8 Years of Building, Learning, and Growing: Celebrate Another Year With Collaborator

This July, Collaborator.pro turns 8.

The past 12 months brought steady, meaningful changes. We introduced updates that quietly improved daily workflows, made data more actionable, and helped the platform work even better.

At the same time, we stayed close to the SEO community — not just through product work, but through real conversations, events, and content that reflects what people are solving for right now.

Here’s a look at what changed, what we learned, and what’s next.

This year, our catalog expanded significantly, not just in size, but in global coverage. Thousands of new platforms joined Collaborator, with verified and active websites now representing over 150 countries and 50+ languages.

We also keep a close eye on catalog quality every day — adding new relevant websites and removing those that no longer meet the platform’s standards, to keep the service reliable and easy for everyone.

The most notable growth came from the USA, France, Spain, Poland, and Brazil, with continued expansion across Ukraine, Italy, and the Netherlands. Each new addition means more relevant opportunities for advertisers and a wider range of trusted placements for every campaign.

The catalog features over 50 categories, helping advertisers browse platforms by niche and select the ones that best match their goals. Over the past year, these categories led by te number of deals — the chart below also shows their average cheque amounts based on hundreds of thousands of placements:

Among these 10 categories, Media (News), City Portals, and Business & Finance were the most in-demand, as they’re a great fit for almost any brand. But there is plenty more to choose from in the catalog, so you can find something that perfectly matches your niche.

This year, we continued to improve the platform in ways that actually make a difference for day-to-day users. We released a number of updates, from interface tweaks to entirely new features. In this section, we’ll cover the ones that had the biggest impact on daily workflows.

Google Search Console Integration: Additional SEO Metrics

One of the most practical updates this year was the addition of Google Search Console verification as an additional method to confirm website ownership. It now includes a fourth option: connecting your site through GSC, alongside GA4, HTML, or manual review.

This integration brings verified performance data directly into the platform, specifically, clicks and impressions from Google Search Console. Advertisers can now make more informed decisions by seeing additional verified performance metrics in search results. 

Verifying with GSC adds a 2.5% bonus to the site’s catalog rating. Pair it with GA4, and the combined boost reaches 10%. That means better visibility in search results inside the platform and a stronger chance of being selected for campaigns.

Our catalog features 6,000+ websites with Google Analytics Data, and 4,000+ sites verified with Google Search Console.

👉Verify Your Website via GSC

Make Edits to Previously Published Articles

We made another really helpful update: if you need to make edits to an article after it’s been published, there’s now a way to do that.

From the dashboard go to “My Orders,” find the one you want to update, and click “Request Edit.” Leave a short message about what needs changing, whether it's a link, anchor, or section of the text, and upload the new version if needed.

The website owner will get your request — If they offer this feature and the changes fit within their policy, they’ll make the update and mark it as done. This also works for older orders, as long as they’re still active.

Publishers see the request inside the order feed and can either accept it or reject it if it doesn’t meet the website’s policy. Once updated, they hit “Mark as Done” — and it’s all set.

"My Lists" Got an Upgrade: Easier Backlink Tracking

We’ve had competitor backlinks lookup functionality for a while, but this year we gave it a visual upgrade. The “My Lists” feature got a new interface that’s easier to navigate and a few small improvements that make a big difference during campaign planning.

You can upload up to 1,000 domains or URLs at once. Collaborator automatically separates what’s already in the catalog from what’s not, making your life easier. For the available sites, you’ll immediately see key info like price, Domain Rating, traffic, and geo. Everything is in one place, with no extra tabs or copy-pasting required. If something from your list isn’t in the catalog, we’ll let you know as soon as it’s added. Since our catalog is constantly expanding, there’s a good chance these websites will appear soon, and you’ll get an email update when they do.

Planning and prioritizing backlink tracking is now just a bit less tedious and a lot more efficient.

Check out the walkthrough to see how this works:

Effortless Link Monitoring With Racoon SEO Link Checker

We also launched Racoon SEO Link Checker — a free Chrome extension built to simplify link monitoring and manual link checks. 

With Racoon, you can easily find dofollow, nofollow, and sponsored links, check if they are indexed, and scroll directly to each found link on the page, one by one — no more endless scrolling or digging through code. You can copy link data in one click, open it up in Ahrefs (if you’re logged in), or export the dataset straight to Google Sheets.

