We Checked If Three Platforms Pass Link Authority to Our Site. None Did.

Description and use

The author tested whether Dev.to, Medium, and Telegraph pass link authority to their own site and found none do. Publishing strategy shifted from SEO to audience reach, and outbound links are now limited to reader value.

Problem

Assuming guest posts on platforms like Dev.to, Medium, and Telegraph pass SEO link authority to the author’s own site without verification.

Outcome

All three platforms (Dev.to, Medium, Telegraph) returned no authority‑passing backlinks; links were often followable but pages were marked non‑indexable, nullifying SEO benefit.

Workflow

• 1. Select recent posts on each platform.
• 2. Fetch each page’s raw HTML via a plain HTTP request (no login).
• 3. Parse the HTML to locate links to the author’s domain.
• 4. Check each link’s rel attribute for nofollow/sponsored/ugc.
• 5. Inspect the page’s <meta name="robots"> tag for noindex or nofollow.
• 6. Determine authority pass: link must be followable AND page indexable.
• 7. Record results and repeat on a schedule.

Evidence

We checked three platforms. None of them pass link authority to our site.

Source

If the links are frequently followable but authority still does not pass, the block is not (only) at the link level — it is at the page level.

Source