Link Building Guide

HARO link building: what works since the 2025 relaunch

HARO is running again. Featured.com bought it from Cision and relaunched it in April 2025, a few months after Cision closed Connectively. This guide covers how HARO link building works now, where else journalists post requests, and what results to expect.

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Overview

For more than fifteen years, Help a Reporter Out was the standard way to trade expertise for editorial links. A journalist posted a query, sources replied, and the most useful answers got quoted, often with a link. Cision folded HARO into its Connectively platform in 2023 and shut Connectively down in December 2024.

The pause was short. Featured.com announced it had acquired HARO in April 2025 and relaunched the free email digests that month. The tactic kept working through the gap, so HARO link building today means answering source requests on HARO and on the other services journalists use alongside it.

Quick answer

Is HARO still running?

Yes. Featured.com bought HARO from Cision and relaunched it in April 2025 as free email digests for journalists and sources. Source of Sources, Qwoted and Featured's own platform also carry journalist requests, so most teams watch more than one.

Guide sections

What you need to know.

A short history of HARO.

HARO's problem in its last Cision years was volume. Popular queries drew hundreds of responses, and a growing share were AI-written boilerplate signed by invented experts. Journalists read less of each inbox, and the Connectively rebrand didn't fix the noise before the platform closed in December 2024.

Featured.com's relaunch kept HARO free for journalists and sources and added checks aimed at the same spam problem. Whichever channel you use, the lesson holds: open request channels fill up with low-effort replies, so the advantage goes to sources who answer fast and specifically.

Where journalist requests show up now.

Most teams watch more than one channel:

HARO: the relaunched free email digests, now run by Featured.com
Featured: Featured.com's own platform of structured expert questions, with answers routed to publisher partners
Source of Sources (SOS): a free email digest started by HARO's original founder
Qwoted: a platform with source profiles, strongest in finance and business press
X: reporters posting directly under hashtags like #journorequest

No single channel carries every request, so a steady program checks several each day.

What to expect from request-based links.

Request-based links are rationed. Popular queries draw heavy competition, a good response often still goes unused, and many placements land in roundup articles. Some credits arrive unlinked or nofollow.

That makes HARO link building a useful supplement: a steady trickle of editorial links and quoted credits that feeds a wider program. Be wary of anyone selling HARO links as a complete SEO strategy.

How to answer a request that gets used.

Reporters skim replies fast. The answers that get used usually arrive within hours, open with the credential that earns the quote, make one specific point the reporter can lift as written, and stop. Three quotable sentences beat two hundred words of context. Leave out links to sales pages, attachments and requests for edits. The credit and the link come from being useful.

Requests worth skipping.

Request channels attract their own spam. Skip queries from anonymous contributors with no named outlet, anything hinting the placement is paid, link-exchange fishing dressed up as a query, and content-farm blogs collecting free expert copy. A quick look at the outlet's organic traffic in Ahrefs or Semrush, or at whether its articles carry bylines, filters most of it.

Where request monitoring fits in a campaign.

Inside our campaigns, request monitoring is one input to reactive PR. It runs alongside newsjacking and proactive pitching, and alongside expert commentary written at deadline speed. The team watches the channels, writes the responses and keeps pitching until the month's placement minimum is met. If you'd rather not staff an inbox all day, that's what a managed program covers.

Questions

Useful answers before you choose a package.

Is HARO still running?

What happened to Connectively?

Connectively was Cision's 2023 rebrand of HARO, and Cision closed it in December 2024. Featured.com then bought the HARO brand and brought the email digests back in April 2025.

Are HARO links still worth the effort?

As a supplement, yes. They're editorial, they come with a quoted credit, and the cost is time. As a standalone strategy, no, because hit rates are low and placement quality varies. Treat them as one channel inside a broader link program.

Which request service should a beginner start with?

HARO and Source of Sources are both free email digests, so they're the easiest place to start. Add Qwoted if you work in finance or business, where its journalist base is strongest. Featured suits people who prefer structured questions, and X requests reward whoever is watching at the right moment.

Do HARO links comply with Google's guidelines?

A used request response is a journalist's editorial choice: nothing is paid and nothing is exchanged. The caution sits elsewhere. Low-quality roundup sites recruit through the same channels, so check the outlet before answering.

Start here

Skip the inbox grind.

Email info@seobacklinks.com if you'd rather a team watched every request channel and wrote the responses for you.

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