Racoon is especially useful for link builders and outreach teams who have to keep track of live placements constantly. It takes care of the tedious manual checking, so you can focus on the actual work.

 👉Try Racoon Link Checker

With more users joining from different countries, we’ve been expanding our content beyond Ukrainian and English. This year, we started publishing blog articles in Spanish and Polish, covering a variety of SEO topics.

Here’s a quick peek at what we’ve been working on:

👉Cómo espiar a tu competencia para captar enlaces similares

👉Kluczowe Aspekty Skutecznego SEO dla Rynków Niemieckojęzycznych

👉6 Najlepszych Darmowych Narzędzi do Monitorowania Linków Zwrotnych

On the video side, we continued to release English-language content on YouTube, including new user onboarding and feature walkthroughs.

We’re also growing our podcast-style content, featuring guest speakers from across the SEO world. These conversations cover everything from technical SEO to link-building strategies, with insights from experts actively involved in the industry.

 👉Check Out Our YouTube Channel

We took part in many industry events this year, but one in particular stood out.

In May, we headed to Ho Chi Minh City for the SEO Mastery Summit, our first major event of the year, and honestly, it left a mark. We showed up with a booth, a giveaway, and a small part of our team on-site. Our Marketing Manager, Oleksandra Khilova, also took the stage as a speaker, sharing insights on link building and platform growth.

Between booth chats, panels, and a quick giveaway (the blue iPad found a new home!), it was an amazing opportunity to connect with the global SEO crowd and finally meet some of our longtime users and collaborators face-to-face.

Outside of Vietnam, we also participated in several major conferences across Lisbon, Chiang Mai, London, Athens, and Zagreb, supporting events as sponsors, speakers, or virtual contributors. These events help us stay connected to the ecosystem, even when we’re not physically present.

We also continued to invest in the Ukrainian SEO community by hosting local online events and expanding our Telegram network. For us, building globally means staying connected to our roots and strengthening the community that helped build Collaborator in the first place.

User Recognition, Reviews & Awards

We got a fair amount of recognition this year. Yeah, we’ve won some awards, but what stuck more was seeing engagement from regular Collaborator users. We saw growing traffic worldwide, and we also received dozens of new reviews on Trustpilot, G2, and other platforms. Honest feedback and real-world impact — that’s what matters.

As for the awards, over the course of the year Collaborator.pro was recognized by:

• SuperbCompanies — named among the Top Content Marketing Companies of 2024
• TechBehemoths — awarded in Content Marketing, PR, and SEO
• SoftwareSuggest — selected as Best for Small Businesses in their 2025 Winter Awards
• G2 — earned the “Users Love Us” badge, and recognized as a High Performer in the Spring 2025 Press Release Distribution category

A huge highlight was that in G2’s Summer 2025 Reports, we advanced to a Leader spot in the Small Business Grid. We’ve also continued as a High Performer in both the EMEA and European Regional Grids for Content Distribution — a category focused on tools that help marketers amplify content across blogs, email, paid ads, and social media.

This status means a lot to us, and we’re proud to consistently outperform the industry average:

100% in Ease of Admin and Ease of Doing Business With, 96% in Support Quality, and 94% in Likelihood to Recommend. 

G2 is the world’s largest software marketplace, and when they call us a Leader, it’s more than an award — it’s proof that what we’re building is genuinely valued.

Content Collaborations and Industry Partnerships

A big thank you to the creators, marketers, entrepreneurs, and partners who collaborated with us this year. Whether through content, strategy, or spontaneous ideas, you helped us grow in new directions.

Your insights, creativity, and shared passion for SEO and visibility helped us stretch our perspective. More of this, please! 

This past year was about sharpening what we’ve already built: improving the platform, expanding globally, and making day-to-day work smoother for the people using it.

There’s still a lot to do. More features to ship, more markets to explore, and more chances to make link building a little less painful.

None of this happens in a vacuum. The fact that we’re here, still building, still growing, is only possible thanks to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Their resilience allows us to do our work, and we don’t take that lightly. If you’d like to mark this anniversary in a meaningful way, we invite you to join us in supporting them.

 👉Donate to the Ukrainian Armed Forces

Thanks for being here. We’re eight years in, and we’re not done🥂

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