In April 2025, Cision formally announced the sale of Help A Reporter Out (HARO), a long-standing journalist-source connection platform, to Featured.com, a newer entrant in the media outreach space. According to Cision’s press release, this move allows the company to “sharpen focus on core software offerings” while handing HARO over to a brand that emphasizes product-led growth and contributor experience.
Featured.com, formerly known as Terkel, provides a Q&A-style platform where experts answer prompts from media publishers and, if selected, earn featured quotes in outlets like Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and others. In contrast to HARO’s traditional email pitch model, Featured.com facilitates a more curated, account-based approach.
This transition is noteworthy for SEO professionals and marketers who rely on digital PR not just for brand awareness, but for earning authoritative backlinks.
Digital PR Is Link Building Google Approves Of
Over the last decade, Google has consistently reiterated that it values earned links — those acquired naturally through trust and authority — over manipulative or paid link schemes.
This aligns directly with the value proposition of platforms like HARO and now Featured.com, where links are obtained through editorial merit. Rather than relying on guest posts or directory links, digital PR campaigns offer genuine contributions to news stories or expert roundups. These links often come from high-authority publications and contribute to both domain strength and brand reputation.
Links earned through genuine editorial merit tend to:
- Appear on authoritative domains
- Be placed contextually within high-quality content
- Signal expertise, relevance, and trustworthiness
These qualities all support Google’s E-E-A-T framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
AI Content Saturation Has Changed the Web
This surge in generic content has created renewed urgency around authenticity. As search engines evolve to reward trust and transparency, verifiable human input — such as quotes from named experts or contributors — has become a differentiator. Editorial citations, especially those tied to real people with credentials and reputational signals, offer a kind of credibility that’s difficult to fake and easy to verify.
In this environment, platforms that facilitate human-to-human connections between journalists and sources offer more than media exposure — they provide algorithmic value.
Alternatives to HARO: A Growing Ecosystem
Featured.com isn’t the only tool looking to evolve the journalist-source dynamic. Several alternative platforms have emerged or gained traction in recent years, each catering to different niches within the digital PR space:
- Qwoted – A media request platform used by journalists at outlets like Forbes, Bloomberg, and Insider. It allows users to create detailed expert profiles and pitch in response to targeted media inquiries (https://www.qwoted.com).
- Help a B2B Writer – Designed specifically for B2B content creators, this platform connects freelance and in-house writers with subject-matter experts in tech, SaaS, and enterprise industries (https://helpab2bwriter.com).
- Source of Sources – A curated Slack-based community where verified experts and journalists can collaborate on background, quotes, and citations. This invite-only group was created to improve signal-to-noise and build long-term media relationships (https://www.sourceofsources.com).
These tools vary in approach, but all reflect a larger trend: the move away from mass-email outreach toward more thoughtful, curated relationships between contributors and publications.
A Strategic Opportunity for SEOs and Business Owners
While HARO’s traditional model is being retired, its underlying purpose remains relevant: connecting credible sources with credible media. The move to Featured.com simply changes the format — and presents an opportunity to evolve how marketers, agencies, and founders approach journalist outreach.
To stay competitive in 2025 and beyond:
- Prioritize editorial over transactional: Focus on contributing value, not just acquiring links.
- Invest in personal branding: Develop credible bios, author pages, and social proof for company founders or spokespeople.
- Join and test multiple platforms: Don’t rely on just one service — experiment with Qwoted, Featured.com, and others to see what matches your industry.
- Stay human: Offer unique insights, real experience, and commentary that goes beyond AI rehashes.
A Reminder, Not a Shift
The acquisition of HARO by Featured.com isn’t a pivot. It’s a continuation of a trend that’s been gaining traction for years: high-quality links come from high-quality relationships. Outreach, credibility, and human insight remain the foundation of ethical, effective SEO.
DISCLAIMER: This article was developed with assistance from AI, but all content was thoroughly researched, written and fact-checked by a human editor. Every source was independently verified, and the editorial structure, tone, and direction was reviewed with human oversight to ensure accuracy and integrity.
Sources
- https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/cision-announces-sale-help-reporter-140000380.html
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/featuredcom-acquires-help-a-reporter-out-haro-from-cision-302428717.html
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2010/06/quality-links-to-your-site
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
