Nofollow

What nofollow does

The rel="nofollow" attribute prevents link equity from passing to the linked page. Originally created to combat blog comment spam, nofollow now signals "I'm linking to this, but not endorsing it for search rankings".

Nofollow links still provide value—visitors can click them for referral traffic. They signal relevance and context. But they don't boost the linked page's search rankings the way normal links do.

When to use nofollow

Paid links: Advertising, sponsored content, or any link you're compensated for must use nofollow. Google's guidelines explicitly require this. Failing to nofollow paid links risks penalties for both parties.

User-generated content: Blog comments, forum posts, profile links—anywhere users can add links. Nofollow prevents your site from vouching for potentially spammy destinations.

Untrusted content: Links to sites you can't verify. If you mention a service you haven't used or reference a source you don't fully trust, nofollow protects you from implicitly endorsing it.

Google's updated treatment

Since 2019, Google treats nofollow as a hint, not a directive. They may choose to crawl and pass some value through nofollow links. This change aimed to better understand web relationships.

Two additional attributes joined nofollow: rel="sponsored" for paid links and rel="ugc" for user-generated content. These provide more specific signals than generic nofollow, though nofollow still works for all scenarios.

Internal nofollow links

Using nofollow on internal links to "sculpt" link equity—concentrating it on priority pages—no longer works reliably. Google now processes nofollow internal links differently than external ones.

Better approach: strategic internal linking architecture that naturally emphasises important pages through more frequent linking, not artificial nofollow manipulation.

Nofollow vs noindex

Nofollow prevents link equity from passing. Noindex prevents pages from appearing in search results. Different purposes—don't confuse them. Links can be nofollowed while the page remains indexed.