{
  "id": 2834532,
  "title": "I measured 20 \"free dofollow\" backlink sites. One of them was real.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/23/i-measured-20-free-dofollow-backlink-sites-one-of-them-was-real",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-08-23T17:15:32.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/linkhiver_developer_799c5/i-measured-20-free-dofollow-backlink-sites-one-of-them-was-real-4hck"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "I measured 20 free dofollow backlink sites, but only one was genuine. In my search for these platforms, I wrote a script to check various listing pages, examining their robots meta, canonical tags, and outbound anchor rel attributes. This script revealed four common failures in the backlink lists, which affect the perceived quality and effectiveness of these free links.",
  "summary": "I run a small link-in-bio SaaS. Like every other founder with a new domain and no authority, I went looking for the \"100 free dofollow backlink sites\" lists. So I wrote a script and checked them. Twenty platforms, one at a time, on real published pages. Exactly one of them gives a free user a followed, indexable link. Not because the lists lie about rel . They're often right about rel . They're…",
  "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."
}