Fourth niche, same experiment. Take a category's biggest players, pull every domain that links to them from Common Crawl's open hyperlink graph, keep the ones that link to the whole set. SEO tools gave 37 universal linkers (media). CRMs gave 2 (integration hubs). AI agent frameworks gave 5 (dev platforms). Fintech just gave 8 - and they are the most consistent set yet.
The setup
Eight fintech apps across payments, banking, and spend: Stripe, Wise, Revolut, Plaid, Brex, Ramp, Mercury, Chime. For each, referring domains ranked by authority from the Common Crawl webgraph (120M domains, 4.4B edges), then intersect the eight lists. Stripe is its own planet - 100,000+ referring domains, more than the other seven combined.
The 8 that link to all 8
substack.com, entrepreneur.com, libsyn.com (podcast host), beehiiv.com, pymnts.com, thefinancialbrand.com, spocket.co, coda.io.
Two newsletter platforms, a podcast host, a business magazine, and two dedicated fintech trade publications. Widen to the 7-of-8 club and the pattern gets sharp: github, crunchbase, ycombinator, bvp (Bessemer), contrary, builtin, bankrate, bankingdive, finovate, 11fs. Finance trade press plus startup/VC infrastructure. Almost nothing else.
Four niches, four shapes
| Category | Link to all 8 | Who they are |
|---|---|---|
| SEO tools | 37 | trade media + roundups |
| CRMs | 2 | integration hubs |
| AI agent frameworks | 5 | dev platforms + directories |
| Fintech apps | 8 | finance press + VC databases |
The takeaway for anyone building in fintech: you do not earn links with a payments integration. You earn them by being covered (get into PYMNTS, The Financial Brand, Banking Dive, Tearsheet) and by being tracked as a company (complete Crunchbase / Sacra / BuiltIn profiles, land on VC portfolio pages). Mercury has 1,689 referring domains vs Stripe's 100,000+, yet both are reached by the same ten publications and three databases. You don't out-link Stripe; you get on the same shelf.
Full study with the overlap pyramid and downloadable CSV/JSON: 8 domains link to every major fintech app. Method is category-agnostic - it's a backlink gap analysis on Common Crawl data, free.
Top comments (1)
Good framework, and the covered-vs-tracked split is the right cut. One thing hiding in your 8 though: substack, beehiiv, libsyn, coda, spocket aren't really either bucket. They're UGC platform domains, so a link there means someone independently made a newsletter, podcast, or public doc about the app, not coverage you pitched or a profile you filled in. That's a third category, and arguably the most telling one, because you can't go acquire a coda.io or substack.com link. It only shows up once people are already writing about you. So as a playbook: pymnts/financialbrand/bankingdive are the pitch list, crunchbase/builtin are the fill-in-your-profile list, and the substack/beehiiv cluster is the lagging signal that tells you the first two are actually working.