What is nofollow?
Nofollow is a value added to a link's rel attribute: <a href="..." rel="nofollow">. It was introduced in 2005 to fight comment spam, giving sites a way to allow user-posted links without those links lending any ranking value. It grew into a general-purpose label for links a site did not want to endorse: paid placements, untrusted sources, anything where the link exists for readers but not as a vote. In 2019 Google added two more specific attributes, sponsored for paid links and ugc for user-generated content, and announced it would treat all three as hints rather than strict instructions.
Nofollow can also be applied to a whole page through the robots meta tag, where it tells crawlers not to follow any link on the page. That page-level form is blunt and rarely the right choice; the per-link attribute is the one that does the daily work.
Why it matters
Why nofollow matters
Because it is how a site stays honest about which links are endorsements. Search engines treat a followed link as a recommendation, and recommendations that were bought or that came from an anonymous commenter are not recommendations. Marking them keeps the site within Google's link policies and protects it from being associated with wherever the link goes. Without the attribute, a paid link that passes value is a link scheme.
It also matters on the receiving end. A nofollow link from a major publication still sends readers and still builds visibility, and Google has said it may count such links in some cases. Treating nofollow links as worthless undervalues most of the press a brand will ever get.
In practice
How nofollow works in practice
- 01
Apply it where the policy requires. Paid links and sponsorships get rel="sponsored" (nofollow also satisfies the rule). Links posted by users in comments, forums and profiles get rel="ugc". Links to sources you cannot or do not want to vouch for get rel="nofollow". Editorial links to sources you cite and recommend stay followed. Most content management systems let you set this per link, and comment systems usually apply ugc automatically.
- 02
Audit occasionally. A site-wide nofollow on all external links, which some plugins apply by default, makes a site look like it endorses nothing and withholds credit from sources it should credit. Internal links should never be nofollow. On the inbound side, do not let a nofollow label stop you from valuing a link: look at the readers it sends and the publication that gave it.
Watch out
What people get wrong about nofollow
Nofollowing everything. Blanket nofollow on outbound links does not "hoard" link equity; Google has said that equity is simply dropped rather than kept, and the site looks like it trusts no one. The other mistake is using nofollow on internal links to sculpt how authority flows, a tactic that stopped working in 2009.
The third is assuming nofollow guarantees nothing passes. Since 2019 it is a hint, and engines may still count a link they consider valuable.
