108 startup directories to submit your product

How the check works

A script opens one real listing page on each directory — a page for a product that is genuinely listed there, not the directory’s own marketing copy — finds the anchor that points at that product’s website, and reads its rel attribute.

If that attribute contains nofollow, sponsored or ugc, the link does not pass authority. If there is no rel at all, or it only carries noopener and noreferrer, it does. That is the entire test, and it is the only thing that decides the question. A “dofollow backlink” bullet in a pricing table is marketing. A green tick in someone’s listicle is hearsay.

What “dofollow” actually means

There is no such thing as a rel="dofollow" attribute. Dofollow is just the absence of the other thing: by default a link counts as an endorsement a search engine can pass along, and nofollow, sponsored and ugc are the site’s way of saying don’t count this one. That is the whole distinction, and it is why it can be settled by reading markup rather than by asking anybody.

A nofollow link is not a wasted submission. It is clickable, it sends real people, and it puts your product somewhere a journalist, an investor or a future customer might read it. It just doesn’t do the one thing directory sales pages imply it does.

And keep the upside in proportion. 37 dofollow directory links will not rank a site. They are a modest, one-off input: some early crawl paths into a new domain, a little anchor variety, a handful of pages that describe what you do. Anyone selling you two hundred directory submissions is selling volume of exactly the thing with the steepest diminishing returns. The longer argument, with the free-versus-paid breakdown, is in which startup directories actually give dofollow links.

The 69 we could not verify

This is the section a listicle rounds away, and it is the reason to trust the rest of the page. 69 of the 108 directories have no verdict from us — 25 of them for a reason we recorded at the time. None of it is a mark against those sites. A site that refuses a scripted request is telling you something true about its bot protection and nothing at all about its links, and several of these are very likely dofollow. We are not going to guess on their behalf. Guessing is the failure mode this page exists to correct.

For completeness, the confirmed nofollow end of the index: we read the outbound link on SourceForge and Tekpon and found it marked. Both are still real places to be listed. Neither will move a ranking through the link itself, so budget your time accordingly.

Check any directory yourself

You should not have to take our word for it, and you shouldn’t take a directory’s word for it either. It is about two minutes per site.

1. Open any live listing on that directory, ideally for a product like yours.
2. Find the button that goes to the product’s own website. Right-click it and choose Inspect, or open the page source and search for the product’s domain.
3. Read the anchor tag. Any nofollow, sponsored or ugc and the link passes nothing.

Two traps. Check a free listing rather than a featured one, because some sites mark them differently — which is exactly why our result covers the page we read and not the whole site. And check the outbound link, not the internal links on the page: those are always dofollow and prove nothing.

If you’d rather not read markup, paste the listing URL into our free dofollow link checker and it will list every outbound link on the page with its rel value. Re-check a few months after you get listed — policies change quietly, which is how the listicles got it wrong in the first place.

Questions about this list

How do you know a directory gives a dofollow link?

We fetch a real listing page on that directory — a page for a product that is actually listed — find the anchor pointing at that product's own website, and read its rel attribute. If it contains nofollow, sponsored or ugc, the link does not pass authority. If there is no rel, or it only carries noopener and noreferrer, it does. Each confirmed row records the exact page we read.

Why do 69 directories have no verdict?

Because we could not read a listing page on them. Most return an HTTP error to a scripted request, which is bot protection doing its job — a fact about our request, not about their links. Some of them are very likely dofollow. We are not going to guess on their behalf, because guessing is the failure mode this page exists to correct.

Is a nofollow directory link worthless?

No, but it is worth a different thing than it is usually sold as. A nofollow link is still clickable: it can send qualified traffic, put your product in front of someone who writes about it later, and place your name somewhere a journalist or investor checks. What it does not do is pass ranking authority.

Does a result stay true?

Not necessarily. A directory can change its link policy by editing nine characters in a template, and nothing announces it. Every confirmed row carries the date we read it. Treat an old date as a claim to re-check rather than a guarantee.

Can a directory pay to be listed here, or to change its result?

No. Every outbound link on this page carries rel="nofollow", including the submit links, and the result on each row is whatever the checker read. Dofollow links on LetsLaunch itself are earned through the vote threshold, never bought.