Check & monitor · Nofollow links
Nofollow links and dofollow links: what rel nofollow, sponsored and ugc do to crawling and indexing
Almost every article about nofollow links argues about the same thing: whether a nofollow link passes ranking value. That argument is well covered and, for most site owners, not the question that costs them traffic.
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In short
A nofollow link is an ordinary HTML link that carries rel="nofollow", which tells Google you would rather it not associate your site with the linked page or crawl that page from yours. A dofollow link is just a normal link with no rel attribute at all: dofollow is a term the SEO industry invented and is not something you ever write in HTML. Google's current documentation says links marked with nofollow, sponsored or ugc will generally not be followed, but the pages they point at can still be crawled and indexed if Google reaches them another way, such as a sitemap or a link from a different site. Nofollow is a link-level hint about a link. It is not noindex, and it does not keep anything out of the index.
Last updated August 2026
The question that costs traffic is the one underneath it. Links are how Google finds pages. If you mark a link nofollow, you have changed how a crawler moves through your site, and if the only links pointing at a page are nofollow, you have quietly changed that page's chances of being discovered at all. People reach for nofollow expecting it to control ranking and are surprised when it changes what gets crawled, or surprised when it does not keep a page out of search results.
This page covers the mechanics rather than the folklore. What the three link attributes actually are, what Google's documentation says happens to a link that carries one, why nofollow has never been a way to keep a page out of the index, how the link attribute differs from the robots meta tag that shares its name, and how to check what a given link on your site is doing. The console above shows which of your URLs Google has actually indexed, which is the only honest way to find out whether your link markup is helping or quietly working against you.
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Why it works
What your team gets with nofollow links
Dofollow is not a real attribute
There is no rel="dofollow". A dofollow link is simply a link with no rel attribute on it, which is the default state of every link you write. Only nofollow, sponsored and ugc exist in markup.
Nofollow is about the link, noindex is about the page
Marking a link nofollow says something about that one link. It has never been a way to keep the destination out of Google, because Google can reach that destination through any other route.
See what your markup actually did
Link attributes change how crawlers move through a site, and the effect shows up as pages that never get indexed. Coverage monitoring turns that into data instead of a theory.
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At a glance
The three link attributes Google supports, and what each one means
There are exactly three values, they can be combined, and none of them controls indexing. Verified against Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links, August 2026.
| Markup | What Google says it is for | Effect on following the link | Effect on indexing the destination |
|---|---|---|---|
| a href="/page" (no rel attribute) | The default. What the industry calls a dofollow link, though that word appears nowhere in HTML or in Google's documentation. | Normal. Google may use the link to discover the linked page. | None directly. The page is discoverable and treated normally. |
| rel="nofollow" | Google says to use it when the other values do not apply and you would rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site. | Generally not followed. | None. The page can still be crawled and indexed if found another way. |
| rel="sponsored" | Google says to mark links that are advertisements or paid placements, commonly called paid links, with the sponsored value. | Generally not followed. | None. |
| rel="ugc" | Google recommends marking user-generated content links, such as comments and forum posts, with the ugc value. | Generally not followed. | None. |
| rel="ugc nofollow" | Multiple values are allowed. Google states you may specify multiple rel values as a space or comma separated list. | Generally not followed. | None. |
| meta name="robots" content="nofollow" | A page-level robots rule, not a link attribute. Google defines it as: do not follow the links on this page. | Applies to every link on the page at once. | None. This rule says nothing about indexing the current page. |
| meta name="robots" content="noindex" | The page-level rule that does control indexing. Google defines it as: do not show this page, media, or resource in search results. | No effect on link following by itself. | Removes the page carrying it from search results. |
| meta name="robots" content="none" | Google states this is equivalent to noindex, nofollow. | Links on the page are not followed. | The page carrying it is kept out of search results. |
What a nofollow link is, and why dofollow does not exist
A nofollow link is a normal HTML link with one extra attribute: rel="nofollow". Everything else about it is unchanged. It renders the same, a visitor clicks it the same way, and it sends the same referral traffic. The attribute is a message to search engines, not to browsers or people.
