[Keyword Research Guide 2026] Ahrefs new Category filter is a game changer for keyword research

[IM Dude]

Behind the scene, on the backend, Ahrefs have categorized all it's data.
Which means ahrefs have taken care of semantics - the study of the meanings of words and phrases. This is how search engines look at search terms.
What do i mean by this?
Lets say you want to keyword research about dental care. What will you do?
Traditionally you will enter seed keyword:
dental care
well there is better way with categories.

1) go to ahrefs and click on keyword explorer and select your target county US in this case



2) click on search this will load the whole ahrefs database of millions of keywords, this is everything
3) Now comes the fun part, click on categories and type you niche , in this case - dental care and hit apply


4) and hit show results
this gives you 1 million+ dental and oral care keywords , that's everything semantically related to dental and oral care (remember semantics - the study of the meanings of words and phrases. This is how search engines look at search terms.)


5) you can filter it further if you want for example commercial and transitional trending non-local keywords:
you are down to 1000+ keywords


Just to show you the difference i will remove the categories and type the keywords dental and oral care as seed keywords:
4 matching keyword



43 related keywords


and 2 search suggestions


So with new categories you can get 1000+ semantically related highly targeted keywords instead of 49 worthless keywords like before.

 

[1SEOWarrior]

It looks great. I hope SEMrush would do the same.

Will make a try though.

 

[HenryObi]

I hope SEMrush would do the same.

This was my exact thought, because I don't see myself paying for an Ahrefs sub.

 

[IM Dude]

It looks great. I hope SEMrush would do the same.

Will make a try though.

This was my exact thought, because I don't see myself paying for an Ahrefs sub.

I dont see semrush doing this any soon. It might in few years.

 

[TheReviewer]

too bad they stopped there free trial

 

[IM Dude]

too bad they stopped there free trial

It was never a free trial, it was 7days for 7$.
You can easily get ahrefs groupbuy for cheap price.

 

[TheReviewer]

It was never a free trial, it was 7days for 7$.
You can easily get ahrefs groupbuy for cheap price.

unless you had a coupon code

 

[laur.laurix]

Ahrefs is the only tool/company that I pray every night to fail and go bankrupt......the level of greed on this mfs passed jew levels.

 

[XrumerGeek]

Ahrefs is the only tool/company that I pray every night to fail and go bankrupt......the level of greed on this mfs passed jew levels.

Expensive tools are expensive for a reason. AHREFS monthly fee should be earning you at least 5x profit even if you're just part time.

The likes of SEMRush absolutely pale in comparison.