Nofollow Link

What is a nofollow link?

A nofollow link is a hyperlink carrying the attribute rel="nofollow". It tells search engines that the linking site does not want to pass ranking signals to the destination. In practice it means the link is unlikely to help the target page rank.

The attribute was introduced in 2005, created jointly by Google, Yahoo and MSN to fight blog comment spam. The logic was simple: if links in comments and forums pass no value, there is no incentive to spam them. It worked well enough that nofollow spread far beyond comments, and today it is applied broadly across user generated content, paid placements, and many directories.

Two changes are worth knowing. In September 2019 Google added two more specific values: rel="sponsored" for paid or affiliate links, and rel="ugc" for user generated content such as comments and forum posts. Then in March 2020 Google began treating all three as hints rather than directives, meaning it may choose to consider a nofollow link for ranking purposes. That is a meaningful shift, though you should still plan on the assumption that a nofollow link passes little or nothing.

The three link attributes

Attribute	Intended for	Passes ranking signals
(none)	Ordinary editorial links	Yes
rel="nofollow"	Links you do not vouch for	Generally no, treated as a hint
rel="sponsored"	Paid, affiliate, advertising	No
rel="ugc"	Comments, forums, user posts	Generally no

Why nofollow links still matter for startups

It is easy to read "passes no authority" as "worthless", and that is a mistake. A nofollow link from a site your buyers actually read will send you real visitors, real signups, and often real revenue. None of that requires a search engine's permission.

There is also a credibility dimension. Many of the highest profile places a startup can appear, including large news sites, Wikipedia, and most social platforms, mark outbound links nofollow as a blanket policy. Refusing those placements because of an HTML attribute would be an odd way to run a company.

Finally, a profile made up entirely of dofollow links is itself unnatural. Real sites accumulate a mix, because real mentions happen in comments, forums, and social posts. A clean sweep of followed links is a pattern, and patterns are detectable.

Nofollow in practice

Your product gets covered by a well known tech publication. The link is nofollow, as their policy dictates. In the following week you get four thousand visitors, ninety signups, and two other blogs write about you independently after seeing the piece. Those secondary posts link dofollow.

The nofollow link passed no authority directly and was still the most valuable link you got that quarter, because it caused the ones that did. This is the normal shape of how coverage compounds, and it is invisible if you evaluate links purely by their rel attribute.

Rules of thumb

Judge a link by the traffic and credibility it brings first, and by its rel attribute second. If a placement would put you in front of the right people, take it regardless of how the link is marked.

On your own site, use the attributes honestly. Mark paid and affiliate links rel="sponsored", mark comment sections rel="ugc", and leave your editorial links alone. Getting this wrong on paid links is a spam policy violation, and it is entirely avoidable.

Common mistakes

• Treating nofollow links as worthless. They bring people. People are the point.
• Turning down good coverage over the attribute. The visibility is usually worth far more than the link would have been.
• Failing to mark paid links. Selling or buying followed links breaches Google's policies. Use rel="sponsored".
• Assuming nofollow means invisible. Google describes it as a hint now, and may still use it. It is not a guarantee in either direction.
• Nofollowing your own internal links. An old tactic called PageRank sculpting that has not worked for many years and now just wastes link equity.

Related concepts

The opposite case is the dofollow link, which is simply a link with none of these attributes applied. What a followed link transmits is link equity, and the mix of followed and nofollowed links across your whole site is part of your backlink profile. Before choosing where to invest outreach time, checking a candidate site's domain rating alongside its link policy gives you the full picture.