How links are verified

Which companies

Every published company in the companies.fru.dev registry, the shared company list behind every Glyph site. 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.

Many accounts, and public counts

A company can have several official accounts on one platform: more than one YouTube channel, several GitHub organizations, regional or product pages. A deeper discovery also reads the company's about, community, developer and press pages, checks whether an account links back to the company's domain (a YouTube channel's description, a GitHub organization's website field, a Bluesky domain handle), and follows the accounts a verified account lists itself (a channel's featured channels) when they name the company or link back. A GitHub organization found by GitHub's search counts only when GitHub verifies its domain or the page its website field points to links it back. Every account shows how it was confirmed.

Follower counts are read only where the platform publishes them openly and allows reading: YouTube subscribers and videos from the public channel page (as YouTube rounds them), GitHub followers, public repositories and stars from GitHub's public API, and Bluesky and Mastodon followers and posts from their public APIs. They are stored once a week and never overwritten, so growth shows over time. X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Threads keep counts behind a login or forbid automated reading, and Reddit's robots.txt disallows reading, so those are links only. Compare puts two to four companies side by side.

How often, and history

A check runs every Tuesday at 04:40 UTC and reads about a quarter of the sites, eight at a time: companies new to the registry first, then the ones checked longest ago, so each company is re-checked about once a month. A read that finds under half the links on file is held and unlinks nothing. 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

1497 sites read with official channels found, 115 read with none found (often because the page builds its links in the browser), 182 refused automated reads, 20 disallowed by robots.txt, 116 did not answer, 52 now redirect to another company, and 79 have no website on file.

About this data

Links from each company's own website, read weekly in turns. Verified means the site links the account, or the account links back; unverified ones are marked. Follower counts only where the platform publishes them openly (YouTube, GitHub, Bluesky, Mastodon), read weekly; X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Threads are link only. The list grows as companies join the companies.fru.dev registry. Accounts can change hands, so check before you rely on one. Logos via /api/logo; trademarks belong to their owners. Anonymous usage stats via Google Analytics.

Questions

What does Verified mean?

A link is Verified when the company's own website links to it (its footer, its contact or community page, or the list of profiles the site publishes for search engines), or when the account's public profile links back to the company's domain, as GitHub organizations and Bluesky domain handles do. Every verified link shows the page that proves it and the date it was checked.

Why are some links Unverified?

They are listed by the companies.fru.dev registry but the company's site does not link them where it could be read, and the platform does not show a link back without a login (X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook profiles need one). Unverified links are shown muted. Nothing is guessed: no handle is made up from a company name.

Which companies are covered?

Every published company in the companies.fru.dev registry: AI labs, data and developer tools, cloud, semiconductors, security and the other companies the fru.dev directories track. A company without a website on file is listed without verified links until it has one.

How often is it checked?

Every company's site is read about once a month, a quarter of them each Tuesday, politely: robots.txt first, then the homepage and at most two contact or community pages it links. When a handle changes, the old and new link are kept in an append-only history, so renames are easy to follow.

Data

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