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

Claim: The tools that earn the most links produce a public, quotable number other writers need to cite (e.g., a salary benchmark, an industry average, a public formula output), not a private personal answer (e.g., your take-home pay, your custom config). A take-home-pay or per-user pricing widget is genuinely useful but produces nothing a writer would quote, so it earns few links.

Source: Synthesis from Ahrefs / Moz practitioner literature.

Confidence: Industry-consensus.

Why this matters for Candid: THE practical filter that distinguishes link-magnet tools from "useful but un-linkable" tools. Anchors R4 — When SEO is part of the case, build for CITATION not just utility — the public quotable number earns the links; the private personal answer does not. Pair the design discipline with Dichter (1966), Harvard Business Review — ~64% of sharing is about the sharer's self-presentation; foundational framing for self-enhancement / social currency (sharers cite numbers that make them look in-the-know).