What Is a Nofollow Link?
A nofollow link is a hyperlink marked with an attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking credit to the page it points to. It’s the specific type of link created by adding a nofollow tag to the HTML.
Example
Most blog comment sections automatically add rel=”nofollow” to any links users post, since site owners can’t vouch for the quality or trustworthiness of user-submitted links. In code, it looks like this: <a href="example.com" rel="nofollow">.
From Directive to Hint: How Google’s Treatment Changed
Nofollow used to be a strict directive: Google would not follow the link or pass any ranking value, full stop. That changed on March 1, 2020. Google now treats nofollow as a hint rather than a rule, meaning it may still crawl the link and, in some cases, factor it into ranking anyway. In practice, most nofollow links still won’t meaningfully help a page rank, but the guarantee that they can’t is gone.
Nofollow vs. Sponsored vs. UGC
Alongside the 2020 change, Google introduced two more specific attributes so site owners could describe why a link shouldn’t pass full credit:
- rel=”sponsored”: for paid links and advertisements
- rel=”ugc”: for user-generated content, like comments and forum posts
- rel=”nofollow”: the general-purpose option, for any link you don’t want to vouch for or don’t want crawled
All three are treated as hints, and they can be combined, for example rel="nofollow sponsored" on a paid link you also don’t want crawled.
When to Use a Nofollow Link
Nofollow (or the more specific sponsored/ugc tags) belongs on: paid links and advertisements, comment and forum links you don’t personally vouch for, widget or embed links, and any outbound link to a source you’re citing but don’t want to pass authority to. Google’s guidelines explicitly require sponsored or nofollow tags on paid links; leaving them as a regular dofollow link is treated as a link scheme violation and, at scale, can contribute to a toxic backlink pattern that eventually needs a disavow to clean up.
Does Nofollow Still Matter for SEO?
Yes, in two ways that have nothing to do with passing direct ranking credit. First, a natural backlink profile includes a mix of nofollow and dofollow links; a profile that’s entirely dofollow can look manipulated. Second, nofollow links still drive real referral traffic and brand visibility, and since Google now treats the attribute as a hint rather than an absolute block, some nofollow links may carry more residual signal than site owners assume.
Common Nofollow Mistakes
- Nofollowing internal links by accident, which blocks internal link equity from flowing to your own pages
- Applying nofollow site-wide through a misconfigured plugin, stripping value from legitimate outbound citations
- Leaving paid or sponsored placements as regular dofollow links instead of tagging them, which risks a manual action
FAQ
Should I nofollow all outbound links on my site?
No. Nofollowing every external link looks unnatural and denies credit to sources you’re legitimately citing. Reserve it for paid links, unvetted user content, and links you genuinely don’t want to endorse.
Does a nofollow link ever pass any SEO value?
Since 2020, Google has said it may use nofollow links as a signal in some cases, since the attribute is now a hint rather than a hard rule. It’s not something to plan a strategy around, but it means “nofollow links are worthless” is no longer entirely accurate.
What’s the difference between nofollow and a noindex tag?
Nofollow applies to a specific link and controls whether credit passes to the linked page. A noindex tag applies to an entire page and tells search engines not to include that page in results at all. They solve different problems.