# How do you find free links to your site with an assistant?

Paste the prompt below into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini with your site's address, and it looks for free places that would link to you, checks each one, and says plainly what it could not confirm. Then check every row yourself: an assistant can be wrong about a page it never opened.

By clickd. Published October 31, 2026. Updated November 1, 2026. About 6 minutes to read.

At a glance:

- 50: Places the prompt asks for at most, each checked. From the prompt below.
- 5: Kinds of place it looks in, from directories to contributed articles. From the prompt below.
- $0: What every place on the list may cost. From the prompt's rules, below.
- 7 days: The outreach schedule the prompt ends with. From the prompt below.

## Why do earned links still matter?

A link from another site is how a crawler finds a page it did not know about. [Google's guide to how Search works](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works) says other pages are discovered when Google extracts a link from a known page to a new page. It is also how a person reading that site finds yours.

An earned link is one someone chose to give: a directory that lists businesses like yours, a resource page kept by hand, an association's member list. A page other people chose to point to has someone vouching for it.

An earned link and the page it points to: An earned link comes from a free directory, a resource page kept by hand, an association or chamber profile, or a contributed article: someone chose to list you. It points to one of your pages, which is worth more when it can be fetched without running script, answers near the top, and carries structured data that parses. clickd checks the page.

> Out: [Google's spam policies](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#link-spam) count buying or selling links for ranking, excessive link exchanges and links made by automated programs as link spam. Leave them out, along with any list that charges to be on it.

## What is the prompt?

Fill in the three lines in brackets, then paste the whole of it into an assistant that can search the web and open pages. It asks for up to 50 places, checked one by one, and fewer when fewer hold up.

Free link finder. Paste it into any assistant:

```text
Free link finder

You are researching free, earned links for one website. Find up to 50 real places that would link to it, check each one yourself, and say plainly what you could not confirm.

The site: [your site]
What it does: [one line]
Where its customers are: [country, state or city]

1. Learn the site first. Read its home page and its main pages. Write down what it offers, who it serves, which topics it covers, and which of its pages someone would want to point to: a guide, a tool, a price list, a local resource.

2. Look in five places, up to ten in each.
- Directories that list businesses or resources like this one for free, local and trade ones before national ones.
- Resource pages: lists someone keeps by hand, where one of the site's pages would genuinely belong.
- Profiles: associations, chambers, marketplaces and communities where a business can have a page with its address on it.
- Contributed articles: sites in the same field that publish outside writers without charging.
- Sites that already link to similar businesses and could reasonably link to this one too.
Prefer small, specific, local and trade sites over the lists everyone already submits to.

3. Check every one before listing it.
- Open it and confirm it is live.
- Find the exact page to submit, register or pitch.
- Confirm it is free and that it allows a link out.
- Report the link type (followed, nofollow, sponsored) only if you saw it on the page; otherwise write "not confirmed".
- Leave out anything paid, anything that exists to sell links, and anything off topic.
- Never invent an address, a requirement or an authority score.

4. Give one table: site, kind, the page to use, cost, link type, effort (low, medium, high). Under each row, one line on how to get the link and one on why it fits, with the address you checked it at.

5. Rank them by how well each fits the site, how likely it is to say yes, how little effort it takes, whether real people would click through, and how trustworthy it looks. Authority scores alone decide nothing.

6. Finish with a plan: the ten quickest links to get today, the ten most worth the effort, five short outreach notes written for this site, a seven-day schedule, and a checklist to track what was sent, accepted and live.

Rules: only free places, only real sites, no claims you did not see on the page, one entry per domain, no link schemes. If only 23 hold up, return 23.
```

What the prompt asks an assistant to do, in order:

1. Learn the site: What it offers, who it serves, and the pages worth pointing to.
2. The search: Five kinds of place, up to ten in each, small and local before national.
3. Check every one: Live, free, the exact page to use, and the link type only if seen.
4. Rank and plan: By fit, a likely yes and little effort, then a week of outreach.

Five kinds of place feeds step 2, filled from: Directories; Resource pages; Profiles; Contributed articles; Sites linking to similar businesses.

| Where it looks | What makes one worth it |
| --- | --- |
| Directories | Free, and listing businesses or resources like yours; local and trade ones first. |
| Resource pages | Kept by hand, with a place where one of your pages would genuinely belong. |
| Profiles | An association, chamber, marketplace or community where a business has a page with its address. |
| Contributed articles | A site in your field that publishes outside writers without charging. |
| Sites linking to similar businesses | Ones that could reasonably link to you too. |

_From the prompt's second step._

## How do you judge what it returns?

Treat the table as a list of leads, not a list of facts. Before you send anything, check each row against the page itself.

### Before you use a row

- Open the address it gives and confirm the page is live and is the one it describes.
- Find the submit, register or pitch page yourself, and read what it asks for.
- Confirm it is free. A fee anywhere in the process puts it out.
- Read "not confirmed" as an honest answer, not a gap to fill. Look at the link yourself once it is live.
- Drop anything that exists to sell links, swaps links, or has nothing to do with what you do.
- Ignore any authority score it quotes unless you saw it on the page.
- Keep the checklist the prompt ends with, and mark each link sent, accepted and live.

A link marked `sponsored` or `nofollow` is still a way for people to find you. [Google's page on qualifying outbound links](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links) explains what each one means.

## Where does clickd fit in?

A link is worth more when the page it points to is worth reading. clickd reads that page the way crawlers and assistants do and checks that it can be fetched, answers its question near the top, and carries structured data that parses, among every other rule in [the rulebook](https://clickd.com/rulebook).

Read your site: https://clickd.com/read?domain=<address>. Read your site with clickd: every page held to one rulebook, and the fixes worth the most listed first.

A score or a rule passed says pages are well formed. It does not say an assistant cites the site. A link pointing at a page does not make it rank either.

## What do people ask about earned links?

### Can an assistant find links for me on its own?

It can find leads. It can also name pages it never opened, so the prompt asks it to check each one and say what it could not confirm, and you check every row again before you send anything.

### Should I pay to be listed?

Not for this list. The prompt asks for free places only, and Google's spam policies count buying links for ranking as link spam.

### Is a nofollow link worth having?

It can be. People still click it, and a listing in the right directory or association is where customers look. The prompt reports the link type only when it saw it on the page.

### How many links should I go after?

As many as hold up. The prompt asks for up to 50 and says to return fewer when fewer pass its checks.

## Sources

- [In-depth guide to how Google Search works](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works): Google Search Central. Pages found by following links from known pages
- [Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#link-spam): Google Search Central. Link spam, including buying links and excessive link exchanges
- [Qualify outbound links for SEO](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links): Google Search Central. What sponsored, ugc and nofollow mean

## Where the figures come from

Every figure on this page is from the prompt itself. None is counted by clickd, and nothing here says a link will move a ranking.