Dofollow vs Nofollow Links: What's the Difference?

A dofollow link passes ranking signals from one page to another. A nofollow link includes an HTML attribute that tells search engines "don't count this as an endorsement." That's the two-sentence version. But if you're here, you probably want more than that, and there's genuinely more to understand than most people realize.

Key Takeaways

• The HTML Side of Things
• A Quick Comparison
• Where You'll Encounter Each Type
• The SEO Value Question
• Common Myths and Misunderstandings
• For Site Owners: When to Use Nofollow on Your Own Site

Let's start with something that confuses a lot of people: "dofollow" isn't actually a real HTML attribute. There's no rel="dofollow" in the HTML spec. A dofollow link is just a regular link — an anchor tag with an href and nothing else special going on. The term "dofollow" was invented by the SEO community to describe the default state of a link. It's the absence of nofollow. Kind of like how "unfiltered" coffee is just... coffee. Nobody at the W3C sat down and created a dofollow attribute. It doesn't exist in any specification. But the SEO world needed a word for it, so here we are.

Nofollow, on the other hand, IS a real attribute. Google introduced it in 2005, working alongside other search engines, specifically to combat comment spam. Back then, blog comment sections were absolute war zones. Spammers would flood every blog they could find with comments containing links back to their sites, and because those comment links passed ranking value, it actually worked. The incentive was enormous. So rel="nofollow" was born as a way for webmasters to say "I'm allowing this link on my page, but I'm not vouching for it."

The HTML Side of Things

Here's what both types look like in actual code, because seeing it makes it click.

A regular (dofollow) link:

<a href="https://www.example.com">Visit Example</a>

A nofollow link:

<a href="https://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">Visit Example</a>

That's it. The only difference is rel="nofollow" in the tag. From a user's perspective, both links look identical. They both work. They both take you to the destination page when clicked. The difference is entirely about what happens behind the scenes with search engine crawlers.

Now, in 2019, Google expanded the system and introduced two more rel attributes:

<a href="https://www.example.com" rel="sponsored">Paid Link</a>
<a href="https://www.example.com" rel="ugc">User Comment Link</a>

The rel="sponsored" tag is meant for links that are advertisements or paid placements. The rel="ugc" tag (user-generated content) is for links in comments, forum posts, and similar user-contributed areas. You can even combine them if you want:

<a href="https://www.example.com" rel="nofollow sponsored">Paid Link</a>

Whether anyone actually uses these granular tags consistently is... debatable. Most people just slap nofollow on everything and call it a day. Which is fine. Google has said that all three attributes are treated as "hints" rather than directives, which brings us to something important. You might also find What Are Backlinks and Why Do They Matter for SEO useful here.

A Quick Comparison

That "hint" versus "directive" distinction in the table is the thing most SEO articles gloss over, and it's actually the most interesting part of this whole topic.

The 2019 Change That Broke Everyone's Mental Model

Before September 2019, nofollow was a directive. Google obeyed it. If a link had rel="nofollow," Google would not follow that link for crawling purposes and would not pass any ranking signals through it. Period. End of story. The SEO world built its entire understanding of link value around this binary: follow links = good, nofollow links = worthless.

Then Google announced that nofollow would become a "hint." Meaning Google might still choose to follow the link. They might still use it for ranking purposes. They might not. It's up to Google's algorithms to decide on a case-by-case basis. This was a pretty big deal and it quietly invalidated a lot of received wisdom that the industry had been operating on for fourteen years.

Why did they make this change? Google's stated reason was that nofollow links contain valuable signals that they were missing out on. If the New York Times links to your website with a nofollow tag (which they do for many external links), that's still a signal that the New York Times found your content worth referencing. Ignoring that signal entirely just because of an HTML attribute seems like throwing away useful information. And Google doesn't like throwing away information.

The practical implication: nofollow links aren't worthless. They never were entirely, because they still drove traffic and brand awareness. But now they might actually pass some ranking value too. How much? Nobody outside Google knows. Probably varies by context. A nofollow link from a highly authoritative, relevant site probably carries more weight as a "hint" than a nofollow link from a random low-traffic blog. But that's speculation. Educated speculation, but still.

Where You'll Encounter Each Type

In practice, here's where you'll typically see nofollow links in the wild. Social media platforms — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit — all add nofollow (or its equivalent) to outbound links. Wikipedia adds nofollow to all external links. Most major news sites add nofollow to external links by default, though some are more selective about it. Blog comment sections almost universally use nofollow now (most CMS platforms like WordPress add it automatically). Forum posts on most platforms. Anywhere users can add links, basically.

