Nofollow Links: The HTML of a Link, the Three rel Values, and Why Google Treats Them as Hints

One line of HTML, taken apart piece by piece

Search for "HTML code for a link" and you get the short version: an a element with an href. That is enough for a browser. Search engines read more of it. Here is a full link of the kind a roofer might put in a blog post: <a href="https://example.com/storm-damage-guide" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the county's storm damage guide</a>. Every part of that line is read by someone: the browser, Google, a screen reader, or the analytics on the other end.

Two details save more trouble than any attribute. First, a menu item built from a span or a button with a click handler is not a link to Google, which is why Google's link documentation lists those patterns as not recommended. Our JavaScript SEO guide covers how scripted sites lose pages that way. Second, a link whose visible text says "click here" tells Google nothing about the page behind it. The rest of this guide is about the rel attribute, because that is where the money questions sit.

From comment-spam patch to hint: how nofollow changed in 2019

Nofollow started as a patch. Google introduced it in January 2005 to take the profit out of comment spam, back when blog comment sections were a free billboard for anyone with a script. It soon became Google's recommended way to flag advertising and sponsored links too. For fourteen years the rule was simple: Google did not count a nofollowed link as a ranking signal.

On September 10, 2019, Google's Search Central blog announced the change in a post called Evolving "nofollow". It added two values, sponsored and ugc, and said all three would now be treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. For ranking the change applied at once. For crawling and indexing, nofollow became a hint on March 1, 2020.

Google's stated reason is that links carry information it did not want to throw away. Anchor text can describe the page it points to, and seeing every link helps Google spot unnatural patterns. The same post said Google expected the change to make little difference in practice, because it would generally still not use such links for ranking. So a nofollowed link is not a secret vote. It is a link Google may learn from, and usually will not credit.

Nofollow is a request with a reason attached. Google reads both and decides.

What a hint cannot do: keep a page out of Google

The 2019 change broke one old habit. Some sites had nofollowed every link to a thank-you page, a staging copy or a members area, and assumed that hid the page. Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links says linked pages may still be found through sitemaps or links from other sites, and points to stronger tools for each job.

The two tools in the right column conflict if you combine them carelessly: a page blocked in robots.txt is never fetched, so Google never sees its noindex. Our guide to robots.txt blocking Google covers the first, and meta tags covers the robots tag. That tag has a nofollow of its own. Written as <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">, it applies to every link on the page, and the same rule can be sent as an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. The rel attribute marks one link; the meta tag marks them all.

Sponsored, ugc or nofollow: choose by asking why the link exists

Google defines each value by the reason behind the link, not by where it sits on the page. Ask how the link came to exist and the value usually picks itself. A plain link with no rel attribute is the default, and it is correct for most links you place by choice.

Values combine. Google accepts a space or comma separated list, such as rel="nofollow ugc", and its 2019 post suggests that pairing because some services do not recognize the newer values. WordPress has done exactly that since version 5.3: its core announcement says comment links and comment author URLs get rel="nofollow ugc" by default. Guest posts have their own wrinkles, covered in guest blogging, and paid placements are the subject of buying backlinks.

Six ways sites get the attribute wrong

• Nofollowing every outbound link. A single theme setting or link plugin can stamp it on every external link. Google says to use nofollow only when you do not trust the source, not for every external link on your site. A cited source deserves a plain link.
• Leaving paid links unmarked. Google's 2019 FAQ says there is no wrong attribute except with sponsored links: an ad left unflagged risks a link scheme action, while an ordinary link marked sponsored by mistake at most loses its credit.
• Nofollowing internal links to steer ranking. Old advice said to nofollow links to the contact page or the privacy policy so the important pages got more credit. For pages within your own site, Google points to robots.txt rather than nofollow when you want a URL left alone, and good internal linking does the rest.
• Inventing a dofollow value. No rel="dofollow" appears among the values in Google's documentation. A followed link is simply a link without nofollow, sponsored or ugc. Anyone selling "dofollow links" is selling the absence of a label, which tells you what the label would have said.
• Confusing noopener and noreferrer with nofollow. Those are browser values. MDN, the developer reference for web standards, says noopener stops the new page from controlling the one that opened it, and noreferrer removes the Referer header. Neither is a search instruction, but noreferrer can make your visits to a partner look like direct traffic in their analytics.
• Marking store filters one link at a time. Google's guide to faceted navigation says nofollow on filter links helps only if every link to those URLs carries it, and calls robots.txt the more effective long-term control.

On target="_blank": MDN notes that in newer browsers it already behaves as if rel="noopener" were set, so the extra value is a belt for older browsers. It also recommends telling readers when a link opens a new tab, because an unexpected tab confuses people using screen readers.

Checking how a link is marked, on your site and on theirs

You cannot see rel in the page as a visitor sees it, and Search Console's Links report does not show it either. Google says so in the report's help. Checking takes a browser and five minutes.

1. 1

   Inspect the link itself

   Right-click the link in Chrome, Edge or Firefox and choose Inspect. The developer tools highlight the a element and show every attribute on it, including rel.

2. 2

   Search the page source

   Open the page source and search for rel=. On a page with many links this shows quickly whether a plugin is stamping nofollow on everything.

3. 3

   Check the rendered version

   If links are added by scripts, use URL Inspection in Google Search Console and view the tested page's HTML, which shows what Google saw after rendering.

4. 4

   Crawl your own site

   A site crawler lists every outbound link with its rel value. Sort by domain and look for sponsors left unmarked and trusted sources marked nofollow.

5. 5

   Read the defaults

   Look at the settings of your theme, link plugin and comment system. One checkbox can be the reason four hundred links carry nofollow.

For links pointing at you, the same Inspect step works on the other site's page. A wider review of who links to you belongs in a backlink audit, and our free website audit checks your own pages for the technical faults that sit around links, such as broken addresses and redirect chains.

What a nofollowed link is still worth

A link to you marked sponsored or nofollow will generally not pass ranking credit. It still sends people. A sponsor link on the charity 5K's registration page reaches every runner who signs up. A nofollowed link in a local news story puts your name in front of everyone who reads it, and a forum reply that solves someone's problem gets clicked for years. Judge those links by the visitors and the reputation, which GA4's referral report counts.

Mentions matter beyond the click as well. AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI features draw on what the web says about a business, linked or not, which our page on brand mentions vs backlinks explains. None of that is a reason to chase nofollowed links in bulk. It is a reason not to turn down a good placement because of an attribute.

The rel attribute is a small part of off-page SEO, and the link building section covers earning the links worth marking. The SEO guide puts both in order. If you would rather have someone else read the attributes, fix the templates and earn the links, that work is part of DataCram's monthly SEO programs: no long contract, a defined scope, from $575 a month, depending on how complex the site is, the setup it needs and your budget, per our SEO pricing page.