What Is a Nofollow Link?
A nofollow link is a normal hyperlink with one extra attribute that tells search engines not to count it as a vote. That is the whole idea — the rest is context.
Short answer
rel="nofollow" in its HTML. It asks search engines not to pass ranking credit to the page it points to. Visitors cannot see any difference — they click it and land on the destination exactly as with any other link.The definition
Nofollow is a value of the rel attribute on an HTML anchor tag. It signals to search engines that the site publishing the link does not vouch for the destination and does not want its ranking systems to treat the link as an endorsement.
It is not a property of the destination site, and it is not something you can set on links pointing at you. Only the publisher of the linking page controls it.
What it looks like in HTML
<!-- normal, followed -->
<a href="https://example.com">Example</a>
<!-- nofollow -->
<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Example</a>
<!-- combined with other values -->
<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Example</a>A page can also apply it site-wide to every link on that page with a meta robots tag, which is much blunter and worth using sparingly:
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">Why the attribute exists
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft introduced nofollow in 2005 for one reason: blog comment spam. Anyone could drop links into comment fields and siphon ranking credit from somebody else's site. The attribute let publishers keep comments open without underwriting whatever got posted in them.
Its scope widened from there — to paid placements, user-generated content, untrusted submissions, and anywhere a publisher wanted to link without endorsing.
Where you'll run into it
- Blog and news comment sections
- Social platforms — LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, most of them
- Wikipedia and most wikis
- Forums and Q&A sites
- Press releases and syndicated distribution
- Sponsored posts, affiliate links, and advertising
- Many large publishers who nofollow all outbound links by policy
Plenty of the free backlink opportunities in our directory are nofollow. They are still worth doing for the traffic, the discovery, and the profile diversity — just do them with the right expectations.
How Google treats it today
Since March 2020 Google treats nofollow as a hint for ranking and crawling rather than an absolute rule. Its systems may choose to consider the link. In practice, assume no ranking credit and be pleasantly surprised. Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links is the authoritative reference.
What it means for your site
For links to you: nofollow is neutral. Judge the placement on whether real, relevant people will see and click it. For links from you: use the attribute honestly on paid and user-generated links — see when to use nofollow links and which attribute to use where.
To inspect any specific link, follow the steps in how to check if a link is nofollow.
FAQ
What does nofollow link mean?
It means the link carries rel="nofollow", an HTML attribute that asks search engines not to treat the link as an endorsement of the destination page. The link still works normally for visitors.
Do nofollow links still get crawled?
Often yes. Since 2019 Google treats nofollow as a hint, so it may crawl the destination anyway, especially if the page is linked from elsewhere. But you should never rely on a nofollow link to get a page discovered.
Is a nofollow link a bad link?
No. Nofollow is not a penalty or a quality judgement. Many of the most valuable sites on the web, including Wikipedia and most large news publishers, nofollow their outbound links by default.
Put it into practice
Browse the directory to find the next backlink opportunity to act on.