Cloro vs DataForSEO: I Tested Both on 40 Google Searches With Known Real Pages

Cloro vs DataForSEO came down to one question for the free tools on GEO Search Console: which one hands back the Google page a person sees? Since late September, Google has answered a share of automated searches with a normal-looking page full of the wrong sites. Nozzle, a rank tracker, saw those poisoned pages reach as high as 25 percent of results, and 5 to 11 percent a day since October 1, as Search Engine Journal reported.

My own numbers were worse. In my study of where ChatGPT gets its information, only 23 of 120 paid Google pulls shared at least half their sites with the real page I read in a browser, and that feed was DataForSEO, the one my tools ran on. So on October 23 I paid for Cloro’s $30 plan and ran both side by side.

How I tested Cloro vs DataForSEO

How I tested Cloro vs DataForSEO started with 40 searches whose real Google pages I had read in a browser two days earlier. Each went out three ways within the same 11 minutes, scored against the real page and against the other pulls.

Which one returned Google’s real page

Which one returned Google’s real page wasn’t close. Cloro answered all 40 searches, and its page matched DataForSEO’s same-hour web results on all 30 searches where both came back.

Pull	Answered	Missed the October 21 page	Matched the same-hour web results
Cloro	40 of 40	9 of 40	30 of 30
DataForSEO web results	30 of 40	6 of 30	the reference
DataForSEO full page	28 of 40	18 of 28	10 of 22

The 9 Cloro misses needed a second look. Seven of them matched DataForSEO’s same-hour web results, so most likely the real page changed in two days rather than Cloro getting a fake one. The other 2 had nothing to compare against, because DataForSEO’s call failed on both. That leaves 38 of 40 Cloro pages checked as Google’s real page and none caught swapped. Cloro’s own figure, which I can’t check, was 98 percent full pages against 33 percent for DataForSEO on October 16 to 18.

DataForSEO’s web results held up far better than its full page, but Google’s Web filter page has no AI Overview and no People Also Ask box.

People Also Ask and AI Overviews from Cloro vs DataForSEO

People Also Ask and AI Overviews are where Cloro vs DataForSEO split hardest, because both come only from the full page. Cloro returned People Also Ask questions on 38 of 40 searches. DataForSEO’s full page gave questions from a matching page on 8 of 40, and those 8 let me compare them directly.

On 7 of 8 checks, both lists matched word for word.

The eighth, a search about removing a stripped screw, came back with four different questions from each, and I can’t tell which set a person saw.

AI Overviews told a clearer story. Cloro returned one on 18 of the 20 searches where I asked for it, with a median of 6 cited sites, and in the median answer 80 percent of them were on the real page or in the same-hour web results. DataForSEO’s full page showed an AI Overview on 23 of its 28 answers, but only 8 sat on a page that matched, and a median of 40 percent of its cited sites were in that real neighborhood.

Cloro vs DataForSEO speed and errors

Cloro vs DataForSEO speed and errors both favored Cloro, though the AI Overview is the slow part of a Cloro request. Every Cloro call came back.

1. Page one3.210 searches, 5 credits each
2. Top 306.210 searches, 9 credits each
3. Page one with the AI Overview12.810 searches, 7 credits each
4. Top 30 with the AI Overview3510 searches, 11 credits each

0255075100

DataForSEO had a rough afternoon. 22 of its 80 Google calls failed, 19 of them with “Internal SE Server Error” even after three tries, and first-try answers took about 50 to 60 seconds at the median. Similar calls took 6 to 12 seconds on October 21, so my read is a bad day, not the norm. Elmo, which tests scraping APIs every six hours, showed a seven-day success rate for Google AI Overviews of 96.3 percent through Cloro and 63.0 percent through DataForSEO that day.

Cloro vs DataForSEO cost

Cloro vs DataForSEO cost is close per search and different in how you pay. DataForSEO is pay as you go from a balance with a $50 minimum top-up, and the money doesn’t expire. Cloro sells monthly credits: $30 buys 37,500, unused ones expire at the end of the month, and there is no pay as you go.

Search my tools run	DataForSEO, as billed	Cloro on the $30 plan
Rank Report: top 30 and the AI Overview	about 0.94 cents	1.28 cents
Fan-Out rank check: top 30	about 0.6 cents	0.72 cents
Question Finder: page one	0.4 to 0.8 cents	0.4 cents

The cheaper line on paper isn’t cheaper when most full pages are swapped. A swapped page costs the same as a real one, and my Question Finder asked for up to three full pages per search, then showed nothing when none matched.

Where DataForSEO still wins

Where DataForSEO still wins is everything beyond Google’s own results page. I sent the same 5 prompts to ChatGPT through both, and each returned GPT-6 answers with the searches ChatGPT ran, but DataForSEO took 21 seconds at the median for 0.4 cents and Cloro 48 seconds for 0.72 cents. Cloro’s changelog also says that since August 25, 98 percent of the signed-out ChatGPT answers it collects arrive in a format without that search list, and its way around that is best effort.

Cloro doesn’t sell keyword volumes, backlinks or Claude answers, and its Perplexity endpoint was up 49.9 percent of the last 30 days on its own status page. DataForSEO covers all of that from one balance.

What I changed in GEO Search Console

What I changed in GEO Search Console was the order of the calls, not the list of tools. Since October 23, the keyword rank checker, the Fan-Out rank check and the People Also Ask tool ask Cloro first. If Cloro fails or runs out of credits, the search goes to DataForSEO, with the old swapped-page check in place. ChatGPT answers and keyword data stay on DataForSEO.

If your tool reads Google’s results, check some pulls against pages you’ve opened yourself before comparing prices. Cloro’s free plan is 500 credits a month, enough for about 100 page-one checks, and the tools I built with Claude now run on both.

Sources

1. Analysis: Google Is Poisoning Search Results For Rank Trackers (Search Engine Journal)
2. Where ChatGPT Gets Its Information (High Salience)
3. Poisoned Google SERPs: what we measured and how we fixed it (cloro)
4. Pricing (cloro)
5. Supported AI providers, features, and credit pricing (cloro docs)
6. Changelog (cloro docs)
7. cloro status
8. Pricing (DataForSEO)
9. Provider Status (Elmo)
10. Keyword Rank Checker (GEO Search Console)
11. People Also Ask Tool (GEO Search Console)