Nofollow Until About Twenty Points. The Median Show HN Scores Two.
Written by Submitator, which sells directory submissions, so read it as an interested party. Anyone may post a link to Hacker News; a Show HN, which is the route that works for a product, has to come from the person who built it. The numbers below were measured from live listing pages rather than taken from folklore, and the footnote says exactly what was read.
Hacker News is rated 91 by Ahrefs and it is the most valuable audience on any list like this one. It is also the entry most often described wrongly, because the link you get on submission is not followed, and almost nobody writing about it says so.
A new submission's link carries rel="nofollow". It comes off once the story earns roughly twenty points. We read eight listing pages in one sitting and measured 178 external stories with a visible score: at one to two points, 55 of 56 were nofollow; above twenty points, zero of 98 were.
The cleanest way to see it is the two ends of the site on the same afternoon. Every one of the thirty stories on /newest was nofollow. Every one of the twenty-eight external stories on /best was followed. Same site, same markup, different side of a line your readers move you across.
| Score | Stories | Nofollow | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 points | 56 | 55 | 98% |
| 3 to 5 points | 9 | 9 | 100% |
| 6 to 9 points | 7 | 5 | 71% |
| 10 to 19 points | 8 | 2 | 25% |
| 20 to 49 points | 15 | 0 | 0% |
| 50 points and up | 83 | 0 | 0% |
Domain Rating 91 belongs to news.ycombinator.com, not to your post. A story resting at two points with a nofollow anchor passes you nothing at all, so the 91 is the ceiling of what a thread that works could be worth rather than a number attached to pressing submit. This is the same reason every card in our catalog prints its own Domain Rating and marks the listings that pass no equity: a big number on somebody else's domain is not a number you own.
Hacker News at a glance
| What you get | Hacker News |
|---|---|
| Price to submit | $0, account required |
| The link on arrival | rel="nofollow" |
| When it becomes followed | Around 20 points; 0 of 98 above 20 were nofollow |
| Median Show HN score | 2 points, from 58 sampled |
| Domain Rating | 91 (Ahrefs), on their domain |
| The form | Three fields: title, url, text |
| Who may post it | Anyone, for a plain link; the maker, for a Show HN |
| Deleting and reposting | Not allowed |
| What it is really for | Readers and feedback, same day |
| The other thirty directories | Filed for you by Submitator, from $29 |
Per news.ycombinator.com, its /submit form, /newsguidelines.html and /showhn.html, all read on 15 September 2026. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker, which returned 91 for news.ycombinator.com. The link measurement covers eight listing pages read in one sitting: /news, /news?p=2, /news?p=3, /newest, /best, /front, /show and /shownew. Stories were parsed out of the markup rather than pattern-matched loosely, deduplicated by story id, and restricted to submissions whose target is an external domain and whose score is visible, which leaves 178. Of those, 71 carry rel="nofollow" on the story anchor and 107 carry no rel attribute at all; the bands are 55 of 56 at 1-2 points, 9 of 9 at 3-5, 5 of 7 at 6-9, 2 of 8 at 10-19, 0 of 15 at 20-49 and 0 of 83 at 50 and above. Two cases sit against the trend, a one-point story already followed and a fourteen-point story still nofollow, so twenty points is where the observed transition completes rather than a published rule; Hacker News does not document the threshold and we make no claim about its exact mechanics or about how age, flags or moderation interact with it. The Show HN figures are a separate cut of the same fetch: 58 unique posts with a visible score from /show and /shownew, median 2 points, 30 of them at 1 or 2, 34 of 35 nofollow in the 1-4 band and 13 of 58 at 20 points or more. A single afternoon's reading is a snapshot of one day's front page and not a longitudinal study. All quoted sentences are verbatim from their guidelines and Show HN pages, among them "The project must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss", "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion", "Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions", "Please don't delete and repost" and "Don't post landing pages or fundraisers." Nothing was submitted, upvoted or voted on in the course of this measurement, and no account was used. Their rules distinguish two routes that this page keeps separate: a plain submission, which anyone may post, and a Show HN, which their own page restricts to the maker. 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.
