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Do Directory Backlinks Still Help SEO in 2026?

By AllDirectories.org ·

Submitting your startup to directories is one of the first things founders hear about. The usual pitch is that each listing is a backlink, backlinks raise your Domain Rating, and a higher DR helps you rank.

We maintain a list of startup directories and re-check it, so we see the gap between that pitch and reality every week. The short answer: directory links help a little, in specific ways, and much less than the pitch suggests. Here’s the evidence.

What DR actually measures

Domain Rating is a score Ahrefs calculates from a site’s backlinks. Moz, Semrush and others have similar scores. They’re useful for comparing sites, but they’re third-party estimates, not something Google uses.

They’re also easy to move, especially for a new domain:

  • Ahrefs’ own caveat: DR doesn’t account for backlink spam, and large numbers of low-quality links can push it up (Ahrefs).
  • Cheap gigs: in one test, $15–$85 Fiverr gigs took five new domains to DR 44–59 in about nine weeks, while their Semrush Authority Score stayed at 0 (Xamsor).
  • Cross-linking: Marc Lou took a new domain from DR 0 to 43 in ten days by linking it from his own sites (Startup Spells).

That’s why directory submission services happily guarantee “DR 0 to 15” or “up to DR 20”: a new domain reaches those numbers almost automatically. Some vendors, ScrollLaunch among them, now tell buyers to avoid anyone who guarantees DR at all (ScrollLaunch).

A higher DR on your own site is a side effect, not a goal. And a high DR on a directory says little about whether anyone visits it. In zplatform’s audit of 42 AI directories, DR and organic traffic were essentially uncorrelated; Turbo0 had DR 80 and about one organic visit a month (zplatform).

What Google says

Google’s spam policies list several kinds of link spam. Three are directly relevant to directories:

  • “Low-quality directory or bookmark site links”
  • “Excessive link exchanges (‘Link to me and I’ll link to you’)”
  • “Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement” without letting the site owner qualify the outbound link

That last one matters because “free listing if you add our badge” is now a common model. On our own list, at least 23 of the 125 smaller directories make the free listing, or its followed link, conditional on a badge or backlink to them.

In practice, Google mostly ignores these links rather than penalising you. John Mueller said in 2019, “We already ignore links from sites like that, where there are unlikely to be natural links” (Search Engine Roundtable). Gary Illyes said in 2024 that Google needs “very few links to rank pages” (Search Engine Journal).

So a free directory listing mostly costs you time. The real risk is paying for followed links or buying link packages. Google says paid links should be marked rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" (Google).

Even setting Google’s view aside, many listings don’t give you the link you expect:

  • The big platforms: G2, Capterra, Crunchbase, Indie Hackers, F6S, Hacker News and Reddit all use no-follow links, and AlternativeTo’s website link is now no-follow too (OneUp). Lists like this go stale, though. When we checked in October 2026, Indie Hackers’ product links were no-follow, but BetaList’s “Visit” buttons were followed links routed through a redirect, even though some lists call BetaList no-follow. Check for yourself.
  • 13 directories: an audit found that the directories passing link equity were the ones selling links (DEV).
  • About 15 directories: another check found six didn’t give the advertised link at all, one had quietly switched a badge-for-dofollow deal to no-follow, and two blocked their listing pages from search engines (DEV).
  • 202 launch directories: Line of Sites found 17 of 148 listing pages weren’t indexed by Google. Of the rest, 23 were dead, 18 had no outbound link, and 42 only showed the product link through JavaScript (Indie Hackers).

Directories also decay. When we re-checked our list in October 2026, 12 of 144 directories were dead and 46 submission links were broken. We cover that in our audit.

A newer pitch is that directory listings help ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers recommend you. The evidence so far says launch directories barely register:

  • Oğuzhan Tüsen’s test: across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity in four software categories, he found one directory citation (G2) among 172 (DEV). AlternativeTo, Capterra, Crunchbase, Product Hunt, SaaSHub and others got none. Reddit appeared in 61% of the answers.
  • DerivateX: across 233 ChatGPT recommendations in 40 B2B software categories, review aggregators got 0.9% of citations, and G2 and Capterra got none (DerivateX). The cited pages were list-style articles, most with a year in the title and a comparison table.

Review sites are the exception. SE Ranking found that 34.5% of Google AI Overviews for commercial searches cite at least one review platform. That rises to 49% for searches that include “review” (SE Ranking). If AI visibility matters to you, real reviews on G2, Capterra and similar sites are worth far more than launch-site listings.

Where directories do help

None of this means directories are useless. They help in narrower ways:

  • Discovery. Links from known pages help Google find a new site (Google). For a brand-new domain, a handful of listings on established sites can speed up indexing.
  • Referral traffic from the few with audiences. Results vary widely. One founder’s four paid listings brought 105, 15, 7 and 3 visits over their lifetime (Indie Hackers). Pick directories by evidence of visitors, not by DR.
  • Buyers doing research. Review sites such as G2, Capterra and TrustRadius are where B2B buyers compare options. A profile with real reviews helps close deals even when the link is no-follow.
  • A consistent company footprint. Profiles on Crunchbase and similar databases help people and search engines confirm who you are. Google’s documentation says listing those profiles in your Organization sameAs markup can help it disambiguate your company (Google).
  • Launch-day feedback. Platforms like Product Hunt, DevHunt and Peerlist can bring early users and blunt feedback. See our Product Hunt alternatives.

How to decide whether a directory is worth it

Use this checklist before you submit:

  1. Is there evidence of real visitors? Look for recent listings, comments, upvotes or a newsletter. A high DR alone doesn’t count.
  2. Is it relevant? A directory of AI tools, developer tools or open-source projects that matches what you built beats a general list.
  3. What does the listing page look like? Find an existing listing and check that it’s indexed (search site: for it) and that the outbound link exists and isn’t nofollow, if that matters to you.
  4. What’s the price of “free”? A badge or link-back requirement is a link exchange in Google’s terms. A months-long queue is a real cost too.
  5. Would you pay this much for the traffic alone? If a paid listing only makes sense because of the backlink, skip it.
  6. Is it still alive? Dead or abandoned directories get taken over. One on our list now hosts a gambling site.

The bottom line

Directory links are a small, slow-moving part of SEO for a new site, and Google discounts many of them. Treat a few well-chosen listings as discovery and credibility, not a ranking strategy. Spend most of your effort on things that earn links and mentions naturally: a useful product, honest comparisons, and showing up where your customers talk.

Every directory on our list shows its cost, link type and review speed. You can filter by do-follow or no-follow links.