HARO
Also called: Help a Reporter Out, journalist outreach, Connectively
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a journalist-query service that connects reporters seeking expert sources with people who pitch quotes in exchange for being cited, usually with an editorial backlink. The original service was discontinued in December 2024 and revived by Featured.com in April 2025.
How HARO link building works
You (or your agency) monitor journalist queries by topic, then send a short pitch built on real expertise: a data point, a contrarian take, a specific example. If a reporter uses your answer, they credit you and usually link to your site. That link sits inside genuine editorial content on a domain that earned its authority by publishing, which is worth far more than most links you can buy.
A few realities practitioners agree on: reply rates commonly land in the 5 to 15 percent range, speed matters (pitches sent in the first few hours convert better), and AI-written answers get filtered out fast. You do not control the anchor text or which page gets linked, and placements often point at your homepage rather than a deep page.
The brand history matters in 2026. HARO started as Peter Shankman’s list in 2008, passed to Vocus (2010) and Cision (through its 2014 merger), got rebranded “Connectively,” then was permanently discontinued on December 9, 2024. Cision sold the name to Featured.com, which relaunched it in April 2025 with a free source tier. So “HARO” now means two things: the revived platform, and the general tactic of source-driven digital PR run across tools like Featured, Qwoted, and Source of Sources. When someone says “HARO link building” today, they almost always mean the tactic, not one specific inbox.
How it affects your traffic
HARO-style placements move two things at once: referring-domain authority and brand mentions that AI search engines read as credibility signals. A handful of quotes on high-authority publications can lift how the whole domain ranks and how often models cite you by name. The catch is that it is unpredictable and slow to do well, which is why our Link Building team (/services/link-building/) runs it as managed digital PR: query monitoring, expert pitching, and fast follow-up, so placements actually land instead of dying in a journalist's inbox.
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