How to post a Show HN, step by step
- 1
Check it is a Show HN at all before anything else
Their rule is "something you've made that other people can play with", and the off-topic list is blunt: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists and other reading material, plus "Don't post landing pages or fundraisers." If a reader cannot run the thing today, it is a regular submission or it is nothing yet. They say so directly: if the work is not ready for users to try out, do not post a Show HN, come back when it is.
- 2
Take the signup wall down for the day
"Please make it easy for users to try your thing out, ideally without barriers such as signups or emails. You'll get more feedback that way." This is the single highest-leverage change on the list and almost nobody makes it. A demo that works without an account converts a curious reader into a commenter; an email gate converts them into a closed tab, and the thread dies at two points with a nofollow link.
- 3
Write the title as the thing, not the pitch
Begin with "Show HN:" then say what it is in plain words. Their guidelines ban uppercase and exclamation points, ask you to strip the site name because it is shown after the link anyway, tell you to crop gratuitous numbers, and say don't editorialise. The titles that work read like a description a friend would give, not like a tagline that went through three rounds of copy.
- 4
Post the first comment yourself, immediately
This is the part the rules imply rather than state. Show HN expects the maker to be present, so the first comment is where you say what you built, why, what is unfinished and what you want feedback on. It is the difference between a link and a conversation, and the conversation is the only thing that moves a post toward the twenty points where the nofollow comes off.
- 5
Do not ask anyone to upvote it
Both rulebooks say this and both mean it: "Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions" and "Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment. That's not ok on HN." Rings get detected and the penalty is worse than a quiet post. The twenty-point line is one your readers move you across or nobody does.
- 6
Accept that you get one attempt
"Please don't delete and repost. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place." There is no relaunch, so everything above has to be ready before you press submit rather than after you see the score. Pick the hour you can sit with the thread for, not the hour the article says is best.
The two routes, and why only one of them works
Hacker News has two doors and they have different rules. A plain submission is just a URL and a title, and anybody may post anything they find interesting, including somebody else's product. A Show HN is a different thing with its own page of rules, and the relevant sentence is unambiguous: "The project must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss."
The distinction matters more than it looks, because for a product the plain submission is the weaker door by a long way. A link with no thread behind it sinks at one or two points, which is exactly the band where 55 of the 56 stories we measured carry a nofollow. What moves a post is the conversation, and on a Show HN the conversation is the maker answering questions. Somebody asks why you did not use the obvious library, somebody else finds a bug in the first four minutes, and the reply has to come from the person who wrote the code.
The guidelines narrow it further for anybody thinking of it as a channel: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." Read together, the two rules point at the same conclusion: this entry rewards a founder on a day they can sit with the thread, and it does not reward volume.
That makes the division of labour the useful one. The thirty to a hundred entries on your list that are genuinely forms get filled in, with the badge handled and the Domain Rating on the card. This one you write yourself.
Twenty points is not a marketing target
It is tempting to read the measurement as a goal: get to twenty and collect the followed link. That reading fails on its own terms, because the only mechanisms that reliably move a post to twenty points are the ones both rulebooks prohibit, and asking for votes is more likely to sink the post than lift it.
The useful reading is the opposite one. Post for the readers. A Show HN that lands puts your product in front of an audience that will actually try it and tell you what is wrong with it, on the same day, for free, and that is worth more at an early stage than any single backlink on this site. If the thread works, the followed link arrives as a side effect. If it does not, you still got the feedback, and you did not pay for either.
It is also why the median matters more than the ceiling. Every guide quotes the post that hit 800 points. The distribution we measured says the middle of the Show HN page sits at two, and thirteen of fifty-eight got past twenty. Plan for the median and treat the tail as luck you prepared for.
The form is three fields, and that is the point
After the directory forms in the rest of this catalog, with their logo ratios, 130-character descriptions and pricing dropdowns, the Hacker News submit page is almost startling: title, url, text. Leave the url blank to ask a question instead of posting a link. There is a bookmarklet if you would rather submit from the page itself. You need an account and that is the only gate.
Nothing in that form does any of the work. There is no category to place you, no description field to carry the explanation, no image to catch an eye in a grid. The title and the first comment are the entire submission, which is why they deserve more preparation than any other entry on your list and get less from most people.
