Badge Up, Link Dofollow. The Six Without One Are Nofollow.
Written by Submitator, which files customers here and installs the badge, so read the badge sections as an interested party. Six listings is the whole catalogue, so the link finding below is a census rather than a sample, and the footnote names every page it came from.
amaze.directory is a new, deliberately small AI-tools directory rated 28 by Ahrefs. Its own llms.txt publishes the size rather than rounding it up: "Listings: 6 indexable" across 15 categories. Submitting is free, and the plan card describes what you get as "A permanent listing with a dofollow link".
One condition, printed on the same card: "Goes live as soon as your badge is verified." That is the whole mechanism. Put their badge in your raw HTML, verify it, and the listing goes live with a dofollow link. Leave the badge off and there is no listing at all.
The other side of that switch is measurable today, so we measured it. All six listings currently in the catalogue carry rel="nofollow noopener", and none of the six tools has an amaze.directory badge anywhere on its own site. No badge, no dofollow, six times out of six. The rule is not decoration.
| Listing | rel on the Visit link | Badge on their site? |
|---|---|---|
| Granola | nofollow noopener | No badge on granola.ai |
| Perplexity | nofollow noopener | No badge on perplexity.ai |
| ElevenLabs | nofollow noopener | No badge on elevenlabs.io |
| Cursor | nofollow noopener | No badge on cursor.com |
| Midjourney | nofollow noopener | Site refused our request |
| Claude | nofollow noopener | Site refused our request |
Badge verified, the link is dofollow. That is their stated rule and it is what the badge route delivers, which is why we file here and install the badge as part of it. Badge absent, the link is nofollow, and the six entries above are what that looks like: a founder's seed list of well-known tools, none of which put up a badge, every one of them marked nofollow. Most directories describe a policy. This one can be checked.
amaze.directory at a glance
| What you get | amaze.directory |
|---|---|
| Price to list | £0, free tier only today |
| The condition | A verified badge in your raw HTML |
| Link with the badge | Dofollow, permanent listing |
| Link without it | Nofollow, measured on 6 of 6 |
| Domain Rating | 28 (Ahrefs) |
| Catalogue | 6 listings, 15 categories, their own count |
| Badge upkeep | "missing badges are chased daily and pulled" |
| Paid tier | "No badge required", announced for 15 Oct 2026 |
| Paid placement | None. "Ordering is by recency and category" |
| Filed for you by Submitator | Badge installed and kept live, from $29 |
Per amaze.directory, its /submit and /about pages, robots.txt, llms.txt and sitemap.xml, all read on 24 September 2026, together with the three-step submission flow. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker, which returned 28. Their sitemap holds 29 URLs, of which 6 are under /tools/, 16 are categories and 4 are blog posts; their llms.txt states "Listings: 6 indexable" and 15 categories, so the link finding below is a census of the entire catalogue rather than a sample. All six listing pages carry a title and a self-referencing canonical, none is noindexed, and each carries exactly one anchor to the listed tool's own domain, with rel="nofollow noopener" on all six. Five further external hosts appear on every page and were excluded as furniture by frequency before attribution, being the directory's own badges on other sites. We then requested the six listed tools' own home pages to look for an amaze.directory badge: granola.ai, perplexity.ai, elevenlabs.io and cursor.com all returned successfully and none contains the string amaze.directory anywhere in its markup; midjourney.com and claude.ai returned HTTP 403 to our request and were not checked. Nothing here alleges a broken promise, and the opposite is the point: their rule is that a verified badge is what makes the link dofollow, six unbadged listings carrying nofollow is that rule working, and the dofollow result on the badge route is stated on their plan card and in step three of their flow and is what the badge route gives on the listings we file. Quoted lines are taken verbatim from their own pages: "A permanent listing with a dofollow link", "Your own words on the card and the page", "Goes live as soon as your badge is verified", "No badge required", "Priority review", "Launching 15 October", "the badge must end up in your page's raw HTML. Site builders that inject it with JavaScript after load will fail verification — that is the most common reason a listing never goes live", "Nothing is lost if you leave now", and from llms.txt "No paid placements. Ordering is by recency and category, never by payment" and "Dead links and missing badges are chased daily and pulled", and from the submit page the four refusal criteria and "It goes through screening, usually in under a minute". The paid tier was announced for 15 October 2026 and had not launched when this page was written; if you are reading this later, check whether it has. Their robots.txt allows GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended under a comment reading "Answer engines — they cite the source and send the reader back", and disallows CCBot under "Bulk training scrape — no attribution, no traffic back", with /dashboard, /signin, /search and /newsletter/confirm closed to everyone. Their screening turnaround in practice is their own figure and was not timed by us. Submitator files customers to amaze.directory and installs the badge through one component, which is a product we sell, so the badge sections on this page are written by an interested party. Our plans are $29 for 30 directories, $49 for 60 and $79 for 100, one-time, chosen by you with each Domain Rating shown and no-equity marked where it applies, badges installed and kept live, rejections credited back as +1 directory and a 30-day refund policy on the conditions in our terms.
