Dofollow vs Nofollow Links: Do Nofollow Links Help SEO?

The difference between dofollow vs nofollow links is one attribute. A “dofollow” link is simply a normal link with no rel qualifier, so Google is free to use it for crawling and ranking. A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow", which tells Google you’d rather not be associated with the page or have it crawled from your site. Since 2019, Google treats nofollow, sponsored and ugc as hints, not commands, so a nofollow link is no longer a guaranteed zero.

Here’s the part most guides skip. There is no rel="dofollow" attribute at all. It’s an SEO nickname, not HTML, and that one fact clears up half the confusion I see in client inboxes.

Why Getting This Wrong Costs You

On your own site, the risk is mostly about paid links. If someone pays you for a link and you leave it unqualified, that link falls under Google’s link spam policy, and that can earn a manual action for unnatural links. On the other side, if you slap nofollow on every outbound link out of fear, you make your content less useful and gain nothing.

When you’re building links, the cost is different. I’ve watched business owners reject a genuine mention from a local news site because the link was nofollow, then pay for a “dofollow guest post” on a site nobody reads. Honestly, that trade is backwards in almost every case I’ve reviewed.

The Common Mistake: Treating “Dofollow” as a Quality Score

Most people compare the two link types on one variable: does it pass “link juice” or not. That framing made some sense before 2019. It doesn’t decide much today.

What actually decides the value of a link is who placed it, why, and whether a real person might click it. A followed link on a spam network is a liability. A nofollow link from a page your buyers read every week can send leads for years. I judge links on relevance and editorial placement first, and the rel value comes last. My full checklist for that lives in how to evaluate backlink quality, so I won’t repeat it here.

What Do Nofollow, Sponsored and UGC Mean According to Google?

Google’s page on qualifying outbound links (last updated December 10, 2025, when I checked it) defines three values:

A few details from the same page matter in practice. You can combine values in a space or comma separated list, so rel="ugc nofollow" is valid. For paid links, Google says nofollow is still acceptable, though sponsored is preferred. And nofollow also works as a robots meta tag, which applies it to every link on the page at once.

Are Nofollow Links Hints or Rules?

Hints. In its September 2019 announcement, Google’s Search Central blog said all three attributes would be treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude, and that Google would start using them as hints for crawling and indexing on March 1, 2020. Google also said you don’t need to change nofollow tags you already have.

So “nofollow passes zero value” is no longer something anyone outside Google can promise. Google may use it. Google may not. That’s the honest answer.

The Four Conditions That Decide Which One You Use

When I set up linking rules for a site, four questions settle almost every case:

1. Was there payment or any exchange? Money, free products, a service swap. If yes, the link gets sponsored (or nofollow). No exceptions.
2. Who wrote the link? If a visitor wrote it in a comment, forum or profile, it gets ugc.
3. Do you trust the destination? If you’re linking to something you need to mention but won’t stand behind, use nofollow.
4. Is it an internal link? Leave it alone. I don’t nofollow links between my own pages, and I’ve never seen a good reason to.

If none of those four triggers fire, the link stays a plain, normal link.

Option A: The Normal Link (What People Call Dofollow)

Best for: editorial links you add because they help the reader, and every internal link on your site.

Sweet spot: citing an official source, linking to a tool you recommend without payment, pointing readers to a related guide on your own site.

A normal link is the default for a reason. Google’s own link guidance says external links aren’t something to be scared of and can help establish trust, and it tells site owners to use nofollow when they don’t trust the source, not for every external link. In my own posts, every outbound citation to Google’s documentation is a plain link.

The weakness is responsibility. A normal link is an editorial vote, and if the destination turns spammy or the link was really paid, you own that. I check old outbound links on client sites during audits because domains expire and get bought by casinos and pill sellers more often than you’d think.

Option B: The Qualified Link (Nofollow, Sponsored, UGC)

Best for: paid placements, affiliate links, user comments, and sources you need to mention but don’t endorse.

Sweet spot: a sponsored roundup, a forum signature, a link to a site you’re criticizing.

Qualified links protect you. Google’s spam policy says buying and selling links is a normal part of the web’s advertising economy, and it’s fine when those links are marked with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". That’s the rule, stated plainly: if money or goods changed hands for a link, qualify it.