Dofollow is different in one important way: it is not real. There is no rel="dofollow" in the HTML specification, Google has never documented one, and writing it into your markup does nothing at all. When people say a link is dofollow, they mean it has no rel attribute restricting it, which is the default state of every link you have ever written. The word exists because the SEO industry needed an opposite for nofollow, and a made-up word filled the gap.
This matters more than a terminology footnote, because people go looking for a setting that is not there. If a plugin or a CMS offers you a dofollow toggle, what it is really doing is removing the rel attribute rather than adding anything. The only three values Google supports are nofollow, sponsored and ugc, and a link either carries one of them or it does not.
- rel="nofollow" is real markup with a documented meaning
- rel="dofollow" is not real and has no effect anywhere
- A dofollow link means a link with no rel attribute restricting it
- The default state of any link you write is what the industry calls dofollow
- Google supports exactly three values: nofollow, sponsored and ugc
Do nofollow links get crawled? What the documentation actually says
This is where most write-ups overreach in one direction or the other. The honest answer needs two facts that are usually reported separately, and they do not say quite the same thing.
The first is the change everyone quotes. In a Search Central blog announcement dated September 10, 2019, Google said the link attributes would work as hints rather than directives: as hints for ranking purposes immediately, and, as of March 1, 2020, as hints for crawling and indexing purposes too. That is why you will read everywhere that nofollow is now only a hint and Google may follow the link anyway.
The second fact is the one almost nobody mentions, and it is worth more than the first because it is current rather than seven years old. Google's live documentation on qualifying outbound links states plainly that links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed. Not may or may not be followed. Generally not followed. The same paragraph then adds the part that actually answers the question people are asking: the linked pages may be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites, and thus they may still be crawled.
Put the two together and you get a practical rule that is neither of the popular extremes. Do not treat nofollow as a guarantee that Google will never look at the link, because Google reserves the right to use it as a hint. Equally, do not plan a site around Google following your nofollow links anyway, because the documentation says it generally will not. If a page needs to be crawled, give it a link without the attribute.
- September 10, 2019: Google announced the attributes become hints for ranking purposes
- March 1, 2020: the hint treatment extended to crawling and indexing purposes
- Current documentation: links with these attributes will generally not be followed
- Current documentation: linked pages may still be crawled if found another way
- Practical rule: never rely on a nofollow link to get a page crawled
Nofollow has never kept a page out of Google
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the topic, and it comes from the name. Nofollow sounds like it should mean the destination is hidden from search. It does not, and it never has.
Consider what the attribute can physically control. It sits on one link, on one page, on your site. It can influence whether Google travels along that one link. It cannot reach out and change what Google does with the destination URL, because the destination is reachable by every other route on the web: a sitemap, a link from somebody else's site, a redirect, a URL somebody pasted into a public forum, or simply a URL Google already knew about. Google's documentation makes this explicit when it notes that linked pages may be found through other means and thus may still be crawled.
So if you have a page you genuinely do not want in search results, nofollow is the wrong instrument entirely. The rule that controls indexing is noindex, which Google defines as: do not show this page, media, or resource in search results. It goes on the page you want excluded, not on the links pointing at it. And it comes with a condition people miss, stated directly in Google's robots meta documentation: these settings can be read and followed only if crawlers are allowed to access the pages that include these settings. Block a page in robots.txt and its noindex is never read, because the crawler never got far enough to see it.
The clean sequence, when a page must leave the index, is therefore: make sure the page is crawlable, put noindex on it, wait for Google to recrawl and drop it, and only then consider blocking it. Doing those steps in the wrong order is the most common reason a page somebody tried to remove is still sitting in search results months later.
- nofollow influences one link; noindex controls one page
- A nofollow link cannot stop the destination being indexed
- Google can reach the destination through sitemaps, other sites and known URLs
- noindex is only read if the crawler is allowed to fetch the page carrying it
- Blocking a page in robots.txt hides its noindex rule and keeps it in the index
The link attribute and the robots meta tag are two different nofollows
Google uses the word nofollow for two separate mechanisms, which is a genuine source of confusion rather than a pedantic distinction. They are written in different places and have different scope.
