Key takeaways
- ✓You cannot open the homepage before you pay, because the domain is masked. The pre-pay decision is only about the cells. The site itself is judged on delivery day.
- ✓Copy the SAAS-109 review below and replace every cell with the row you are actually buying.
- ✓If you need rel="sponsored" and the column says DoFollow, the order is not ready.
Fill this note before checkout
People get hurt because the decision lives in a chat thread. Put it on one page you can hand to a client or a reviewer. The page has six lines. If any line is blank, you are not ready to pay. Google's spam policies are what a reviewer would hold next to that page: paid links meant to pass ranking credit, and advertorials that pretend not to be ads, are the cases they name. Your note does not repeal that. It shows you knew which kind of placement you were buying.
| Line | Write this | Blank means |
|---|---|---|
| Row | Code, niche, DR, traffic, country, TAT, both prices, link type | You are buying a vibe |
| Target | The exact URL on your site, and the query it already tries to answer | The homepage was the default |
| Why this publication | One sentence a stranger accepts: who reads it, and why they would mention you | The only reason is DR |
| Brief | The pasted topic notes, including the single anchor | The writer will invent the pitch |
| Rel | Dofollow as labeled, or sponsored if you got a written yes | You hoped the column would change |
| Delivery test | The three checks you will run the day the URL arrives | You will not look |
What you can know while the domain is masked
The public table hides the hostname. The FAQ says the live URL arrives in the delivery report, and the mask is there so the list is not scraped. That is a real constraint. Pretending you 'reviewed the site' before payment is how notes get fictional. Before payment you review cells. After payment you review the site, the same day, and you use the refund clock if it fails.
Kill the order before you pay if any of these are true
- •The niche label cannot host the topic. A payroll product does not belong on a crypto row because the DR was convenient. The niche labels on the shipped table are AI, SaaS, developer tools, Web3, marketing, and general news.
- •The top-country cell is a market you do not sell to, and you cannot explain why those readers would still be the right mention.
- •Turnaround is longer than the date you actually need. SAAS-109 is 4 days. TECH-107 is 5. AI-108 is 2. The cell is the clock, not a wish.
- •You need the link marked sponsored, and you do not yet have a yes. The inventory card says DoFollow Guaranteed. Read the attribute guide and write the answer on the Rel line.
- •The price only works if you assume a traffic jump. Price the row with the Search Console worksheet first.
A row that survives those five lines is allowed to be purchased. It is not approved. Approval is the delivery test. Write that distinction in the note so a teammate does not treat 'we ordered it' as 'we vetted the site.'
Worked row: SAAS-109, filled in
SAAS-109 is the enterprise productivity and AI SaaS comparison row in the catalog shipped with this site. Cells: masked domain ending in workflows.ai, niche SaaS & Tech, DR 67, DA 70, 94,200 monthly visits, DoFollow, turnaround 4 days, guest post $179, niche edit $145, spam score shown as under 1%, top country US 51%, Google News marked yes, completion shown as 99%, sample path a /compare/ slug. The teaching product below is Ledgerline, renewal tracking for finance teams. Ledgerline is not a customer. The host ledgerline.example is a stand-in so the sample brief is not a real site's URL.
| Line | Filled for this example |
|---|---|
| Row | SAAS-109. SaaS comparison. DR 67. 94,200 visits. US 51%. TAT 4 days. Guest post $179. DoFollow. Google News yes. |
| Target | https://ledgerline.example/renewals — the page that explains the audit history feature. Not the homepage. |
| Why this publication | The sample path is a comparison URL. Finance ops readers comparing tools are the audience. We are not buying it for the DR alone. |
| Brief | See the topic notes in the next section. One mention. Anchor is the brand. |
| Rel | DoFollow, matching the column. Counsel did not require sponsored. If they had, we would wait. |
| Delivery test | Indexation, anchor unchanged, and the three-page mold check from the PBN note. |
Notice what this note refuses to say. It does not say the link will move a ranking. It does not say 94,200 people will see Ledgerline. Those visits are the site's visits, which the hero copy attributes to Google Analytics. Your placement is one paragraph. If a colleague cannot tell the difference, they are about to overpay for TECH-107 at $349 for the same mistake at a larger number.
Topic notes you can adapt
Checkout has a topic field and a choice: the desk writes a 1,000-word article at no added price, or you supply the draft. Either way, paste a brief this specific. Vague notes ('please mention our SaaS, anchor best renewal software') are how you receive a page you cannot defend.
Ledgerline tracks contract renewals for B2B finance teams: notice dates, owner, and the approval trail. Please write a comparison of tracking renewals in a spreadsheet versus a dedicated system. In the section on the approval trail, mention Ledgerline once and link to https://ledgerline.example/renewals with the anchor Ledgerline. Do not use the phrase best renewal software. Do not invent a customer count, a G2 score, or a savings percentage. If the editor requires a visible sponsored label or rel="sponsored", stop and tell us before drafting. We are paying for the placement.
Read that paragraph again as the publisher. You can write the article without the link and it still compares two ways of doing the job. That is the test in the vetting guide: the page would still be useful with your link removed. If your real brief fails that test, fix the brief. Do not shop for a publisher who will run it anyway.
Change Ledgerline, the path, and the feature. Do not add a second link 'while you are in there.' One href. If you also want the pricing page mentioned, that is a second order on a different day, with its own note, not a second anchor in this draft.
The day the URL arrives
The FAQ's turnaround for a single placement is the TAT cell, and a miss of that window plus 48 hours is a refund or a credit. SAAS-109 says 4 days, so day 6 without a URL is already the refund conversation. Do not wait two weeks to be polite. Polite is how a masked domain becomes a site you never checked.
- Open the live URL in a private window. Confirm the anchor is exactly Ledgerline, the href is the renewals path, and it is not a sitewide footer.
- View the rel. If you approved DoFollow, confirm there is no surprise nofollow. If you required sponsored, confirm the attribute and that a reader can see a label without viewing source.
- Search Google for the URL. If it is absent, diary a check on day 7. A link on a URL that is not indexed is not the thing you described in the note. The 12-month replacement term covers a link that loses indexation later. It does not excuse you from looking.
- Open one older article and the About page. If they share the mold in the PBN note, stop and write down the three URLs. Do not place a second order on that domain.
- Paste the live URL, the anchor, the rel, and the index status into the note. The note is now a record, not a plan.
What to send when it fails
Use the rule you were shown, and quote it. For a miss: 'TAT on SAAS-109 is 4 days. It is now past 4 days plus 48 hours. Please refund or credit, per the FAQ.' For a bad page after it went live: describe the defect in one sentence ('the anchor was changed to best renewal software' or 'the three articles I opened use the same sponsor block'). Ask for a replacement or a refund. Do not negotiate a rewrite that keeps the exact-match anchor you forbade. That rewrite is you accepting the defect.
A month later, look at Search Console for the renewals URL only. You want to know whether impressions moved, not whether the domain's DR moved. DR on the referring site is not your metric. If nothing moved, the note still did its job: you can see the cost was $179 and the clicks did not change. That is a result. It is a small one. It is allowed to be small. The campaign plan is what you read before you stack six of these notes and call the stack a case study.
FAQ
Can I skip the delivery test if the row shows a spam score under 1%?
No. The spam score is a string in the drawer. It is not the three articles, the brand query, or the index check. Those happen after the domain is visible.
Is this note a legal opinion that the purchase is safe?
No. It is a record that you matched the placement to Google's published spam and outbound-link pages and to the cells you bought. Counsel still decides whether your company can buy a dofollow placement.