DR 81, and Every Link Out Is Nofollow. Four in Ten Pages Are Noindexed.
Written by Submitator. Indie Hackers is in our catalog and we file customers to it, which is exactly why this page says what the link is worth rather than leaving the 81 to imply it. Everything below is measured from their live pages, and the footnote says what was read.
Indie Hackers is the most concentrated community of bootstrapped founders on the internet and it is rated 81 by Ahrefs. Both of those things are true, and only the first of them is a reason to create a product page.
Your product page links your website in three separate places: the title at the top, the Visit Website button, and the website stat in the metrics row. We read 78 product pages and all three carry rel="nofollow noopener" on every one of the 77 where the button was present. Across product pages and milestone posts together we measured 383 outbound anchors and 375 are nofollow. The eight that are not sit inside user-written body content on five pages.
Indie Hackers' own links to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are followed. Yours are not. That is a deliberate, sensible policy for a site where anybody can create a page, and it means a product page is a profile rather than a backlink.
Then there is the second number, which we did not expect. Thirty-two of the seventy-eight product pages we read carry a literal <meta name="robots" content="noindex">.
| Measurement | n | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Product pages read | 78 | of 80 sampled; 2 returned 404 |
| Visit Website anchors | 77 | every one rel="nofollow noopener" |
| Links to your site per page | 3 | title, button, metrics row; all nofollow |
| All outbound anchors | 383 | 375 nofollow, 8 in user-written content |
| Product pages noindexed | 32 | of 78, which is 41% |
| Milestone posts read | 25 | 34 of 34 anchors nofollow |
A Domain Rating describes a domain. It does not describe what that domain's listing page passes to you, and Indie Hackers is the clearest example we have measured of the two coming apart: one of the highest ratings in the catalog, attached to a link that passes nothing. This is why every card in our catalog prints a rating and a no-equity mark rather than a rating alone, and why we would rather tell you before you tick it than let an 81 do the arguing.
Indie Hackers at a glance
| What you get | Indie Hackers |
|---|---|
| Price | $0, account required |
| The link | rel="nofollow noopener" on 77 of 77 |
| Links to your site | Three placements, all nofollow |
| Indexing | 32 of 78 pages carry a noindex |
| Domain Rating | 81 (Ahrefs), and no equity passed |
| Your URL | Permanent; renaming does not move it |
| What it is actually for | Community, revenue transparency, milestone posts |
| Catalogue | 30,096 products, ~236,000 sitemap URLs |
| Root product pages in sitemap | None; only milestone posts |
| In the Submitator catalog | Yes, with a no-equity mark on the card |
Per indiehackers.com, its product pages, milestone posts, sitemap index and the live product creation and edit forms, all read on 18 September 2026. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker, which returned 81. Their robots.txt and llms.txt could not be read: both return a Cloudflare interstitial to every user agent we tried, including one identifying as Googlebot, so nothing on this page describes their crawl directives. Their sitemap index lists five child sitemaps totalling roughly 236,710 URLs; 127,863 of those are under /product/ and every one is a milestone sub-page, so no root product page appears in any sitemap and the 30,096 distinct product slugs used here were derived from those milestone URLs. The link findings are samples: 80 product slugs drawn at random with a fixed seed, of which 78 fetched successfully and 2 returned 404; and 25 milestone posts drawn at random with a fixed seed, all of which fetched. Anchors were located by regex on the anchor element rather than by an HTML parser, and Indie Hackers' own social accounts were excluded by hostname before attribution. On the 77 product pages carrying a Visit Website control, that anchor and the two other links to the same domain, the page title and the website entry in the metrics row, all carry rel="nofollow noopener". Across the 78 product pages the non-social external anchors break down as 231 rel="nofollow noopener", 110 rel="nofollow" and 8 with no rel attribute, the last of these appearing on five pages inside user-written content; across the 25 milestone posts all 34 non-social external anchors carry nofollow. That is 383 anchors measured and 375 carrying nofollow. 32 of the 78 product pages carry a literal meta robots noindex, as do 8 of the 25 milestone posts. Those 32 noindexed product pages have a median served size of 28,209 bytes against 36,186 for the 46 indexed ones, which is an association between indexing and page completeness and is reported as such; Indie Hackers publishes no rule for it, we did not test any mechanism, and nothing here predicts what will happen to a particular page. Form fields, the logo requirement of square or circular at 200x200 pixels or larger, the metadata options and the setup checklist are read from the live forms, and the slug warning is quoted verbatim as "Your product's web address stays alcorone - renaming does not move it" from an edit page for a product of that name. Nothing was published in the course of this review and no product page was created, so review behaviour, moderation and how a page performs over time are outside what we can report. Submitator lists Indie Hackers in its catalog with a no-equity mark on the card. 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.
