What Semrush does well
Semrush bundles licensed keyword and backlink data, rank tracking, competitor research and a site audit in one subscription. For an agency managing many clients with a data budget, that breadth is the point.
Where an all-in-one suite is thin
A suite optimises for breadth across many clients, so the checks that need a request from outside your network, or that did not exist when it was built, tend to be shallow or absent: AI crawler access, llms.txt, rendered-versus-raw comparison, Merchant Center fields. Its audit also runs from Semrush infrastructure, not from the vantage point of the crawler you actually care about.
What Shipwork does instead
- Free and account-free, so you can check a store before deciding to buy anything.
- AI crawler access (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Perplexity), llms.txt and rendered-versus-raw.
- Merchant Center product data, the fields a public catalogue hides.
- A daily watch that emails you the day a check changes.
Which should you use?
Use Semrush for keyword and backlink data and multi-client reporting. Use Shipwork for the free outside-network checks and the AI-era signals, and to watch a single store closely.
- Run the free auditOne crawl, every applicable check, from outside your network.
- AI crawler accessWhether ChatGPT, Claude and others may read your site.
- Feed file checkGTIN, category and condition in your Merchant Center feed.
- Every check, explainedThe full list, each with what it inspects and the fix.
- Shipwork vs SemrushSuite or focused checker?