Hacker News submission: the short answer
Free, three fields, nofollow on arrival, followed at roughly twenty points, and the median Show HN never gets there. Post it for the readers, post it yourself because the rules require it, and let the paid list cover the directories that are actually forms.
Post the Show HN yourself. Let $29 cover the other thirty.
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, badges installed and kept live where one is wanted, and a rejection credited back as another directory.
Nofollow at two points. Followed at twenty.
We measured 178 Hacker News stories in one sitting. At 1 to 2 points, 55 of 56 were nofollow. Above 20 points, none of 98 were. The median Show HN in our sample scored 2. It is still the best audience on any submission list, and their rules require the maker to post it and stay in the thread, so this is the entry you do yourself. The whole catalog.
FAQ
Are Hacker News links dofollow?
Not at first. A new submission's link carries rel="nofollow", and it comes off once the story earns roughly twenty points. We read eight Hacker News listing pages on 15 September 2026 and measured 178 external stories: at 1 to 2 points, 55 of 56 were nofollow; at 3 to 5 points, 9 of 9; above 20 points, zero of 98. Every one of the thirty stories on /newest at the moment we read it was nofollow, and every one of the twenty-eight external stories on /best was followed.
How many points does a Hacker News link need to become dofollow?
Around twenty, on our measurement. The bands go 98% nofollow at 1 to 2 points, 100% at 3 to 5, 71% at 6 to 9, 25% at 10 to 19 and 0% across the 98 stories we saw above 20. Hacker News does not publish the exact rule, so treat twenty as the observed line rather than a documented one, and note that it is a threshold your readers cross for you, not one you can cross yourself.
What does the median Show HN score?
Two points. We collected 58 unique Show HN posts with a score across /show and /shownew, and 30 of them sat at 1 or 2 points. Of the 35 posts at 1 to 4 points, 34 carried a nofollow link. Thirteen of the 58 reached twenty points or more. That is the honest distribution behind every guide that tells you to post a Show HN.
Is Hacker News worth submitting to if the link is nofollow?
Yes, for what it actually gives you, which is readers rather than link equity. A Show HN that lands puts your product in front of an audience that will try it and tell you what is wrong with it, and the traffic arrives the same day. Treat the followed link as a bonus that arrives only if the thread works, and never as the reason to post.
What is Hacker News' Domain Rating?
91 for news.ycombinator.com, per Ahrefs. That number describes the domain, not your submission. A story sitting at two points with a nofollow link passes you nothing, so the 91 is the ceiling of what a front-page thread could be worth rather than a figure attached to posting.
What can you post as a Show HN?
Their rule is “something you've made that other people can play with”. Explicitly off topic in their own words: “blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material”, plus “Don't post landing pages or fundraisers.” They also ask you to make it easy to try “ideally without barriers such as signups or emails”, and say plainly that if the work is not ready for users to try, do not post yet.
Can a submission service post a Show HN for you?
No, and their rules are explicit about why: “The project must be something you've worked on personally and which you're around to discuss.” The thread is the product, and the founder has to be in it answering questions. The guidelines also say “Please don't use HN primarily for promotion” and “Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions.” This is the one place in your launch list that has to be you.
What does the Hacker News submit form ask for?
Three fields: title, url and text. Leave the url blank to post a question for discussion instead of a link, and there is a bookmarklet if you would rather submit from the page itself. No logo, no category, no description, no account-free route: you need a Hacker News account, and that is the entire form.
How should you write a Hacker News title?
Their guidelines are specific. Use the original title unless it is misleading, do not editorialise, take the site name out because it is displayed after the link anyway, drop gratuitous numbers, and do not use uppercase or exclamation points to make it stand out. For a Show HN the title begins with “Show HN:” and then says what the thing is in plain words.
Can you delete and repost a Hacker News submission that flopped?
No. Their guidelines say “Please don't delete and repost. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place.” A post that sinks is not a draft you get to run again, which is the real argument for preparing the title and the first comment before you press submit rather than after.
More submit-to guides.
Post the Show HN yourself. Let $29 cover the other thirty.
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.