Three links to your site, three nofollows
It is worth being specific about this, because at a glance a product page looks generous. Your domain appears as the clickable page title, again on a prominent Visit Website button, and a third time as the website entry in the metrics row next to your follower count. Three anchors, on a DR 81 domain.
All three carry rel="nofollow noopener". We checked seventy-seven pages and found no exception. The only followed external links on a product page belong to Indie Hackers themselves, pointing at their own Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts.
None of that is a criticism. Any site where a stranger can create a page carrying their own URL will be farmed within a week if those links are followed, which is the same reason every body link on Hashnode is ugc and the reason a new Hacker News submission arrives nofollowed. The mistake is not theirs, it is in the spreadsheet where somebody wrote DR 81 next to Indie Hackers and moved on.
The number we did not expect
Forty-one percent of the product pages we read are not asking to be indexed at all. Thirty-two of seventy-eight carry <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the head, and eight of the twenty-five milestone posts we sampled do too.
The noindexed pages are consistently thinner: a median served size of 28,209 bytes against 36,186 for the indexed ones. Indie Hackers publishes no rule for this and we did not test one, so we are not going to tell you what triggers it. What we will say is that the association points at completeness, and that their own onboarding checklist asks for precisely that: create the page, fill in missing information, add an original post, add revenue data, all done.
So finish the checklist. Not because it buys you a link, because it does not, but because a page nobody can find is not a profile, it is a form you filled in once.
Pick the name before you press submit
One small thing that will cost somebody reading this a real headache, so it gets its own heading. The URL is minted when you create the page and it never changes. Their edit screen says so without softening it: "Your product's web address stays alcorone — renaming does not move it."
Rename the product later and the page keeps the old slug forever, which means a product that changed its name at month four carries the wrong address in every link anybody ever shares. If you are between names, or you suspect the name might move, wait a week and create the page when you are sure.
What it is actually for
Everything above is about a link that does not exist, so here is the part that does. Indie Hackers is where founders publish revenue numbers, and the culture of doing so is the reason people read product pages rather than skim them. The metadata the form asks for, whether the founders code, how many employees, bootstrapped or funded, full time or side project, is not decoration: it is what the community browses by.
The motivation field is the one worth writing properly. It asks why the product exists, and it is the closest thing a directory in this catalog has to an invitation to write like a person. Milestone posts do the same job over time, and they get read and discussed even though every link in them is nofollowed.
Judge it the way we judge a Show HN: post for the readers, and treat any SEO effect as something that did not happen. On that basis it is one of the most worthwhile entries on any submission list. On a link basis it is an 81 that passes nothing.
Indie Hackers review: the short answer
Free, real, and nofollow everywhere. Create the page, choose the name carefully because the URL is permanent, finish the checklist so it gets indexed, write the motivation field like a human, and do not count it as a backlink.
How to set up an Indie Hackers product page
- 1
Decide the name first, because the URL is permanent
Creating the page mints a slug and renaming the product later does not move it; their own edit screen tells you so. This is the only irreversible decision in the flow. If the name is provisional, wait. If it is final, use exactly the name and nothing else, because their field says so: "Only include the name of the product itself, not a description."
- 2
Export a square logo of at least 200x200
The requirement is square or circular and at least 200 by 200 pixels, and it is checked at upload. A wide wordmark will not do. Prepare a square mark before you open the form, because this is the field that sends people back to Figma halfway through creating a page.
- 3
Write the tagline for the row and the motivation for a person
The tagline sits next to your name in lists, so it should read like a category plus a difference, and their own examples are as plain as "Music Remixing App, Form Building Tool". The motivation field asks why the product exists. That one is the heart of the page on a site built on founders explaining themselves, and a paragraph of real reasoning will be read.
- 4
Fill the metadata block even though none of it is glamorous
Start date, whether the founders code, number of founders and employees, business model, funding, full time or side project, platforms and tags. Most of it is marked required and all of it is what the community filters by. A page that is bootstrapped, solo and a side project gets found by people looking for exactly that, which is most of the audience.
