From 0 to 8 links without asking: cited for our sourced news

A single real external link, and it was a directory listing

When we measured where we were starting from, rigolco.com had one real external link: its listing in an agency directory. Nearly everything else was the “Made by Rigol&Co” in the footer of our clients’ websites, which we do not count: they appear on every page and are reciprocal, and Google gives them little weight.

real external link

1

editorial links

0

of links came from client website footers (Semrush, Aug 10)

96%

One news piece, two links: the automatic switch to AI Max

The first piece to earn links was the news about the search campaigns Google would convert to AI Max in September. It is cited as a source by the Spanish agency grafeno247.com, in an article dated September 2, and by markital.cloud, in an entry it updated on September 4. We did not write to either of them; we found the links on the 11th.

The statistics page, cited in a guide for small businesses

kravo.mx, a Mexican blog, linked to our page of SEO and AI search statistics in a guide, dated September 21, on how to get a site ready for AI agents. It was the first link the data section earned; Ahrefs picked it up four days later.

Three more links in October, from Nicaragua, Spain and Colombia

nicaraguaes.com cited the news piece on links in AI Mode and AI Overviews; informaticasis.com cited the one on Spain’s accessibility Law 4/2026, with its title and date; and posicionamiento.com.co used us as a price reference for managing a Google Business Profile. Two news pieces and a service page with its prices in plain sight. Ahrefs picked them up between October 22 and 27.

SE Ranking cites Rigol&Co in its study and links to the news piece

SE Ranking, one of the major SEO tools, published a study on Google’s irrelevant results on November 3. Reviewing what the SEO community had spotted, it names three Spanish-speaking professionals; the first, “Ton Rigol, founder of the Mexican agency Rigol&Co”, with a link to our October 25 news piece on false drops in rank trackers. In early November, yavio.ai, a directory of connectors for AI assistants, also linked to the home page.

authority of seranking.com, Ahrefs estimate

DR 86

organic traffic of seranking.com, Ahrefs estimate

~1.1M

DR and traffic are Ahrefs estimates as of November 5, 2026, not measured data.

The DR of rigolco.com goes from 16 to 30

Ahrefs’ Domain Rating measures, from 0 to 100, the strength of the links a domain receives: it rises when authoritative sites link to it. For rigolco.com it was 16 on August 5 and 30 on November 8, nearly double in three months.

DR on August 5

16

DR on November 8

30

DR is an Ahrefs estimate, not a Google metric.

All eight are still live, checked one by one

Every link was checked in the HTML of the page that publishes it: that it exists, that it points to rigolco.com and that it carries no nofollow. On November 9, all eight were still live. We only count links nobody asked for: citations with nofollow, domains Ahrefs flags as spam, directory listings we created ourselves and the footers of client websites are left out.