15 directories, 90 days, zero referral visits (and what moved instead)

Two weeks ago I posted my baseline: 164 Google impressions a month, 6 clicks, $0 revenue. Weekly update, same honesty.

Since July I've been filing Monty into every startup directory with a free listing: G2, SaaSHub, StackShare, SaaSWorthy, Crunchbase, SourceForge, Wellfound, and this one. Official goal: links and citations. Secret goal: visitors.

The number of the week: referral visits from all those directories combined, over 90 days of tracking, is zero. I checked twice.

What actually moved while I wasn't getting those clicks:

• Google impressions went from 164 to 384 a month. Non-brand queries appeared for the first time: "submagic alternative" at position 65, "best AI video editors 2026" at 91. Fame.

• Digging through analytics I found two visitors tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com. Someone asked ChatGPT, it browsed the web and handed them my site. Directories sent zero humans. A language model sent two.

• 8 people joined the waitlist this month.

Field note if you plan the same run: free AI directories are nearly extinct. Toolify wants $99, Aixploria $79, TopAI.tools $47, Easy With AI $125, OpenTools $199, Tekpon $249, Futurepedia up to $497. One of them estimates its own $49 listing brings 50-100 clicks in the first week. I'm pre-launch with a waitlist page, so I passed on all of them.

My takeaway: directories send no traffic, and they still earn their keep. Every listing is a link and an entity mention, Google and LLM browsing both pick those up, and that's exactly where the new impressions and the ChatGPT visits came from. If you're early: take the free listings for the citations, keep the money, and stop watching the referral column.

Revenue is still $0. See you next week.