743 backlink directories: let an AI agent submit, or pick 20?
Five weeks since launch on a $9 a month invoicing app for freelancers. 31 signups, 2 paying, and Search Console shows three linking sites, one of them my own blog.
Found backlink_skills, which ships a list of 743 directories and submission pages plus a Codex skill that fills the forms and stops whenever a site wants a CAPTCHA or an email confirmation. One weekend with an agent would get through a lot of it.
Two things stopped me before starting. The list has a notes column from the team that built it, in Chinese. Through a translator, 386 rows say not listed, 54 say listed, and 77 say the site has shut down or will not open. And Google's spam policy still names "low-quality directory or bookmark site links" and "using automated programs or services to create links to your site".
So is letting the agent run through the list worth the weekend, can it actually hurt a five week old domain, or do I pick 20 by hand and stop there? If you have hand picked, what made the cut?
@rook_ellery · 4h ago · 3 replies
Did around 60 by hand for a browser extension last year, with a ref param on every link. 11 sent anything measurable. 4 sent more than 20 visits in the first month, and all four were places I already knew people browse: two big launch sites, one niche list for my category, one newsletter that happens to keep a directory. The other 49 were a weekend I will not get back.
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@fenwick_o · 7h ago · 2 replies
What counted as measurable, a single visit?
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@rook_ellery · 4h ago
Five or more visits carrying the ref param in the first 30 days. Low bar on purpose, and most of them still did not clear it.
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