Ahrefs May 2025 — only 1.74% of newly published pages reach top 10 within a year (vendor)
Created 2026-06-23
Summary
Claim: Ahrefs' updated May 2025 study (Patrick Stox): "Only 1.74% of newly published pages rank in the top 10 within a year (down from 5.7% in 2017)... The average #1 ranking page is 5 years old (up from 2 years old in 2017)."
Source: Ahrefs (vendor — sells SEO subscription tools).
Caveat: Vendor data. BUT this number cuts AGAINST Ahrefs' incentive (it makes SEO look harder, not more "essential"), so the direction is more credible than typical vendor data.
Confidence: Single-source / Directional.
Why this matters for Candid: The base rate for content work. The widget must communicate this honestly — most pages never rank, and the timeline has lengthened.
Related entries
Referenced by (3)
- reference Research brief: SMB widget difficulty-to-work mapping — three tiers of work for three sizes of gap (June 2026) relates-to
- reference Tier 2 — Findability + trust infrastructure (MODERATE GAP) depends-on
- rule Rule — Attach honest timelines and base rates to every tier recommendation depends-on