Dofollow / nofollow

Normal (dofollow) links pass on link equity; nofollow links shouldn't – since 2019 Google has treated this as a hint. There are also ugc for user content and sponsored for paid links. A natural link profile contains a mix of all of them.

Backlinks are important for a website's ranking. Google rewards a naturally grown link profile – provided the links don't come about through manipulation. That was exactly the big problem in the early 2000s: comment spam in blogs and forums gave websites links en masse. Normally, Googlebot follows every link and treats it as a recommendation for the linked page – this is called a “dofollow” link. There is no separate attribute for this: every link without special markup is automatically a dofollow link. This corresponds to the original idea of the World Wide Web, in which pages link to and thereby recommend each other.

The problem with link spam

If topically related pages link to each other and thereby offer visitors added value, that's generally a good thing. But there have always been attempts to manipulate search engine optimisation. Blogs and forums in particular, where anyone can post content, were spammed with links on a massive scale to improve rankings. That's why Google, together with other search engines, introduced the “nofollow” attribute in 2005. A link with rel="nofollow" signals: I don't endorse this link; it shouldn't pass on any link equity. Visitors can still follow it as normal. Since 2019, however, Google has treated “nofollow” only as a hint: the search engine can decide for itself whether to take the link into account for crawling or evaluation.

Is “nofollow” bad for search engine optimisation?

When blog comments and forum posts suddenly stopped delivering valuable links, many SEOs were critical. By now it's clear: nofollow links have their value too. They are part of a natural link profile – a profile without any nofollow links would tend to look unnatural. They also bring visitors and attention: a nofollow link from a large news portal or specialist community can bring traffic and lead other websites to pick up the content and link to it normally. According to Google, likes and shares on social networks, on the other hand, are not a direct ranking factor – they help indirectly by making content known.

Dofollow, nofollow, sponsored and ugc: the link building mix

In 2019, Google added two more attributes: “ugc” and “sponsored”. rel="ugc" (user-generated content) is used to mark links in content created by users – such as comments, forums or reviews on your own site. rel="sponsored" marks paid links, advertising partnerships and affiliate links. Anyone who buys links without marking them violates Google's guidelines and risks a penalty; marked links, on the other hand, are unproblematic. Important: the attributes don't replace care over link quality. Links from a bad neighbourhood remain a risk even if they are set to nofollow. What matters is a natural mix of editorial links and marked links.