The link attribute, rel="nofollow", lives on a single anchor element and applies to that one link. The robots meta rule, written as meta name="robots" content="nofollow", lives in the head of a document and applies to every link on that page at once. Google defines the meta rule as: do not follow the links on this page. It also adds the useful clarification that if you do not specify this rule, Google may use the links on the page to discover those linked pages, which is a plain statement of why links matter for discovery in the first place.
The pairing people write most often, noindex, nofollow, combines a rule about this page with a rule about the links on it. Google has a shorthand for exactly that combination: the value none, which the documentation states is equivalent to noindex, nofollow. It is worth knowing what you are actually asking for when you paste that pair in. Noindex removes the page from search results. Nofollow tells Google not to use that page's links to find others. If the page is a hub that links to twenty pages you do want indexed, adding nofollow alongside noindex may cut the discovery route to all twenty.
A page you want out of search but still passing discovery to its links should carry noindex on its own, without nofollow. That is the usual intent behind an internal search results page or a thin archive, and it is the setting people most often get wrong by reflex.
- rel="nofollow" applies to one link
- meta robots nofollow applies to every link on the page
- Google defines the meta rule as: do not follow the links on this page
- The value none is documented as equivalent to noindex, nofollow
- noindex alone keeps a page out of results while its links still aid discovery
Where the attributes are genuinely required
Two of the three values exist because Google wanted site owners to describe why a link is there, not just that it should be discounted. Using the specific value is better than defaulting everything to nofollow, because it tells Google something true rather than something vague.
Paid placements take sponsored. Google's wording is direct: mark links that are advertisements or paid placements, commonly called paid links, with the sponsored value. This covers advertising, affiliate links, sponsored posts and anything where money or goods changed hands for the link. The documentation notes that nofollow was previously recommended for these and is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred, so older markup is not broken, it is just less precise.
Anything your visitors write takes ugc. Google recommends marking user-generated content links, such as comments and forum posts, with the ugc value. If you run comments, a forum, reviews or profile fields that accept a URL, this is the one you want applied automatically at the template level rather than by hand.
Nofollow itself is now the catch-all. Google frames it as the value to use when the other values do not apply and you would rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site. That covers linking to a site as an example of something bad, a source you cannot vouch for, or a login and checkout URL there is no value in a crawler pursuing. You are not restricted to one: Google states you may specify multiple rel values as a space or comma separated list, so rel="sponsored nofollow" is valid if you want both stated.
- sponsored: advertisements, paid placements, affiliate links
- ugc: comments, forum posts, reviews and anything visitors submit
- nofollow: the catch-all when neither of the above applies
- Older paid links marked nofollow are still acceptable, sponsored is preferred
- Multiple values are allowed as a space or comma separated list
Nofollow on internal links, and the sculpting idea that stopped working
Around 2007 a technique spread through technical SEO called PageRank sculpting. The idea was that if a page had ten links and you nofollowed the five leading to low-value destinations such as login or privacy pages, the value that would have gone to them was concentrated into the remaining five. For a while that reasoning matched how the system behaved.
Google closed it. Matt Cutts of Google explained in 2009 that the behaviour had already been changed some time earlier: the share of value assigned to a nofollowed link is no longer redistributed to the other links on the page, it is simply not used. Under that model, nofollowing internal links does not concentrate anything. It removes value from the page rather than moving it somewhere better, which is the opposite of the intended effect.
That leaves very little reason to nofollow your own internal links. You control both ends of the link, so if a destination is not worth linking to, the cleaner fix is to not link to it, or to noindex it, rather than to link to it and then annotate the link as untrusted. Telling Google you would rather it not associate your site with a page on your own site is a slightly strange claim to make.
