Nofollow

Nofollow is a link attribute — rel="nofollow" — that tells search engines you don't vouch for the page you're linking to. Get it wrong in either direction and it costs you: nofollow a link that should count and you throw away equity you earned; leave a paid link followed and you're violating Google's spam policies with your name on it.

In the HTML it looks like this:

<a href="https://example.com/some-page/" rel="nofollow">anchor text</a>

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft introduced the attribute together in January 2005, mainly to kill the incentive behind blog comment spam. For fourteen years it worked as a hard directive: nofollowed links passed no PageRank, full stop. Then 2019 happened.

The 2019 shift: from directive to hint

In September 2019 Google announced two changes that most link-building advice still hasn't caught up with:

• Two new attributes: rel="sponsored" for paid and affiliate links, and rel="ugc" for user-generated content like comments and forum posts.
• All three attributes became hints rather than directives — for ranking immediately, and for crawling and indexing from March 1, 2020.

"Hint" means Google decides for itself whether to count the link. A nofollowed link from a major news site probably carries some weight now. A nofollowed link from a spammy comment section carries none, exactly as before. You no longer get to declare the outcome; you only get to state your relationship to the link.

Two practical notes: the values can be combined (rel="ugc nofollow" is valid), and Google has said there's no need to retrofit old paid links from nofollow to sponsored. Don't burn a sprint on that migration — it buys you nothing.

How to check whether a link is nofollowed

1. View source or DevTools. Right-click the link, Inspect, and read the rel attribute on the <a> tag. No rel, or a rel without nofollow/sponsored/ugc, means it's a followed link.
2. Check the page-level directive too. A <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> in the head nofollows every link on the page, even ones that look clean in the HTML.
3. Bulk-check your own site. Crawl it with Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) and filter internal links by rel attribute. Nofollowed internal links are almost always a mistake worth fixing — our check on pages with only nofollow links covers why.
4. Bulk-check your backlinks. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free for verified sites) and Moz Link Explorer both flag nofollow on every reported link, so you can see the followed/nofollowed split of your whole profile.

Common mistakes

• Nofollowing internal links to "sculpt" PageRank. This has been dead since 2009 — the equity assigned to a nofollowed internal link evaporates rather than flowing to your other links. Fix: remove rel attributes from internal links entirely; see internal link sculpting without the nofollow myths.
• Blanket-nofollowing every external link. Linking out to good sources is normal editorial behavior, and hoarding equity this way signals nothing except paranoia. Fix: follow links you'd cite in print; reserve nofollow for links you genuinely don't vouch for.
• Leaving paid or affiliate links followed. This is the actual policy violation that earns manual actions. Fix: audit affiliate templates and sponsor placements; mark them sponsored (or nofollow).
• Refusing links because they're nofollowed. A nofollow link from a site your customers read is worth more than a followed link from a site nobody reads. Fix: judge links by the audience first, the attribute second.
• Forgetting UGC areas. Open comments or forums with followed links will attract spam within days. Fix: default all user-submitted links to rel="ugc".

Frequently asked questions

Do nofollow links help SEO at all?

Sometimes, and nobody outside Google can tell you when. Under the hint model a nofollow link can be counted. Even when it isn't, it drives traffic and brand exposure that leads to followed links. Treat strong nofollow links as assets, just not as guaranteed equity.

Should I use nofollow or sponsored for paid links?

Sponsored is the label Google asked for, so use it on anything new. Existing paid links marked nofollow are fine as-is — Google explicitly said switching isn't required.

What happens if I use rel="dofollow"?

Nothing. It's not a real value — browsers and search engines ignore it. A link is followed simply by not having nofollow, sponsored or ugc, as explained on our dofollow page.

Does nofollow stop Google from indexing the linked page?

Not reliably, and it never really did — Google can find the page through any other path. If you need a page out of the index, use noindex on that page; nofollow on links pointing to it is the wrong tool.

How much of a backlink profile is normally nofollowed?

Every healthy profile has a meaningful nofollow share, because directories, social platforms, Wikipedia and most big publishers nofollow by default. A profile with zero nofollow links looks stranger than one with plenty.