One Rel Value in the Whole Corpus, and It Is the Right One.
Written by Submitator. Go Publicly is one of the launch boards we file customers to, and it also sells a directory service that competes with ours, which this page says out loud rather than leaving you to discover. Numbers are measured from their live pages; the method is in the footnote.
Go Publicly is a Product Hunt alternative for indie makers, rated 32 by Ahrefs, with 1,795 launch pages in its sitemap. Launching is free, there is no badge, and new launches go live daily at 8:00 AM UTC rather than in a weekly batch.
On the link question it produced the tidiest census we have run. Ninety launch pages, every one carrying exactly one anchor to the product's own domain, and across all 3,870 outbound anchors in the sample there is exactly one rel value in use: noopener noreferrer. No nofollow, no sponsored, no redirector in the path, nothing noindexed.
Two directories we measured this week send your link through an internal path their own robots.txt blocks, so nothing crawlable reaches you no matter how clean the rel looks. Go Publicly links straight at your domain. It is the difference between a listing that counts and one that only looks like it does, and it is invisible unless somebody checks.
Go Publicly at a glance
| What you get | Go Publicly |
|---|---|
| Price to launch | $0; $15 or $30 per launch for visibility |
| The link | Followed, direct, on 90 of 90 sampled |
| Redirector in the path | None |
| Domain Rating | 32 (Ahrefs) |
| Badge on your site | Not required |
| Launch cycle | Daily at 8:00 AM UTC |
| AI crawlers | Training refused, citation invited, per crawler |
| Also sells | A $100 directory submission service |
| Filed for you by Submitator | Free launch, plus 29 more directories from $29 |
Per go-publicly.com, its home page, /pricing, /submit, robots.txt and sitemaps, all read on 10 September 2026. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker, which returned 32. Their launch sitemap holds 1,795 /launch/ URLs; their own on-page counters disagree with each other and with that figure, reading 115+ in the meta description, over 1,000 and 1,857+ in the body, alongside 17,401 visits and 5,229 active users, and we reconcile none of them. Tier names, prices and bullets are quoted from /pricing: Free with an Explore listing, community upvotes and comments; Premium at $15 per launch adding a featured tag, highlighted card and priority placement in Top Results; Premium Plus at $30 per launch adding a featured blog post and newsletter promotion; with "Pay only when you launch", "No subscription, no auto-renew", Stripe checkout and paid launches live within 24h. The same page sells a separate Directory Submission Service at $100 one-time, advertising submission to 100+ directories, a complete report, paid directories excluded and a "Guaranteed DR increase from 0 to 15+"; that product competes with ours and nothing on this page is a measurement of it, since we bought nothing. The link finding is a sample, not a census: a seeded random sample of 90 launch URLs, every one fetched successfully at 156-185 KB, parsed rather than pattern-matched, with every outbound anchor classified by hostname. All 90 carry exactly one anchor to the launched product's own domain; across the sample's 3,870 outbound anchors the only rel value present anywhere is "noopener noreferrer", so none carries nofollow or sponsored, no anchor routes through an internal redirector, and none of the 90 pages carries a robots noindex. Each launch page also carries a constant block of roughly eighteen other launch directories plus links to ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, identified by frequency and excluded before attribution. Their robots.txt sets a default Content-Signal of ai-train=no, search=yes, ai-input=no and then raises ai-input to yes for GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, Google-Extended and OAI-SearchBot under a comment reading "Explicitly allow AI search crawlers for citation eligibility"; their footer also links an API catalog, agent skills, an MCP server card, llms.txt and llms-full.txt. Form fields and their required markers are read from the live submission flow; nothing behind it was observed, so review, launch-day mechanics and refund practice are outside what we can report beyond their published wording, which states all sales final. Submitator files customers to Go Publicly. Our plans are $29 for 30 directories, $49 for 60 and $79 for 100, one-time, chosen by you with each Domain Rating shown, rejections credited back as +1 directory and a 30-day refund policy on the conditions in our terms.
How to launch on Go Publicly, step by step
- 1
Paste the URL and let Import Info do the first pass
The form opens on a product URL with an Import Info button that fills the title, tagline and description from your page. As always it is reading your homepage, so what comes back is a mirror of how well that page introduces itself. Fix it there once and every scraping directory improves at the same time.
- 2
Use the live preview, because it is actually live
The right-hand panel renders your launch page as you type and says so: updates as you type. Very few submission forms show you the output before you commit. Read the card the way a visitor would rather than the way its author does.
- 3
Write the tagline long enough to say something
The field allows 5 to 500 characters, which is far more room than the usual one-liner. That does not mean fill it, but it does mean you can name the audience as well as the job rather than choosing between them.
- 4
Prepare both images at the right ratios
A 1:1 logo and a 2:1 cover image, both required. The 2:1 is unusual, so your Open Graph image at 1.91:1 is close enough to crop cleanly, and a 16:9 screenshot is not. Getting this right before you start saves the only real friction in the flow.
- 5
Save as draft if you are not ready
There is a Save as draft button on the first step. Launch day matters here because the board turns over daily, so there is no cost to preparing the entry now and releasing it when your own week is right.
- 6
Decide about $15 on launch-day terms only
Premium buys a featured tag, a highlighted card and priority placement in Top Results; Premium Plus at $30 adds a blog post and newsletter promotion. Neither changes the link, which is the same on the free tier. Pay for attention on the day, not for SEO.
