URL Receives Both Follow and Nofollow Internal Links: How to Fix It

What this check flags

This audit hint fires when a single URL on your site receives a mix of internal links: at least one normal, followed link and at least one link marked with rel="nofollow". In other words, on one template or page you link to the URL cleanly, and somewhere else you link to the very same URL while telling search engines not to pass signals through that link.

Crawlers like Sitebulb surface this because it is almost never a deliberate choice. When a page's status depends on which link a bot happens to follow, something in your templates or plugins is misconfigured.

Why mixed follow and nofollow internal links are a problem

First, the signals are inconsistent. Internal links are one of the strongest ways you tell search engines which pages matter. A followed link says "crawl this, it is important." A nofollow link says "I do not vouch for this destination." Saying both about the same URL muddies your architecture and makes your intent harder to interpret.

Second, the nofollow half of the equation achieves nothing. In September 2019 Google announced that rel="nofollow" would be treated as a hint rather than a directive for ranking, and from March 1, 2020 it became a hint for crawling and indexing as well. Google may choose to crawl and index a nofollowed URL anyway, especially when other followed links point at it. So the mixed state does not even reliably block anything; it just adds noise.

Third, you may be quietly wasting link equity. Google changed how nofollow handles PageRank back in 2009: equity assigned to a nofollowed link is not redistributed to your other links, it simply evaporates. Every internal nofollow on your own pages potentially throws away value that a normal link would have passed.

In practice, these mixed signals are usually template accidents. One menu, widget, or plugin adds nofollow to a batch of links while the rest of the site links normally, and the conflict multiplies across every page that uses that template.

Where it comes from

Plugins and themes that add nofollow automatically

SEO plugins, link managers, and some themes have settings that apply rel="nofollow" to whole categories of links: footer links, image links, links containing certain words, or anything the plugin thinks is "external" but is actually internal. One toggle can nofollow thousands of internal links overnight.

User generated areas

Comment sections, forums, and review widgets commonly nofollow every link they output, which is sensible for links to other sites. But when a commenter or the template itself links to one of your own pages, that internal link gets nofollowed too, while your navigation links to the same page normally.

Leftover PageRank sculpting

Years ago some SEOs nofollowed links to login, cart, privacy, and contact pages to funnel PageRank toward money pages. Google killed this technique in 2009, yet the markup survives in old themes and hand edited templates. If your site still carries sculpting era nofollows, they are pure legacy debt.

How to diagnose

Start from the crawl report. For each flagged URL, your crawler can list all incoming internal links and show which ones carry nofollow. Look at the linking pages and identify the pattern: is it one template element (a footer, a sidebar, a related posts block), one plugin, or one section of the site such as comments?

Then confirm in the source. Open a linking page, view the rendered HTML, and search for the target URL. A problematic link looks like this:

<!-- Bad: internal link with nofollow -->
<a href="/services/seo-audit/" rel="nofollow">SEO Audit</a>

<!-- Good: clean internal link -->
<a href="/services/seo-audit/">SEO Audit</a>

Check both the raw HTML and the rendered DOM, since some plugins and scripts inject rel attributes with JavaScript after the page loads. Finally, group your findings: a handful of source templates usually explains hundreds of flagged URLs.

How to fix

The fix is conceptually simple: remove rel="nofollow" from internal links pointing at any page you want crawled, indexed, and ranked. Work through it in this order:

1. Fix the template, not the page. If a footer or widget adds the nofollow, one template change clears the issue sitewide. 2. Audit plugin settings. Disable any option that nofollows internal links in bulk, and make sure "external link" rules are not matching your own domain. 3. Clean up hand placed nofollows in old content with a careful search and replace, reviewing each match. 4. Re-crawl and confirm the hint count drops to zero or only to URLs you deliberately chose.

Reserve nofollow for the few genuine internal cases, and even then prefer stronger tools. If you do not want a page indexed, use a noindex robots meta tag; if you do not want it crawled at all, use robots.txt. Nofollow on internal links is rarely the right instrument, because Google treats it only as a hint.

Common mistakes

Resolving the conflict in the wrong direction by adding nofollow to the remaining followed links, which only deepens the problem. Trying to save crawl budget by nofollowing faceted or parameter URLs while other templates still link to them normally. Forgetting that nofollow does not prevent indexing, then wondering why a "blocked" page ranks. And fixing the raw HTML while a script keeps re-adding the attribute in the rendered DOM.

FAQ