Free tool
The partner directories worth your afternoon, and the ones that are theatre
Every platform you build on runs a partner or expert directory. Some give you a real indexed profile with a dofollow link. Others render partners in a JavaScript widget that no crawler and no AI engine will ever read. The difference is invisible from the marketing page, so we checked 13 of them by hand.
8 of 13 produce a profile URL that can actually be indexed.
Select a platform to see its directory. Every entry was checked by loading the directory and a real partner profile and reading the raw HTML, so the two facts that decide whether a listing is worth your time (does it give you your own indexable URL, and is the outbound link dofollow) are observed rather than taken from the vendor’s own claims.
Common questions
- What makes a partner directory listing worth doing?
- Two things, and both are observable in the page source. First, whether a listed partner gets their own server-rendered URL: a name inside a JavaScript filter widget has no URL, so it can never be indexed, cited by an AI engine, or linked to. Second, whether the outbound link to your site is dofollow. A directory that fails the first test is worthless for search no matter how large the platform is, which is why some very well known vendors score badly here.
- Are partner directories a link scheme?
- No. Getting listed in a vendor's own partner directory because you genuinely build on that vendor's product is not a link scheme. Google's spam policies target paid links, excessive reciprocal exchanges, and low-quality directory links. A vendor verifying you as a practitioner and publishing a profile is the opposite of that: it is third-party corroboration that your business is real, which is exactly what AI search engines check before citing you.
- Why do these matter for AI search and not just Google?
- Answer engines lean on third-party corroboration to decide whether a company exists and what it does. A profile on the vendor's own domain, describing your services in the vendor's own words, is unusually strong evidence. Brand mentions across independent sites predict AI citation better than raw backlink counts do, and these listings are among the few high-trust mentions you can obtain for free.
- How current is this data?
- Every entry was checked on the date shown on its card, by loading the directory index and a real partner profile and reading the raw HTML rather than trusting the vendor's marketing copy. Vendors change these pages without notice, so treat an older check date as a prompt to verify before you invest hours.