A list of "free .gov backlinks" goes around every few months, and most of it does not survive thirty seconds of checking. Some entries are not government domains at all. Others put your profile behind a login, where no crawler and no AI engine will ever see it. A few are real and worth the afternoon. This page separates them, shows you how to check any listing yourself, and gets the one that matters set up properly.
Source: direct check of six US state procurement portals and the federal registration system, October 2026.
Where to start
Check the listing before you trust the list
Three questions kill most entries on these lists. Is the domain actually government? Several of the most-shared "state government" supplier portals run on ordinary commercial domains — Florida's vendor portal and the Massachusetts system both sit on .com. Is there a public page? New York's vendor registry exists, but you need an account to see it, so there is nothing for a crawler to read. Does it name your business where a machine can find it? A login-only profile helps you win contracts; it does nothing for AI visibility.
None of this means the portals are worthless. Registering as a supplier is genuinely useful if you want government work. It just is not the thing the viral posts are selling, which is a public, high-trust page that confirms your business exists.
Listing checker Example data
Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere. Paste one URL per line from any list you have been given.
Register where the record is genuinely public
In the United States the dependable one is federal entity registration at sam.gov. Registration is free. Any service charging you a fee for it is reselling something the government gives away, and the site says so itself. Once you are registered, your entity record is searchable by anyone, with no account.
Outside the US the equivalent is whatever your national business register is — Companies House in the UK, ASIC in Australia, your provincial or national registry elsewhere. The test is the same one from Step 1: can a stranger, logged out, find a page that confirms your business name, address and what you do?
Priority planner Example data
Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere. Tells you what to do first and roughly how long it takes.
Make every record say the same thing
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that does the work. An AI engine deciding whether to name you is matching records across sources. "Northline Running LLC" at one address and "Northline Running Co." at another reads as two shaky companies rather than one solid one. Pick one legal name, one address format, one short description, and make every listing match it character for character.
Then put the same three facts on your own site, in text, on a page that is crawlable — an about page or the footer. The listing confirms what your site says, and your site confirms what the listing says. That loop is the whole point.
Consistency checker Example data
Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere. Paste the same three facts as they appear in each place.
Questions
Are .gov links actually a ranking factor?
Google has said repeatedly that there is no special treatment for a domain just because it ends in .gov. The usefulness is that government records are hard to fake and independently maintained, which makes them good corroboration. Treat anyone selling ".gov link packages" as selling you nothing.
My business is not in the US. Does any of this apply?
Yes, with different names. The principle is a public, logged-out record from an official register that confirms your name, address and activity. Companies House, ASIC and their equivalents all qualify.
Should I register on every state portal?
Only if you actually want government contracts. As an AI visibility play the returns drop off fast after the first genuinely public record, and gated ones add nothing.
How long until this shows up anywhere?
There is no published timeline, and anyone quoting you one is guessing. These records are slow-moving corroboration, not a switch. Do it once, keep it accurate, and judge it over months rather than days.
Does my listing need a link back to my website?
It helps when the field exists, because it ties the record to your domain explicitly. But the name, address and description matching your site is doing most of the work even where no link field is offered.
Sources: direct checks of US state procurement portals and the federal entity registration system, plus Google's published statements on top-level domains and ranking. Checked October 2026. Portals change their domains and access rules; re-check before following any list, including this one.