The warning they print before you paste
Step three of their flow carries the single most useful sentence any directory in this catalog has written, and we would like to put it in a frame:
"Before you paste it: the badge must end up in your page's raw HTML. Site builders that inject it with JavaScript after load will fail verification — that is the most common reason a listing never goes live."
Read that as an engineering statement, because that is what it is. A badge pasted into a page builder's widget, dropped into a tag manager, or rendered by a component that hydrates after first paint is invisible to a verifier fetching your HTML. The badge is on your site as far as a human looking at it is concerned, and it does not exist as far as the directory is concerned, and nobody tells you which of those two worlds you are in. Your listing simply never goes live.
Which is why a badge is not a form field. It is a deploy, on the server side of your stack, and then it is a thing that has to survive every deploy after it. The two conditions this directory sets are exactly the two that a pasted snippet fails: be in the response, and still be in the response next year.
We solved that once, as a component, for every badge-gated directory in a plan rather than for this one. It renders server-side, so the verifier sees it on the first fetch, and the embed lives on our side, so a directory changing its markup is our problem to ship rather than a ticket in your backlog.
And the badge has to stay there
The other half of the policy is in their llms.txt, in seven words: "Dead links and missing badges are chased daily and pulled."
So this is not a gate you pass once. It is a condition you keep meeting, checked on a daily cycle, with the listing and the dofollow link removed when you stop meeting it. A redesign next spring, a new developer tidying the footer, a template change that drops a block: any of those ends the listing, and the first you would know is that it is gone.
It is also, to be fair to them, the correct thing to do. A badge requirement nobody enforces is just a favour people stop returning, and a directory that checks daily is a directory whose outbound links are alive. It does mean the thing you are actually committing to is maintenance, which is the part we take off your desk.
What the six listings actually tell you
Granola, Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Cursor, Midjourney and Claude. Six well-known tools, none of which submitted itself, none of which has an amaze.directory badge on its site, and all six carrying a nofollow link.
That is not a catalogue, it is a seed list: the founder's examples of what belongs here, put in by hand so the site is not empty on day one. Everything about the pages reads that way, down to the pricing note on each listing being "the pricing on the tool's own site".
Which is useful to you for a reason that has nothing to do with traffic. It is a controlled demonstration of the rule: six entries that did not put a badge up, six nofollow links. A submitter who does put one up gets the dofollow listing the plan card describes. Being early in a directory that removes dead entries daily is a better address than entry forty thousand somewhere that never checks anything.
What they turn down, and why it is worth reading
Four criteria, on the submit page. "Anything we can't sign up for without a sales call." "Wrappers with no product behind the prompt." "Tools already listed under another name." "Anything outside AI tooling."
The first one is the tell. A directory that refuses anything it cannot sign up for itself is a directory whose reviewer opens the product, which is exactly what their own description claims: "AI tools, opened and used before they get listed." Enterprise products behind a demo form will not get in, and that is a stated policy rather than a queue you wait in forever.
Their llms.txt adds the commercial half: "No paid placements. Ordering is by recency and category, never by payment." The paid tier they have announced, for 15 October 2026, buys away the badge requirement and a faster review rather than a better position. That is a narrower thing to sell than most directories manage, and it means the badge route stays the free one that works.
Their robots.txt argues its own case
Worth a paragraph because it is the only one in this catalog that explains itself. Above the AI crawlers it allows, being GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, sits the comment "Answer engines — they cite the source and send the reader back." Above CCBot, which it blocks: "Bulk training scrape — no attribution, no traffic back."
Whether or not you draw the line in the same place, that is a policy with a reason attached, written where only somebody reading robots.txt will find it. It tells you more about how a directory is run than its home page does.
amaze.directory review: the short answer
Free, strict, six listings deep, and gated on a badge that has to be in your raw HTML and has to stay there. Meet the condition and you get a permanent dofollow listing in a directory that prunes daily. File it for the link and the early position, and put the badge in through something that will still be there next year.
How to submit to amaze.directory, step by step
- 1
Check you clear their four refusals first
No sales-call-only signup, no prompt wrapper with nothing behind it, nothing already listed under another name, nothing outside AI tooling. Screening is stated as usually under a minute, which means somebody opens your product. If a reviewer cannot get into it without talking to sales, this is not the directory for you and that is worth knowing before step one.
- 2
Write the one-liner as the card, not the pitch
Their field says "The sentence that shows on your card" and it appears on your listing and on every card that links to it. The longer field is prompted with "What it's for, who it's for, what makes it worth opening." That third clause is the one most submissions ignore, and on a directory whose whole claim is that a human opened the tool, it is the clause that earns the listing.
- 3
Put the badge in the markup, not in a page builder
This is the step that decides whether you get the link at all, and they say so: the badge must end up in your page's raw HTML, and site builders that inject it with JavaScript after load will fail verification. Paste it into a template, a layout file or a footer partial that ships in the server response. If your stack cannot do that, fix that before you press verify rather than after.
