60 days building an AI tools directory — 6,470 impressions, 2 real clicks,3 features I built because every other directory frustrated me
I've been lurking and commenting here for a month. Time to actually post.
I'm Adin — I work full time at an HRMS company in Mumbai and I've been building YourAIFinder on evenings and weekends. It's an AI tools directory. I know, another one. But I built it because I kept hitting the same three walls every time I tried to use the existing ones.
Here's the honest SEO picture first, then the product stuff.
Yes, 6,470 impressions and basically no real clicks. Average position is 35–45 across most queries — deep enough that CTR is near zero regardless of title. The site exists in Google's eyes. It's just not trusted yet.
That's the SEO reality of a brand new domain with zero backlinks. Nothing surprising — just slow.
Now the product part, which is what I actually want feedback on.
The three things that frustrated me about every other AI directory:
Problem 1: You can't search by price properly.
Every directory has a "free" filter. That's it. But "free" means nothing — some free tiers give you 10 requests a month, some give you unlimited. And if you have a $20/month budget, there's no way to see what fits without opening every tool individually.
What I built: a proper price explorer. 412 tools, filter by Free / Freemium / Paid, set a budget slider (e.g. $10–$30/mo), filter by category. You can actually answer the question "what's the best AI writing tool under $20/month" in one page.
https://youraifinder.com/explore-tools-by-price
Problem 2: There's no reason to come back.
Most directories are static. You visit once when you need a tool, then never again. There's no daily pull.
What I built: AI Tool of the Day. Every day, a handpicked set of tools across different categories — ranked, with a countdown to the next day's picks. Today there are 18 tools across 6 categories. It's a small thing but it creates a habit loop that a static directory can't.
youraifinder.com/ai-tool-of-the-day
Problem 3: You still have to open 4 tabs to compare tools.
Someone asks "should I use Buffer or Publer for social media?" Every directory will show you both tools individually. None of them let you put them side by side.
What I built: a comparison page. Pick 2 to 4 tools, see them compared across pricing, features, skill level, Integration Capabilities and category in one view. The feature most people actually need when making a buying decision.
https://youraifinder.com/compare
The honest question I have for this community:
Of these three features — price explorer, tool of the day, side-by-side comparison — which one would actually make you use a directory you'd otherwise ignore?
And the harder question: is "better discovery" even the right problem to solve, or do people just Google "[Tool A] vs [Tool B]" and never visit a directory at all?
Site is youraifinder.com. Genuinely want to hear what's broken.
I can't imagine what would have to happen for an average user to go into a directory to look for a specific tool. I guess this software must be that niche. They'd probably just ask Google or ChatGPT instead. It's a real shame there isn't any traffic. You've put in a lot of work.
Try Reddit. Look for threads where people are asking how to promote their SaaS or, conversely, are looking for a specific tool.
Fair skepticism, and it's honestly the same question I asked at the end of my post — does "better discovery" even matter when Google and ChatGPT exist.
Where I'd push back slightly: the niche isn't "people looking for AI tools," it's "people who've already started narrowing down and want to compare 2-3 options without opening that many tabs." That's a smaller moment than general discovery, but I don't think it's zero — the comparison-page conversation in this thread is actually making me more confident that's the real wedge, not the directory-as-search-engine angle.
Appreciate the Reddit pointer though — that's actually a gap in my distribution right now. I've been heavier on IH and Product Hunt. Going to go look for those threads.
People don't really like change. If they already have a tool they're using, it's much harder to win them over than it is to get a customer who isn't using anything yet. That's why comparing tools isn't that important. Maybe I'm wrong.
You're right that displacing an existing tool is hard — switching costs, sunk learning, "good enough" inertia. That's real.
But I think comparison isn't only useful for displacement. It's just as relevant for someone choosing for the first time — new to a category, evaluating 2-3 unfamiliar tools, no existing habit to break. That's actually probably a bigger slice of comparison-page traffic than people trying to switch away from something they already use and like.
Where I'd agree with you: if someone's already happily using Tool A, a comparison page showing Tool B isn't going to move them. That's a different (and harder) problem than the one the comparison page is built for.
Impressions without clicks usually means you're broadcasting in places where people browse, not asking for help. For directories/tools like this, I had better luck finding 5 threads/week where someone asks "what's the best tool for X" or complains about finding tools — reply there before optimizing the landing page. Where are the 6470 impressions coming from?
The 2 clicks are more interesting than the 6,470 impressions.
You can get strong feedback on features and still end up misreading what the market is actually telling you.
I'd be careful about treating engagement with the directory and demand for the directory as the same thing.
Really honest breakdown, Adin — the 2-click vs 6,470-impression gap is actually a really useful signal. A lot of directories get traffic but fail at the intent-action bridge.
My take on your question: the side-by-side comparison is the highest-value feature by far. It maps to the exact moment someone is deciding. Price explorer is nice but feels like something a blog post can do. Tool of the day is discoverability, but it's passive.
One thing we ran into building twRty Blogboat (an AI blog writing + multi-platform publishing tool) — the features people said they wanted vs. what made them actually convert were very different. The "publish everywhere in one click" feature wasn't even in our original plan. Users kept describing the problem: "I write once but spend hours re-uploading." That shaped everything.
Your honest question at the end — whether better discovery is even the right problem — is the right question. Keep asking it. The 2 real clicks might tell you more than the 6,470 impressions.
Appreciate this, especially the stated-vs-actual-conversion gap. That's the exact trap I'm worried about with Tool of the Day — it sounds good in a feature list, but I have zero evidence it's the thing that makes someone come back versus just being a thing I thought was clever to build.
The Blogboat example is a good reminder of how that gets discovered: not from asking "what feature do you want," but from listening to the actual sentence someone uses to describe their pain. "I write once but spend hours re-uploading" is a much sharper signal than any feature request would've been.
I don't have that sentence yet for YourAIFinder. I have impressions and a comparison page I'm fairly confident about, but I haven't had enough real conversations with users hitting a wall to know if there's an equivalent "oh, that's the actual problem" moment hiding somewhere.
Probably the next right move isn't building more, it's going and finding 5-10 people in the middle of actually choosing a tool and watching where they get stuck. The 2 clicks won't tell me that. Conversations might.