QRhubly

Turns out you can ship an animated hero with morphing QR codes, wire up AI-search tracking, and build three new landing pages in one week, and Bing still returns "never crawled" for every single URL. That was the quiet reality check hiding behind all the visible progress on QRhubly this week.

## What shipped this week

The biggest visible change is a full visual refresh. We added a "living QR" hero on the homepage that shows a code morphing its destination from "spring menu" to "summer menu" with a gentle scan beam animation. It is deliberately playful - a small human detail on what could easily be another sterile SaaS landing page. The rest of the site got the same polish pass: hover glows on cards, a glass header, and tighter chrome around the QR studio itself.

Behind the scenes, we built three new SEO landing pages for specific use cases - dynamic QR codes, QR codes with logos, and bulk generation. These are not blog posts. They are standalone pages meant to rank for long-tail terms with commercial intent, and each one has its own dedicated URL in the sitemap. We also added a page indexing tracker that watches whether these pages, plus the blog posts, actually show up in Google and Bing. Guessing is not a strategy when you are trying to learn what works.

The review rewards system went live too. Users who leave a review on a directory or platform can now claim a small reward inside the dashboard. It is a straightforward way to encourage honest feedback without buying it. We also wired a one-time welcome email that fires on the first dashboard load, with a Trustpilot BCC address baked in so review invites happen automatically without us touching them.

Finally, we added a free barcode generator alongside the QR tool. It handles UPC, EAN, and Code128. The thinking was simple: someone searching for a barcode might also need a QR code, and we would rather they find both in one place than bounce to a competitor.

## What went wrong

The indexing tracker revealed a problem we could not code our way out of. Every QRhubly page returns "never crawled" from Bing Webmaster. Not one exception.

At first we assumed a configuration bug. We triple-checked the IndexNow key file, the sitemap submission, and the API credentials. All green. IndexNow returns HTTP 200. The sitemap is live and Bing confirms the site is verified. Yet Bing's own API says DocumentSize zero and LastCrawledDate year zero for every single URL.

The real answer is simpler and more frustrating: the domain is young and has essentially zero backlink authority. Bing rations crawl budget far more aggressively than Google on new sites. We spent maybe two hours chasing a bug that does not exist. The fix is not technical. It is backlinks and patience.

Google, at least, is moving faster. Most of our blog posts are now indexed, and the new feature landing pages were submitted immediately after publish. But Bing matters more than people think - it feeds ChatGPT and Copilot retrieval. Being invisible there means we are invisible to the AI search layer too. That stings more than I expected.

## SEO and growth notes

We added an LLM mentions tracker this week. It runs ten category-specific prompts against AI models to see whether QRhubly shows up unprompted in buyer queries. The baseline is zero out of ten, which is exactly what you would expect for a two-week-old domain. Now we have a number we can improve rather than a vague feeling.

The directory submission work continued. Capterra is still under review, but AlternativeTo and SaaSHub are live. Microlaunch is queued and waiting. Early impressions from Google are trickling in on long-tail terms, but the volume is still tiny and clicks are essentially zero.

## What's next

July 16 is the Fazier launch date for QRhubly. I have no idea whether a Fazier drop drives real user traffic or just a circle of makers upvoting each other. We will find out in eleven days. The open question is whether we can get any meaningful Bing visibility before then, or whether we are launching into a headwind we cannot control.

For those of you who have launched on Product Hunt, Fazier, or similar platforms - did the traffic spike actually convert to signups, or was it mostly other builders? And if you have cracked the Bing crawl puzzle for a brand new domain, I would genuinely love to know what moved the needle. Backlinks take months. I am hoping there is a faster lever I have missed.

QRhubly officially launches on July 16.

I submitted it to Fazier this week, skipped the paid promotion (the audience didn't feel like the right fit for a QR code product), and now the countdown begins.

For anyone new here: I'm a solo bootstrapped founder building three SaaS products at once. This is my weekly QRhubly build log.

What shipped this week

• Three new landing pages targeting long-tail keywords: Dynamic QR Codes, QR Codes with Logos, and Bulk QR Code Generator. Each page embeds the actual product instead of being SEO-only content.

• A 12-page documentation section answering common questions about dynamic QR codes, scan tracking, logos, and more.

• Automated welcome emails and Trustpilot review invitations for new users.

SEO update

The domain is still brand new.

Seven of nine blog posts are already indexed by Google, while the new landing pages are waiting to be crawled.

My strategy isn't trying to outrank established QR generators on massive keywords.

It's building lots of pages around specific use cases where competition is much lower and search intent is much stronger.

We'll see if that works.

What's next

With two weeks until launch, I'm focused on shipping more use-case landing pages, polishing the onboarding flow, and seeing whether Google starts sending the first organic traffic.

For anyone who's launched on Fazier:

Did it bring real users, or mostly other founders?

A while back I printed a batch of materials with a QR code on them. Then the link needed to change. The code was already out in the world - so it was now pointing at the wrong place, permanently. And I had no idea if a single person had even scanned it.

That's the thing most people don't realize about a basic QR code: it's frozen the moment it's created. Wrong link? Reprint everything. Want to know if it worked? You can't.

So I built QRhubly - a QR code hub that fixes both problems.

Two parts:

1. A free generator that's actually good. Most free QR tools spit out an ugly black square or hide customization behind a signup. QRhubly's is free, client-side, and lets you fully style it - colors, gradients, logos, frames, shapes - and export PNG/SVG/JPEG/WebP. No account needed.

2. Dynamic codes + analytics (the real product). Create a dynamic QR code and you can edit where it points anytime, even after it's printed. Plus you get scan analytics: where, when, what device, peak times - exportable to CSV. One code, fully editable, fully tracked.

The model: free generator as the top of funnel, then a free trial of dynamic codes (live 7 days or 50 scans), and a Pro plan ($7/mo or $59/yr) to keep them live forever with unlimited codes. There's even an AI artistic-QR feature (BYOK) that turns codes into scannable art.

Stack: Next.js + Supabase + Vercel, built solo. Live at qrhubly.com.

I'd love feedback - especially on the free generator (try it, no signup) and whether the trial model feels fair or annoying. What would make you reach for QRhubly over the QR tool you currently use?