The weakness is the one everybody worries about. You can’t count on a qualified link to help rankings. If your whole link strategy depends on rel values, you’re measuring the wrong thing.

Do Nofollow Links Help SEO at All?

Yes, in ways that don’t need Google to count them. A nofollow link from a busy page still sends visitors, and visitors can buy, subscribe or link to you themselves later with a normal editorial link. That’s how I think about mentions in news articles, Reddit threads and big industry roundups.

On rankings specifically, I’ll stick to what Google has actually said. Since the hint change, Google may use nofollow links as signals, and it hasn’t published how often. Anyone who quotes you an exact percentage of “value” for a nofollow link is guessing. If you want the bigger picture on whether links still move rankings at all, I covered that in do backlinks still work.

Dofollow vs Nofollow Links Head to Head

My Verdict

A normal link is the right choice for editorial and internal links because it’s honest about what the link is. However, if any payment, exchange or user-submitted content is involved, a qualified link (sponsored, ugc or nofollow) is correct, and it’s not optional.

When you’re on the receiving end, my take is simpler. Stop sorting links into “dofollow good, nofollow useless.” A relevant nofollow mention from a page your customers read beats a followed link from a site that exists to sell links. If you want a mix of legit profile and directory links set up properly, that’s the kind of groundwork we do in foundation link building, and plenty of profile and directory platforms nofollow their outbound links. That’s fine. They’re there for discovery and consistency, not for magic.

When Does the Answer Flip?

Some situations reverse the default.

• If a link you placed for free later gets “monetized” (you accept money to keep it or update it), it becomes a paid link. Add sponsored.
• If a trusted commenter’s link is genuinely useful, WordPress still marks it ugc by default. I leave it that way. Removing the attribute for one comment isn’t worth the precedent.
• If an outbound domain expires and changes hands, a normal link you added years ago may now point at junk. Remove it or nofollow it.
• If you’re doing a site migration, don’t use nofollow to “save crawl budget” on internal links. Fix the structure instead.

How to Check if a Link Is Nofollow

You don’t need a plugin for this. In Chrome, Edge or Firefox:

1. Right-click the link and choose Inspect.
2. DevTools highlights the <a> element in the HTML.
3. Look for a rel attribute. No rel, or a rel with only values like noopener, means it’s a normal link.
4. If you see nofollow, sponsored or ugc, it’s qualified.
5. Check the page’s <head> for a robots meta tag with nofollow, which qualifies every link on the page.

Here’s what each case looks like in the source:

<a href="https://example.com/guide/">Normal editorial link</a>
<a href="https://example.com/offer/" rel="sponsored">Paid placement</a>
<a href="https://example.com/" rel="ugc nofollow">Link from a comment</a>
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">

For checking links pointing at your own site in bulk, Search Console’s Links report and a proper backlink audit do the job better than clicking one link at a time.

What Does WordPress Do by Default?

WordPress core has added rel="nofollow ugc" to links in comments and comment author URLs since version 5.3, according to the WordPress core team’s announcement. Links you add to posts yourself are a different story. On the sites I look after they come out as normal links unless an SEO plugin or the author adds a rel value, but plugins change behavior, so inspect a live link on your own site before you trust any default.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Dofollow an Actual HTML Attribute?

No. There’s no rel="dofollow" value in Google’s documentation. “Dofollow” is shorthand for a link without nofollow, sponsored or ugc. Adding rel="dofollow" to a link does nothing useful.

Should Affiliate Links Be Nofollow or Sponsored?

Affiliate links are paid relationships, so I mark them rel="sponsored". Google says nofollow is still acceptable for paid links, but sponsored is its preferred value. Either one keeps you inside the spam policy.

Should I Nofollow Internal Links?

I don’t, and I don’t recommend it. If a page shouldn’t be indexed, use noindex or fix the page. Nofollowing your own internal links just hides your site structure from Google.

Are Nofollow Backlinks Worth Building?

Worth earning, yes, when the page has a real audience. The referral traffic and brand exposure are real even if Google decides not to count the link. Pick these by readership, and pair them with the anchor choices in my guide to anchor text SEO.

Last updated: October 2026 by Mizanur Rahman