
5. Site Metrics
This is a report where you can get a close look at all your domains. In particular, how they perform in organic search results, changes in keyword rankings, keyword positions, top performing pages, and even how your competitors are doing, if you track them.
You can also spot new or lost backlinks and monitor ad performance.
Honestly, it’s one of my favorite parts of Search Atlas because I can keep an eye on my website’s performance daily.
Plus, if you link up Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4, you’ll get to see impressions, clicks, keyword rankings, and changes in a way that looks nicer and gives you more useful insights than just GSC alone.
6. Keywords
This toolkit is for keyword research and rank tracking.
If you want to see if your keyword idea has a chance to rank, the Keyword Research tool shows you metrics like global and country search volumes, keyword difficulties, what the top search results look like, the search intent, related keywords, and more!
The Keyword Magic Tool looks and works the same way as Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, helping you quickly find lots of keywords related to your seed keyword.
If interested, I’ve also shared a comparison between these tools in my Search Atlas vs Semrush post.
7. GB Galactic for local SEO
Search Atlas offers a special local SEO toolkit made for businesses with a Google My Business (GMB) listing. If you have a GMB and want to improve your local search rankings and visibility, this toolkit could be helpful.
Since my site isn’t connected to any specific location and I don’t have a GMB account, I don’t use this feature myself.
8. Report Builder
Honestly, this is one of my favorite Search Atlas features.
It makes it super easy to create performance reports for your websites by pulling data from tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Ads, OTTO SEO, your Google My Business profile, and more.
You can customize reports however you want and even get them sent to you automatically every week with the latest stats.
There’s an AI feature that generates performance summary reports for your site, so you don’t have to do any work at all. Pretty handy!
9. Authority Builder
Search Atlas has a dedicated feature for outreach experts who want to build backlinks.
You can create and send bulk outreach campaigns and keep track of all your messages with site owners, all within Search Atlas. There’s also a site directory with many publishers where you can find sites that fit your link-building goals.
How accurate is Search Atlas’ data?
Let me take a closer look at Search Atlas, because data accuracy is crucial for marketers and SEOs when choosing SEO tools.
The main question is: Can we trust the data for decision-making?
For me, I only trust a tool after testing it myself and checking its numbers against solid sources like Google Search Console and Google Analytics. That’s the best way to know if it’s reliable.
If you’re curious about how accurate Search Atlas is, I’ve done that comparison for you.
Just so you know, I focused on the key stats like organic traffic and didn’t include data from other marketing channels.
Here’s a quick look at my website’s SEO metrics from July 2025:
| Category | Search Atlas | Google Search Console |
|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic | 10,500 | 7,240 |
| Top 3 pages based on organic traffic | AI SEO tools, AI marketing tools, Ahrefs Alternatives | AI SEO tools, Mailchimp alternatives, Ahrefs alternatives |
| Organic traffic estimate for the top-ranking page | 3,500 | 2,660 |
Here’s a screenshot from my Google Search Console showing my organic website traffic from July 2025. It estimates a total of 7.24k clicks.
And here’s what Search Atlas says about my site for the same period:
So, Search Atlas tends to overestimate my website’s traffic a little, but honestly, its data feels more reliable than what I used to get from Ahrefs. For example, in July 2025, Ahrefs showed about 25,000 organic visitors, which is significantly lower than the actual numbers.
If you want to know more about my experience, I’ve written about it in my post on Ahrefs alternatives.
I’ve also tried to find any information about Search Atlas’ data sources. I even asked ChatGPT for help. Then, I stumbled upon an interesting comment under one of Search Atlas’s Facebook ads that caught my attention:
“Search Atlas’s database pulls from a mix of trusted sources, including real-time interactions with Google’s systems and data from Google Search Console.”
As of July 31st, Search Atlas’ database comprises the following:
- 100 trillion backlinks
- 500 million indexed domains
- 5 billion keywords
- Coverage across 200 countries
That’s a pretty solid database! However, it’s still smaller than tools like Semrush.
For example, Semrush has over 27 billion keywords and the biggest backlink database out there. This means Semrush can suggest more keyword ideas and detect more keywords and backlinks for any domain.
But Search Atlas is improving fast and adding cool new features. I’d still rely on its suggestions, considering that its metrics more or less align with my Google Search Console numbers.
If you want me to test anything else for this Search Atlas review, just drop your ideas in the comments! I’ll try it out and update the post.
Search Atlas OTTO review
One of the coolest Search Atlas features that you’ll hear a lot about is their OTTO SEO automation.
Basically, it’s an AI-powered tool that can help you identify and fix your website’s technical problems with just one click — you just hit “Enable” and it gets to work.
