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How to check if a backlink is dofollow (and what ~15 launch sites actually gave us)

#seo #sideprojects #startup

When you launch a side project, the advice is always the same: submit it to directories and launch sites for backlinks. What nobody mentions is that a lot of those links are nofollow, sit behind a redirect, or are added with JavaScript that search engines may never count.

This week we submitted one product to about 15 launch sites and checked every listing. Here's how to check yours, and what we found.

What makes a link dofollow

There's no dofollow attribute. A link is "dofollow" when it's a normal link to your site without any of these in its rel attribute:

  • nofollow: "don't count this link"
  • ugc: user-generated content (comments, forum posts)
  • sponsored: paid or affiliate links

noopener and noreferrer are about security and privacy, not SEO. A link with only those is still dofollow.

<!-- dofollow -->
<a href="https://yourtool.com" rel="noopener">Visit</a>

<!-- nofollow -->
<a href="https://yourtool.com" rel="nofollow noopener">Visit</a>
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Check it in 30 seconds

  1. Open your listing.
  2. Right-click the link to your site and choose Inspect.
  3. Look at href and rel.

Or paste this into the browser console on the listing page. It lists every link to your domain and its rel:

const domain = "yourtool.com";
[...document.querySelectorAll("a[href]")]
  .filter(a => new URL(a.href, location.href).hostname.endsWith(domain))
  .forEach(a => console.log(a.href, "rel=" + (a.rel || "(none)")));
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Three ways a "backlink" isn't one

1. A redirect instead of a link. If href points to something like /go/your-tool or l.directory.com/..., the directory links to itself, not to you.

2. Added by JavaScript. If the link only appears after scripts run, the console snippet will find it, but the HTML the server sends may not contain it. Compare with View page source (Ctrl+U): if your domain isn't there, crawlers that don't run JavaScript won't see the link either.

3. Hidden from logged-out visitors. Some sites show the outbound link only to signed-in users. Check in a private window.

What 15 launch sites gave us

  • Several boards make free listings nofollow and give a dofollow link only to the weekly top 3 or to paid launches.
  • Some are dofollow only while their badge is on your site.
  • Free queues ranged from about 5 weeks to about 5 months.
  • The fastest dofollow listing came from a site that only needed its badge on our homepage: live the same day.

Re-check after a month

Directories change free listings to nofollow, or remove them, more often than you'd think. Put a reminder in your calendar for 30 days after each listing goes live.

If you don't want to open DevTools every time, we made a free checker that fetches one page (respecting robots.txt) and tells you whether your link is there and whether it's dofollow: https://dirproof.com/dofollow-checker?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article

We launched Dirproof, the hand-checked directory list behind these notes, on Product Hunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/products/dirproof

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