Has Nofollow Internal Outgoing Links: Why to Remove Them

What nofollow on internal links flags, and why it matters

This check fires when a page links to another page on your own domain using rel="nofollow". Nofollow tells Google not to pass ranking signals across that link — which makes sense for untrusted external content, but on your own internal links it means you are voluntarily choking the equity flowing through your own site.

The habit is a fossil of "PageRank sculpting," a mid-2000s tactic that stopped working the way people believed after Google changed how nofollow is handled. Today nofollowing your internal links does not concentrate equity anywhere useful; it just leaks it into a dead end and can slow how Google discovers and values the pages you nofollowed.

A real failing example, and the fix

The pattern usually hides in a template or a plugin that blanket-adds nofollow to categories of links — here a "sculpting" rule that nofollows every link to login, cart, or tag pages:

<!-- Fails the check: nofollow on your own internal links -->
<a href="/guides/on-page-seo/" rel="nofollow">On-page SEO guide</a>
<a href="/blog/category/technical/" rel="nofollow">Technical posts</a>

Unless there is a real reason to withhold trust from your own page, drop the attribute so the link is followed normally:

<!-- Passes: internal links are followed, equity flows -->
<a href="/guides/on-page-seo/">On-page SEO guide</a>
<a href="/blog/category/technical/">Technical posts</a>

If your real goal is to keep Google out of a thin utility page like a login or faceted-filter URL, nofollow is the wrong tool anyway — use robots.txt to block crawling or noindex to keep it out of the index. Nofollow on an internal link neither blocks crawling reliably nor recovers the equity.

Nofollow internal vs. the tools that actually do the job

How to detect it

1. Screaming Frog. Use Bulk Export → Links → All Outlinks, then filter where Link Position is content, Follow equals False, and the destination is on your own domain. That isolates every internal nofollowed link in one export.
2. DevTools on the rendered page. Run [...document.querySelectorAll('a[rel~="nofollow"]')].filter(a => a.hostname === location.hostname) in the Console to list nofollowed links that point back to your own host.
3. Command line spot check. curl -s https://example.com/page/ | grep -oE '<a [^>]*rel="[^"]*nofollow[^"]*"[^>]*' surfaces the nofollowed anchors so you can see which internal URLs are affected.
4. Google Search Console. Nofollowed internal links can leave target pages under-linked in Google's eyes; watch for those URLs showing weak or absent internal-link counts in the Links report, or lingering in Discovered – currently not indexed.

How to fix it

1. Export every internal nofollowed link and group them by cause — usually one plugin setting, one theme rule, or a copy-paste habit.
2. For links to real content you want ranked, remove rel="nofollow" so the link is followed.
3. For utility URLs you genuinely want kept private (login, cart, endless filter combinations), switch to the correct tool: noindex to keep them out of search, or a robots.txt disallow to stop crawling.
4. Check plugin defaults — some SEO and security plugins nofollow whole link categories automatically. Turn that off for internal destinations.
5. Re-crawl and confirm the internal nofollow count drops to zero for content links.

FAQ

Does nofollow still "sculpt" PageRank across my site?

No. After Google changed how nofollow is treated, the equity assigned to a nofollowed link no longer gets redistributed to your other links — it evaporates. Sculpting by nofollowing internal links leaks equity instead of concentrating it.

Are there any internal links I should nofollow?

Almost none within your own trusted content. The rare edge case is user-generated internal content you cannot vouch for, but even then a crawl or index directive is usually the better control.

Is a nofollowed internal link the same as a broken link?

No. The link still works for users and the URL is valid. The issue is purely that you are telling search engines not to pass ranking signals through a link you fully control.

How do I stop Google indexing a login or filter page instead?

Use noindex on the page to keep it out of search results, or block the pattern in robots.txt to stop crawling. Both do the job nofollow was never designed to do.

Will removing internal nofollows change my rankings overnight?

Not overnight. You are restoring normal equity flow, so improvements show up gradually as Google recrawls and re-weights the newly followed links. It is a cleanup that compounds, not a switch.

Related checks and reading

• Only Nofollow Internal Links — the severe case where every internal link to a page is nofollowed.
• Internal Link Sculpting in 2026: PageRank Flow Without the Nofollow Myths — why the sculpting playbook stopped working.
• Nofollow — what the attribute actually signals to search engines.
• Link Equity — the value nofollow blocks from flowing.