Editorial
Editorial Guidelines
These are the rules each listing follows. They cover where every figure comes from, which facts we fetch ourselves, how traffic and spam are shown and why a listing shows only what was measured.
Data as of Sep 2026
Where the Numbers Come From
Each publication has its own page, and every page is built from two kinds of input. We keep them apart because they carry different weight.
The first kind comes from SEO tools, read by our own checker in one run: Moz for Domain Authority, spam score and links, Ahrefs for Domain Rating, and Semrush for US organic traffic and keywords. We print them as the tools report them. We don't adjust them, blend them or round them up.
The second kind we collect ourselves, straight from the domain, when the listing is built. These facts don't rely on a tool's estimate, and they don't rely on what a publisher says about its own site.
Figures from the tools
- Domain Authority Moz 24 of 24
- Spam score Moz 23 of 24
- Referring domains Moz 23 of 24
- Backlinks Moz 23 of 24
- Domain Rating Ahrefs 24 of 24
- Organic traffic (US) Semrush 24 of 24
- Organic keywords Semrush 24 of 24
- Homepage backlinks Our link checker 24 of 24
The last column counts how many of the 24 listings carry each field. It is worked out from the data at build time, so the table can't list a figure the directory doesn't hold.
Facts We Fetch Ourselves
Some fields we never take on trust. The ingest script fetches each one from the domain as the listing is built. The registration date comes from the registry's RDAP service. Page count and publishing pace come from the sitemap protocol. Crawler rules come from robots.txt, read the way Google's documentation describes. The count shows on how many of the 24 listings each check returned a result.
- Registration date The domain registry, via RDAP 24 of 24
- Platform Signatures in the homepage code 22 of 24
- Indexed pages All URL entries across the sitemap tree 21 of 24
- Publishing pace lastmod dates in the sitemap 18 of 24
- AI-crawler policy robots.txt, read as crawler groups 23 of 24
- Declared language The lang attribute on the page 22 of 24
How each check works
- Registration date. We read the RDAP record at the registry and follow any referrals. The result must be a real calendar date, and not one in the future. If the record gives a renewal or expiry date instead of a registration date, we reject it rather than show it as the domain's age.
- Platform. We identify it from the homepage code: a generator tag, an asset path on the site's own domain, or a platform's runtime marker. File paths only count when they belong to this site, so a passing mention of a platform is not mistaken for the site's own setup.
- Indexed pages. We walk the whole sitemap tree, including indexes nested inside other indexes, and count only sitemaps on the same domain. Some sites list other domains' sitemaps in robots.txt, and adding those would describe the wrong website. If any part of the tree can't be read, we publish no page count at all. A count we know is too low is still a wrong count.
- Publishing pace. We take the sitemap's lastmod dates from the last 90 days and turn them into a monthly rate. A lastmod marks any change, not only a new post. So a day with more than five times the median volume is treated as bulk maintenance and dropped. If the rate comes out at more than three times what the archive could have produced over its whole life, we drop it entirely.
- AI-crawler policy. We read robots.txt as crawler groups, the way the standard defines them. One block that names several AI agents above a single rule covers all of them. Agent names must match exactly. An empty disallow counts as permission. An HTML page served where robots.txt should be is not treated as a policy.
- Declared language. We take the lang attribute the page declares, and accept it only when it looks like a real language tag, not a template placeholder left unfilled.
When a Check Fails
If a check returns nothing, we store nothing, and the field doesn't appear on the listing. No row, chip, label or dash takes its place. The missing field is also left out of the confidence score, so no listing loses points for data we couldn't get.
This choice has two sides. One listing may show fewer fields than another. But every field you do see was checked. Nothing on a listing is guessed, borrowed from a similar site, or added to make the layout look full.
This page follows the same rule. Each figure on it is counted from the live data when the site is built, so the examples update along with the data and can't drift out of date.
Traffic and Spam Score
The traffic on every listing is the Semrush estimate of monthly organic visits from US search. It is one tool's estimate, and we print it exactly as Semrush reports it. We don't scale it, blend it with another source or round it up. A reading of zero is a real measurement and shows as 0. A site Semrush has no figure for shows no traffic field at all.
The spam score is Moz's. It runs from 1% to 100% and counts how many features a domain shares with sites Google has penalised. We show it with Moz's own bands and the number of current listings in each.
23 of the 24 listings carry a spam score right now.
Neither number is a verdict on its own. A new site can have little traffic and still be a good placement, and a high spam score can have an innocent cause. They are there so you can see the risk before you pay, not to decide for you.
No Printed Prices
Publishers change their rates. A price saved into the site would be wrong the first time one of them did, and a wrong price is exactly the kind of bad data this directory is built to avoid. So each listing says “Email for details”, and a person sends you the current rate.
Nothing on the site depends on a price either. There is no value ratio, no price range and no budget filter. We left those out instead of estimating them. Send us your shortlist and we will reply with what those sites cost now.
Rankings Can’t Be Bought
No listing sits above another because someone paid. There is no promoted tier, no featured slot and no paid position anywhere on the site. The directory follows the sort you choose: authority, traffic or domain age. By default it shows Domain Authority, highest first, and that default is the same for every visitor.
We don't own the sites we list, and we don't control what they publish. A listing reports what we measured. It is not an endorsement of the publisher's editorial choices.
When the Data Updates
All figures are refreshed together, in one run. Every listing carries data from the same review and the same date stamp, so you never compare two sites measured at different times.
The current set was compiled in Sep 2026 and covers 24 publications across 10 subjects. Nobody edits a listing by hand between runs. The number you see is the one that run returned, which is why the review date matters as much as the figure beside it. If a site has changed since then, the section below explains how to tell us, and the about page covers what happens to a weak listing.
Reporting an Error
If a figure is wrong, we want to know. Publishers can ask for a listing to be corrected or removed. Buyers can question any number on any page. Tell us the listing and the field, and we will re-run the check on the domain and fix whatever it returns.
Email timeviewblog@gmail.com, or use the contact page. The about page gives a short version of this method, and the guide to choosing a guest post site shows how to read a listing built this way.