Directory Backlinks in 2026: Which Ones Still Count

Four tests a directory backlink has to pass

1. It is followed and points at your domain

Start with the rel attribute on the link to your site. A link with no rel, or with only noopener or noreferrer in it, is followed; nofollow, sponsored and ugc ask search engines not to pass ranking credit through it. Ahrefs, the source of the Domain Rating in our catalog, puts the consequence for its own metric in one line: "If a website is only linking to you via nofollow links, it won’t increase your DR."

Then read where the link goes. A clean rel on an anchor that points at the directory's own /go/ address, disallowed in its robots.txt, leaves no path a crawler may follow to you. Future Tools (DR 70) routes 79 of the 80 listings we read that way, as our guide to it says up front.

2. The listing page is indexed and something links to it

A followed link on a page that asks not to be indexed sits on a page search engines are told to leave out. Look in the head of your listing for a robots meta tag: Indie Hackers (DR 82) carried a noindex on 32 of the 78 product pages we read, and nofollow on all three of its links to the product. The other end of the scale is DeepLaunch (DR 72): 80 listing pages read, none noindexed, every one linking its tool followed.

Then ask how a crawler reaches the listing at all. LemonLaunch publishes no sitemap, and 232 of its 315 listing pages had no crawlable internal link pointing at them. On a directory like that, the badge on your own site is often the main way a crawler finds your listing, because it links straight to it: a badge is part of how the backlink gets found, not only the price of it.

3. The directory has links of its own

Domain Rating summarises the sites linking to a domain, so it describes the directory and not your listing. Read it beside the count it is built from, the referring domains: how many separate sites link in. Both tables below print the two together. And check whose domain the rating belongs to. Index by Dodo Payments shows DR 81 in our catalog, the rating of the payment company's domain, while Ahrefs counts 87 referring domains for the index itself. Its listings link out nofollow on 79 of the 80 we read.

Count what you buy in referring domains too. From the same Ahrefs explainer: "Only the first link from a domain will increase your DR. All subsequent links don’t affect your DR any further." A listing that links you three times is one referring domain. Thirty followed listings on thirty directories are thirty, which is why, for DR, the number of directories matters more than the number of links on any one of them.

4. It stays live

Badge directories make the followed link conditional on their badge or a link back on your site. CurlShip, which checks for its badge every hour, puts the rule in one sentence: "Free links are nofollow until you add the badge; paid tiers are dofollow with no badge." Its listings bear it out: all 94 free listings with the badge were followed, and all 3,356 without it were nofollow. On EasyLaunch, 373 of 387 listings were followed, and every one of the 14 nofollow ones belonged to a site without the badge.

Some directories take the listing down instead. On DodoDirectory removing the badge means "instant delisting", and AI Toolz Dir, one of our October additions, says "Listing stays permanent as long as the backlink remains on your site."

The directories put a price on the alternative themselves. Turbo0 (DR 81) sells a Basic plan at $29.90 that makes its link back optional and lists you at once. Twelve Tools (DR 83) asks "No badge space? Get listed with a paid submission" and charges $36 for it. AI Toolz Dir charges $25 to skip its link back, DodoDirectory $9.99 and CurlShip $1 a month or $30 once.

A badge is a few lines in your site's code that have to survive every redesign, for every directory that asked for one. Submitator carries that code for you. One component, installed once, renders the badge each of your directories asked for; we keep all of them live, and no directory ever costs you a commit.

Best directories for backlinks in our catalog

These 11 directories from our catalog link their listings followed, strongest first by Domain Rating, with the count behind each cell. Of the 11, 10 ask for a badge or a link back, which we place and keep live.

New in October 2026: 23 more directories

The directories we added to the catalog in October 2026, strongest first. AI Toolz Dir (DR 69) and Yo.directory (DR 69) lead the list: all 346 AI Toolz Dir listings that load link followed, and Yo.directory's free listing "Stays live while your link stays live". Of the newcomers, 5 have a guide of their own, and four of those link every listed product followed on the pages we read: AI Toolz Dir, ToolHunter, AZN8 and ThisTool.

Checking a directory backlink yourself

1. Open your live listing, find the link to your site and read two things on it: the rel attribute and the href. The href should be your own domain.
2. If the href is an address on the directory's own site, open its robots.txt and look for a Disallow line covering that path.
3. View the page source and search for noindex and for a canonical tag that points somewhere other than the listing itself.
4. Run the directory's domain through our free DR checker for its Domain Rating, and read the number as a rating of the directory.
5. After any redesign of your own site, check that every badge a directory asked for still renders and still links to your listing.

30 directories, every badge kept live

That last step is the one that slips, because it lives in your code rather than on the directory. With Submitator it is our step to keep. You choose the directories in the dashboard, Domain Rating on screen for every one; we write each of them a unique description, put every badge and link back on your site and keep all of them live. Most directories are delivered in 24 to 48 hours, every directory within 21 days at most. If a directory rejects a submission, we add one more directory to your selection so you can pick a replacement.

The full catalog table on our where-to-submit page carries the whole list, 160+ directories, with the DR, the link type and the badge rule of each. Two shorter cuts of it serve one kind of product each: AI tool directories and SaaS directories.