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What is a nofollow link?

Anubhav Sharma 449 09 Jun 2025

What is a nofollow link? what are purpose of nofollow in webpage.

Anubhav Sharma

Student

The Anubhav portal was launched in March 2015 at the behest of the Hon'ble Prime Minister for retiring government officials to leave a record of their experiences while in Govt service .

1 Answers

Anubhav Sharma 06 Nov 2025

A nofollow link is a type of hyperlink that tells search engines not to pass any SEO authority or “link juice” from the linking page to the target page.

In simple terms —

A nofollow link doesn’t help the target page improve its Google ranking.

Or

A nofollow link tells search engines:
“Don’t count this link for ranking.”
It’s used mainly for paid, untrusted, or user-generated links.

Or

“Don’t follow this link or count it for ranking purposes.”

rel="nofollow"

Example

Normal (DoFollow) Link:

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

Google follows this link and may pass ranking authority (PageRank).

Nofollow Link:

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

Google won’t pass PageRank or ranking credit to example.com.

Why Nofollow Links Are Used

Purpose	Explanation
1. To avoid SEO manipulation	Stops passing link juice to prevent spam or paid link schemes.
2. Paid or sponsored content	Used when linking to sponsored or affiliate sites (per Google policy).
3. User-generated content	Platforms like blogs, forums, and comments use `nofollow` to prevent spam links.
4. Untrusted or unknown sites	Use it when you don’t want to “endorse” a site’s content.

Where Nofollow Links Commonly Appear

Blog comments
Forum posts or profiles
Social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)
Wikipedia references
Paid ads or sponsored posts
User-generated content sections

Types of rel Attributes (Modern Google Rules)

Google expanded rel attributes to better categorize link types:

Attribute	Purpose
`rel="nofollow"`	Don’t pass ranking credit (general use)
`rel="sponsored"`	Used for paid or affiliate links
`rel="ugc"`	Used for user-generated content (comments, forums, etc.)

Example:

<a href="https://example.com" rel="sponsored">Buy Now</a>
<a href="https://example.com" rel="ugc">User comment link</a>

How Google Treats Nofollow Links Today (Post-2019)

Before 2019 → Google completely ignored nofollow links.
After 2019 → Google treats them as “hints”, meaning it may choose to follow or consider them for ranking if relevant.

So while nofollow links don’t directly boost SEO, they can still:

Bring referral traffic
Improve brand visibility
Help with indexing indirectly

Example Use Case

If you’re writing a sponsored post:

<a href="https://sponsorwebsite.com" rel="sponsored nofollow">Check this product</a>

If you’re unsure about a site’s trustworthiness:

<a href="https://unknownsite.com" rel="nofollow">Source</a>

DoFollow vs NoFollow Summary

Feature	DoFollow Link	NoFollow Link
Passes PageRank	Yes	No
Affects SEO ranking	Yes	Minimal (only as hint)
Used for paid links	No	Yes
Search engine follows it	Yes	Not always
Common in	Editorial content	Comments, ads, social media

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