How links are verified

Which companies

Every published company in the companies.fru.dev registry, the shared company list behind the fru.dev directories. The registry's domain is the one website whose links count as official. A company without a domain on file is listed, but nothing can be verified for it yet.

What is read

For each company: its robots.txt first (a site that asks crawlers to stay away is left alone), then its homepage, then at most two of the contact or community pages the homepage itself links to. No logins, no forms, one request at a time per site, and the crawler says who it is (fru.dev-Socials, with a link to this page).

What counts as Verified

• The site links it. In the footer, in the site's schema.org list of its own profiles (sameAs), or anywhere on the homepage when the handle names the company. Links in a page's body that do not name the company (a founder's GitHub, a partner's account, an embedded post) are ignored. Share buttons, single posts, people's LinkedIn profiles and the platforms' own pages never count.
• The account links back. A GitHub organization whose public website field is the company's domain, or a Bluesky handle on the company's own domain (proven by DNS).

Every verified link shows its evidence: the page that links it or the profile that links back, and the date it was checked.

Unverified

The registry's own X, LinkedIn and GitHub links that neither route confirmed are shown muted as Unverified. X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook do not show a profile's website without a login, so a link back cannot be read there. Nothing is guessed: no handle is ever built from a company's name.

How often, and history

A check runs every day at 04:40 UTC and reads about a 28th of the sites (the ones checked longest ago, and any company the registry added since the day before), so each company is re-checked about once a month. A link the site stops linking turns No longer linked for one check, and is removed if it is still gone the next time. A site that cannot be read changes nothing. Every change is kept in an append-only history on the Changes page and at /api/changes, so handle renames can be followed.

The last check

281 sites read with official channels found, 24 read with none found (often because the page builds its links in the browser), 36 refused automated reads, 8 disallowed by robots.txt, 15 did not answer, 8 now redirect to another company, and 194 have no website on file.

About this data

Links from each company's own website, read daily in turns so each company is re-checked about once a month. Verified means the site links the account, or the account links back; unverified ones are marked. The list grows as companies join the companies.fru.dev registry. Accounts can change hands, so check before you rely on one. Logos via logo.dev; trademarks belong to their owners.

Data

JSON at /api/companies and /api/changes, plain text at /llms-full.txt. For AI agents: /agents and /openapi.json.