Only Nofollow Links

What Is This Issue?

This check fires when every outbound link on a page carries the rel="nofollow" attribute. Nofollow is a signal to search engines that you do not vouch for the destination and do not want ranking credit, sometimes called link equity or PageRank, to flow through that link. When a page links out only through nofollowed links, it passes no authority to anything it references. On an internal page that links to your own pricing, product, or category URLs, that is almost always a mistake: you are throttling the ranking signals your own site relies on.

The attribute itself is valid HTML and has legitimate uses. The problem the check surfaces is scope. A single nofollow on a paid placement is correct. A whole page where the navigation, body links, and footer are all nofollow means the page becomes a dead end for authority, and often a crawl dead end too.

Why This Matters for Rankings

Search engines discover and score pages partly through the links between them. Internal links spread authority from strong pages, such as your homepage or a popular guide, to deeper pages that need help ranking. When those internal links are nofollowed, three things happen. First, the destination pages receive no share of the linking page's authority. Second, crawlers that lean on links for discovery may reach those URLs later or less often. Third, any deliberate internal linking strategy, moving equity toward money pages, is silently cancelled.

External nofollow is less damaging but still worth reviewing. If you nofollow a genuinely useful, authoritative resource you cite, you lose the small trust signal that outbound relevance can provide, and you gain nothing in return unless the link is paid or untrusted.

The rel Attribute Values You Should Know

Google split the old single nofollow into a small family of link relationships. Using the right one keeps you compliant and preserves equity where you want it.

You can combine values, for example rel="sponsored nofollow", when a link is both paid and untrusted. What you should not do is blanket every link on a template with nofollow.

How to Detect Nofollow-Only Pages

Crawl the site with Screaming Frog, then open the Outlinks tab or export All Outlinks. Filter the Link Position and Follow columns: any internal target where every inbound internal link shows Follow = False is a candidate. In the Inlinks report, sort by follow status to find URLs that receive only nofollowed internal links. You can also spot-check in the browser by viewing source and searching for rel="nofollow" across the navigation and body.

1. Run a full crawl and export All Outlinks to a spreadsheet.
2. Filter for internal links where Follow equals False.
3. Group by destination URL and flag any that never receive a followed internal link.
4. Confirm in the page source that the nofollow is intentional, not a template default.

How to Fix

1. Remove rel="nofollow" from all internal links that point to your own indexable pages.
2. Audit templates, navigation menus, and plugins that may inject nofollow globally.
3. Switch paid or affiliate links to rel="sponsored" and user submitted links to rel="ugc".
4. Leave genuine external links followed unless there is a specific trust or payment reason not to.
5. Recrawl to confirm destination pages now receive at least one followed internal link.

When Nofollow Is the Right Choice

Nofollow is not something to eliminate, only to apply precisely. Use it for links you were paid to place, links inside user generated areas you cannot moderate, and links to pages you do not trust or do not want associated with your site. In those cases the correct modern attributes are sponsored and ugc, which tell search engines exactly why the link is qualified. The rule of thumb: nofollow protects you from vouching for something, so never point it at your own content.

What Has Changed Since 2019

For roughly fifteen years nofollow was a strict directive that blocked PageRank flow entirely. In September 2019 Google introduced rel="sponsored" and rel="ugc" and announced that all three values would be treated as hints for ranking purposes, with the change taking full effect through 2020. In practice Google may now choose to consider a nofollowed link for crawling and indexing signals, though it still will not be counted as an endorsement. This does not change the guidance for this check: keep your internal links followed so the intended equity flow is unambiguous.

Related reading on SEO ProCheck: the full link checks library, the nofollow definition in our glossary, and the accessibility guide to links that must have discernible text.

Frequently Asked Questions