Collaborator Turns 9: Celebrating a Big Year Together

Collaborator turns nine today! They say once you hit nine, a company doesn't need to prove itself anymore. Still, we brought the numbers 🙂

It has been a busy year for us: dozens of major releases, hundreds of improvements, and thousands of decisions behind the scenes. We expanded the catalog, launched powerful new tools, and somehow squeezed in trips to SEO events around the world.

In this post, we’re sharing:

• Our biggest wins from the past year
• The platform updates that matter most
• A few stories behind our biggest launches

In July 2025, the Collaborator catalog passed 38,000 websites. A year later, we’re closing in on 44,000.

For us, expanding the catalog is first and foremost about meeting our users’ needs. We’re constantly looking for new publishers so that every customer can find exactly what they need, regardless of country, niche, or language.

Every new publisher creates another opportunity to reach an international audience. That’s why our catalog now spans more than 150 countries and 50+ languages, with websites ranging from niche blogs to major news publications across 40+ categories:

Our catalog team checks every website for quality, up-to-date metrics, and compliance with our platform requirements. Over the past year alone, we turned down 65,222 websites.

The goal is simple: help advertisers find the right publishers faster.

Of course, the bigger the catalog grows, the more it matters that you can quickly find the site that fits your exact criteria. That's why this year we focused not just on expanding the catalog, but on tools that make guest posting and link building much faster.

SEO moved fast this year. AI changed how people search, new ways to evaluate websites emerged, and automation became part of more everyday SEO workflows.

We built this year’s Collaborator updates around those shifts.

The highlights include Automatic Competitor Analysis, Google AI Overviews data in the catalog, AI Filtering by Keywords, and dozens of smaller improvements across the platform.

Here’s a closer look at the biggest releases.

Automatic Competitor Analysis

One of our biggest updates this year is Automatic Competitor Analysis.

Now, you simply enter a competitor's domain, and Collaborator automatically pulls a list of sites where they’ve already placed backlinks.

That makes it easier to spot promising publishers, understand your competitors’ link-building strategies, and plan your own placements — without piecing together data from several different tools.

Google AI Overviews (AIO)

The Collaborator catalog now shows how many keywords a website appears for in Google AI Overviews.

Traditional search rankings and visibility in AI-generated answers tell different stories. SEO professionals now need to pay attention to both.

This gives you a quick way to gauge a publisher’s visibility in AI-generated search results and identify websites that are already being cited in AI answers.

AI Filtering by Keywords

Finding relevant publishers no longer requires a complicated mix of filters. Our new feature, AI keyword filtering, helps you get a tailored list of sites that publish similar content or feature matching thematic categories.

You just need to enter one or more keywords, and AI will surface the websites that best match your topic.

Collaborator Link Assistant

This year, our much-loved Racoon Link Checker evolved into Collaborator Link Assistant.

The free Chrome extension helps SEO professionals and link builders find placement opportunities and keep track of links they’ve already built.

Price Checker shows whether a website is available in the Collaborator catalog, and how much a placement costs, directly in Google search results and Ahrefs. Link Tracker finds your backlinks on any page and shows their attributes, indexation status, and technical checks.

Based on our team’s testing, Link Assistant can cut the time spent on routine link-building checks by up to 99%. A manual check can take one to three minutes; the extension surfaces the same information almost instantly. Try it for yourself 🙂

Collaborator API

For teams, agencies, and companies handling large volumes of data, there’s the option to connect the Collaborator API.

It helps you automate site selection based on your specific criteria, sync budget spending directly with your CRM or Google Sheets, and set up Slack alerts for new placements or price changes in a few simple tweaks.

You can also connect the API to AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT. From there, a simple text prompt can generate a shortlist of websites tailored to a specific project.

Fresher Ahrefs and Google Analytics Data

Ahrefs metrics in Collaborator are now refreshed every week instead of every month. Google Analytics traffic data follows the same weekly schedule.

It may sound like a small technical change, but it makes the marketplace more transparent and easier to use.

You get fresher SEO and traffic data, fewer surprises when checking a website, and greater confidence in the numbers shown in the catalog.

More Improvements Across the Platform

Major releases usually grab the headlines. However, throughout the year, we also shipped dozens of smaller updates to make your daily workflow smoother:

• instant balance top-ups with PayPal and Apple Pay;
• faster sign-in with a Google account;
• AI-powered suggestions for similar publishers based on topic and region;
• catalog filters for audience geography;
• a free Backlink Checker;
• clearer placement and indexation status indicators for advertisers and website owners.

As SEO continues to change, so does Collaborator. We are constantly adding new data sources, automating routine tasks, and developing tools to simplify your workflow.

Over the past year, we released 9 episodes of the Collaborator SEO Podcast, bringing together experts from across the industry to discuss SEO, agency growth, AI, hiring, networking, and more.

Listen on Spotify, YouTube, and Libsyn.

We believe the best SEO communities are built by people who share what they know. Thank you to every speaker, guest, and expert who contributed to our educational projects this year.

In October 2025, the Collaborator team made its debut at Ahrefs Evolve in San Diego. Since then, we’ve barely had time to unpack — running between international flights and brainstorming our next wave of custom merch.

Throughout 2025 and 2026, we hit the road to sponsor and attend some of the biggest SEO events across the globe, including:

• BrightonSEO (2025 & 2026) – UK
• Zagreb SEO Summit (2025) & Croatia SEO Summit (2026) – Croatia
• Baltic-Nordic SEO Summit – Lithuania
• SERP Conf – Bulgaria
• Digital Marketing Europe – Portugal
• Search Barcelona – Spain
• Campixx – Germany

...and many more.

Our seagull and Valera the pigeon have become unmistakable members of the team. If you haven’t met them yet, there’s always the next conference 🙂

This year, Collaborator won three TechBehemoths 2025 Awards, with recognition in Content Marketing, Public Relations, and SEO. DesignRush also named us a Top SEO Company, Top Digital Marketing Agency, and Top Public Relations Company in 2026.

We’re proud of those awards, but the feedback we hear from users matters even more. Thank you for every suggestion, idea, and honest criticism. It helps us make Collaborator better.

Follow Collaborator on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Have an idea for the platform? We’re always happy to hear it.

And if Collaborator helped you promote your business or grow your revenue this year, share your story with us on social media or leave a review on Trustpilot or G2. It means the world to our team! 🙂

Over the past year, our community, catalog, product, and ambitions have all grown.

Now we’re ready for another 365 days of building, improving, and scaling.

Thank you for being part of the journey 💙