--- title: "Where to list software in 2026" description: "A four-part test for SaaS directories. Indexed listings, real organic traffic, a clean neighborhood, and an honest follow policy beat a list of 260 sites." --- # Where to list software in 2026 2026-10-05 - 6 min read - 1318 words Every year someone publishes "260 SaaS directories you must submit to." The list is a product. The listings are not. You spend a week pasting the same paragraph into forms that auto-approve casino blogs, then you watch Search Console for a lift that never shows up. The job is not to be everywhere. The job is to leave a few public records that Google and answer engines can still quote six months later. That is a much shorter list. This is the test MakeItLast uses on itself, and the test you should use on anyone who wants your URL. ## The four-part test Open the directory as a stranger. Ignore Domain Rating for a minute. Check four things. **1. Are individual listing pages indexed?** Search `site:thatdirectory.com` plus the name of a product you know is listed there. If the homepage ranks and the product URL does not, the catalog is a brochure. Category pages can pull traffic while every card stays in "crawled, currently not indexed." That is a Search Console report, not a vibe. **2. Does any listing get organic visits?** Ahrefs, or whatever crawler you pay for, should show at least some listing URLs with organic traffic. If the only ranking URL is the homepage and a "submit" page, you are buying a receipt. **3. Would you show this page to a customer?** Adult, gambling, payday, "AI wrapper of the week," and parked domains in the same grid as your product is a neighborhood problem. Google has spent a decade telling people that thin directory neighborhoods do not help, and sometimes they stain. A nofollow link from a clean catalog is healthier than a dofollow from a dump. **4. Is the follow policy written in public?** If the sales email says dofollow and the HTML says `rel="nofollow"`, stop. If paid placement is unmarked, stop. MakeItLast publishes the three options in the open: free dofollow with a homepage badge, a one-time paid dofollow, or nofollow. [The long version is here](/blog/dofollow-directories-without-the-theater). If a directory fails two of the four, skip it. If it fails the first, skip it even if the Domain Rating looks pretty. ## What Domain Rating is, and is not Ahrefs Domain Rating is a link graph number. MakeItLast's sits in the mid 40s. That is a neighborhood hint, not a traffic report, and not a promise that your listing will rank for "[your category] software." People use DR as a shopping filter because it is easy. Easy filters get gamed. A site can rent links, keep a high DR, and still have listing pages that Google will not index. Run the four-part test first. Then glance at DR if you want a second opinion. Organic traffic to listing URLs beats DR every time. A directory whose product pages rank for "[name] alternatives" or a real category query is doing the work. A directory whose only ranking page is "Submit your SaaS" is selling the form. ## The short list that actually matters You do not need 260. You need a handful of public pages that different crawlers already trust. **Review platforms, if you have customers who will write.** G2, Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice, TrustRadius. These rank for buying queries and get cited in AI answers because they have volume, reviews, and years of entity data. They are slow. They are not a launch-week toy. Fill them once, keep the facts aligned with your homepage, and leave them. **Switching queries.** AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, and similar "X alternative" catalogs. People land there when they already pay for a tool and want out. That is later in the funnel than a Product Hunt upvote. List the product. Then make sure your own site has a page that can compete for the same query, or accept that the directory owns the snippet. **Launch spikes.** Product Hunt, BetaList, a niche newsletter. Use them as spikes. [Launch week is a spike](/blog/launch-week-is-a-spike). Do not confuse the front page with an archive. **A lasting catalog.** One public card with the real name, a real sentence, a stable URL, and a machine-readable twin. That is MakeItLast's job. Submit once. If review passes, the listing stays. Search can keep reading it. So can an answer engine that fetches [llms.txt](/llms.txt). **Your own site.** This is still the source of truth. Directories quote you. If the homepage is a reel with no product name in the HTML, every listing will be a worse copy of a missing sentence. Skip mass-submit services, PR dump sites, and anyone who promises "500 directories for $5." Those are the pages Google already learned to ignore, and the backlink report that makes a founder feel busy. ## How to check indexing without guessing You do not need a Search Console property on the directory. You need one query and one sitemap glance. 1. `site:directory.com "exact product name"` 2. Open the listing URL. View source. Confirm the name is in the title and the first paragraph, not only in a logo. 3. Open `/sitemap.xml`. If listings are missing from the sitemap, crawlers are guessing. 4. In your own Search Console, watch referral landing pages and "who links to you" only after a month. Same-week DR ticks are noise. If the listing URL returns a soft 404 (HTTP 200 with "not found" in the title), treat it as unpublished. MakeItLast's markdown twins return 404 when the HTML page does not exist. The HTML 404 must match. Anything else wastes crawl budget and teaches Google the catalog is sloppy. ## What a listing should say, on every site Keep one paragraph. Reuse it. - Product name as it appears on the homepage. - One sentence that names the job, not the vibe. - Category a stranger would type. - Official URL, HTTPS, no redirect chain through an ad network. - Pricing posture you can defend (free, open source, subscription), not a number you will change next Tuesday. Inconsistent blurbs across G2, Capterra, and a dozen indie lists do not "cover more keywords." They give crawlers three products with the same URL. AI answers will pick one sentence and repeat it. Make it the sentence you like. On MakeItLast that paragraph becomes `/tools/{slug}`, plus a markdown twin, a review URL, a pricing-tags URL, audience and facet URLs, and compare pairs when nearby listings exist. Those extra URLs only help if they are unique pages, not copies of the card. That is a separate problem, covered in [software alternatives without doorway pages](/blog/software-alternatives-without-doorway-pages). ## A week of listing, not a quarter Day 1: Homepage is fetchable. Name in text. One honest paragraph. Day 1: [List on MakeItLast](/get-listed). Edit the draft. Save. Pick badge, paid dofollow, or nofollow after it is live. Day 2: AlternativeTo or the switching catalog that already ranks for your category. Day 3: One review platform if you have users who will write. Do not fake reviews. Day 4: Product Hunt or your niche launch surface if you actually have a launch. Otherwise skip. Day 5: Add the lasting listing URL to your footer or docs. Stop. Do not spend November collecting badges from strangers. ## Short answers **Is MakeItLast a replacement for G2?** No. G2 is a review graph. This is a public catalog card that stays up. **Should I pay for directory packages?** Almost never. Pay a directory you already passed review on, if the follow policy is honest and the page is real. MakeItLast's paid option is a one-time dofollow on a live card, not a ranking package. **How many directories is enough?** Enough that a crawler can find the official URL and a true sentence from more than one host. That is usually under ten, plus your own site. **Will listing get me into ChatGPT?** Only as one more public source. Put the facts in HTML and markdown. Do not block GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, or PerplexityBot in robots.txt if you want to be cited. MakeItLast allows them. A directory is a shelf. Put a labeled box on a shelf people already walk down. Leave the warehouses of empty boxes to the listicles. HTML: https://www.makeitla.st/blog/where-to-list-software-in-2026