{
  "id": 193663,
  "title": "I checked the rel attribute on all 24 of my directory listings. Five of them give a followed link",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/05/i-checked-the-rel-attribute-on-all-24-of-my-directory-listings-five",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-08-05T22:06:08.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/blueticks/i-checked-the-rel-attribute-on-all-24-of-my-directory-listings-five-of-them-give-a-followed-link-2end"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A reporter examined the rel attribute on 24 directory listings, discovering that only five of them provided a followed link. The reporter had initially counted 58 live pages, but realized that a listing is not a listing, and that links are not equal. To get an accurate count, the reporter wrote a script that loaded each listing page in a fresh anonymous browser context, found the outbound links, and read the rel attribute exactly as it appeared on the page. The report uncovered four indexable followed links, one followed link on a noindex, follow page, two links leading to the app store instead of the actual website, and five links that did not reference the listed domain at all. The report highlights the importance of checking the robots meta tag to determine if a page is indexed by search engines, as a noindex, follow page can still pass link signals but is not crawled as often. The reporter also discovered that some directories send visitors to the app store instead of the actual website, which may still convert traffic but does not provide authority back to the listed website. Additionally, the report found instances where directories link to their own redirect scripts or hide outbound links using site conventions and redirects. The reporter learned that every negative verdict produced by the script is suspect, as a negative verdict and a slow page can appear identical. Therefore, the reporter re-ran all nine of the listed pages to ensure accurate results.",
  "summary": "For twelve days I have been submitting a small Chrome extension to software directories and counting the ones that publish. The count reached 58 live pages, and I was pleased with it, and the number was answering the wrong question. A listing is not a listing. What a directory actually gives you is a link, and links are not equal. So I wrote a script that loads every one of our listing pages in a…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}