- 5
Finish the checklist, including the revenue data
Their setup list ends with an original post and revenue data before it says all done. The noindexed pages in our sample were consistently the thinner ones, so completing this is the lever you have over whether the page is indexed at all. Revenue numbers are also the thing this particular audience turns up for.
- 6
Budget it as community time, not as a link
Every outbound anchor we measured is nofollow, so nothing here belongs in a tally of the links a campaign produced. What it can produce is readers, a public record of milestones and conversations with people building the same kind of thing, and those are worth an afternoon on their own terms.
Write the product page. Let $29 cover the thirty that pass a link.
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 of your choice.
An 81 that passes nothing.
Indie Hackers links your site three times from a product page and all three carry nofollow. We measured 383 outbound anchors across 78 product pages and 25 milestone posts; 375 are nofollow. 32 of those 78 pages also carry a noindex. Create the page for the community, pick the name carefully because the URL is permanent, and finish the setup checklist so it is indexed at all. The whole catalog.
FAQ
Are Indie Hackers links dofollow?
No. We read 78 product pages and 25 milestone posts and measured 383 outbound anchors: 375 carry nofollow and the remaining 8 sit inside user-written content on five pages. Your product page links your site in three separate places, the title, the Visit Website button and the metrics row, and all three carry rel="nofollow noopener" on all 77 pages where we found them. Indie Hackers' own social links are followed; yours are not.
Is an Indie Hackers product page indexed by Google?
Often not. 32 of the 78 product pages we read carry a literal <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the head, which is 41%. The noindexed ones are thinner: a median of 28,209 bytes against 36,186 for the indexed ones. Indie Hackers does not publish the rule and we are not going to guess it, but the association with page completeness is visible and their own setup checklist asks for exactly that.
What is Indie Hackers' Domain Rating?
81, per Ahrefs, which makes it one of the strongest domains in this catalog and one of the least useful for link equity. That gap is the entire reason this guide exists. Our catalog card for Indie Hackers prints the 81 and a no-equity mark next to it, because a rating describes a domain and a mark describes what the listing actually passes.
Is Indie Hackers worth submitting to?
Yes, for the audience and the archive rather than for SEO. It is the most concentrated community of bootstrapped founders anywhere, the revenue-transparency culture means people actually read product pages, and milestone posts get discussed. Treat a product page as a profile you maintain, not as a listing that passes value, and your expectations will match what arrives.
How do you get an Indie Hackers product page indexed?
Fill it in. Their own onboarding checklist is the closest thing to an answer they publish: create a product page, fill in missing information, add an original post, add revenue data, all done. Our sample found the noindexed pages consistently thinner than the indexed ones, so finishing that list is the lever you have. Nothing here is a promise about what triggers indexing, only what the difference looked like when we measured it.
Does renaming an Indie Hackers product change its URL?
No, and their edit page warns you in the plainest possible terms: “Your product's web address stays alcorone — renaming does not move it.” The slug is minted when you first create the page and it is permanent. If you are between names, or the product is called something you might change in three months, pick carefully before you press submit rather than after.
What does the Indie Hackers product form ask for?
Creating the page takes four fields: product name, tagline, website and a logo that must be square or circular and at least 200x200 pixels. Afterwards the edit page adds a motivation field asking why the product exists, a Twitter handle and a Facebook address, and a long metadata block: start and end dates, whether the founders code, number of founders and employees, business model, funding, full time or side project, platforms and tags.
How big is Indie Hackers?
Their sitemap runs to five files and roughly 236,000 URLs, of which 127,863 are under /product/ and resolve to 30,096 distinct products. Notably, not one root product page appears in the sitemap at all: only the milestone posts underneath them do, so the product pages themselves are reached through the site rather than through the sitemap.
Do Indie Hackers milestone posts pass a link?
No. We sampled 25 of them and every one of the 34 outbound anchors they carry is nofollow, with 8 of the 25 pages also noindexed. So writing a milestone post is worth doing for the people who read it and for the record it leaves on your own page, and it is not worth doing for a backlink.
Does Submitator submit to Indie Hackers?
It is in our catalog, with its Domain Rating on the card and a no-equity mark beside it because that is what 383 measured anchors say. A product page there is a profile worth having and the community is real, which is why it stays in the catalog rather than being dropped from it; what it is not is a source of link equity, and the card says so before you tick it.
More submit-to guides.
Write the product page. Let $29 cover the thirty that pass a link.
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.