The exception worth keeping is practical rather than theoretical. Interface URLs that produce endless variations, such as faceted filter combinations, calendar pages that continue forever, or session and sorting parameters, can consume a real amount of crawling for nothing. Those are worth handling, but nofollow is only a partial answer because Google may still reach the URLs another way. Robots.txt rules, canonical tags and simply not generating infinite URLs are stronger tools, and the crawl budget documentation is clear that blocked URLs stay in the crawl queue much longer than URLs that return a clean 404.
- Sculpting stopped working when the discarded share stopped being redistributed
- Nofollowing an internal link removes value rather than concentrating it
- If a page is not worth linking to, do not link to it
- For infinite URL spaces, prefer robots.txt, canonicals and not generating them
- Nofollow alone does not stop Google reaching a URL by another route
What nofollow links are actually worth
Because the ranking argument is where every discussion ends up, it is worth stating a position plainly rather than dodging it. A nofollow link is worth having. It is worth less than an equivalent link without the attribute, and it is worth considerably more than no link at all.
The clearest part of the case does not depend on any theory about how Google weighs links. A nofollow link on a busy page still sends real people to your site. Those people convert, subscribe, come back through a branded search later, and sometimes link to you themselves from a page you had nothing to do with. That second-order link is an ordinary one. Traffic is not a consolation prize that SEOs award nofollow links to be polite; for links on high-traffic pages it is usually the largest part of the value.
On the search side, the honest answer is that Google reserves discretion and does not publish the mechanics. The 2019 announcement moved these attributes from directives to hints precisely so Google could use the information where it is useful rather than discarding it, and Google has said the anchor text and context of such links can still be seen. What nobody outside Google can tell you is how much weight any individual link carries, and anyone quoting you a percentage is inventing it.
The practical consequence is that a link profile made entirely of nofollow links from directories and comment sections is weak, while a profile that happens to include nofollow links from genuinely large sites alongside ordinary editorial links is completely normal. Most major publishers, marketplaces and social platforms apply nofollow or ugc sitewide. Refusing those placements to protect a metric would mean turning down traffic to chase an attribute.
- A nofollow link still sends real visitors, which is often the main value
- Referral traffic can produce ordinary links you did not ask for
- Google treats the attributes as hints and does not publish the weighting
- Any specific percentage of value passed is invented, so do not trust one
- Large sites apply nofollow or ugc sitewide, so such links are normal
How to check whether a link is nofollow
You do not need a tool for this, and the manual method is worth knowing because it is the only one that shows you what is actually in the markup rather than what something reports.
Right click the link and choose inspect, or open the page source and search for the destination URL. You are looking at the anchor element itself for a rel attribute. If you see rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc", the link carries that value. If there is no rel attribute, or the rel attribute only contains unrelated values such as noopener and noreferrer, then the link is what people call dofollow. Those two values are security and privacy settings applied to links that open in a new tab, and they have nothing to do with search engines, which trips up a lot of people reading source for the first time.
Check the head of the document as well, because a page-level rule overrides your reading of individual links. A meta robots tag containing nofollow means no link on the page is followed regardless of how each anchor is marked. It is entirely possible for every link on a page to look clean while the whole page is set to nofollow.
The check that matters more than any of this is the outcome. Markup tells you what you asked for; the index tells you what happened. If pages on your site are not being indexed, the useful question is not whether one link carries an attribute but whether Google has crawled the URL at all, and whether it was indexed or seen and rejected. Those are different problems with different fixes, and the console at the top of this page reports which one you have.
- Inspect the anchor element and look for a rel attribute
- rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer" are unrelated to search engines
- No rel attribute means the link is what people call dofollow
- Check the head for a meta robots nofollow that overrides every link
- Verify the outcome in the index, not just the markup
Keep reading
- Do Nofollow Links Get Indexed? Yes, a page linked only by nofollow links can still be indexed. The attribute controls one link, not the destination URL. Here is what it does and does not do.
- How Many Internal Links Should a Page Have? There is no limit. Google dropped the 100-links-per-page guideline over a decade ago. What actually matters is links per destination, not links per page.
- Do Backlinks Need to Be Indexed to Count? Do backlinks need to be indexed to count? Yes, in practice. Here is why links fail to index, what backlink indexers really sell, and how to check your own links.
Good questions
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