Every article about link building in software tells you to get listed in directories and write guest posts. None of them opens the actual link graph of a category and counts what is there.
This file does that for feedback tools, roadmap tools and changelog tools. Seventy vendor domains, the public Common Crawl hyperlink graph for June to August 2026, and then every domain that links to more than one of them opened to see whether an outsider can get the same link.
The shape of the category's link graph
| What was measured | Count |
|---|---|
| Vendor domains in the set | 70 |
| Referring edges into them | 51,266 |
| Distinct domains linking to at least one | 36,646 |
| Domains linking to more than one | 2,706 |
| Domains linking to ten or more | 239 |
| Domains linking to twenty or more | 35 |
The number that matters is the fourth one. A domain linking to one vendor might be a customer, a job board or an accident. A domain linking to ten is a site that lists products like these on purpose, and there are two hundred and thirty nine of them.
Take the file. Two thousand seven hundred and six rows: the domain, how many vendors it links to, its position in the graph, what kind of site it is, and what route it offers somebody who wants in.
None of it needs attribution. If you would rather point at it than copy it, the address is https://votefirst.app/en/data/feedback-tool-referring-domains and the graph was read on 13 September 2026.
The twelve domains that link to the most of them
| Domain | Vendors it links to | Position |
|---|---|---|
| saashub.com | 55 | 17,785 |
| cpoclub.com | 39 | 9,887,067 |
| whatarethebest.com | 37 | 7,141,346 |
| atlassian.com | 33 | 477 |
| productlogz.com | 31 | 9,978,560 |
| thecxlead.com | 31 | 1,894,640 |
| substack.com | 30 | 121 |
| constitute.net | 29 | 47,426,762 |
| rapidr.io | 29 | 7,072,049 |
| featureos.com | 28 | 12,534,275 |
| savio.io | 28 | 6,898,879 |
| zefi.ai | 28 | 8,026,607 |
Position is Common Crawl harmonic centrality, where lower is stronger. It is not a paid metric, it is free and it is reproducible.
Read the two columns together and the list splits. Three of the twelve sit at a position under twenty thousand, a directory and two platforms, and they are the only rows on it that a search engine treats as central to anything. The other nine are at positions in the millions, and several of them are the vendors themselves, linking to each other from their own comparison pages, which is a habit this category has and most categories do not.
What each of those 2,706 domains actually offers
Every one of them had its homepage fetched, its anchors read for words that mean somebody outside the site can add something, and thirteen conventional paths probed where the anchors found nothing.
| What the site offers | Domains |
|---|---|
| An explicit submit a tool or add your product page | 70 |
| A write for us or contribute page | 112 |
| A page matching submit or suggest, which has to be read to judge | 351 |
| An advertise or sponsor page, paid by definition | 103 |
| A contact form and nothing else | 1,200 |
| No route of any kind | 681 |
| Homepage would not load | 189 |
Seventy. Out of two thousand seven hundred and six domains that demonstrably link to more than one product in this category, seventy publish a page inviting you to add yours.
That is the number the link building articles leave out, and it changes what the work is. The lane is not submission. Almost half of these sites have a contact form and nothing else, and a quarter have nothing at all, which means their links were placed by a person writing an article who happened to mention a product.
So how did the competition actually get them?
Four ways, and only one of them is a form.
They were listed in the handful of real directories. Seventy sites take a submission. That is a morning of work and it is available to anybody, which is also why it does not move much on its own.
They were written about. The 1,200 contact form sites and the 681 with no route between them hold most of the graph, and a link from one of them exists because somebody wrote a paragraph. No form was involved and no form will produce one.
They linked to each other. Several of the domains highest in the list above are competitors, linking out from their own alternatives and comparison pages. Publishing a page that names your rivals honestly is a link building strategy, and it is the one this category has quietly settled on.
They paid. One hundred and three of these domains sell a sponsor slot outright, and many of the write for us pages name a price further down. Google's link spam policy names buying links for ranking purposes, so those rows are a marketing expense with a risk attached rather than a link strategy.
What we did with it
Opened the next question before spending a day on the first answer.
A submission is only worth making if the link it produces carries ranking credit, so the directories were opened on a real vendor listing and the attribute on the anchor was read. Only seven of the fifty five hand a closed source product a link that passes credit. The rest mark it nofollow, or carry no outbound link to the vendor at all.
That measurement is why the seventy submission routes are not the top of our own list. It costs a morning and it produces seven links, which is worth doing and is not a strategy.
The honest summary of the whole exercise is that this category has no cheap authority left in it. What is free has already been taken by everybody, what is paid carries a policy risk that a small company should not take, and what is left is publishing things other people want to point at. This file is an attempt at one of those.
How to repeat it for your own category
Four steps and none of them costs money.
Name the vendor domains in your category. Stream the Common Crawl hyperlink graph and keep only the edges naming one of them; the archive is nine gigabytes and the filter takes about two hours. Group the result by referring domain and keep the ones linking to more than one vendor. Then open every one of those and read what it offers.
The third step is the one that matters. A domain linking to one vendor tells you nothing. A domain linking to ten has already decided it covers this kind of product, and that is a different conversation to open.
The graph was read on 13 September 2026 and the route pages on 16 September 2026. Both change, so the dates are part of the rows.