October 24, 2026

We checked 64 SaaS directories for a followed link. Four had one.

"List your SaaS on G2 and Capterra for the backlinks" is advice every new product gets. We looked at the markup. On G2 and Capterra there is no link to look at.

Why we counted

When Miraqo went live in September, the site had zero referring domains. The standard advice for that situation is directories: SaaS catalogs, AI tool lists, launch sites. Before spending weeks filling in forms, rewriting descriptions by hand and waiting in review queues that, as it turned out, can last longer than a quarter, we wanted to know what each directory actually gives back to a site that has no links yet.

Between August 21 and October 24, 2026 we measured 64 directories: software review sites, SaaS and AI tool catalogs, launch platforms, startup databases and MCP server registries. Seven more on our list turned out not to be directories at all (revenue-share marketplaces, a recruiting site, a registry that imports on its own) and are left out of the count.

How we measured

On each directory we looked at a real vendor's listing, and on ours once it was live. Always logged out. For each one:

• Is there an <a> element pointing to the vendor's domain, or does the click go through something else?
• What does its rel attribute say?
• Is the listing page indexable (meta robots), and does its canonical point to itself?
• Does robots.txt block the path the link goes through?
• What does the free plan include, read from the pricing page itself?
• Is the site alive: listings published in the last month, a submit page that works?

We read both the HTML the server sends and the DOM the browser renders, because on several of these sites the two are not the same thing.

The result

Ten directories offer a free followed link on paper. On October 24, four of those links were live on our own listings: Smithery, LibHunt, SaaSHub and StackShare. On StackShare the listing's canonical points to StackShare's homepage, so the page may not count as a page at all. The other six are still in queues that run from three weeks to five months, and one of them (Uneed) gives the followed link only to products that reach 20 upvotes on launch day.

So: four out of 64, and only three without a caveat.

Six traps we fell into while measuring

Most of the time spent on this was not finding directories. It was finding out that the first reading was wrong.

1. curl gets a 403

Capterra, G2, Trustpilot, Product Hunt and AlternativeTo answer a script with a 403 or a bot challenge, even with full browser headers. A crawler-based check of these sites measures the block page. The only reliable reading is in a real browser.

2. Looking for nofollow misses the missing link

On G2 and Capterra the "Visit website" control is a <button> with no href; the vendor's URL sits inside a JSON blob. SaaSworthy uses a <span onclick>. A script that counts rel="nofollow" finds nothing to complain about, because there is no link to carry the attribute. These listings can still rank for the product name. They pass no link.

3. A followed link can still go nowhere

Future Tools and SourceForge send the click through an internal redirect, and that redirect path is disallowed in their robots.txt. StackShare's links have no nofollow, but the listing pages declare the homepage as canonical. In each case the rel attribute alone says "followed".

4. The attribute changes after you claim the listing

On StackShare, before we claimed the listing, the desktop button was nofollow ugc. After the claim, every link lost both. On SaaSHub the main button was nofollow on another vendor's listing in September and followed on ours after verification. Measuring someone else's listing tells you what an unclaimed one gets.

5. It also changes later, without notice

DevHunt linked to us with no rel on September 28. On October 24 the same link was nofollow noopener. Nobody told us. A link you counted a month ago is a link you need to measure again.

6. Read the icons, not the text

One launch platform lists "Do-follow backlink (DR 70)" in its free plan. Next to it there is a red ✗. Read as text, the pricing table says the opposite of what it shows.

And one more pattern rather than a trap: directories, AI tool lists above all, age fast. Eleven on our list were unreachable or had stopped publishing months ago, and two more had a submit form that returned an error on the day we used it.

What a listing without a followed link is still worth

We are not saying the other 60 are worthless. A nofollow listing on Crunchbase or AlternativeTo is still a mention of the product as an entity, a page that can rank for its name, and a source an AI answer may cite. We have not measured how much any of that moves, so we do not put a number on it.

What the count does say is narrower, and for a new site it is the part that decides where the next month of work goes: if the reason you are submitting is the link, the link is usually not there, or it costs money, or it arrives months later, by which time it may have changed again.

Six checks before you submit

• Open a real vendor's listing in a browser, logged out. Is there an <a> to the vendor's domain, or a button?
• Read its rel, then check where the URL actually goes: direct, or through an internal redirect?
• If it goes through a redirect, look that path up in the directory's robots.txt.
• Check the listing page's meta robots and canonical.
• Read the free plan's row for "backlink" or "do-follow" by its icon, not its label. Check whether the free plan asks for a badge or a link back.
• Look at the newest listing's date. If it is months old, so is the review queue.

Then, once your own listing is live, measure it again, and again a month later.