Here’s how OTTO SEO works:
You add the OTTO pixel to your website’s header tag, then OTTO scans your site to find any technical issues and areas for improvement. It uses the Search Atlas Holistic SEO blueprint plus your Google Search Console data to suggest fixes. Once you check the suggestions and approve them in your dashboard, OTTO starts making changes on your website.
In my case, I used Google Tag Manager to add the OTTO pixel on every page of my site to see what it would suggest.
The technical issues it discovered ranged from missing headlines, title tags, and alt tags to problems with links and indexing. One thing to note is that OTTO doesn’t prioritize these issues, which can be tricky for non-technical SEOs to know where to start.
From my experience, not all SEO technical issues are urgent. Many of the problems OTTO flagged on my site were nice-to-fix, but not critical.
You can check out some of the issues in the screenshot below.
Here’s something important I want to point out.
I don’t recommend letting AI make changes to your website’s code or content!
OTTO SEO can work on your website’s technical issues, but there’s no guarantee it won’t break anything that might need a developer’s quick help.
I’ve read some stories like the following one on Reddit. Most Search Atlas reviews are good, but those experiences made me avoid turning on OTTO SEO automation. Instead, I prefer the old-school way—fixing things myself or passing them to my developer.
Search Atlas cons
I’m overall happy with Search Atlas and what it can do, but there are a few things I wish they’d improve.
For example, I ran into some bugs, like the system not recognizing the OTTO SEO pixel on my website through Google Tag Manager. It kept saying the pixel was missing even though it wasn’t.
Also, the on-page audits for some URLs failed multiple times, and it took 2 to 5 minutes, sometimes longer, to generate each report. What made it frustrating was that I never got any clue why the audits failed.
Another thing is the Search Atlas Google Chrome extension, which didn’t work for me. It kept asking me to log in, even though I was already logged in.
These issues are mostly minor and didn’t change my overall good opinion of the tool. I still think Search Atlas is a solid automation tool for managing SEO campaigns.
However, I wouldn’t recommend turning on automatic SEO fixes with OTTO unless you’re sure nothing will break.
Also, I’m not a fan of the “Authority Builder” option that lets you buy backlinks. If anyone can buy a link, it loses its value, right?
Search Atlas pricing
Search Atlas offers flexible pricing depending on your needs.
Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Starter Plan – $99/month
Includes 1 OTTO SEO project (aka one domain), 2 user seats, and unlimited keyword rank tracking, which is a big deal! It suits content creators, solo marketers, and small website owners like me. - Growth Plan – $199/month
Ideal if you handle multiple clients and need more flexibility. - Pro Plan – $399/month
Built for growing agencies managing several domains and users. - Enterprise Plan – Custom pricing
It’s designed for big enterprises with demanding SEO needs and complex workflows.
Before committing, you can try Search Atlas with their 7-day free trial. Just a heads-up: you’ll need to add your credit card to activate it. You won’t get charged, but if you cancel early, you’ll lose access right away. So plan your trial wisely!
FAQ
Now, let’s go over some common questions users ask about Search Atlas on the web.
What does Search Atlas do?
Search Atlas is an AI SEO automation tool to manage SEO campaigns of various complexities. Here’s what it can do for you:
- Track your website’s keyword rankings
- Spy on competitors’ SEO strategies
- Find new keywords to target
- Analyze backlinks for your site and competitors
- Monitor your website’s health and SEO issues
- Automate SEO reports for clients or yourself
- Discover content ideas based on what works in your niche
- Manage multiple projects or clients in one place
- Generate and optimize content
- Analyze your website’s on-page optimization
And more!
Who is the CEO of Search Atlas?
The CEO of Search Atlas is Manick Bhan. He’s an entrepreneur and the driving force behind this AI-powered SEO platform.
Before Search Atlas, he founded LinkGraph, which is an SEO agency. Manick is also known for his previous venture, Rukkus, a mobile ticketing app acquired by TickPick, StubHub, and SeatGeek in 2018.
What are Search Atlas alternatives?
When looking for alternatives to Search Atlas, I only recommend solid tools I’ve actually used myself.
Semrush, SE Ranking, and Ahrefs are top choices if you want a full SEO suite with powerful features. I’ve published a detailed Semrush review if you want to learn more about this competitor tool.
Now, if your main focus is content SEO tasks like writing and optimizing content, I’d suggest trying Writesonic. These tools cover different needs, so pick the one that fits your goals best!
Join the newsletter for actionable SEO tips, case studies, and a behind-the-scenes look at my affiliate marketing journey.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
