Ahrefs (Hardwick, 2018/2020) — "online tools and calculators have the potential to attract a LOT of links" because they solve a problem people are already talking about, making linking to your tool a natural next step

Claim: Joshua Hardwick, Ahrefs Blog, "6 Linkable Asset Types" (2018, updated Nov 5, 2020): "Online tools and calculators have the potential to attract a LOT of links (and I do mean a lot)," because they "solve a genuine problem that people are already talking about — thus making the addition of a link to the solution (i.e., your tool) a natural next-step."

Source: ahrefs.com/blog 6-linkable-asset-types.

Confidence: Industry-consensus.

Caveat: Ahrefs sells a backlink index / SEO subscriptions; numbers in the article come from its own crawler.

Why this matters for Candid: Pair with Named-tool backlink magnitudes (Ahrefs-indexed, directional): CoSchedule Headline Analyzer 16K+/3.6K+; Coolors 154K+/5K+; ABV calc 2.3K/190+; Adobe Shortcut Mapper 280+/130+; Ahrefs free backlink checker 1M+ for the magnitudes and Citability caveat: tools with PUBLIC, QUOTABLE outputs (salary benchmarks, public averages) earn the most links; tools with PRIVATE personal outputs (your take-home pay) earn few for the discipline that distinguishes link-magnet tools from "useful but un-citable" tools.