- 4
Pick the variant that will survive your next redesign
Dark, light or transparent. Transparent is the one that keeps looking right when somebody changes the background colour, which on a badge you are committing to keep live for years is worth more than matching today's palette exactly.
- 5
Verify, then write down what the listing depends on
Their note is that nothing is lost if you leave and come back to verify from the dashboard later. Once it is live, record that this listing and its dofollow link depend on a badge staying up, because their policy is to chase missing badges daily and pull the listing. Future you, mid-redesign, will not remember.
- 6
Or have the badge handled and skip all of that
One component, installed once, that puts every badge a directory in your plan asks for into the raw HTML and keeps it there when embeds change. That is what we sell, so weigh it accordingly; the point that stands either way is that a badge is a commit in a repository rather than a field in a form, and the directories that require one say so themselves.
Their badge is the dofollow link. Our $29 installs it, on thirty directories, and keeps it live.
One payment, every directory named in your dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card, a no-equity mark where the link passes nothing, one component that puts every badge into the raw HTML and keeps it there, and a rejection credited back as another directory of your choice.
The badge is the link. $29 puts it up.
A new DR 28 directory with six listings, by its own count. Verify their badge and the free listing is permanent and dofollow; all six entries without a badge carry nofollow, which is the same rule from the other side. Their own warning is the sharpest in this catalog: JavaScript-injected badges fail verification, and that is the most common reason a listing never goes live. Thirty directories with every badge installed and kept live is $29, once. The whole catalog.
FAQ
Is an amaze.directory link dofollow?
With the badge verified, yes. Their free plan card reads "A permanent listing with a dofollow link" and step three of the flow reads "As soon as we can see it, [your tool] goes live with a dofollow link", and that is what the badge route gives you. The six listings sitting in the catalogue today carry rel="nofollow noopener", and none of those six tools has an amaze.directory badge on its own site, which is the same rule seen from the other side rather than a different outcome.
Is the badge required on amaze.directory?
On the free tier, yes, and it is the condition for going live at all: the plan card reads "Goes live as soon as your badge is verified." A paid tier with "No badge required" and priority review is advertised as launching on 15 October 2026, which at the time of writing has not happened yet. Submitator installs the badge for you, so the condition is met without you touching a footer.
Why do badge verifications fail on amaze.directory?
They tell you before you paste it, and it is the most useful warning any directory in this catalog gives: "the badge must end up in your page's raw HTML. Site builders that inject it with JavaScript after load will fail verification — that is the most common reason a listing never goes live." Anything that renders the badge client-side, or through a tag manager, or inside a widget that hydrates after load, will not be seen.
What happens if the badge comes down later?
The listing goes with it, and so does the link. Their llms.txt states the policy plainly: "Dead links and missing badges are chased daily and pulled." So the badge is not a one-time gate you pass and forget, it is an ongoing condition checked on a daily cycle, and a redesign or a template change six months from now can quietly end the listing without anybody telling you. This is exactly what our badge component is for: it goes in once and stays.
How big is amaze.directory?
Small and new, and they publish the number themselves rather than rounding it up: their llms.txt says "Listings: 6 indexable" across 15 categories. The six are Granola, Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Cursor, Midjourney and Claude, which read as the founder's own seed list rather than maker submissions. An early dofollow listing in a strict directory is worth filing for; traffic from it today is not the reason to do it.
What is amaze.directory's Domain Rating?
28, per Ahrefs. For a directory with six listings that is higher than you would guess, and it is also not the number that decides this one: a badge-gated dofollow from a small, strict directory is a different proposition from an unconditional nofollow from a large one.
What does amaze.directory turn down?
Four things, listed on the submit page: "Anything we can't sign up for without a sales call", "Wrappers with no product behind the prompt", "Tools already listed under another name", and "Anything outside AI tooling." The first of those is unusual and tells you the register: they open and use a tool before listing it, so if a reviewer cannot get in, it does not go in.
Does amaze.directory sell placement?
No, and they say so in their llms.txt: "No paid placements. Ordering is by recency and category, never by payment." The paid tier they have announced buys the removal of the badge requirement and a faster review, not a better position, which is a narrower thing to sell than most directories manage.
What does the amaze.directory submission form ask for?
Tool name, website, one line that shows on your card, a category, a pricing model and a few sentences on what it actually does, prompted with "What it's for, who it's for, what makes it worth opening." Then you choose the free plan, copy a badge in dark, light or transparent, paste it into your site and press verify. Screening is stated as usually under a minute.
Does Submitator submit to amaze.directory?
Yes, and we handle the badge rather than emailing you a snippet to paste. One component installed once puts every badge a directory in your plan asks for into the raw HTML and keeps it there, which covers both failure modes this directory names: a badge that never reaches the markup, and a badge that quietly disappears later. From $29 for 30 directories, one time.
More submit-to guides.
Their badge is the dofollow link. Our $29 installs it, on thirty directories, and keeps it live.
One payment, each directory named with its Domain Rating on the card before you choose it, a no-equity mark where the link passes nothing, one component that installs every badge into the raw HTML and keeps it there, and a rejection swapped for another directory.