Ahrefs
I Wouldn’t Hire a Content Engineer, and You Shouldn’t Either
Confidential X‑rayAhrefs
This is a free tool that tells you if your content has a credible POV.
(in case the website name wasn’t clear enough)
Link an article
you think has a POV.
*Don’t link how-to guides, social posts, news, announcements, videos, and stuff like that, please.
Not so loved by
How the tool works
STEP 1Link an ungated written piece of content you think has a POV.
- STEP 2
Wait a minute or less.
- STEP 3
Get a result like this.
Example result
Click around and play with it.
Your results come with
1 of 65 content tropes
Here’s one of them. Drag it around, spin it, flip it.
If your content has a genuine POV, you'll get on a public list with others that have it.
You'll see their content and results on your own results page, but only if you're one of them. This list updates every 2 hours.
If your content has a super credible POV, you'll go into the Hall of Fame.
You'll see their content and results on your own results page, whatever result you get. This list updates every 2 hours.
- Your company, hopefullyYour content piece, hopefullyTrope: [hopefully a good one]
You'll also unlock these
Practical Examples
Curated content pieces with a genuine POV. Each comes with its own X-ray breakdown, so you can see what these companies did right.
(I’m not friends with them and this isn’t some arse-kissing ABM play.)
SparkToro
Creating and Promoting Were Never the Same Decision
Confidential X‑raySparkToro
Linear
Rethinking the Startup MVP: Building a Competitive Product
Confidential X‑rayLinear
37signals
Why We Choose Profit at 37signals
Confidential X‑ray37signals
A whole site about POVs that you can get lost in.
It’s everything I learned, plus a few toys.
Inspired by 37signals and MSCHF.
The
POV Constitution
of DOYOUHAVEAPOV.COM
Sneak peek edition
A competing philosophy
Pain point
A camp of people
Strawman
Fighting ghosts
More coming soon
Why I built this
I never trusted B2B content, but I make a living from it, so I tried my best not to be a hypocrite. I did everything content gurus say you should do. I'd interview experts, collect original data, literally every box you can think of, I checked. When AI came along, everyone suddenly started preaching how important it is to have a unique POV, and so I focused on that as well. I platformed execs and their opinions, thinking I'd get the famous POV everyone's on about. Then I'd read what I wrote and feel: "This is complete bullshit. I don't trust a word of this."
But why? Why does it sound so fake? I went down a rabbit hole for weeks on end to find out. Long story short, vendor content feels fake because it is. There's no genuine perspective in it, nothing that stands on its own. It’s just one long sales pitch made to sound like serious thinking. It might never mention the product at all. It might have a thought leadershippy vibe to it. It might talk about the state of the industry, so it feels like it's all about YOUR world. There might be a COO on the byline reminding you of his 20 years in the industry every other sentence and throwing out a bunch of scary stats. It’s still a sales pitch at its core.
Nobody wrote it because they realized something interesting and just had to say it. They mapped out what you'd have to believe before you'd buy, and then they pulled a "POV" out of their ass to corner you until accepting that belief feels like the only sane choice. But when you take out the case for whatever the vendor wants you to adopt, rip out, change, replace, or prefer, you'll see that there's nothing left. I'm not talking about performative tactical tips or stats. Anyone can sprinkle those in. I'm asking whether there's still some bigger interesting idea left. Nope. The so-called POV has no life of its own. If you don't toe the line, it has nothing to offer you. Marketers call that a POV. If you think it is, okay, then my barber's POV is: "Cutting your hair three times a month is the future."
A POV isn't a marketing tactic. Marketing is strategic. A POV is organic. You follow it wherever it leads. Marketing messages have only a few implications (like "buy my stuff", "our way is better than theirs", …) but a POV has dozens. They're bigger than what you sell. A lot of times they have nothing to do with buying anything at all. Your buyers would talk about them even if you vanished. A genuine POV can absolutely help you sell, but that's a byproduct, not the point. You can't just decide to have a POV one day. You can only earn it by being tapped into your work / industry / buyer's world. If you try to force it, you just end up with another marketing message.
That's why I built this tool. If Claude Sonnet 5.5 on medium effort sees your content for what it really is, do you really think buyers with 10+ years of experience don't?
FAQ
Will this publicly embarrass me?
No. The tool might roast you, but only YOU see it. No one else does unless you share your result link.
Could you X-ray your competitor’s content and laugh about it in Slack? Technically, yeah. You won’t. You’re not an arsehole. Neither am I.
If you have no POV, your name never goes on any list here. At most, you show up as an anonymous statistic like: “One CRM vendor’s essay about scaling a sales team.”
If you actually had a genuine POV but got a bad trope, your name goes on the list, but the trope doesn’t.
Anything that could make you look bad in public stays anonymous. I will never put anyone on blast.
If a competitor or a hater runs your content through it and shares the result, that’s on them, not me.
Who can see my result?
Three kinds of people: you, me, and whoever you share your result link with.
I see everybody’s results because I run the site. I use them to improve the tool and the experience. Don’t worry, I will never share your result, or anybody’s result, with anybody. Ever.
The only exception: your result goes public if you get a genuine POV or better. That’s because content with a POV is rare, and it deserves to be celebrated. It gets featured on one of the lists on this site: a genuine POV goes on the public list, and a super credible one goes into the Hall of Fame. The homepage only shows your company’s name. Your content and its full result open from those lists on the results page.
I know my content has a POV. So why did it fail?
It failed because I made the AI agents inside this tool very strict.
I made it that way so the sneaky bullshit doesn’t pass. Having strong opinions about the industry doesn’t magically turn a sales pitch into a POV. If your content is training people to buy, prefer, adopt, feel urgency, prioritize, etc. whatever you’re selling, TECHNICALLY having a perspective in there won’t save it.
That also means some genuinely good content that’s a 50:50 coin toss will fail. I accept that trade-off.
Only content with an independent worldview that stands on its own, even after you take any sales agenda out, will pass.
I pasted a link and it doesn’t work. What gives?
You probably pasted a link this tool can’t read. It only reads the text on a public web page, like a blog post. So these won’t work:
- LinkedIn posts. LinkedIn needs a login, so nothing can be pulled from it.
- YouTube videos. There’s no article to read.
- Anything behind a paywall or a login.
- PDFs.
- Product pages, pricing pages, press releases, and anything else that isn’t an article.
- Some sites that block tools like this one.
Paste an article from your company blog or Substack instead.
Who cares about a POV? My content drives pipeline.
I’m sure it does, and good for you! But your content can be:
- A huge pipeline driver - and have no POV at all.
- Top ranking on Google - and have no POV at all.
- Co-signed by your CEO - and have no POV at all.
- Cited by LLMs - and have no POV at all.
POV and marketing have little to do with each other. You don’t need a POV to do good marketing.
My issue is with marketers who insist that they have (or should have) a POV, but they don’t. This tool exposes them.
Who the hell are you to judge anybody’s content?
Me? I’m nobody. Just some rando from central Bosnia.
Yeah, the tool is built on my opinion on what a POV is. But it’s written down and consistent. The AI agents apply it the same way to everyone’s content, mine included.
You can even download it and see exactly how you got judged if you have any issues with it.
Where’s your content with a POV? I’ve seen your work before... what have you ever shipped in your life?
Uh... you’re looking at it right now.
What’s the purple thing with a chef hat?
That’s my mascot, Calvin Cooks.
I came up with this and AI-coded it during the summer of 2026,
between random client projects and being the final boss of unemployment.
You ran this thing 10 times now.
Seems like you’re into it. Wanna chat about content?
Message me on LinkedIn