Journalist Request Links in 2026: What Replaced HARO and How to Earn Them

Journalist request links are the citations you earn by answering a reporter's public call for expert sources, and the tactic outlived HARO. Cision shut down Connectively, the platform HARO had been rebranded into, on December 9, 2024, and Featured.com bought the HARO name and restarted it as a free email digest in April 2025. Requests now arrive through several feeds at once: Qwoted, HARO, Source of Sources, Connectively and the #journorequest hashtags. BuzzStream's mid-2025 study of the request platforms found they overlap by only about 17% on average, and that just 21.9% of requests explicitly offered a followed link. Treat the channel as a source of authority and brand mentions that sometimes produces an excellent link, not as a way to hit a monthly link count.

What Happened to HARO

Peter Shankman started Help a Reporter Out in 2008 to match reporters on deadline with expert sources. According to Cision's own account, it came to Cision through the 2014 merger with Vocus and was rebranded as Connectively in 2024. The change turned a simple email list into a web platform, and it did not last: Cision's notice says that as of December 9, 2024, the Connectively (HARO) platform was permanently discontinued, with customers pointed toward its CisionOne suite.

Shankman had already moved on. In spring 2024 he launched Source of Sources, a free list in the old format that sends journalist queries up to three times a day.

Then the old names started coming back. Featured.com announced on April 16, 2025 that it had bought HARO from Cision and would run it free for journalists and sources, paid for by newsletter ads. In May 2026 Featured revived a second brand: it moved its own expert-answer platform, with 100,000 users and 2,500 publishers, to the Connectively name and relaunched Featured itself as an AI tool for PR teams. The same release says "HARO is not going anywhere" and that the two products run side by side.

So "Connectively" now means a different product from the one Cision closed. Any older guide that tells you to sign up for Featured to answer expert questions is pointing you at what is now Connectively.

The 2026 Platform Stack

The main feeds differ in format and in what BuzzStream's May to June 2025 data showed about each:

Prices differ widely. Source of Sources and HARO are free. Qwoted's pricing page lists a free plan with 2 pitches a month and a two-hour delay on new requests, and a Pro plan at $149 a month for 35 pitches with no delay. Paid media databases such as Muck Rack are a different product: they sell journalist contact data rather than open requests, and Muck Rack prices by custom proposal. You do not need one to work requests.

Why One Feed Is Not Enough

Low overlap is the case for watching more than one feed. In BuzzStream's data, HARO shared the most requests with Qwoted (35%), then Source of Sources (31.5%), then Featured (22%). Help a B2B Writer and Substack had almost nothing in common with the rest. A team reading only HARO sees a minority of what is out there.

The link figures matter as much. Only 21.9% of all requests explicitly offered a followed link. Source of Sources led at 36.26%, and when nofollow links are counted too, 43.94% of its requests offered a link of some kind, with Qwoted second at 40.17%. Shankman's explanation to BuzzStream was enforcement: "at SOS, we actively prohibit overseas SEO shops from using our service." Reporters who are not buried in link-bait replies are more willing to link.

Read those numbers as what requests promise, not what gets published. A request that says nothing about links can still produce one, and a promised link can be cut in the edit.

A practical working set is two or three feeds: one web platform such as Qwoted, one email digest, and one saved hashtag search. A fourth mostly adds triage time.

Speed and Fit Decide Most Pitches

A reporter on deadline can stop reading once they have a usable quote, so a reply sent the next day may never be opened. The platforms price speed accordingly: the main thing Qwoted's paid plan removes is the free plan's two-hour delay. If you cannot check your feeds within a few hours of a request going out, subscribe to fewer of them and watch those properly.

Fit is the other filter. Answer the question that was asked, not the adjacent one you would rather answer. Source of Sources puts it bluntly on its sign-up page: "If you pitch a reporter off topic even once, and it gets back to me, you're gone. No exceptions, no appeals." Deciding quickly that a request is not for you saves the time you need to be early on the next one.

Write the Quote, Not the Pitch

Send something the reporter can paste into a draft without editing:

• Lead with the answer in the first sentence.
• Keep it to two to four sentences, written in first person as the quote itself rather than a description of what you could say.
• Close with a one-line credential and the exact name, title, company and URL you want cited, pointing to a page that shows you do this work.
• Leave out attachments, press releases, offers to hop on a call and any product pitch.

What separates a usable answer from a generic one is input only you have: a number from your own data, a specific case you handled, a position you can defend, or a first-hand account. Best-practice summaries are exactly what AI tools produce for free, and reporters skip them. Shankman's point to BuzzStream was that reporters link when they "get real content from real people." Never invent a statistic to sound authoritative; a reporter who checks it will not come back.

A reporter who has quoted you once is worth more than the link they gave you. Answer their next request well, and do not chase them with follow-ups.

Nofollow and Anchor Text Are Out of Your Hands

Many large publishers apply nofollow to outbound links by default, and that is not a failed placement. Google has treated nofollow as a hint rather than a directive since it announced the change in September 2019, and a nofollowed citation on a real publication still brings referral traffic and brand exposure. Our breakdown of how nofollow and dofollow links are weighed explains why a profile made only of followed links looks less natural than a mixed one.

You also do not choose the anchor. Reporters link your brand, your name or a bare URL. That suits most profiles, because branded and naked anchors are what commercial campaigns tend to be short of, as our anchor text strategy guide covers. Do not ask a reporter to swap in a keyword. Google's link spam policy lists "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" among its examples of link spam, and the request is a reliable way to never hear from that reporter again.

Where It Pays and Where It Doesn't

The channel rewards a business with a credible, nameable expert in a subject reporters cover often. In BuzzStream's data, home and lifestyle made up about a quarter of all requests, and business and finance about a quarter or more on most platforms. If a trade or national outlet writes about your field every week, the requests exist.

It pays poorly when your niche never makes the news, when nobody on the team can be quoted by name, or when you need links on a schedule. You cannot make a request appear the month you need it, and results arrive unevenly: a national outlet one month, then several months with nothing. That makes it a complement to a predictable placement program rather than a substitute, and our complete guide to link building shows where each tactic fits.

Be wary of anyone selling "guaranteed HARO links." The reporter decides whether to quote you, whether to link and whether the link is followed, so a guarantee means someone other than the reporter is making that call. It belongs on the list of red flags that a link building service is wasting your money.

Measure It as PR

Track the funnel in order: requests answered, replies received, mentions published, mentions with any link, and followed links. The conversion rate at each step tells you whether a bad month was a targeting problem, a writing problem or a timing problem.

The real cost is hours spent triaging feeds and writing answers. If someone spends five hours a week for a placement every few weeks, set that against what the same budget buys elsewhere and choose the split on purpose. Then judge each placement the way you would judge any link: is the site real, does it get organic traffic, is the topic close to yours, and did anyone click through? One quote in a publication your buyers read beats a dozen citations on sites nobody visits, which is the same test behind our placement standards.