A daily cycle is rarer than it sounds
Most launch boards batch. Product Hunt runs a day at a time but with a queue in front of it; the smaller boards in this catalog mostly release on Mondays. Go Publicly publishes daily at 8:00 AM UTC, and paid launches are stated to go live within twenty-four hours.
For a founder that changes the planning rather than the outcome. There is no date to claim and no week to wait for, so the launch can be attached to whatever else you are doing rather than the other way round.
Training refused, citation invited
Their robots.txt is the most carefully drawn one we have read. The default is Content-Signal: ai-train=no, search=yes, ai-input=no. Then, one crawler at a time, ai-input is raised to yes for GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, Google-Extended and OAI-SearchBot, under a comment that says exactly why: "Explicitly allow AI search crawlers for citation eligibility".
That is a position, not a default. They decline to have the corpus used for training while inviting it to be quoted in answers, and they have gone to the trouble of expressing that per crawler. The footer backs it up with an API catalog, agent skills, an MCP server card and both llms.txt files.
They also sell what we sell
Worth stating plainly rather than leaving in a footnote. Alongside the launch platform, Go Publicly sells a Directory Submission Service at $100 one-time: submission to 100+ directories, a complete report, paid directories excluded. Submitator sells 100 directories for $79.
The part we would push back on is not the price. It is the bullet that reads "Guaranteed DR increase from 0 to 15+". Domain Rating moves when new referring domains are discovered, accepted and recrawled, and none of those three is inside a submission service's control. We do not guarantee a Domain Rating number and would not, because the honest version of that promise is a promise about work done rather than a score reached.
What we commit to instead is in our terms: the directories you picked, each named with its Domain Rating on the card before you choose, a rejection credited back as another directory, and a refund on the stated conditions. Their launch board is a good, free place to be listed and we file customers there. Their directory service is a different product, and this is the honest comparison of it.
Their $100 for 100 directories. Our $79, and no DR promised.
One payment, every directory named in your dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card, a no-equity mark where the link cannot be crawled, and a rejection credited back as another directory.
Go Publicly review: the short answer
Launch, take the free tier, and use the live preview properly. A direct followed link on an indexed page, no badge, no account friction and a daily cycle is a good trade for one form.
Pay the $15 only if launch-day placement matters to you on that particular day. And price their $100 directory service against $79 before you buy it, with the DR guarantee read carefully.
Free, daily, and the link points at you.
Go Publicly launches daily at 8:00 AM UTC, costs nothing, asks for no badge, and every one of the 90 launch pages we sampled carries a direct followed anchor to the product. The only rel value in 3,870 anchors is noopener noreferrer. Paid tiers at $15 and $30 buy launch-day placement, not a better link. The whole catalog.
FAQ
Is a Go Publicly link dofollow?
Yes, cleanly. We sampled 90 of the 1,795 launch pages in their sitemap and every one carries exactly one anchor to the product's own domain with rel="noopener noreferrer" and no nofollow. Across 3,870 outbound anchors in the sample that is the only rel value present at all, there is no redirector in the path, and nothing is noindexed.
Is Go Publicly free to launch on?
Yes. Free is a real tier with a listing on the Explore page, community upvotes and comments. Premium is $15 per launch for a featured tag, a highlighted card and priority placement in Top Results, and Premium Plus is $30 per launch adding a featured blog post and newsletter promotion. Their own line is “Pay only when you launch. No subscription, no auto-renew.”
When do Go Publicly launches go live?
Daily at 8:00 AM UTC, which is unusual: most launch boards run weekly batches. Paid launches are stated to go live within 24 hours. There is no queue to wait out and no launch date to negotiate.
What does the Go Publicly submission form ask for?
A product URL with an Import Info button that fills the rest, a project title, a tagline between 5 and 500 characters, a description, a 1:1 logo and a 2:1 cover image, all required. A live preview updates as you type and there is a Save as draft button, so you can stop halfway.
What is Go Publicly's Domain Rating?
32 on Ahrefs. Mid-table, and worth more than that suggests here because the link is genuinely followed, sits on an indexed page and needs nothing from your own site in return.
Does Go Publicly allow AI crawlers?
Selectively, and it is the most carefully drawn robots.txt in our catalog. The default is Content-Signal: ai-train=no, search=yes, ai-input=no. Then GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, Google-Extended and OAI-SearchBot each get ai-input=yes, under a comment reading “Explicitly allow AI search crawlers for citation eligibility”. Training is refused; being cited is invited.
What is Go Publicly's $100 directory submission service?
A separate product from the launch platform, sold at $100 one-time for submission to 100+ directories with a report, excluding paid directories. It also advertises a “Guaranteed DR increase from 0 to 15+”. Submitator sells 100 directories for $79 and does not guarantee a Domain Rating number, because acceptance and recrawl timing are outside anyone's control.
Is Go Publicly worth launching on?
Yes. Free, no badge, no account friction beyond the form, a followed link on every page we checked, and a daily rather than weekly cycle so you are not waiting for a Monday. Treat the paid tiers as launch-day visibility rather than as a better link, because the link is the same on all three.
More submit-to guides.
Go Publicly is free. Thirty directories are $29, each one measured.
One payment, each directory named with its Domain Rating on the card before you choose it, a no-equity mark where the link cannot be crawled, badges installed and kept live where one is wanted, and a rejection swapped for another directory.