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What Is a Nofollow Link?
A nofollow link is a hyperlink that carries an HTML attribute telling search engines the publisher doesn't want to vouch for, or pass ranking credit to, the destination page. In...
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A nofollow link is a hyperlink that carries an HTML attribute telling search engines the publisher doesn’t want to vouch for, or pass ranking credit to, the destination page. In practice it looks like this in the source code:
<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">example</a>The attribute itself is invisible to a normal site visitor. The link looks and behaves exactly like any other clickable link in the browser. The only difference is the instruction embedded in the markup, aimed at crawlers rather than people.
Where Nofollow Came From
Google, along with Yahoo and what was then MSN Search, introduced the rel="nofollow" attribute in 2005 as a joint response to comment spam. At the time, blog comment sections, forums, and guestbooks were being flooded with links purely to manipulate search rankings, since any link from a crawled page could pass ranking value to its target. Tagging those links as nofollow gave publishers a way to host user contributions without that risk.
For roughly 14 years, Google treated nofollow as a directive: a flagged link would not pass PageRank, would not be crawled on the strength of that specific link, and would not be used as a ranking signal, full stop. That started changing with Google’s September 10, 2019 announcement, which said rel="nofollow", along with two new attribute values, would move from a strict directive to a hint that Google’s systems could choose to factor in (Google Search Central Blog, September 10, 2019). The change actually rolled out in two stages. The ranking-hint treatment applied from the announcement date, but Google held back the crawling and indexing side separately, stating that nofollow would become a hint “for crawling and indexing purposes” only as of March 1, 2020. Before that date, a nofollowed link still reliably stopped Google from crawling a page through that specific link; after it, Google could choose to crawl and index a nofollowed destination even without help from some other, unflagged link pointing at the same URL, though it still generally won’t pass ranking credit by default.
That same announcement introduced two additional, more specific attribute values:
rel="sponsored", for links that exist because of advertising, sponsorships, or any paid or compensated arrangementrel="ugc", for links inside user-generated content such as comments, forum posts, and reviews
Google’s current documentation confirms rel="nofollow" is still valid as a general-purpose qualifier for links a site doesn’t want to vouch for, and that all three values, nofollow, sponsored, and ugc, can be combined when more than one applies, for example rel="ugc nofollow" (Google Search Central: Qualify Outbound Links).
The Three Link Attributes at a Glance
| Attribute | Primary use case | Typical scenario |
|---|---|---|
| <!–INLINECODE9–> | General-purpose "don't vouch for this" signal | A link to a source you're citing skeptically, or any outbound link you don't want to formally endorse |
| <!–INLINECODE10–> | Paid or compensated links | Advertisements, sponsored content, affiliate links, paid product placements |
| <!–INLINECODE11–> | Links inside content submitted by users | Blog comments, forum posts, community reviews, wiki edits |
These aren’t mutually exclusive categories. A paid guest post containing a comment-style embedded link could in theory need more than one value, though most real-world links cleanly fit a single attribute.
How Google Actually Treats Nofollow Today
The most common misconception is that nofollow makes a link invisible to Google. It doesn’t. Google can still crawl a nofollowed link’s destination, particularly if that URL is discoverable through other means, such as a sitemap, another inbound link without the attribute, or direct navigation. The attribute is a signal about how to weigh the link, not an instruction to ignore the destination page entirely.
A second misconception is that nofollow guarantees zero ranking impact in every case. Because Google now treats the attribute as a hint, the company has been deliberately vague about exactly when or how it might still use a nofollowed link as a signal. Google’s qualify-outbound-links documentation states plainly that links marked with these rel attributes “will generally not be followed,” and that “the linked pages may be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites, and thus they may still be crawled.”
A third misconception, common among site owners doing technical cleanup, is treating rel="nofollow" on internal links as a way to control crawling. It isn’t a reliable crawl-blocking mechanism for your own site’s pages, since Google may still find and crawl the destination through another route. If the goal is to prevent Google from crawling a page on your own site, the documented approach is a robots.txt rule, not a nofollow attribute on internal links.
When to Use Each Attribute
A practical checklist for deciding how to tag an outbound link:
- Is it paid for, sponsored, or otherwise compensated? Use
rel="sponsored". This includes display ads, sponsored posts, affiliate links, and paid reviews. Google’s spam policies documentation treats properly qualifying these links as the compliant alternative to leaving them as ordinary followed links, which would otherwise risk being treated as a link scheme (Google Search Central: Spam Policies for Google Web Search). - Did a user submit it, not your editorial team? Use
rel="ugc". Comments, forum threads, and open community submissions fall here. - Is it a link you don’t want to vouch for, but it doesn’t fit the first two categories? Use plain
rel="nofollow". Examples include linking out to a source you’re quoting critically, or a link in a press release you didn’t write but are required to host. - Is it a normal editorial link to a source you trust and want to credit? Leave it unattributed (a normal followed link). Most outbound citations in original content fall here.
Why Nofollow Links Still Matter for SEO
Even setting aside the “hint” nuance, nofollow links retain real, non-PageRank value:
- Referral traffic. A nofollow link from a high-traffic publication can send direct visitors to a site regardless of what it does or doesn’t pass for ranking purposes.
- Brand visibility and discovery. Being mentioned and linked from a reputable source, even nofollowed, puts a brand in front of that publication’s audience and can lead to unlinked mentions or follow-on coverage elsewhere.
- Natural link profile composition. A link profile made up entirely of followed, anchor-text-optimized links looks unnatural. A mix that includes nofollowed links from forums, social platforms, and press coverage is closer to what organic, real-world link acquisition tends to look like, though there’s no fixed or official ratio that defines a “normal” mix, despite some SEO commentary asserting specific percentages.
- Compliance value. Properly marking paid and user-generated links with
sponsoredorugcis part of staying within Google’s documented guidance on link spam, which matters more for avoiding manual actions than for chasing incremental ranking gains.
What Nofollow Doesn’t Do
Two limits are worth flagging that haven’t come up yet. Nofollow does not remove a link from the page or hide it from human visitors, and it does not retroactively undo risk from a link scheme; Google’s spam policies still apply to the underlying intent behind a link, not just whatever markup is attached to it. (The crawling and indexing limits covered above, that nofollow doesn’t guarantee Google skips a destination and isn’t a dependable way to block crawling of your own site, apply here too.)
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a nofollow link ever pass ranking value?
By default, no, but Google has said it may use nofollowed links as one signal among many during crawling, indexing, or ranking, since the attribute is treated as a hint rather than a strict directive. There’s no published mechanism for predicting when that happens.
Is rel=”nofollow” still valid, or should every link use sponsored or ugc instead?
It’s still valid. Sponsored and ugc are more specific subcategories; plain nofollow remains the right choice for links that don’t fit either of those more precise labels.
Do nofollow links hurt SEO if I have too many?
Having nofollowed outbound links does not penalize a site. What matters for spam policies is whether paid or user-submitted links are properly qualified, not the raw count of nofollow attributes present.
Can I use nofollow to keep Google from crawling pages on my own site?
It isn’t a dependable method. Google can still discover and crawl an internal page through other links, sitemaps, or direct requests. Use robots.txt or a noindex directive instead, depending on the goal.
How do I check whether a link on a page is nofollowed?
View the page source or use your browser’s developer tools to inspect the <a> tag’s rel attribute. Most SEO browser extensions also highlight nofollow, sponsored, and ugc links visually.