Explore the independent web

The last few years have seen another renaissance of writing online as newsletters have made blogging cool again. It's exciting.

It's also created a discovery problem.

Google search is making it harder than ever before to find anything. Social media algorithms reward the loud rather than the nuanced. Closed publishing platforms keep everything inside their proprietary apps. How do you find independent voices out there on the open web?

Until recently, we didn't have a good answer. Now, we do!

We've built a brand new discovery engine for indie publications, powered by Ghost.

Ghost Explore

One of the interesting quirks of distributed software like Ghost is that discovery is really challenging. Every Ghost install is a separate website running... somewhere out there in the world. But where?

For a while we tried to curate recommendations with a manual directory, but now we have a brand new service that brings the best Ghost publishers on the web all together in a single location: https://explore.ghost.org

We built this as a new distribution channel to showcase independent publishers and help them grow, by putting your work in front of a new audience and promoting it across Ghost.org.

All this is powered by a new growth setting in your admin panel, added in Ghost 6.0, which adds your site to the Explore discovery engine.

By default, only public data is listed (like your site URL, title, description, etc) — but if you're happy to share your growth metrics (optional), then the Explore algorithm is able to use that to rank your site even higher within the engine.

The biggest challenge for us building Ghost Explore was how to rank tens of thousands of websites in some way that makes sense. How do you figure out which sites are high-quality and popular, vs which aren't?

To solve that, we turned to our friends at ahrefs.

If you're familiar with the world of Search Engine Optimization, you already know ahrefs. They are, by far, the leading platform for tracking search ranking and AI discoverability on the web — and ahrefs data makes up the very core of the Ghost Explore ranking algorithm, which makes it all possible.

We tried... many... unsuccessful approaches to ranking independent Ghost sites before, and nothing came close to the quality of ahrefs data.

Featuring your testimonials

As an added bonus, you can also send us a testimonial about your experience with Ghost and — if you do — we'll feature the testimonial on your Explore profile, as well as throughout the Ghost.org official website with your logo and a link to your site.

We've been blown away by the hundreds of wonderful testimonials already submitted by Ghost users from all over the world. Any time we're feeling a little low on motivation, the Ghost Love page is a real nice pick-me-up.

Explore the Social Web

In Ghost 6.0 we launched native support for a new distribution channel in Ghost, called the social web. This allows you to turn your Ghost publication into a networked profile that can be followed and subscribed to by millions of people across Threads, Mastodon, Flipboard, Bluesky, WordPress, and many, many more.

It's amazing technology but, like any network, it's hard to get started when you're not sure who to follow or how to find them.

This week we shipped a dedicated Social Web category in Ghost Explore that allows people to find all the independent Ghost publications and newsletters out there on the Fediverse.

We've also added Ghost Explore data into the social web features inside Ghost Admin, so now it's easier than ever to discover your next favorite writer.

Head over to the network tab in Ghost to surf the social web!

Ghost Explore helps readers discover publishers they might never find through Google or social media. It rewards creators who invest in quality and consistency over those who reach for controversy and clickbait.

There's a big, wide, wonderful web out there — with so many amazing things to discover, whether you're looking for the latest viral recipes from Alison Roman...

Independent news from The Stanford Review...

Or the best new music picks from the team that brought you Pitchfork...

Ghost is home to an enormous number of incredible websites, and we're thrilled to now be able to play a small part in helping more people discover them.

Ghost Explore is available in all versions of Ghost from 6.0 and up — there's nothing you need to do in order to enable it, but if you'd prefer not to be listed you can always toggle off the Explore setting in Ghost Admin. Sites that run in private mode or on private networks are automatically excluded.