If you’ve ever tried to get your business mentioned in a news article, blog post, or industry publication, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Help A Reporter Out, or better known as HARO. For years, this platform has provided business owners with a straightforward way to connect with journalists seeking expert quotes. It was free, easy to use, and loved by marketers, often leading to meaningful media coverage that helped with SEO.
In 2025, HARO entered a new chapter. Featured.com (formerly known as Terkel), a company specializing in connecting experts with media outlets, acquired HARO from its previous owner, Cision. The change came shortly after Cision announced plans to shut down the platform, as its transition to Connectively had not worked out. Now, HARO is back, rebuilt and rebranded by Featured, with a renewed mission to help business owners and journalists find each other more easily.
So what does this mean for you as a business owner? Should HARO still be part of your SEO strategy? Will the new platform work the same way? And how can this help you grow your business?
Why HARO Mattered to Marketers in the First Place
For many small and mid-sized businesses, getting media coverage has always felt like an uphill battle. You can hire a PR agency, but that’s expensive. You can try cold-pitching reporters, but that’s time-consuming and often ineffective.
HARO solved that problem by flipping the script. Instead of businesses chasing down journalists, it allowed journalists come to you. Every weekday, users would receive an email with a list of questions from journalists at real publications. If you had a helpful answer or insight, you could reply. If the journalist liked what you had to say, your quote, and sometimes your business name, title, and website, would be featured in their article.
That kind of exposure was incredibly valuable. A quote in a major publication helped build your reputation. It signaled to customers that you were a trusted voice in your industry. And it gave your business more visibility in search engines by associating your name with highly regarded websites, which Google loved. While using HARO, we successfully landed clients links from major publications like GoDaddy, Volusion, Realtor, Upcity, and countless more.
But when Cision acquired HARO and later shifted its focus to other platforms, many users felt the service had lost its original spark. Response rates dropped. Query quality declined. Publishers weren’t as active. And eventually, the platform was rebranded as Connectively before being put on pause altogether.
That’s where Featured stepped in last month.
Who Is Featured, and Why Did They Buy HARO?
Featured.com is a platform with a similar mission to HARO: helping experts get featured in media outlets. The company has already run a successful expert contribution model, where professionals could be quoted in curated, roundup-style articles published on partner websites.
When HARO was no longer being supported, Featured saw an opportunity to revive it. In April 2025, they officially acquired the HARO brand and domain from Cision. According to Featured CEO Brett Farmiloe, the goal is to get back to what made HARO great—namely, connecting real people with real journalists.
This wasn’t just a brand move. Featured believes that in today’s environment, where artificial intelligence is generating a lot of the content online, real voices and real stories matter more than ever. Their plan is to revive HARO with that focus front and center.
What This Means for Business Owners & Marketers Looking for Exposure
For business owners who want to build visibility and earn trust with potential customers, this is good news. HARO is back in the hands of a company that understands its value—and wants to make it work for you again.
So what will it look like going forward?
First, you can expect HARO to remain free. Like the original version, the new HARO will send out daily emails with requests from journalists. If you see a question you can answer, something in your area of experience, you can submit a thoughtful response. If the journalist uses it, you and your business could be mentioned in their article.
Second, the new version of HARO will be more curated. That means the questions you see will be more relevant and better targeted. This helps save time and increases the chance of your response being selected. Featured is also emphasizing quality, so journalists will likely see better submissions and be more inclined to trust the platform again.
Third, this is an opportunity to stand out. As the new HARO rebuilds its network of experts and journalists, early users who take it seriously will have a greater chance of getting quoted. If you’ve ever wanted to be featured in a well-known publication, now may be one of the best times to get started.
How to Use HARO the Right Way
Using HARO successfully isn’t complicated, but it does require some intention.
When you see a request from a journalist, don’t just respond with a sales pitch. Instead, think about what would actually be helpful for their story. Share your personal insights, your real experiences, or a piece of practical advice. If you run a pool leak detection service and a journalist is writing about common homeowner mistakes, offer a short story about a time someone turned a minor pool leak into a major repair bill. If you own a bakery and the topic is about small business resilience, talk about how you adapted during slow seasons.
These are the kinds of responses journalists are looking for—real, grounded, and informative. And when you give them that, there’s a good chance they’ll quote you. That quote may end up on a highly respected website or in an industry publication, giving your business more visibility and helping to build your reputation.
Does Getting Quoted Really Help Grow Your Business?
Yes! And not just in one way.
Being quoted in an article can increase your credibility with customers. It shows that you’re not just claiming to be an expert; others recognize your experience too. If a journalist at a respected outlet thinks your insight is worth sharing, that’s a powerful endorsement.
It also helps your business get found online. When your name and your company are mentioned in articles across the web, especially on websites that are widely read or considered trustworthy, it can lead to more traffic to your website and more people discovering what you do. This is one of the reasons many marketers and agencies, like us, have used HARO in the past: the links back to your website carry real value in helping it appear in search engines.
But even if you don’t care much about Google rankings, the benefits are still real. People often search for your name or your company when they hear about you. If what they find includes published articles where you’re the expert being quoted, they’re more likely to trust you and to become customers.
What to Expect Moving Forward
The transition to Featured’s version of HARO isn’t just about changing hands. It’s about restoring something that was valuable for thousands of business owners and making it work better in today’s media environment.
Featured has already indicated that they’ll be focusing on real stories, real experts, and better tools to help journalists find those experts more easily. For you, that means there’s a renewed opportunity to get your voice out there.
If you’ve never used HARO before, this is a great time to start. And if you were once active but stopped when the platform declined, now’s the time to take another look.
You can visit helpareporter.com to sign up for free and start receiving opportunities straight to your inbox.
Final Thoughts About Featured’s Acquisition of HARO
There’s no shortage of marketing channels these days, but most of them cost money or take a lot of time to get off the ground. HARO has always been a rare exception—a free, low-barrier way to get your story and brand in front of more people. Now, thanks to Featured’s acquisition and renewed vision, the platform is poised to become valuable again for marketers and business owners who want exposure, credibility, and real media coverage.
With that said, consistently watching and responding to HARO queries takes time, strategy, and follow-through. Not every pitch gets selected, and the best responses often come from those who understand how to write for journalists and identify the right opportunities. This is exactly why many brands turn to SEO agencies like us to manage the process. It’s not just about finding a journalist’s question; it’s about crafting a thoughtful, timely response that gets you noticed and earns you a link.
If your company doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to monitor HARO queries, filter the right opportunities, and write compelling answers, this is the kind of work we can help with. With the right support, we can turn these opportunities for your brand into real results—media features, brand visibility, and long-lasting authority online. Let’s get started with a conversation today.