Dofollow links tend to appear in editorial content. When a journalist writes an article and links to a source, that's usually dofollow. When a blogger genuinely recommends a product or resource within their post content (not in a paid promotion), that's typically dofollow. Guest post bio links are sometimes dofollow, sometimes not — depends on the site's policy. Resource pages and curated link lists are often dofollow. Basically, links that represent a genuine editorial choice tend to be dofollow, while links in user-controlled or paid contexts tend to be nofollow.

There are exceptions everywhere though. Some sites nofollow everything out of an abundance of caution. Some sites dofollow everything because they never bothered to configure their CMS properly. Some sites have inconsistent policies where some external links are nofollow and others aren't within the same article. The web is messy. Don't expect clean patterns.

How to Check If a Link Is Dofollow or Nofollow

Right-click on a link. "Inspect" or "Inspect Element." Look at the HTML in your browser's developer tools. If you see rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc" in the anchor tag, it's nofollowed. If there's no rel attribute at all (or if rel is something unrelated like rel="noreferrer"), it's dofollow.

Quick note on that: rel="noreferrer" and rel="noopener" are NOT the same as nofollow. Those are security attributes that prevent the linked page from accessing your page's window object. They have nothing to do with SEO. I see people confuse these all the time. Our article on Understanding Link Equity: A Complete Guide explores this idea in more depth.

If you want to check lots of links at once, browser extensions like NoFollow or SEO-related extensions will highlight nofollow links on a page. Saves you from inspecting each one individually. Or if you're looking at your own backlink profile, tools like Ahrefs and Semrush will tell you which of your backlinks are dofollow versus nofollow.

The SEO Value Question

Alright, here's the part everyone actually cares about. How much do dofollow links matter versus nofollow links for rankings?

Dofollow links are still more valuable for direct ranking impact. That hasn't changed. When you get a dofollow link from a relevant, authoritative site, that directly contributes to your site's authority in Google's eyes. It's a vote of confidence that gets counted. The more quality dofollow links you have, the better your site tends to rank, all else being equal. This is still the fundamental mechanism of how Google's link-based ranking works, even though they've added hundreds of other signals over the years.

But here's where people go wrong: they treat nofollow links as having zero value. And that's just not accurate, even setting aside the 2019 "hint" change.

A nofollow link from a high-traffic website still sends real visitors to your site. Those visitors might convert, subscribe, buy something, or share your content further. That has obvious business value regardless of what a search engine does with the link. And those visitors' behavior on your site — how long they stay, whether they engage, whether they come back — might indirectly influence your rankings through user engagement signals.

A nofollow link also increases brand visibility. If people see your brand mentioned on authoritative sites, they start searching for you by name. Branded searches are a strong positive signal for rankings. Someone reading an article on Forbes that mentions your company might Google your company name later. That branded search tells Google "people are looking for this brand specifically." There's no rel attribute involved. It's just human behavior.

Nofollow links also diversify your link profile. A natural backlink profile has a mix of dofollow and nofollow links. If 100% of your links are dofollow, that actually looks artificial. Real websites get linked from social media, forums, comment sections, news sites — all of which tend to be nofollow. Having a healthy percentage of nofollow links makes your overall profile look more natural. Some SEOs estimate that a natural ratio is somewhere around 60-80% dofollow and 20-40% nofollow, but that varies wildly by industry and nobody has a definitive number.

The PageRank Flow Thing

If you've read older SEO content, you might have encountered discussions about "PageRank sculpting" — the practice of strategically using nofollow on internal links to control how ranking power flows through your site. The idea was that if you had 10 links on a page and nofollowed 5 of them, the remaining 5 dofollow links would each get more PageRank. Like plugging holes in a bucket so more water flows through the remaining ones.

Google killed this approach years ago. Matt Cutts (Google's former head of webspam) confirmed that nofollowing internal links doesn't redistribute PageRank to the remaining links. The PageRank that would have flowed through the nofollowed link just evaporates. It doesn't go anywhere. So nofollowing internal links is basically never a good idea for SEO purposes. There are rare edge cases — like nofollowing links to login pages or other pages you definitely don't want indexed — but as a general strategy, it's dead.

For external links on your own site, though, nofollow has a clear purpose. If you're linking to something you don't want to endorse — a competitor you're critiquing, a source you're debunking, a paid partner — nofollow (or the more specific sponsored/ugc tags) is the right call. And if you're accepting guest posts, sponsored content, or any kind of paid link placement, you're required by Google's guidelines to nofollow those links. Not doing so is technically a link scheme violation. This is closely related to what we cover in The Beginner's Guide to Link Juice and How It Flows.

Common Myths and Misunderstandings

Let me rapid-fire some things I hear constantly that are either wrong or outdated.

"Nofollow links are worthless for SEO." Wrong. They may pass value as hints, they drive traffic, they build brand awareness, and they make your link profile look natural. Not as directly valuable as dofollow? Sure. But worthless? No.

"You should only try to build dofollow links." Bad strategy. If a nofollow link from the New York Times versus a dofollow link from a random blog with 12 monthly visitors — I'm taking the New York Times link every single time. Quality and context matter more than the follow attribute.

"All social media links are useless for SEO." The direct link value is minimal since they're nofollow. But social sharing drives traffic, increases content visibility, leads to people discovering and linking to your content from their own sites (with dofollow links), and generates branded searches. The indirect effects are real.

"You should nofollow all external links on your site to keep all your PageRank." This is the hoarding mentality and it doesn't hold up. Linking out to quality resources is actually a positive signal. It shows Google your content is well-researched and contextual. Sites that never link out are weird. Think about it — if you wrote a research paper and cited zero sources, that wouldn't inspire confidence. Same principle applies to web content.

"Wikipedia links are valuable because Wikipedia has high authority." Wikipedia links are nofollow and have been since 2007. They don't pass direct link value. But a Wikipedia citation can drive traffic, lend credibility, and if your content is good enough to be cited on Wikipedia, it's probably good enough to attract dofollow links from other sources too. The value is real but indirect.

Building a Natural Link Profile

If you're actively working on getting more backlinks — whether through content marketing, outreach, digital PR, whatever — you shouldn't be exclusively chasing dofollow links. That tunnel vision leads to bad decisions. People turn down opportunities for nofollow links on amazing sites because "it won't help my SEO." Meanwhile they're spending hours trying to get dofollow links from mediocre sites nobody reads. It's backwards thinking.

The best approach is to focus on getting links from relevant, quality sites that your actual audience reads, and let the dofollow/nofollow ratio sort itself out naturally. If someone offers you a guest post on a major industry publication but all their external links are nofollow? Take it. The exposure, the traffic, the credibility, the relationship with that publication — all of that matters. The follow status of the link is one factor among many, and probably not the most important one.

I'd also add that obsessing over follow status can make your outreach feel transactional and annoying. If you're emailing a blogger saying "hey, love your content, would you link to my article? But only if it's dofollow" — that's a terrible look. Nobody wants to feel like their site is just a vehicle for your link building campaign. Build relationships first. Create genuinely good content. The links follow.

For Site Owners: When to Use Nofollow on Your Own Site

If you run a website, here's when you should add nofollow (or sponsored/ugc) to your outbound links: Related reading: Rel Attributes Explained: nofollow, sponsored, ugc.

Paid links. Any link you received compensation for — money, free products, services — should be tagged as rel="sponsored" or at minimum rel="nofollow". This is non-negotiable per Google's guidelines. If you're running sponsored posts, affiliate links, or paid partnerships, tag them. Not doing so risks a manual penalty for participating in link schemes.

Affiliate links. If you're linking to Amazon, ShareASale, or any other affiliate program, those should be nofollow or sponsored. Most affiliate programs actually require this in their terms of service anyway. And Google has specifically mentioned affiliate links as something that should carry a nofollow-type attribute.

User-generated content. Comment sections, forum posts, profile pages where users can add links. Tag these with rel="ugc" or rel="nofollow". WordPress does this automatically for comments. Most forum software does too. But if you're running a custom-built platform, make sure your developers have implemented this.

Untrusted content. Linking to a site you don't vouch for? Use nofollow. Writing a negative review and linking to the company? Nofollow. Citing a source you find questionable? Nofollow. It's essentially saying "this link exists for reference, not as an endorsement."

Everything else? Let it be dofollow. Linking to a great resource that supports your article? Dofollow. Citing a study? Dofollow. Referencing a tool you genuinely recommend (without being paid to do so)? Dofollow. Don't be stingy with your link equity. The web works because sites link to each other. Be part of that.

What to Do Next

Pull up one of your recent blog posts or pages. View the source or use inspect element. Look at your outbound links. Are paid links properly tagged as sponsored or nofollow? Are editorial links dofollow? Check your CMS settings to see what the default behavior is for links in your content editor versus links in comments. Most of this is a one-time setup, and once it's right, you don't have to think about it again. Just fifteen minutes of checking can save you from potential issues down the line.